NAPOLEONS LEGACY

Excerpts from NAPOLEON AND THE AWAKENING OF EUROPE

By Felix Markham

within a year of the Treaty of Tilsit, which appeared to set the seal on the Napoleonic Empire of the West, Napoleon became involved in the Spanish conflict, which drained the lifeblood from the Grand Army. "The Spanish ulcer destroyed me," he said afterwards. The rising of the Spank--people was hailed in England and Europe as the turn of the tide and the first example of national resistance to Napoleonic domination. The battle of Baylen (July 1808,) in which two French divisions capitulated to Spanish forces, destroyed the legend of the invincibility of the French armies and, encouraged Austria to take up arms again in 1809. What led Napoleon to make such a colossal mistake over Spain? The Peninsular War raises the whole question of Napoleon's attitude to national feeling in Europe and the effect of the Napoleonic domination on the emergence of national consciousness.

With the inauguration of the Continental System in 1807, it became important to Napoleon to control the coastline of the Iberian Peninsula. Moreover, he had his eye on the Spanish fleet, as an aid in rebuilding his naval strength after Trafalgar. He had always held an exaggerated view of the latent resources of Spain; he ascribed her present weakness to the incompetence and treachery of her rulers, the decade and disreputable trio of the Bourbon King Charles IV, his Queen and their favourite, Godoy. Lured by the prospect of conquering Portugal, Godoy had kept Spain in uneasyalliance with France since 1804; but Napoleon had become more and more irritated at the feebleness of the Spanish war effort. During the Jena Campaign, Godoy had shown signs of breaking away from the alliance, and at the end of 1806 Napoleon demanded that Spain should join the Continental System and provide a Spanish corps for the occupation of Hanover. In October 1807, he sent Juno with an army to occupy Portugal, Godoy being promised the south of Portugal as a principality for himself.

As soon as a French army had crossed Spain, Napoleon was able to infiltrate more troops into strategic points. Ferdinand, Charles IV's heir, was afraid that Godoy intended to usurp the throne at his father's death, and opened nego-tiations with Napoleon for Godoy's overthrow. The idea thus grew in Napoleon's mind of a Spain regenerated by an efficient French administrationeither by a deposition of the Bourbons or by marrying Ferdinand to a Bonaparte princess.

In March 1808, Murat was appointed to command in Spain and marched on Madrid. A revolt took place against the King and Godoy, and the King abdicated. On receipt of this news, Napoleon wrote to his brother Louis, offering him the throne of Spain, and he summoned the Spanish royal family to meet him at Bayonne. The result of this interview was that, after mutual recriminations, the King and Ferdinand both resigned their rights to the throne, and Napoleon gave the vacant crown to Joseph. Napoleon was still completely ignorant of the temper of the Spanish people, had written to Murat in April that "if there are movements in Spain, they will resemble those we have seen in Egypt.

Murat had sent him optimistic reports of the good recep-tion of the French in Spain (partly because he wanted the throne of Spain for himself). Until the royal family left for Bayonne, the Spaniards remained quiet, because they thought that Napoleon intended to back Ferdinand, but on May 2 the population of Madrid rose against the French, and were savagely repressed by Murat. Even then Napoleon misread the situation, and wrote to Talleyrand: "Some agitations may take place, but the good lesson which has just been given to the city of Madrid will naturally soon settle affairs. . . . The Spaniards are like other peoples, and are not a class apart; they will be happy to accept the imperial institutions." While the grandees and officials of Madrid were accepting an en-lightened constitution from Napoleon at Bayonne, the provinces of Spain were flaming into spontaneous revolt. Canning hastened to give British support to the insurrectionary Juntas, and Wellington's expeditionary force to Portugal fought the battle of Vimiero (August 1808), which forced Junot to evacuate Portugal by the Convention of Cintra.

