In the midst of all these cares he found time to write a letter of sympathy to the widow of the brave Muiron. "You," he writes, "have lost a husband who was dear to you; and I am bereft of a friend to whom I have been long and sincerely attached. But our country has suffered more than us both, in being deprived of an officer so pre-eminently distinguished for his talents and his dauntless bravery. If it lies within the scope of my ability to yield assistance to yourself, or your infant, I beseech you to reckon upon my utmost exertions." It is affecting to record that in a few weeks the woe-stricken widow gave birth to a lifeless babe, and she and her little one sank into an untimely grave together. The woes of war extend far and wide beyond the blood-stained field of battle. Twenty thousand men perished around the marshes of Arcola. And after the thunders of the strife had ceased, and the groans of the dying were hushed in death, in twenty thousand distant homes, far away on the plains of France, or in the peaceful glens of Austria, the agony of that field of blood was renewed, as the tidings reached them, and a wail burst forth from crushed and lacerated hearts, which might almost have drowned the roar of that deadly strife.
How Napoleon could have found time in the midst of such terrific scenes for the delicate attentions of friendship, it is difficult to conceive. Yet to a stranger he wrote, announcing the death of a nephew, in the following affecting terms: "He fell with glory and in the face of the enemy, without suffering a moment of pain. Where is the man who would not envy such a death? Who would not gladly accept the choice of thus escaping from the vicissitudes of an unsatisfying world. Who has not often regretted that he has not been thus withdrawn from the calumny, the envy, and all the odious passions which seem the almost exclusive directors of the conduct of mankind." It was in this pensive strain that Napoleon wrote, when a young man of twenty-six, and in the midst of a series of the most brilliant victories which mortal man had ever achieved.
The moment the Austrians broke and fled, while the thunders of the pursuing cannonade were reverberating over the plains, Napoleon seized a pen and wrote to his faithful Josephine, with that impetuous energy, in which "sentences were crowded into words, and words into letters." The courier was dispatched, at the top of his speed, with the following lines, which Josephine with no little difficulty deciphered. She deemed them worth the study. "My adored Josephine! at length I live again. Death is no longer before me, and glory and honor are still in my breast. The enemy is beaten. Soon Mantua will be ours. Then thy husband will fold thee in his arms, and give thee a thousand proofs of his ardent affection. I am a little fatigued. I have received letters from Eugene and Hortense. I am delighted with the children. Adieu, my adorable Josephine. Think of me often. Should your heart grow cold toward me, you will be indeed cruel and unjust. But I am sure that you will always continue my faithful friend as I shall ever continue your fond lover. Death alone can break the union which love, sentiment, and sympathy have formed. Let me have news of your health. A thousand and a thousand kisses."
A vein of superstition pervaded the mind of this extraordinary man. He felt that he was the child of destiny—that he was led by an arm more powerful than his own, and that an unseen guide was conducting him along his perilous and bewildering pathway. He regarded life as of little value, and contemplated death without any dread. "I am," said he, "the creature of circumstances. I do but go where events point out the way. I do not give myself any uneasiness about death. When a man's time is come, he must go." "Are you a Predestinarian?" inquired O'Meara. "As much so," Napoleon replied, "as the Turks are. I have been always so. When destiny wills, it must be obeyed. I will relate an example. At the siege of Toulon I observed an officer very careful of himself, instead of exhibiting an example of courage to animate his men. 'Mr. Officer,' said I, 'come out and observe the effect of your shot. You know not whether your guns are well pointed or not.' Very reluctantly he came outside of the parapet, to the place where I was standing. Wishing to expose as little of his body as possible, he stooped down, and partially sheltered himself behind the parapet, and looked under my arm. Just then a shot came close to me, and low down, which knocked him to pieces. Now, if this man had stood upright, he would have been safe as the ball would have passed between us without hurting either." Maria Louisa, upon her marriage with Napoleon, was greatly surprised to find that no sentinels slept at the door of his chamber; that the doors even were not locked; and that there were no guns or pistols in the room where they slept. "Why," said she, "you do not take half so many precautions as my father does." "I am too much of a fatalist," he replied, "to take any precautions against assassination." O'Meara, at St. Helena, at one time urged him to take some medicine. He declined, and calmly raising his eyes to heaven, said, "That which is written is written. Our days are numbered." Strange and inconsistent as it may seem, there is a form which the doctrine of Predestination assumes in the human mind, which arouses one to an intensity of exertion which nothing else could inspire. Napoleon felt that he was destined to the most exalted achievements. Therefore he consecrated himself through days of toil and nights of sleeplessness to the most Herculean exertions that he might work out his destiny. This sentiment which inspired Napoleon as a philosopher, animated Calvin as a Christian. Instead of cutting the sinews of exertion, as many persons would suppose it must, it did but strain those sinews to their utmost tension.
