The History of Napoleon Buonaparte Part 31

Pride and vanity were strangely mingled in his composition. Who does not pity the n.o.ble chamberlain that confesses his blood to have run cold when he heard Napoleon--seated at dinner at Dresden among a circle of crowned heads--begin a story with, _When I was a lieutenant in the regiment of La Fere_? Who does not pity Napoleon when he is heard speaking of some decorations in the Tuileries, as having taken place "in the time of the king, my uncle?"[76]

This last weakness was the main engine of his overthrow. When he condescended to mimic all the established etiquettes of feudal monarchy--when he coined t.i.tles and lavished stars, and sought to melt his family into the small circle of hereditary princes--he adopted the surest means which could have been devised for alienating from himself the affections of all the men of the revolution, the army alone excepted, and for re-animating the hopes and exertions of the Bourbonists. It is clear that thenceforth he leaned almost wholly on the soldiery. No civil changes could after this affect his real position.

Oaths and vows, charters and concessions, all were alike in vain. When the army was humbled and weakened in 1814, he fell from his throne, without one voice being lifted up in his favour. The army was no sooner strengthened, and re-encouraged, then it recalled him. He re-ascended the giddy height, with the daring step of a hero, and professed his desire to scatter from it nothing but justice and mercy. But no man trusted his words. His army was ruined at Waterloo; and the brief day of the second reign pa.s.sed, without a twilight, into midnight.

We are not yet far enough from Buonaparte to estimate the effects of his career. He recast the art of war; and was conquered in the end by men who had caught wisdom and inspiration from his own campaigns. He gave both permanency and breadth to the influence of the French Revolution.

His reign, short as it was, was sufficient to make it impossible that the offensive privileges of _caste_ should ever be revived in France; and, this iniquity being once removed, there could be little doubt that such a nation would gradually acquire possession of a body of inst.i.tutions worthy of its intelligence. Napoleon was as essentially, and irreclaimably, a despot, as a warrior; but his successor, whether a Bourbon or a Buonaparte, was likely to be a const.i.tutional sovereign.

The tyranny of a meaner hand would not have been endured after that precedent.

On Europe at large he has left traces of his empire, not less marked or important. He broke down the barriers everywhere of custom and prejudice; and revolutionised the spirit of the Continent. His successes and his double downfall taught absolute princes their weakness and injured nations their strength. Such hurricanes of pa.s.sion as the French Revolution--such sweeping scourges of mankind as Napoleon Buonaparte, are not permitted but as the avengers of great evils, and the harbingers of great good. Of the influence of both, as regards the continent, it may be safely said--that even now we have seen only "the beginning of the end." The reigning sovereigns of Europe are, with rare exceptions, benevolent and humane men; and their subjects, no less than they, ought to remember the lesson of all history--that violent and sudden changes, in the structure of social and political order, have never yet occurred, without inflicting utter misery upon at least one generation.

It was England that fought the great battle throughout on the same principle, without flinching; and, but for her perseverance, all the rest would have struggled in vain. It is to be hoped that the British nation will continue to see, and to reverence, in the contest and in its result, the immeasurable advantages which the sober strength of a free but fixed const.i.tution possesses over the mad energies of anarchy on the one hand, and, on the other, over all that despotic selfishness can effect, even under the guidance of the most consummate genius.

[Footnote 74:

"The G.o.dlike Ulysses is not yet dead upon the earth; He still lingers a living captive within the breadth of ocean, In some unapproachable island, where savage men detain him."

ODYSS. book i. ver. 195.]

[Footnote 75: Tres peu aimant.]

[Footnote 76: _Louis XVI.!_--married to the aunt of Maria Louisa--See Bourienne.]