The battle of Waterloo itself has been so fully and ably discussed from this rostrum, and Grouchy’s part of the failure so clearly explained, that I will go no further. It seems clear that the battle was lost on the day preceding it. If Blucher did not join Wellington by one means he would by another, when Napoleon gave him so many hours leeway. Nothing but the old activity in following up his initial success could possibly have enabled Napoleon to fight Wellington and Blucher separately,—and if they joined they were sure to beat him. Had he kept right on, he would have beaten Wellington, and Blucher would have retired. His difficulties here were not great. He was successful in his early steps, and failed in later ones. The explanation of the whole matter lies in the fact that Napoleon’s physical powers and moral initiative had waned. His intellect was unimpaired, but his character had lost its native quality.
No man should be subject to criticism for inability to do his best work when suffering from disease. It is not intended to criticise in this sense. La critique est facile; l’art est difficile. The motto of these lectures is that coexistent intellect, character, and opportunity go to make the great captain. We see Napoleon for twelve years possibly the greatest soldier who ever lived. We then see his successes lessen. It was not from declining intellect. It was partly lesser opportunity,—that is, greater difficulties,—partly loss of activity and decisiveness,—or, in other words, character,—proceeding from weakening physique or decrease of moral strength. There may be room for doubt whether failing health alone, or failing health combined with waning character, caused the indecisiveness. It descends into a question of nomenclature. Of the bald fact there can be no doubt. Napoleon at Waterloo was not as great as Napoleon at Austerlitz.
The secret of Napoleon’s power lay in his clear eye for facts, his positive mind. Carlyle says: “The man had a certain, instinctive, ineradicable feeling for reality, and did base himself upon fact so long as he had any basis.” Napoleon said of himself that he was most of a slave of all men, obliged to obey a heartless master, the calculation of circumstances and the nature of things. Coupled with this were a reliance on facts, rare capacity for divination, and an immense power of imagination. But finally the latter overran the other qualities. His successes convinced him that he could do anything; he forgot what his success had been grounded on, and he began to neglect facts. “It is not possible” is not French, said he. This is the best of maxims construed one way,—the worst, if misconstrued. Napoleon believed himself able to accomplish all things, until his accuracy of judgment was lost in his refusal to look facts in the face. He ceased to be slave of the nature of things. He deserted belief in facts for belief in his destiny. Finally facts became for him not what they were, but what he wished them to be. He refused credit to what did not suit his theory of how things ought to turn.
Napoleon had what rarely coexists,—an equally clear head on the map and in the field. On the map he was able in both theory and practice. His theories are text-books; his letters are treatises. No higher praise can be spoken than to say that every one of Napoleon’s fourteen campaigns was, in a military sense, properly planned.
Napoleon showed the value of masses in strategy as well as tactics. In former times the worth of troops was of greater value than numbers. To-day worth of itself is less essential than it was. Napoleon founded his calculations on the equality of thousands. It is he who collated all that was done by the other great captains, clothed it in a dress fit for our own days, and taught the modern world how to make war in perfect form.
Strategy will always remain the same art. Its uses are to-day varied by railroads, telegraphs, arms of precision. What was not allowable in the Napoleonic era can be undertaken now with safety. But all this has only modified, it has not changed strategy. The tendency of modern armies is toward better organization. Ramrod discipline is giving way to dependence on the individuality of officers and men, and to instruction in doing what at the moment is the most expedient thing. But every great soldier will be great hereafter from the same causes which have made all captains what they were; in conducting war he will be governed by the same intellectual and moral strength which they exhibited, and will do, as they always did, what befits the time, unfettered by rules and maxims, but with a broad comprehension of their true value.
Napoleon is so close to this generation that he sometimes appears to us gigantic beyond all others. He certainly moulded into shape the method in use to-day, which the Prussians have carried forward to its highest development by scrupulous preparation in every department, personal service, and the teaching of individuals to act with intelligent independence. That Napoleon was always intellectually the equal, and, in the first part of his career in the moral forces, the equal of any of the captains, cannot be denied. But we must remember that because Napoleon wrought in our own times we can the better appreciate what he did, while our more meagre knowledge of the others makes it impossible to see as clearly the manner in which, to accomplish their great deeds, they must have patterned their means to the work to be done. “The most important qualities of an army leader,” says Jomini, “will always be a great character or constitutional courage, which leads to great determinations; sang froid or bodily courage which conquers danger; learning appears in third line, but it will be a strong help.”
Napoleon exhibited these qualities in full measure up to 1808, and comes close to being, at his best, the greatest of the captains. He failed to exhibit the moral power in as great measure thereafter. It was not years, for Cæsar and Frederick were older when they showed these same qualities in the highest degree. That Napoleon lost activity and decisiveness, and thereby forfeited success, is no reproach. No man can keep his faculties beyond a certain period. He lacked that equipoise which enables a man to stand success. He did not last as the others lasted; and proved that only so long as a man retains the highest grade of character can he remain a great captain. At the same time it is but fair to repeat that the conditions under which Napoleon worked gradually became more difficult; that the allies learned from him as the Romans did from Hannibal, and made fewer mistakes as the years went on; that he was not always able to retain about him the most efficient of his marshals; that he commanded vastly larger armies than the other captains. His task was larger accordingly.
Napoleon’s strategy shows a magnificence in conception, a boldness in execution, and a completeness and homogeneity not shown by any other leader. The other captains can only stand beside him because they builded so that he might add; they invented so that he might improve. But while Napoleon reached a height beyond the others, they did not show the decrease of genius which he showed.
Too little time is left to draw a satisfactory comparison between Napoleon and his peers in arms. In Frederick we recognize a man of higher standard than Napoleon reached. Not merely because Frederick was, of all the captains, the only one who, with vastly smaller forces, attacked troops equal to his own and defeated them right and left,—in other words, because he was typical tactician, the typical fighter,—but because he was steadfast in victory and defeat alike; because he was so truly a king to his people as well as a soldier; because he so truly merged his own self in the good of Prussia. Napoleon flared like a comet. Frederick burned like a planet or a fixed star,—less brilliant, less startling, but ever constant. Frederick at the close of his life was the same great man. Napoleon had burned out his lamp. Frederick never waned. Years or infirmity never changed his force or determination, or limited his energies. Moreover, Frederick, like Hannibal, was greater in disaster than in success. Napoleon succumbed to disaster. Frederick and Hannibal alone held themselves against overwhelming civilized armies. They were stronger, more able, more determined, more to be feared the more misfortune crowded upon them. We instinctively couple Napoleon’s genius with his greatest success; we couple Hannibal’s or Frederick’s with their direst disasters. Alexander and Gustavus never looked real disaster in the face, as Frederick before Leuthen, or Hannibal after the Metaurus. Nor indeed did Cæsar. But Cæsar opposed wonderful countenance to threatening calamity.