In Egypt he projected the mighty work of adding millions of acres to the cultivable area by the construction of vast storage basins on the Nile. England has but recently carried to successful completion the magnificent plan he suggested.
In Milan he finished the gorgeous cathedral which had been commenced hundreds of years before. To stagnant, pestilential Venice he gave new life, dredging her lagoons, decreeing a Grand Canal, deepening her harbor, overhauling her sanitary system—spending $1,000,000 during his one visit. And the story is the same for almost every portion of his huge empire.
Bad? Lord Wolseley says he was not only bad, but “superlatively” so. Perhaps he was; but here is one publican and sinner who dares to say that were the good men to work half as hard as Napoleon did to improve the condition of this world, its moral and material situation would more nearly approximate the imagined perfection of that heavenly abode in whose behalf this poor planet and its poor humanity are so often neglected.
CHAPTER XXXI
Tilsit is generally considered the high-water mark of Napoleon’s power. Not yet forty years of age, he was lord of lords and king of kings. With Russia for an ally, Continental Europe was at his mercy. Adding Westphalia and, also, enlarged Saxony to the Confederation of the Rhine, the Empire was guarded upon the west, from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, by an unbroken line of feudatory states. In all these subject lands the principles of the French Revolution took the form of law. The Code Napoléon, with its civil equality, jury trials, uniformity of taxes, publicity of legal proceedings, drove out the mediæval abuses which had so long robbed the people in the name of government. To his brother Jerome Napoleon wrote: “Be a constitutional king. Your people ought to enjoy a liberty, an equality, a well-being unknown heretofore to the Germans.” And the Emperor reminded Jerome that if he gave his people the benefits of a wise and liberal administration, they would never wish to return to the barbarous rule of Prussia. Rule your kingdom wisely and liberally, said Napoleon, and “this kind of government will protect it more powerfully than fortresses or the armies of France.”
Far-reaching as was the sweep of Napoleon’s sword, that of his Code went farther. The soldier of the Revolution could never go as far as its principles. In the hour of its deepest humiliation Prussia dropped the system of Frederick, a worn-out garment, and clad itself anew. She freed the serf, abolished caste, opened all careers to merit, made military service universal, and gave partial self-government to towns and cities. Under the ministry of Stein, Prussia was born again, and the greatness of modern Germany dates from the reorganization which followed Jena—a greatness which, when analyzed, is seen to consist in calling in the Prussian people to resurrect a nation which class legislation and the privileged nobles had led to perdition.
In measuring the results of the French Revolution and of Napoleon’s victories, let us remember what Germany was in the eighteenth century. Let us not forget that the great mass of the people were serfs chained to the soil, mere implements of husbandry, burdened with the duty of feeding the nation in time of peace, and fighting for it in time of war, but uncheered by the hope of ever becoming more than serfs. Let us remember that the great rights of the citizen had no legal existence, that the arbitrary will of the lord was the peasant’s law. In the very provinces out of which Napoleon fashioned the kingdom of Westphalia a legitimate, divine-right prince had sold to an equally God-appointed king of Great Britain some thousands of soldiers to fight against the revolted colonists in North America. In the very cities which the Code Napoléon now entered and ruled, might still be seen the foul dungeons where alleged culprits were secretly tried, secretly tortured, and secretly done to death with atrocities which might have shamed a savage.
With Napoleon himself, however, imperialism had become a fixed creed. Ever since Austerlitz, he had affected greater reserve, exacted a greater deference, obeyed and enforced a more rigid etiquette. Oriental baseness of flattery pampered his pride; opposition to his will was not dreamt of in his empire; pestiferous intriguers like Madame de Staël lived in exile; pert maids of honor like Mademoiselle de Chevreuse were sent away and silenced; secret enemies, embryo traitors like Talleyrand and Bernadotte, fawned and flattered like the others, greedily clutching at all he flung to them,—money, titles, estates. The Grand Monarch himself never lived in greater pomp than this “Corsican upstart.” The formulas of divine right usurped the old popular phrases, and “Napoleon by the grace of God Emperor, etc.,” was the style of imperial proclamations. “Religious veneration” was claimed for the eagles of the army; and the priests taught the children that “to honor and serve the Emperor is to honor and serve God.” No toil was spared to make the ceremonial at the palace conform to Bourbon precedent. The hero of Austerlitz and Jena consented to be tutored by the Campans, De Ségurs, Narbonnes, and De Brézés of etiquette. When Louis XVIII. came to the throne in 1814, he apparently discovered but one serious fault in all of Napoleon’s imitation Bourbonism—his dinner had not been escorted from kitchen to dining room by a squad of soldiers.
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