Napoleon was endowed by nature with a clear, penetrating, vast, comprehensive, and peculiarly active mind, nor had he less decision of character than clearness of intellect. He always seized at once the decisive argument, in battle the most effective movement. To conceive, resolve, and perform were with him but one indivisible act, so wonderful was his rapidity, that not a moment was spent in reflection between perception and action. Any obstacle presented to such a mind by a trifling objection, by indolence, weakness, or disaffection, served but to cause his anger to spring forth and cover you with its foam. Had he chosen some civil profession where success can only be attained by persuading men and winning them over, he might have endeavored to subdue or moderate his fiery temperament, but flung into the career of arms, and endowed with the sovereign faculty of seeing the surest means of conquest at a glance, he became at one bound the ruler of Italy, at a second the master of the French Republic, at a third the sovereign of Europe.
What wonder that a nature formed so impetuous by God should become more so from success; what wonder if he were abrupt, violent, domineering, and unbending in his resolutions! If apart from the battle-field he exercised that tact so necessary in civil business, it was in the council of state, though even there he decided questions with a sagacity and clearness of judgment that astonished and subdued his hearers, except on some few occasions when he was misled for a moment by passion or want of sufficient knowledge of the subject under discussion. Both nature and circumstances combined to make him the most despotic and impetuous of men.
In contemplating his career, it does not appear that this fiery, despotic nature revealed itself at once or altogether. In his youth he was lean, taciturn, and even sad—sad from concentrated ambition that feeds upon itself until it finds an outlet and attains the object of its desires. As a young man he was sometimes rude, morose, until becoming the object of universal admiration he became more open, calm, and communicative—lost the meagerness that made his countenance so expressive, and, as one may say, unfolded himself. Consul for life, emperor, conqueror at Marengo and Austerlitz, still exercising some little restraint on himself, he seemed to have reached the apogee of his moral existence; and his figure, then moderately stout, was radiant with regular and manly beauty. But soon, when nations submitted and sovereigns bowed before him, he was no longer restrained by respect for man or even for nature. He dared, attempted all things; spoke without restraint; was gay, familiar, and often intemperate in language. His moral and physical nature became more developed, nor did his extreme stoutness diminish his Olympian beauty; his fuller countenance still preserved the eagle glance; and when descending from his accustomed height from which he excited admiration, fear, and hatred, he became merry, familiar, and almost vulgar, he could resume his dignity in a moment, for he was able to descend without demeaning himself. And when at length, in advancing life, he is supposed to be less active or less daring, because of his increasing embonpoint, or because Fortune had ceased to smile on him, he bounds more impetuously than ever on his charger, and shows that for his ardent mind matter is no burden, misfortune no restraint.
Such were the successive developments of this extraordinary nature. It is not easy to estimate Napoleon’s moral qualities, for it is rather difficult to discover goodness in a soldier who was continually strewing the earth with dead, or friendship in a man who never knew an equal, or probity in a potentate in whose power were the riches of the universe. Still, though an exception to all ordinary rules, we may occasionally catch some traits of the moral physiognomy of this extraordinary man.
In all things promptness was his distinctive characteristic. He would become angry, but would recover his calmness with wonderful facility, almost ashamed of his excitement, laughing at it if he could do so without compromising his dignity, and would again address with affectionate words or gestures the officer he had overpowered by his burst of passion. His anger was sometimes affected for the purpose of intimidating subalterns who neglected their duty. When real, his displeasure passed like a flash of lightning; when affected, it lasted as long as it was needed. When he was no longer obliged to command, restrain, or impel men, he became gentle, simple, and just, just as every man of great mind is who understands human nature, and appreciates and pardons its weaknesses because he knows that they are inevitable. At St. Helena, deprived of all external prestige, his power departed, without any other ascendant over his companions than that derived from his intellect and disposition, Napoleon ruled them with absolute sway, won them by unchanging amiability; and that to such a degree that having feared him for the greater part of their lives, they ended by loving him for the remainder. On the battle-field he had acquired an insensibility that was almost fearful; he could behold unmoved the ground covered with a hundred thousand lifeless bodies, for none had ever caused so much human blood to flow as he.
This insensibility was, so to speak, a consequence of his profession. Often in the evening he would ride over the battle-field, which in the morning he had strewed with all the horrors of war, to see that the wounded were removed, a proceeding that might be the result of policy, but was not; and he frequently sprang from his horse to assure himself whether in an apparently lifeless body the vital spark did not still linger. At Wagram he saw a fine young man, in the uniform of the cuirassiers, lying on the ground with his face covered with clotted blood; he sprang at once from his horse, supported the head of the wounded youth on his knee, restored him by the aid of some spirituous remedy, and said, smiling: “He will recover, it is one more saved!” These are no proofs of want of feeling.
In everything connected with finance he was almost avaricious, disputing even about a centime, while he would give millions to his friends, servants, or the poor. Having discovered that a distinguished savant who had accompanied him to Egypt was in embarrassed circumstances, he sent him a large sum, blaming him at the same time for not having told him of his position. In 1813, having expended all his ready money, and learning that a lady of high birth, who had once been very rich, was in want of the necessaries of life, he immediately appointed her a pension of twenty-four thousand francs, as much as fifty thousand at the present time, and being told that she was eighty-four years of age, “Poor woman,” he said, “let her be paid four years in advance.” These, we must repeat, are no indications of want of kindness of disposition.
Having but little time to devote to private friendships, removed from them by his superiority to other men, but still, under the influence of time and habit, he did become attached to some, so strongly attached as to be indulgent even to weakness to those he loved. This was the case with regard to his relatives, whose pretensions often provoked his anger; yet, seeing them annoyed, he relented, and to gratify them, often did what he knew to be unwise. Although the admiration he had felt for the Empress Josephine passed away with time, and though she had, by many thoughtless acts, lowered herself in the esteem he always entertained for her, he had for her, even after his divorce, the most profound affection. He wept for Duroc, but in secret, as though it were a weakness.
As to his probity, we know not by what standard to estimate such a quality in a man who from the very commencement of his public career had immense riches at his command. When he became commander-in-chief of the army in Italy and was master of all the wealth of the country, he first supplied his army abundantly, and then sent assistance to the army on the Rhine, reserving nothing for himself, or at most only a sum sufficient to purchase a small house, Rue de la Victoire, a purchase for which one year’s pay would have sufficed; and had he died in Egypt, his widow would have been left destitute. Was this the result of pride, disdain of vulgar enjoyments, or honesty? Perhaps there was a little of all in this forbearance, which was not unexampled among our generals, though certainly as rare then as it has ever been. He punished dishonesty with extreme severity, which might be attributed to his love of order; but, what was still better, and seemed to indicate that he possessed the quality of honesty himself, was the positive affection he showed for honest people, carried so far as to take keen pleasure in their society.
Still this man, whom God had made so great and so good, was not a virtuous man, for virtue consists in a fixed idea of duty, to which all our inclinations, all our desires, moral and physical, must be subjected, and which could not be the case with one who, of all that ever lived, put least restraint upon his passions. But if wholly deficient in what is abstractly understood as virtue, he possessed certain special virtues, particularly those of a warrior and statesman. He was temperate, not prone to sensual gratifications, and, it not exactly chaste he was not a libertine, never, except on occasions of ceremony, remained more than a few minutes at table; he slept on a hard bed though his constitution was rather weak than strong, bore, without even perceiving it, an amount of fatigue that would have exhausted the most vigorous soldiers; and was capable of prodigious exertion when mentally occupied with some great undertaking.