Napoleon: A Sketch of His Life, Character, Struggles, and Achievements

by Thomas E. Watson

Very heavy had been the hand of France during her ascendency. Very freely Napoleon had helped himself to such things in Germany as he needed. Very harshly had he put down all opposition to his will. And the French officers, imitating their chief, had plundered the land with insolent disregard of moderation or morality. From Jerome Bonaparte downward, Napoleon’s representatives in Germany had been, as a rule, a scandal, a burden, an intolerable offence to German pride, German patriotism, and German pockets. It was with a furious explosion of pent-up wrath that Germany at last arose and drove them out.

Who was there to warn the peoples of the European states that they were blindly beating back the pioneers of progress, blindly combating the cause of liberalism, blindly doing the work of absolutism and privilege? Who would have hearkened to such a warning, had there been those wise enough and brave enough to have spoken? Viewed upon the surface, the work Napoleon had done could not be separated from his mode of doing it. The methods were rough, sometimes brutal, always dictatorial.

People could see this, feel it, and resent it—just as they saw, felt, and resented his exactions of men, money, and war material. They could not, or did not, make due allowance for the man’s ultimate purpose. They could not, or would not, realize how profoundly his code of laws and his system of administration worked for the final triumph of liberal principles. They could not, or would not, understand that there was then no way under heaven by which he could subdue the forces of feudalism, break the strength of aristocracy, and establish the equality of all men before the law, other than the method which he pursued.

So the peoples in their folly made common cause with the kings, who promised them constitutions, civil and political liberty, and representative government. In their haste and their zeal, they ran to arms and laid their treasures at the feet of the kings. In their ardor and devotion, they marched and fought, endured and persisted, with an unselfish constancy which no trials, sufferings, or defeats could vanquish.

They advanced to the attack with fierce shouts of joy; on the retreat they were not cast down; reverses did not dampen their hopes nor shake their resolution. When the truce of Pleiswitz was granted, they welcomed it only as it gave them time to recuperate. When the Congress of Prague convened, they regarded it with dread, fearing that peace might be made and Napoleon left part-master of Germany. When the beacon lights blazed along the heights at midnight of August 10, they were hailed as slaves might hail the signals of deliverance.

In his Memoirs, Metternich relates that when, after the battle of Leipsic, he entered the palace of the King of Saxony to notify him of the pleasure of the Allies, the Queen reproached him bitterly for having deserted Napoleon’s “sacred cause.” Metternich states that he informed her that he had not come there to argue the question with her.

And yet, if Metternich had any reply to make, then was the time to make it. The Queen’s side of the case was weaker then than it would ever be again; Metternich’s stronger. Perfect as may have been the Queen’s faith, it was beyond her power to pierce the curtain of the years, and see what lay in the future. Had the spirit of prophecy touched her lips, she would have been taken for a maniac, for this would have been her revelation:—

“The promises the kings have made to the people will be broken; the hope of the patriot will be dashed to the ground; counter-revolution will set in; and the shadow of absolutism will deepen over the world. The noble will again put on his boots and his spurs; the peasant will once more dread the frown of his lord. The king will follow no law but that of his pleasure; the priest will again avow that Jehovah is a Tory and a Jesuit. Reactionaries will drive out Napoleon’s Code, and the revolutionary principles of civil equality. The prisons will be gorged with liberals; on hundreds of gibbets democrats will rot. The Inquisition will come again, and the shrieks of the heretic will soothe the troubled conscience of the orthodox. Constitutions promised to peoples, and solemnly sworn to by kings, will be coldly set aside, and the heroes who demanded them will, by way of traitor’s deaths, become martyrs to liberty.

“Mediævalism will return; statues of the Virgin will weep, or wink, or sweat; and miracles will refresh the faith of the righteous, bringing death to the scoffer who too boldly doubts. The press will be gagged, free speech denied, public assemblies made penal. The Jesuits will swarm as never before, monasteries and convents fill to overflowing, church wealth will multiply, and neither priest nor noble will pay tribute to the state. Clerical papers will demand the gallows for liberals, clericals will seize the schools, clericals will forbid all political writings.

“The time will come when the European doctrine will again be proclaimed that the sovereign has full power over the lives and the property of his subjects. The time will come when this same Emperor Francis will publicly admonish the Laybach professors that they are not to teach the youth of Germany too much:—‘I do not want learned men! I want obedient men!’