The bulk of the Spanish regular forces were easily routed at Medina del Rio Seco (July 1808), and Napoleon, under-rating the possibilities of further resistance, ordered Dupont, with two divisions, to march to the south and occupy Cadiz. Here he was caught by Castanos with 30,000 regular Spanish troops supported by guerrillas, and forced to capitulate at Baylen (July 1808). Napoleon at last recognised that he had a full-scale war on his hands, and ordered the mass of the Grand Army from Germany to Spain. The Peninsular War, with its savage and demoralising reprisals, immortalised in the pictures of Goya, had begun.

Napoleon could never bring himself to cut his losses and abandon this war, partly because he persisted in thinking it was "a war of monks," which could be stamped out by ruthless repression, and partly because he was constantly tempted by the prospect of catching the English army and destroying it in Spain. At the end of 1808 he assumed command in Spain himself, and narrowly failed to catch Moore's army in the Corunna campaign. He never appeared in Spain again, and distrusting Joseph's competence, preferred to send orders from Paris to his disobedient and quarrelsome marshals.

The turning-point of the Peninsular War came in 1810-11. Having dealt with Austria in 1809, Napoleon- appointed| Massena to command in Spain, and gave him 100,000 of his best troops to "drive the English leopard into the sea." The provincial Juntas and guerrillas had lost their first enthusiasm for the war, and, if Massena had been successful, the conquest of Spain would have been accomplished. He was defeated by Wellington's defensive tactics at the lines of Torres Vedras, and by the jealousy of Soult, who failed to back him up from the south. Thereafter Wellington took the offensive and by the victories of Salamanca (1812) and Vittoria (1813) drove the French out of Spain.

Napoleon was not wholly wrong in thinking that the English army was the crux of the problem in Spain. Without the military genius of Wellington and his new-model infantry (of whom a French officer said: "They are the finest infantry in Europe but fortunately there are only a few of them"), the Spanish guerrilla resistance would ultimately have collapsed. There was always a considerable pro-French party in the Peninsular War, and if Napoleon had been able to make Joseph the independent ruler of a regenerated Spain, as he had originally intended at Bayonne, the country might have rallied to the new dynasty.

The organisers of popular resistance were the lower clergy and the monks, enraged by the prospect of the secularisation of Church propertya reform decreed by Napoleon in December 1808. Napoleon's mistake was in thinking that there was a considerable middle class in Spain which would welcome the reforms of the French Revolution. Spain was a country of priest-ridden peasants, swayed by religious fanaticism and a traditional, unreasoning attachment to their dynasty, however degenerate. The proceedings at Bayonne were an unforgivable shock to Spanish pride, which touched off the revolt. French intervention in itself would not have produced this explosion, as is shown by the subsequent inter-vention in 1823, when, to the surprise of Europe, French armies marched through Spain without the slightest popular resistance. The difference was that, in 1823, the French - Bourbons were intervening on behalf of the legitimate dynasty and the Church, against the minority of liberal reformers.

It is true that the insurrectionary Cortes promulgated a liberal constitution in 1812, a large part of which was copied from the French constitution of 1791; but this was mainly a propaganda effort, designed to counter the liberal reforms of Joseph's government in Madrid. It did not represent the general attitude of the nation, and the Juntas were mainly led by priests and nobles. When Ferdinand was restored to the throne in 1814, the people shouted "Long live the absolute King" and "Down with the Constitution." The Spanish rising of 1808 was primarily religious, a sort of La Vendee on a large scale; it certainly has little in common with the awakening of national consciousness in the Europe of the nineteenth century which was the work of the liberal middle class, stimulated by the principles of the French Revolution.

The Spanish affair cannot, therefore, be regarded as a typical example of national opposition to Napoleon, though it throws a good deal of light on Napoleon's attitude to national sentiment and popular movements. Looking back to the Napoleonic period, across the developments of the nine-teenth century, the historian of today is bound to be puzzled by Napoleon's disregard of these factors. It is true that at St. Helena, when he could see the trend of events, he fabri-cated the Napoleonic Legend, and tried to present his career as a struggle on behalf of the people and nationalities against
the reactionary dynasties. But this was an afterthought and a travesty of the facts. The Napoleonic Empire was the negation of nationality, and never more so than in its later
stages after 1810.

