Theological Essays and Other Papers — Volume 2

by Thomas De Quincey

Passing for a moment to minor accomplishments, we find that Charlemagne excelled in athletic and gymnastic exercises; he was a pancratiast. Bonaparte wanted those even which were essential to his own daily security. Charlemagne swam well; Bonaparte not at all. Charlemagne was a first-rate horseman even amongst the Franks; Napoleon rode ill originally, and no practice availed to give him a firm seat, a graceful equestrian deportment, or a skilful bridle hand. In a barbarous age the one possessed all the elegances and ornamental accomplishments of a gentleman; the other, in a most polished age, and in a nation of even false refinement, was the sole barbarian of his time; presenting, in his deficiencies, the picture of a low mechanic—and, in his positive qualities, the violence and brutality of a savage. [Footnote 9] Hence, by the way, the extreme folly of those who have attempted to trace a parallel between Napoleon and the first Caesar. The heaven-born Julius, as beyond all dispute the greatest man of ancient history in moral grandeur, and therefore raised unspeakably above comparison with one who was eminent, even amongst ordinary men, for the pettiness of his passions—so also, upon an intellectual trial, will be found to challenge pretty nearly an equal precedency. Meantime, allowing for the inequality of their advantages, even Caesar would not have disdained a comparison with Charlemagne. All the knowledge current in Rome, Athens, or Rhodes, at the period of Caesar's youth, the entire cycle of a nobleman's education in a republic where all noblemen were from their birth dedicated to public services, this—together with much and various knowledge peculiar to himself and his own separate objects—had Caesar mastered; whilst, in an age of science, and in a country where the fundamental science of mathematics was generally diffused in unrivalled perfection, it is well ascertained that Bonaparte's knowledge did not go beyond an elementary acquaintance with the first six books of Euclid; but, on the other hand, Charlemagne, even in that early age, was familiar with the intricate mathematics and the elaborate computus of Practical Astronomy.

But these collations, it will be said, are upon questions not primarily affecting their peculiar functions. They are questions more or less extra-judicial. The true point of comparison is upon the talents of policy in the first place, and strategies in the second. A trial between two celebrated performers in these departments, is at any rate difficult; and much more so when they are separated by vast intervals of time. Allowances must be made, so many and so various; compensations or balances struck upon so many diversities of situation; there is so much difference in the modes of warfare—offensive and defensive; the financial means, the available alliances, and other resources, are with so much difficulty appraised—in order to raise ourselves to that station from which the whole question can be overlooked, that nothing short of a general acquaintance with the history, statistics, and diplomacy of the two periods, can lay a ground for the solid adjudication of so large a comparison. Meantime, in the absence of such an investigation, pursued upon a scale of suitable proportions, what if we should sketch a rapid outline [Greek Text: os en tupo pexilabeln] of its elements, (to speak by a metaphor borrowed from practical astronomy)—i. e. of the principal and most conspicuous points which its path would traverse? How much these two men, each central to a mighty system in his own days, how largely and essentially they differed—whether in kind or in degree of merit, will appear in the course even of the hastiest sketch. The circumstances in which they agreed, and that these were sufficient to challenge an inquiry into their characteristic differences, and to support the interest of such an inquiry, will probably be familiar to most readers, as among the common places of general history which survive even in the daily records of conversation. Few people can fail to know—that each of these memorable men stood at the head of a new era in European history, and of a great movement in the social development of nations; that each laid the foundations for a new dynasty in his own family, the one by building forwards upon a basis already formed by his two immediate progenitors, the other by dexterously applying to a great political crisis his own military preponderance; and finally, that each forfeited within a very brief period—the one in his own person, the other in the persons of his immediate descendants—the giddy ascent which he had mastered, and all the distinctions which it conferred; in short, that 'Time, which gave, did his own gifts confound;' [Footnote 10] but with this mighty difference—that Time co-operated in the one case with extravagant folly in the individual, and in the other with the irresistible decrees of Providence.