Napoleon had obtained, at the time of his marriage, an exquisite miniature of Josephine. This, in his romantic attachment, he had suspended by a ribbon about his neck, and the cheek of Josephine ever rested upon the pulsations of his heart. Though living in the midst of the most exciting tumults earth has ever witnessed, his pensive and reflective mind was solitary and alone. The miniature of Josephine was his companion, and often during the march, and in the midnight bivouac, he gazed upon it most fondly. "By what art is it," he once passionately wrote, "that you, my sweet love, have been able to captivate all my faculties, and to concentrate in yourself my moral existence? It is a magic influence which will terminate only with my life. My adorable wife! I know not what fate awaits me, but if it keep me much longer from you, it will be insupportable. There was a time when I was proud of my courage. When contemplating the various evils to which we are exposed, I could fix my eyes steadfastly upon every conceivable calamity, without alarm or dread. But now the idea that Josephine may be ill, and, above all, the cruel thought that she may love me less, withers my soul, and leaves me not even the courage of despair. Formerly I said to myself, Man can not hurt him who can die without regret. But now to die without being loved by Josephine is torment. My incomparable companion! thou whom fate has destined to make, along with me, the painful journey of life, the day on which I shall cease to possess thy heart will be to me the day of utter desolation." On one occasion the glass covering the miniature was found to be broken. Napoleon considered the accident a fearful omen of calamity to the beloved original. He was so oppressed with this presentiment, that a courier was immediately dispatched to bring him tidings from Josephine.
It is not surprising that Napoleon should thus have won, in the heart of Josephine the most enthusiastic love. "He is," said she, "the most fascinating of men." Said the Duchess of Abrantes, "It is impossible to describe the charm of Napoleon's countenance when he smiled. His soul was upon his lips and in his eyes." "I never," said the Emperor Alexander, "loved any man as I did that man." Says the Duke of Vicenza, "I have known nearly all the crowned heads of the present day—all our illustrious contemporaries. I have lived with several of those great historical characters on a footing quite distinct from my diplomatic duties. I have had every opportunity of comparing and judging. But it is impossible to institute any comparison between Napoleon and any other man. They who say otherwise did not know him." Says Duroc, "Napoleon is endowed with a variety of faculties, any one of which would suffice to distinguish a man from the multitude. He is the greatest captain of the age. He is a statesman who directs the whole business of the country, and superintends every branch of the service. He is a sovereign whose ministers are merely his clerks. And yet this Colossus of gigantic proportions can descend to the most trivial details of private life. He can regulate the expenditure of his household as he regulates the finances of the empire."
Notwithstanding Napoleon had now destroyed four Austrian armies, the imperial court was still unsubdued, and still pertinaciously refused to make peace with republican France. Herculean efforts were immediately made to organize a fifth army to march again upon Napoleon. These exciting scenes kept all Italy in a state of extreme fermentation. Every day the separation between the aristocratic and the republican party became more marked and rancorous. Austria and England exerted all their arts of diplomacy to rouse the aristocratic governments of Rome, Venice, and Naples to assail Napoleon in the rear, and thus to crush that spirit of republican liberty so rapidly spreading through Italy, and which threatened the speedy overthrow of all their thrones. Napoleon, in self-defense, was compelled to call to his aid the sympathies of the republican party, and to encourage their ardent aspirations for free government.