In his earlier policy in Italy, for example, Napoleon had appeared to foster national aspirations, by the creation of the Cisalpine Republic; then, in 1802, the Italian Republic, which in 1805 became the Kingdom of Italy. But in 1806 the Kingdom of Naples was given to Joseph, and the principalities given to various marshals were carved out of Italy.

In 1806, the duchies of Parma and Piacenza were an-nexed to the French Empire; in 1808 so also was Tuscany, and in 1809 the Papal states. The Illyrian Provinces taken from Austria in 1809 remained directly under the control of the Emperor through a governor-general. Finally, in 1811, the title of "King of Rome" given to Napoleon's son, seemed to foreshadow a policy of incorporation into the Grand Empire.

In Germany, Napoleon's policy was a continuation of t policy of Richelieu and Louis XIVto keep Germany divided by encouraging the particularism of the client kingdoms grouped in the Confederation of the Rhine. From 1806 to 1808, Napoleon inclined to a federative organisation of Western Europe, placing his relatives on the thrones of vassal-kingdoms round France. But he made it clear to them that they were expected to act as agents of himself and of France. In 1810, Louis was forced to abdicate the throne of Holland, for daring to pay too much interest to the national interests of the Dutch, and Holland was annexed to the Empire. In 1810, Hanover, and in 1811, the Hanseatic towns and the Duchy of Oldenburg were similarly annexed. The creation of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw in 1807, with a constitution drawn up by Napoleon, appeared to be a step towards the restoration of Polish national independence. But Napoleon was only interested in Poland as a pawn in his strategy and diplomacy. At Tilsit, his first proposal to Alexander was that Poland should go to Russia, and Silesia to Jerome Bonaparte; the Grand Duchy of Warsaw was a compromise solution. In 1812, at the beginning of the Russian campaign, Napoleon was to disappoint the Poles with his vague promises of inde-pendence in the future. Napoleon, in fact, never had a consistent and clear-cut plan for the organisation of his conquests: his policy shifted according to opportunity, military needs and the requirements of the Continental System. But it is also obvious that Napoleon never thought it necessary to take account of the principle of nationality.

In one aspect of his imperial policy Napoleon was consistentthe introduction of the Code Napoleon into the annexed territories and vassal states. The Code was the container in which the principles of the French Revolution were carried throughout western Europe, even as far as Illyria and Poland. In 1808, at Erfurt, Napoleon urged the kings of the Confederation to apply the Code to their states. Writing to Jerome, King of Westphalia, and to Joseph, King of Naples, Napoleon reveals his motives. To Jerome he says: "In Germany, as in France, Italy and Spain, people long for equality and liberalism. The benefits of the Code Napoleon, legal procedure in open court, the jury, these are the points by which your monarchy must be distinguished . . . Your people must enjoy a liberty, an equality unknown in the rest of Germany." To Joseph, he writes: "You must establish the Civil Code in your States; it will fortify your power, since by it all entails are cancelled, and there will be no longer any great estates apart from those you create yourself. This is the motive which has led me to recommend a civil code and to establish it everywhere."

Napoleon's object was thus to use the Code to buttress his power. Why did he not realise that the principles of the French Revolution, spread throughout Europe, would pro-duce the same effect as in Francea feeling of national unity? The explanation is to be found in Napoleon's outlook as the heir of the Enlightenment and the last of the enlightened despots of the eighteenth century. European society at the end of the eighteenth century had become so cosmopolitan, so dominated by French culture, that it was possible to regard France, not as one among many nations, but as la grande nation, the nucleus of a universal state, a united Europe. The principles of the French Revolution were after all, of universal application; the Declaration of Rights had pro-claimed the Rights of Man, not merely of Frenchmen.