Napoleon Bonaparte and Charlemagne were both, in a memorable degree, the favorites of fortune. It is true, that the latter found himself by inheritance in possession of a throne, which the other ascended by the fortunate use of his own military advantages. But the throne of Charlemagne had been recently won by his family, and in a way so nearly corresponding to that which was afterwards pursued by Napoleon, that in effect, considering how little this usurpation had been hallowed by time, the throne might in each case, if not won precisely on the same terms, be considered to be held by the same tenure. Charlemagne, not less than Napoleon, was the privileged child of revolution; he was required by the times, and indispensable to the crisis which had arisen for the Franks; and he was himself protected by the necessities to which he ministered. Clouds had risen, or were rising, at that era, on every quarter of France; from every side she was menaced by hostile demonstrations; and, without the counsels of a Charlemagne, and with an energy of action inferior to his, it is probable that she would have experienced misfortunes which, whilst they depressed herself, could not but have altered the destinies of Christendom for many ages to come. The resources of France, it is true, were immense; and, as regarded the positions of her enemies, they were admirably concentrated. But to be made available in the whole extent which the times demanded, it was essential that they should be wielded by a first-rate statesman, supported by a first-rate soldier. The statesman and the soldier were fortunately found united in the person of one man; and that man, by the rarest of combinations, the same who was clothed with the supreme power of the State. Less power, or power less harmonious, or power the most consummate, administered with less absolute skill, would doubtless have been found incompetent to struggle with the tempestuous assaults which then lowered over the entire frontier of France. It was natural, and, upon the known constitution of human nature, pretty nearly inevitable, that, in the course of the very extended warfare which followed, love for that glorious trade—so irritating and so contagious—should be largely developed in a mind as aspiring as Charlemagne's, and stirred by such generous sensibilities. Yet is it in no one instance recorded, that these sympathies with the pomp and circumstance of war, moved him to undertake so much as a single campaign, or an expedition which was not otherwise demanded by his judgment, or that they interfered even to bias or give an impulse to his judgment, where it had previously wavered. In every case he tried the force of negotiation before he appealed to arms; nay, sometimes he condescended so far in his love of peace, as to attempt purchasing with gold rights or concessions of expediency, which he knew himself in a situation amply to extort by arms. Nor where these courses were unavailing, and where peace was no longer to be maintained by any sacrifices, is it ever found that Charlemagne, in adopting the course of war, suffered himself to pursue it as an end valuable in and for itself. And yet that is a result not uncommon; for a long and conscientious resistance to a measure originally tempting to the feelings, once being renounced as utterly unavailing, not seldom issues in a headlong surrender of the heart to purposes so violently thwarted for a time. And even as a means, war was such in the eyes of Charlemagne to something beyond the customary ends of victory and domestic security. Of all conquerors, whose history is known sufficiently to throw light upon their motives, Charlemagne is the only one who looked forward to the benefit of those he conquered, as a principal element amongst the fruits of conquest. 'Doubtless,' says his present biographer, 'to defend his own infringed territory, and to punish the aggressors, formed a part of his design; but, beyond that, he aimed at civilizing a people whose barbarism had been for centuries the curse of the neighboring countries, and at the same time communicating to the cruel savages, who shed the blood of their enemies less in the battle than in the sacrifice, the bland and mitigating spirit of the Christian religion.'

This applies more particularly and circumstantially to his Saxon campaigns; but the spirit of the remark is of general application. At that time a weak light of literature was beginning to diffuse improvement in Italy, in France, and in England. France, by situation, geographically and politically speaking, by the prodigious advantage which she enjoyed exclusively of an undivided government, and consequently of entire unity in her counsels, was peculiarly fitted for communicating the benefits of intellectual culture to the rest of the European continent, and for sustaining the great mission of civilizing conquest. Above all, as the great central depository of Christian knowledge, she seemed specially stationed by Providence as a martial apostle for carrying by the sword that mighty blessing, which, even in an earthly sense, Charlemagne could not but value as the best engine of civilization, to the potent infidel nations on her southern and eastern frontier. A vast revolution was at hand for Europe; all her tribes were destined to be fused in a new crucible, to be recast in happier moulds, and to form one family of enlightened nations, to compose one great collective brotherhood, united by the tie of a common faith and a common hope, and hereafter to be known to the rest of the world, and to proclaim this unity, under the comprehensive name of Christendom. Baptism therefore was the indispensable condition and forerunner of civilization; and from the peculiar ferocity and the sanguinary superstitions which disfigured the Pagan nations in Central Europe, of which the leaders and the nearest to France were the Saxons, and from the bigotry and arrogant intolerance of the Mahometan nations who menaced her Spanish frontier, it was evident that by the sword only it was possible that baptism should be effectually propagated. War, therefore, for the highest purposes of peace, became the present and instant policy of France; bloodshed for the sake of a religion the most benign; and desolation with a view to permanent security. The Frankish Emperor was thus invited to indulge in this most captivating of luxuries—in the royal tiger-hunt of war—as being also at this time, and for a special purpose, the sternest of duties. He had a special dispensation for wielding at times a barbarian and exterminating sword—but for the extermination of barbarism; and he was privileged to be in a single instance an Attila, in order that Attilas might no more arise. Simply as the enemies, bitter and perfidious of France, the Saxons were a legitimate object of war; as the standing enemies of civilization, who would neither receive it for themselves, nor tolerate its peaceable enjoyment in others, they and Charlemagne stood opposed to each other as it were by hostile instincts. And this most merciful of conquerors was fully justified in departing for once, and in such a quarrel, from his general rule of conduct; and for a paramount purpose of comprehensive service to all mankind, we entirely agree with Mr. James, that Charlemagne had a sufficient plea, and that he has been censured only by calumnious libellers, or by the feeble- minded, for applying a Roman severity of punishment to treachery continually repeated. The question is one purely of policy; and it may be, as Mr. James is disposed to think, that in point of judgment the emperor erred; but certainly the case was one of great difficulty; for the very infirmity even of maternal indulgence, if obstinately and continually abused, must find its ultimate limit; and we have no right to suppose that Charlemagne made his election for the harsher course without a violent self-conflict. His former conduct towards those very people, his infinite forbearance, his long-suffering, his monitory threats, all make it a duty to presume that he suffered the acutest pangs in deciding upon a vindictive punishment; that he adopted this course as being virtually by its consequences the least sanguinary; and finally, that if he erred, it was not through his heart, but by resisting its very strongest impulses.