And here again the candid mind is compelled to pause, and almost to yield its assent to that doctrine of destiny which had obtained so strong a hold upon the mind of Napoleon. How could it be expected that those monarchs, with their thrones, their wealth, their pride, their power, their education, their habits, should have submissively relinquished their exalted inheritance, and have made an unconditional surrender to triumphant democracy. Kings, nobles, priests, and all the millions whose rank and property were suspended upon the perpetuity of those old monarchies, could, by no possibility have been led to such a measure. Unquestionably many were convinced that the interests of humanity demanded the support of the established governments. They had witnessed the accomplishments of democracy in France—a frenzied mob sacking the palace, dragging the royal family, through every conceivable insult, to dungeons and a bloody death, burning the chateaus of the nobles, bruising with gory clubs upon the pavements, the most venerable in rank and the most austere in virtue, dancing in brutal orgies around the dissevered heads of the most illustrious and lovely ladies of the realm, and dragging their dismembered limbs in derision through the streets. Priests crowded the churches, praying to God to save them from the horrors of democracy. Matrons and maidens trembled in their chambers as they wrought with their own hands the banners of royalty, and with moistened eyes and palpitating hearts they presented them to their defenders.
On the other hand, how could republican France tamely succumb to her proud and aristocratic enemies. "Kings," said a princess of the house of Austria, "should no more regard the murmurs of the people than does the moon the barking of dogs." How could the triumphant millions of France, who had just overthrown this intolerable despotism, and whose hearts were glowing with aspirations for liberty and equal rights, yield without a struggle all they had attained at such an enormous expense of blood and misery. They turned their eyes hopefully to the United States, where our own Washington and their own La Fayette had fought, side by side, and had established liberty gloriously; and they could not again voluntarily place their necks beneath the yoke of kingly domination. Despotism engenders ignorance and cruelty; and despotism did but reap the awful harvest of blood and woe, of which, during countless ages of oppression, it had been scattering broadcast the seed.
The enfranchised people could not allow the allied monarchs of Europe to rear again, upon the soil of republican France, and in the midst of thirty millions of freemen, an execrated and banished dynasty. This was not a warfare of republican angels against aristocratic fiends, or of refined, benevolent, intellectual loyalists against rancorous, reckless, vulgar Jacobins. It was a warfare of frail and erring man against his fellow—many, both monarchists and republicans, perhaps animated by motives as corrupt as can influence the human heart. But it can not be doubted that there were others on each side, who were influenced by considerations as pure as can glow in the bosom of humanity. Napoleon recognized and respected these verities. While he had no scruples respecting his own duty to defend his country from the assaults of the allied kings, he candidly respected his opponents. Candidly he said, "Had I been surrounded by the influences which have surrounded these gentlemen, I should doubtless have been fighting beneath their banners." There is probably not a reader of these pages, who, had he been an English or an Austrian noble, would not have fought those battles of the monarchy, upon which his fortune, his power, and his rank were suspended. And there probably is not a noble upon the banks of the Danube or the Thames, who, had he been a young lawyer, merchant, or artisan, with all his prospects in life depending upon his own merit and exertions, would not have strained every nerve to hew down these bulwarks of exclusive privilege, which the pride and oppression of ages had reared. Such is man; and such his melancholy lot. We would not detract from the wickedness of these wars, deluging Europe with blood and woe. But God alone can award the guilt. We would not conceal that all our sympathies are with the republicans struggling for their unquestionable rights. But we may also refrain from casting unmerited obloquy upon those, who were likewise struggling for every thing dear to them in life.