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

by Thomas E. Watson

Let Cherbourg’s thousand guns salute! Let triumphal arches span the Seine as he passes on his way! Let hill and slope and river bank hold their gazing hosts! Let flowers and garlands shower down on the bier from every bridge. Let aged peasants drop on reverent knees, fire the old musket in humble salute, and then cover the weeping faces with trembling hands! Cold is this December day; but winter cannot chill this vast enthusiasm. From the quay, where the funeral barge moors, to the Church of the Invalides, where the tomb waits, a million people throng the route. Streets, avenues, squares, balconies, windows, roofs, trees—all are full of people. Cannons, drums, military bands, the tramp of men and war-horses, the glitter of endless lines of soldiers, the songs which rouse the passions and the memories, the shouts of dense crowds stirred by electrical emotions—all these mark this December day as the gorgeous funeral car bears Napoleon to his final rest. There is the white war-horse, not Marengo, but one like him; and upon the horse is the saddle and the bridle Napoleon had used. There are his old Marshals Moncey, and Soult, and Oudinot; there is Bertrand and Gourgaud and Las Casas, the faithful companions of his long exile. But above all there are the relics of his ancient wars to come weeping around the bier; and there is a remnant of his Old Guard to march with him to his tomb. Oh, the magic of the mighty dead! No freezing December air can keep down the fervor which makes the great city ring with cries of “Live the Emperor!”

Sixteen black horses, plumed and draped, draw the lofty funeral car over which lies the purple velvet robe, and in which is the coffin—marked, at last, in letters of gold, “Napoleon.” Princes of the Church come forth to meet the body; a king and his court and the proudest notables of France wait within to receive it.

“The Emperor!” cries the herald at the door; and the brilliant assembly rises, as one man, and makes the reverent bow to the dead man who enters.

Over all is the spell of a master spirit; over all the spell of a deathless past.

The sword of Austerlitz is handed to King Louis Philippe by Soult; and the King gives it to the faithful Bertrand; and Bertrand lays it, reverently, upon his master’s coffin. The awful stillness of the great temple is broken by the sobs of gray-haired soldiers.

With a grand Requiem chant, the funeral ends; but the silent procession of mourners coming in endless lines to view the coffin lasts more than a week, bringing people from all parts of France, from Belgium, and from other lands.

Nor has that procession ended yet. Around the great man, lying there in his splendid tomb, with his marshals near him and the battle-flags he made famous drooping about him, still flows the homage of the world. The steps of those who travel, like the thoughts of those who are students of human affairs, turn from the four quarters of the earth to the tomb of this mightiest of men.

His impress lies upon France forever, in her laws, her institutions, her individual and national life; but his empire does not stop with France,—is cramped by no “natural limits” of Rhine and Alps and Pyrenees.

By force of genius and of character, by superior fitness to do great things, he was the chief usurper of his time. He is the usurper yet, and for the same reasons. He did the work kings ought to have done,—doing it in spite of the kings. He does it yet, in spite of the kings.

His hand, as organizer of the Revolution, which was greater even than he, is at the loom where the life-garments of nations are woven. Listen to this voice, coming out of Italy: “Within the space of ten years we had made [under Napoleon] more progress than our ancestors had done in three centuries. We had acquired the French civil, criminal, and commercial codes; we had abolished the feudal system, and justice was administered with improved methods.” So wrote General Pépé; and what he said of Italy was equally true of every other portion of Continental Europe which had come under the imperial sway. It was this work Napoleon was doing from the very first day he grasped the reins of power; it was this work the allied kings dreaded; it was this work they meant to stop.