As Toynbee points out in his Study of History, western Europe at the end of the eighteenth century appeared to be in a situation rather similar to that of the Mediterranean, world in the second century u. c., when the city-state organization gave place to the universal state of the: Roman-Empire. Napoleon was tempted into thinking that the Europe of his time was ripe for the same solution of uni-versal monarchy. He imagined that the sweeping away of the obsolete institutions of the ancien regime through the application of the Code would leave a flat, uniform surface on which a universal state could be erected. As we know from he developments of the nineteenth century, the removal of the debris of the ancien regime in fact allowed the latent seeds of nationalism to thrust up and sprout.

If Napoleon fell into this error, it was an error shared by many of his contemporaries. At any rate up to 1805 Napoleon had powerful moral and ideological forces on his side; he was The revolution on horseback, bringing en-lightenment to Europe. (In the 1830s, Persigny, one of he founders of the Second Empire, was to be converted to the Napoleonic Legend by talking to a coachman in the Rhineland who had once seen the great Emperor passing by.) As we have seen, Spain is a special case, apart from the main stream of the development of nationalism; and even up 1814, the emergence of a national sentiment elsewhere in Europe in opposition to Napoleon is by no means obvious. The statesmen of the Congress of Vienna in 1814 paid no more heed than Napoleon to the principle of nationality.

The effect of the Napoleonic domination and the evolution of opinion can best be examined in the case o Italy and Germany. In Italy, the administrative unification under Napoleon, partial and inconsistent as it was, the introduction of the Code and conscription, hastened the development of the Risorgimento, signs of which had already appeared before Napoleons first invasion of Italy. Under Napoleon, Italian troops fought well in their own units, and suffered about 80,000 casualties: their officers returned from the ware imbued with national sentiment. A few writers like Alfieri and Foscolo, forerunners of the Risorgimento, were anti-Napoleonic in feeling, because he had betrayed their hopes of national unity. From 1811 onwards, Murat inclined to-wards the Italian party which resented the predominance of French officials, and Napoleon threatened him with deposi-tion. In 1815, during the Hundred Days, Murat declared war against Austria, and issued a proclamation calling on all Italians to fight for national unity and independence. But the mass of the population was not stirred by these feelings; they passively resented the increasing weight of conscription, taxes and the Continental System, and the religious quarrel.

The origins of German nationalism can be seen in the intellectual sphere long before it affected politics. The intellectual renaissance of Germany at the end of the eighteenth century, exemplified in such great writers and thinkers as Goethe, Kant, Schiller, was at first cosmopolitan and non-political. The initial stages of the French Revolution were greeted with enthusiasm as the triumph of reason, but, except in the Rhineland, this influence remained purely intellec-tual and had no political repercussions. At the turn of the century, the rationalism of the Enlightenment began to give way in Germany, as in France, to the Romantic Movement in literature and thought. There was a conservative reaction and a religious revival which condemned the anarchy and atheism of the Terror, and emphasised the superiority of the unique, separate German culture to the French. But this cultural nationalism remained till 1806 confined to the intellectual sphere. Schiller in 1802 said: "The greatness of Germany consists in its culture and the character of the nation, which are independent of its political fate." And Goethe himself remained obstinately cosmopolitan in out-look, completely uninterested in the political unification of the German nation. To the end, he was an admirer of Na-poleon as the embodiment of reason and enlightenment in action.

It was the humiliation of Prussia in 1806 that converted cultural nationalism into political nationalism; the younger generation of intellectuals, such as Fichte, Arndt and Schlegel began to preach patriotic resistance to Napoleon. The collapse of the Prussian government gave an opportunity for the nationalists to gain control; Frederick William was forced to appoint Hardenberg and Stein as his ministers in 1807. Hardenberg wrote in a memorandum on reform (September 1807): "The French Revolution, of which the present wars are only a continuation, has given France, in the midst of stormy and bloody scenes, an unexpected power. The force of the new principles is such that the State which refuses to accept them will be condemned to submit or perish . . . Democratic principles in a monarchical governmentthis seems to me the formula appropriate to the spirit of the times."

