Looking at Napoleon and Gustavus, it is perhaps impossible to compare them. Gustavus was immeasurably above all the others in purity of character, and their equal in force and intellect. To him we owe the revival of intellectual war, lost for seventeen centuries; and on what he did Frederick and Napoleon builded. Napoleon is nearer akin to Cæsar. Perhaps, take them all in all, as soldiers, statesmen, law-givers, Cæsar and Napoleon are the two greatest men. But they sink below the rest in their motives and aspirations. Neither ever lost sight of self; while Alexander’s ambition was not only to conquer the East, but to extend Greek civilization; the motive of Hannibal and Frederick was patriotic, and that of Gustavus love of country and religion. Three of the captains were kings from the start. Their ambition was naturally impersonal. Of the other three, Hannibal alone worked from purely unselfish motives.
Nor can we compare Napoleon with Hannibal. In his successes Napoleon is equally brilliant, more titanic; in his failures he falls so far below the level of this great pattern of patient, never-yielding resistance to adversity as to be lost. To Alexander fighting semi-civilized armies, Napoleon can only be likened in his Egyptian campaigns, and in this he in no sense rises to the height of the Macedonian. Napoleon’s genius was most apparent on the familiar fields of Europe.
In intellectual grasp, all six great captains stand side by side. In enthusiastic activity and in all the qualities which compel good fortune, Alexander stands clearly at the head. No one but Frederick has perhaps so brilliant a string of tactical jewels as Hannibal, while in a persistent unswerving struggle of many years to coerce success against the constantly blackening frowns of Fortune, Hannibal stands alone and incomparable. Cæsar was a giant in conception and execution alike, and stands apart in having taught himself in middle life how to wage war, and then waging in it a fashion equalled only by the other five. Gustavus will always rank, not only as the man who rescued intellectual war from oblivion, but as the most splendid character, in nobility of purpose and intelligence of method, which the annals of the world have to show. Frederick is not only the Battle Captain who never blenched at numbers, but truly the Last of the Kings,—king and priest, in the history of mankind. Napoleon carries us to the highest plane of genius and power and success, and then declines. We begin by feeling that here is indeed the greatest of the captains, and we end by recognizing that he has not acted out the part. No doubt, taking him in his many-sidedness, Cæsar is the greatest character in history. It may not unfairly be claimed that Napoleon follows next, especially in that he preserved for Europe many germs of the liberty which was born of the blood of the Revolution. Cæsar was the most useful man of antiquity; Napoleon comes near to being the most useful man of modern times. But neither Cæsar nor Napoleon appeal to us as do splendid, open-hearted Alexander; patient, intrepid, ever-constant Hannibal; the Christian hero, Gustavus; and daring, obstinate, royal Frederick.
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.
Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs and outside quotations. In versions of this eBook that support hyperlinks, the page references in the List of Illustrations lead to the corresponding illustrations.
[Page 85]: “He went to school as Cæsar” was originally printed as “He went to school to Cæsar.”