It is remarkable that both Charlemagne and Bonaparte succeeded as by inheritance to one great element of their enormous power; each found, ready to his hands, that vast development of martial enthusiasm, upon which, as its first condition, their victorious career reposed. Each also found the great armory of resources opened, which such a spirit, diffused over so vast a territory, must in any age ensure. Of Charlemagne, in an age when as yet the use of infantry was but imperfectly known, it may be said symbollically, that he found the universal people, patrician and plebeian, chieftain and vassal, with the left foot [Footnote 11] in the stirrup—of Napoleon, in an age when the use of artillery was first understood, that he found every man standing to his gun. Both, in short, found war in pro-cinctu—both found the people whom they governed, willing to support the privations and sacrifices which war imposes; hungering and thirsting for its glories, its pomps and triumphs; entering even with lively sympathy of pleasure into its hardships and its trials; and thus, from within and from without, prepared for military purposes. So far both had the same good fortune; [Footnote 12] neither had much merit. The enthusiasm of Napoleon's days was the birth of republican sentiments, and built on a reaction of civic and patriotic ardor. In the very plenitude of their rage against kings, the French Republic were threatened with attack, and with the desolation of their capital by a banded crusade of kings; and they rose in frenzy to meet the aggressors. The Allied Powers had themselves kindled the popular excitement which provoked this vast development of martial power amongst the French, and first brought their own warlike strength within their own knowledge. In the days of Charlemagne the same martial character was the result of ancient habits and training, encouraged and effectually organized by the energy of the aspiring mayors of the palace, or great lieutenants of the Merovingian kings. But agreeing in this—that they were indebted to others for the martial spirit which they found, and that they turned to their account a power not created by themselves, Charlemagne and Napoleon differed, however, in the utmost possible extent as to the final application of their borrowed advantages. Napoleon applied them to purposes the very opposite of those which had originally given them birth. Nothing less than patriotic ardor in defence of what had at one time appeared to be the cause of civil liberty, could have availed to evoke those mighty hosts which gathered in the early years of the Revolution on the German and Italian frontiers of France. Yet were these hosts applied, under the perfect despotism of Napoleon, to the final extinction of liberty; and the armies of Jacobinism, who had gone forth on a mission of liberation for Europe, were at last employed in riveting the chains of their compatriots, and forging others for the greater part of Christendom. Far otherwise was the conduct of Charlemagne. The Frankish government, though we are not circumstantially acquainted with its forms, is known to have been tempered by a large infusion of popular influence. This is proved, as Mr. James observes, by the deposition of Chilperic—by the grand national assemblies of the Champ de Mars—and by other great historical facts. Now, the situation of Charlemagne, successor to a throne already firmly established, and in his own person a mighty amplifier of its glories, and a leader in whom the Franks had unlimited confidence, threw into his hands an unexampled power of modifying the popular restraints upon himself in any degree he might desire.