In practice, this policy led to the reform of the ministerial system, the abolition of serfdom and feudal tenures, munici-pal autonomy, and the reform of the army by the abolition of degrading punishments and the aristocratic monopoly of the officer corps. Even these moderate reforms aroused the alarm and resentment of the Prussian nobles; they feared that Stein, who was not a Prussian but a German nationalist, wanted to democratise Prussia and use her as the spearhead of a Ger-man national rising against the French. They blocked pro-posals for calling a Prussian representative assembly and forming a national bourgeois militia. In August 1808, Stein, excited by the news of the Spanish insurrection, was pressing for a German rising. Napoleon intercepted one of Stein's letters, and demanded his dismissal as the price of signing a convention with Prussia for evacuation and the payment of war indemnities. The King gave way and signed the Conven-tion; Stein was dismissed (November 1808) and subsequently outlawed by Napoleon. In his bulletin announcing the capture of Burgos (November 1808), Napoleon gave a warning to Germany: "It would be a good thing if men like M. de Stein, who, lacking regular troops which were unable to resist our eagles, entertain the sublime idea of arming the masses, could see the misfortunes which ensue, and the weakness of the obstacles which this resource can offer to regular troops."

In fact, there was little popular support for a German rising, and Stein himself condemned the posturings of the patriotic anti-French society, the Tugendbund or "League of Virtue," as the "rage of dreaming sheep." Reform was being imposed from above by a handful of far-sighted statesmen civil, servants, and, owing to the resistance of the Junker aristocrats, Stein's plans remained largely on paper. General von Yorck expressed the feelings of the Junkers when he wrote, on hearing of Stein's dismissal: "So one of these mad-men has been eliminated: the rest of this brood of vipers will perish of their own poison." The one really effective reform, that of the Prussian army, was carried through by Scharnhorst and Gneisenau after Stein's dismissal. By the Convention of 1807, Prussia had undertaken to limit her army to 42,000 men, but this restriction was evaded by employing a disproportionate number of officers and passing men rapidly through the ranks for short-service training. In this way Prussia had by 1813 at least 150,000 trained men available.

When Prussia relapsed into submission to Napoleon at the end of 1808, German patriots turned to Austria for leadership. The Spanish rising and the recall of the Grand Army from Germany encouraged Austria to attempt one more throw against Napoleon. The Archduke Charles and Stadion, Chancellor since 1806, had made considerable progress in modernising the army, culminating in the formation of a reserve Landwehr in 1808. The cession of the Tyrol to Bavaria in 1806 under the Treaty of Pressburg had particularly caused resentment in Austria, and a flood of patriotic propaganda, let loose under the direction of Hormayr, whipped up enthusiasm for a war of revenge.

Napoleon had noted the Austrian war preparations in 1808, and had taken counter measures in good time. At his confer-ee with Alexander at Erfurt (September 1808), he had assured himself of the Tsar's neutrality. By calling up 150,000 young conscripts and allied contingents, he could dispose of 300,000 men in Germany, in addition to his commitments in Spain. But it was no longer the superbly trained army of 1805: less than one-third was composed of veterans. On the other hand, the Austrian army was more efficient and fought with more enthusiasm than in 1805. It was the combination of these factors, rather than any falling-off in Napoleon's skill, which brought him to the brink of disaster in 1809.

The series of battles, collectively known as Eckmuhl, which opened the campaign in April 1809, ranks high among the examples of Napoleon's military genius. Rapidly regrouping his forces which Berthier had faultily disposed before his ar-rival in Germany, Napoleon had opened the way to Vienna, which he entered on May 12. A strong Austrian army was on the north bank of the Danube, and Napoleon, occupying the island of Lobau in midstream, crossed the Danube on the night of May 20. In a stiff two-day battle (Essling-Aspern), he failed to break the Austrians and had to retire to the island of Lobau.

Napoleon's defeat at Essling created an even greater sensation than his check at Eylau in 1807, but the Prussians and Russians hesitated and the English attack on Walcheren did not take place till August. Meanwhile, both sides were gathering their forces for a decisive battle. Napoleon was in control of Vienna, and could bring up reinforcements. Eugene, advancing from the Italian front, beat the Austrians at Raab (June 14) and joined Napoleon at Vienna. By July 5, when Napoleon again crossed the Danube, he had 165,000 men available against some 135,000 Austrians. In the two-day battle of Wagram, the Austrians were beaten, but not routed, with casualties of 20,000 on each side. Although the Austrians were by no means crushed, an armistice was signed on July 12, followed by the Peace of Schonbrunn (October 1809) which deprived Austria of three and a half million subjects, including the Illyrian provinces, and Salzburg, which was given to Bavaria. The Emperor Francis was disgusted with the patriots who had dragged him into an unsuccessful war without allies, and with the appointment of Metternich in place of Stadion after Wagram, the patriots were disgraced, and their ideas, which Francis condemned as "Jacobinism," repressed. Napoleon, on his side, had been impressed by the strength and enthusiasm of the Austrian resistance in 1809. The incident of the Austrian student, Staps, who was arrested when trying to present a petition to Napoleon, and confessed to the Emperor that he had come to assassinate him, both puzzled and dismayed him. He was forced to recognise that there was a new spirit abroad in Germany.

The nationalism manifested in the war of 1809 was of a peculiar kind, and it was Austrian, rather than German, in its appeal to the traditions of the Habsburg dynasty. The peasant risings in the Tyrol, led by Hofer, which had some of the features of the guerrilla war in Spain, were directed primarily against the Bavarian occupation. No such popular guerrilla warfare is to be found in the campaigns of 1813 in Germany itself. German national consciousness remained confined to a minority of intellectuals, and the dynastic rulers remained suspicious of its Jacobinical character. The German nationalists of the nineteenth century created a romantic legend out of the war of 1813, and christened Leipzig the "Battle of the Nations." The historian must discount the legend, and recognise that the spirit of nationality, receiving its first stimulus from the Napoleonic domination, was still too feeble and obscure to exert a powerful influence on Napoleon's policy or on his downfall. Napoleon was to be defeated by his own overreaching ambition and by the dynastic rulers who, after repeated and bitter lessons, learned how to combine and to modernize military effort.

it may be argued that Napoleon's career was finished at Waterloo and that little more remains to be said. He was transported to St. Helena, and died there a prisoner in 1821. But it was impossible for Napoleon to relinquish a political role as long as he was alive; he was merely exchanging the sword for the pen as a political weapon. The writings which emanated from St. Helena laid the foundations of the Second Empire. Moreover, for the historian the story of St. Helena is of incomparable interest for the light which it throws on Napoleon's character. The English who came into contact with him on the voyage there and on the island saw him stripped of power and with eyes which were not dazzled by hero-worship.

There were two French frigates lying near Rochefort, and the French government had asked the British government for safe conduct for Napoleon to the U.S.A. This was refused, and Captain Maitland of the Bellerophon, which was block-ading that part of the coast, was ordered to intercept and bring Napoleon to the nearest British port. Various plans for evading the blockade were proposed to Napoleon, but he finally discarded them and resolved to give himself up voluntarily to the Bellerophon. The idea of an "asylum in England" had already occurred to him in 1814, and it had been strength-ened by the favourable impression he had formed of the Eng-lish he had met at Elba. "There is always some danger in trusting to one's enemies," he said, "but it is better to risk
reliance on their sense of honour than be in their hands as a prisoner by law." When Napoleon's emissaries met Maitland, he made it perfectly clear that he was not in a position to ''give any pledges about the treatment Napoleon would receive from the English government, but he did not discourage the idea that Napoleon would be allowed to live in England. Before boarding the Bellerophon, Napoleon wrote the famous letter to the Prince Regent which is now in the Royal Library at Windsor. "I come, like Themistocles, to claim a seat by the hearth of the British people. I put myself under the protection of the law which I claim from your Royal Highness as the most powerful, the most constant and the most generous of my enemies."