—'Nunquam libertas gratior exit, Quam sub rege pio'—

is the general doctrine. But as to the Franks, in particular, if they resembled their modern representatives in their most conspicuous moral feature, it would be more true to say, that the bribe and the almost magical seduction for them, capable of charming away their sternest resolutions, and of relaxing the hand of the patriot when grasping his noblest birthright, has ever lain in great military success, in the power of bringing victory to the national standards, and in continued offerings on the altar of public vanity. In their estimate for above a thousand years, it has been found true that the harvest of a few splendid campaigns, reaped upon the fields of neighboring nations, far outweighs any amount of humbler blessings in the shape of civil and political privileges. Charlemagne as a conqueror, and by far the greatest illustrator of the Frankish name, might easily have conciliated their gratitude and admiration into a surrender of popular rights; or, profiting by his high situation, and the confidence reposed in him, he might have undermined their props; or, by a direct exertion of his power, he might have peremptorily resumed them. Slowly and surely, or summarily and with violence, this great emperor had the national privileges in his power. But the beneficence of his purposes required no such aggression on the rights of his subjects. War brought with it naturally some extension of power; and a military jurisdiction is necessarily armed with some discretionary license. But in the civil exercise of his authority, the emperor was content with the powers awarded to him by law and custom. His great schemes of policy were all of a nature to prepare his subjects for a condition of larger political influence; he could not in consistency be adverse to an end towards which he so anxiously prepared the means. And it is certain, that, although some German writers have attempted to fasten upon Charlemagne a charge of vexatious inquisition into the minor police of domestic life, and into petty details of economy below the majesty of his official character, even their vigilance of research—sharpened by malice—has been unable to detect throughout his long reign, and in the hurry of sudden exigencies natural to a state of uninterrupted warfare and alarm, one single act of tyranny, personal revenge, or violation of the existing laws. Charlemagne, like Napoleon, had bitter enemies—some who were such to his government and his public purposes; some again to his person upon motives of private revenge. Tassilo, for example, the Duke of Bavaria, and Desiderius, the King of the Lombards, acted against him upon the bitterest instigations of feminine resentment; each of these princes conceiving himself concerned in a family quarrel, pursued the cause which he had adopted in the most ferocious spirit of revenge, and would undoubtedly have inflicted death upon Charlemagne, had he fallen into their power. Of this he must himself have been sensible; and yet, when the chance of war threw both of them into his power, he forbore to exercise even those rights of retaliation for their many provocations which the custom of that age sanctioned universally; he neither mutilated nor deprived them of sight. Confinement to religious seclusion was all that he inflicted; and in the case of Tassilo, where mercy could be more safely exercised, he pardoned him so often, that it became evident in what current his feelings ran, wherever the cruel necessities of the public service allowed him to indulge them.

In the conspiracy formed against him, upon the provocations offered to the Frankish nobility by his third wife, he showed the same spirit of excessive clemency,—a clemency which again reminds us of the first Caesar, and which was not merely parental, but often recalls to us the long-suffering and tenderness of spirit which belong to the infirmity of maternal affection. Here are no Palms, executed for no real offence known to the laws of his country, and without a trial such as any laws in any country would have conceded. No innocent D'Enghiens murdered, without the shadow of provocation, and purely on account of his own reversionary rights; not for doing or meditating wrong, but because the claims which unfortunately he inherited might by possibility become available in his person; not, therefore, even as an enemy by intention or premeditation; not even as an apparent competitor, but in the rare character of a competitor presumptive; one who might become an ideal competitor by the extinction of a whole family, and even then no substantial competitor until after a revolution in France, which must already have undermined the throne of Bonaparte. To his own subjects, and his own kinsmen, never did Charlemagne forget to be, in acts, as well as words, a parent. In his foreign relations, it is true, for one single purpose of effectual warning Charlemagne put forth a solitary trait of Roman harshness. This is the case which we have already noticed and defended; and, with a view to the comparison with Napoleon, remarkable enough it is, that the numbers sacrificed on this occasion are pretty nearly the same as on the celebrated massacre at Jaffa, perpetrated by Napoleon in council. [Footnote 13] In the Saxon, as in the Syrian massacre, the numbers were between four and five thousand; not that the numbers or the scale of the transaction can affect its principle, but it is well to know it, because then to its author, as now to us who sit as judges upon it, that circumstance cannot be supposed to have failed in drawing the very keenest attention to its previous consideration. A butchery, that was in a numerical sense so vast, cannot be supposed to have escaped its author in a hurry, or to be open to any of the usual palliations from precipitance or inattention. Charlemagne and Napoleon must equally be presumed to have regarded this act on all sides, to have weighed it in and for itself, and to have traversed by anticipation the whole sum of its consequences. In the one case we find a general, the leader of a soi-disant Christian army, the representative of the 'most Christian' nation, and, as amongst infidels, specially charged with the duty of supporting the sanctity of Christian good faith, unfortunately pledged by his own most confidential and accredited agents, officers bearing on their persons the known ensigns of his aides-de-camp, to a comprehensive promise of mercy to a large body of Turkish troops, having arms in their hands, and otherwise well-disposed and well able to have made a desperate defence. This promise was peculiarly embarrassing; provisions ran short, and, to detain them as prisoners, would draw murmurs from his own troops, now suffering hardships themselves. On the other hand, to have turned them adrift would have insured their speedy re-appearance as active enemies to a diminished and debilitated army; for, as to sending them off by sea, that measure was impracticable, as well from want of shipping as from the presence of the English. Such was the dilemma, doubtless perplexing enough, but not more so than in ten thousand other cases, for which their own appropriate ten thousand remedies have been found. What was the issue? The entire body of gallant (many, doubtless, young and innocent) soldiers, disarmed upon the faith of a solemn guarantee from a Christian general, standing in the very steps of the noble (and the more noble, because bigoted) Crusaders, were all mowed down by the musketry of their thrice accursed enemy; and, by way of crowning treachery with treachery, some few who had swum off to a point of rock in the sea, were lured back to destruction under a second series of promises, violated almost at the very instant when uttered. A larger or more damnable murder does not stain the memory of any brigand, buccaneer, or pirate; nor has any army, Huns, Vandals, or Mogul Tartars, ever polluted itself by so base a perfidy; for, in this memorable tragedy, the whole army were accomplices.

Now, as to Charlemagne, he had tried the effect of forgiveness and lenity often in vain. Clemency was misinterpreted; it had been, and it would be, construed into conscious weakness. Under these circumstances, with a view, undoubtedly, to the final extinction of rebellions which involved infinite bloodshed on both sides, he permitted one trial to be made of a severe and sanguinary chastisement. It failed; insurrections proceeded as before, and it was not repeated. But the main difference in the principle of the two cases is this, that Charlemagne had exacted no penalty but one, which the laws of war in that age conferred, and even in this age the laws of allegiance. However bloody, therefore, this tragedy was no murder. It was a judicial punishment, built upon known acts and admitted laws, designed in mercy, consented to unwillingly, and finally repented. Lastly, instead of being one in a multitude of acts bearing the same character, it stood alone in a long career of intercourse with wild and ferocious nations, owning no control but that of the spear and sword.

Many are the points of comparison, and some of them remarkable enough, in the other circumstances of the two careers, separated by a thousand years. Both effected the passage of the Great St. Bernard; [Footnote 14] but the one in an age when mechanical forces, and the aids of art, were yet imperfectly developed; the other in an age when science had armed the arts of war and of locomotion with the fabulous powers of the Titans, and with the whole resources of a mighty nation at his immediate disposal. Both, by means of this extraordinary feat, achieved the conquest of Lombardy in a single hour; but Charlemagne, without once risking the original impression of this coup d'eclat; Napoleon, on the other hand, so entirely squandering and forfeiting his own success, that in the battle which followed he was at first utterly defeated, and but for the blunder of his enemy, and the sudden aid of an accomplished friend, irretrievably. Both suffered politically by the repudiation of a wife; but Charlemagne, under adequate provocation, and with no final result of evil; Bonaparte under heavy aggravations of ingratitude and indiscretion. Both assumed the character of a patron to learning and learned men; but Napoleon, in an age when knowledge of every kind was self-patronized—when no possible exertions of power could avail to crush it—and yet, under these circumstances, with utter insincerity. Charlemagne, on the other hand, at a time when the countenance of a powerful protector made the whole difference between revival and a long extinction—and what was still more to the purpose of doing honor to his memory, not merely in a spirit of sincerity, but of fervid activity. Not content with drawing counsel and aid from the cells of Northumberland, even the short time which he passed at Rome, he had 'collected a number of grammarians (that is litterateurs) and arithmeticians, the poor remains of the orators and philosophers of the past, and engaged them to accompany him from Italy to France.'