Napoleon knew perfectly well the risks he was running in the surrender, but he was banking on the generosity of the British people and the fascination of his personality. Maitland records that "from the time of his coming on board ship, his conduct was invariably that of a gentleman." On the Beller-ophon he was treated as a royal personage. Maitland explains that: "It may appear surprising that a possibility could exist of a British officer being prejudiced in favour of one who had caused so many calamities to his country; but to such an extent did he possess the power of pleasing, that there are few people who could have sat at the same table with him for nearly a month, as I did, without feeling a sensation of pity, allied perhaps to regret, that a man possessed of so many fascinating qualities, and who had held so high a station in life, should be reduced to the situation in which I saw him." When Napoleon left the Bellerophon, Maitland asked his servant what the ship's company thought of Napoleon. He replied: "I heard several of them conversing this morning and one observed, 'Well, they may abuse that man as much as they like, but if the people of England knew him as well as we do, they would not hurt a hair of his head.' They all agreed." While the Bellerophon lay first at Torbay and then at Plymouth, she was besieged by hordes of sightseers in boats, anxious to catch a glimpse of "Boney." Lieutenant Bowerbank of the Bellerophon recalls that: "I was surprised at not hearing a disrespectful or abusive word escape from any one. One the contrary, the spectators generally took off their hats when he bowed." If Napoleon had once landed on English soil, there would have been a fair chance of his conquering the hearts of the English people.

It was a bitter moment, therefore, for Napoleon when Admiral Lord Keith announced to him the decision of the English government. He was to be sent to St. Helena, and treated, no longer as ex-Emperor, but as a general on retired pay. Napoleon protested in writing: "I am not the prisoner, but the guest of England. If the government, in ordering the captain of the Bellerophon to receive me, as well as my suite, desired only to set a trap, it has forfeited its honour and sul-lied its flag." This charge of perfidy will not stand examina-tion; Napoleon knew perfectly well that he had surrendered at discretion as a prisoner-of-war. Nor can the choice of St. Helena be questioned; it had a reasonably healthy climate, and could be effectively guarded without close restrictions on Napoleon's liberty. To keep him in England was an impossi-bility, since, as Liverpool wrote to Castlereagh, "you know enough of the feelings of people in this country not to doubt he would become an object of curiosity immediately, and pos-sibly of compassion, in the course of a few months." The Eng-lish Whigs and Radicals professed admiration for Napoleon, and the Tory government were frightened not only of Napo-leon but of Jacobinism, of which he was still the symbol.

The Allies had agreed with the St. Helena decision, and would certainly have been suspicious of English designs if he had been kept in England. The real charge against the English government is the lack of magnanimity and imagination, markedly different from the instinctive reaction of the Eng-lish people, with which they carried out their unpleasant and unprecedented task. The refusal to recognise Napoleon's title as ex-Emperor was an unnecessary and petty insult, and the management of Napoleon's internment at St. Helena was en-trusted to the wrong hands.

When Napoleon was transferred from the Bellerophon to the Northumberland for the three months' voyage to St. Helena, he was allowed to bring with him a considerable suiteBertrand, two court chamberlains, Montholon and Lascases (both of them ex-royalist nobles of the ancien regime), General Gourgaud and twelve servants. Bertrand and Montholon brought their wives and young children, and Lascases his young son. Napoleon adapted himself with good humour to the crowded quarters of the Northumberland and to his new status as a retired general and prisoner-of-war; he started to dictate his memoirs, and spent the evenings playing cards with the English officers.

The six years of Napoleon's life at St. Helena contain elements of high tragedy, pathos, triviality and farce inextricably mixed. For the first month, while his permanent home, Longwood, was being prepared for him, Napoleon occupied a small pavilion in the garden of the country-house of Mr. Balcombe, an English merchant. Separated from his suite, he amused himself by making friends with the Balcombe daugh-terstwo wild English hoydens, aged fifteen and thirteen. Betsy, the younger, could talk French, and she treated Napo-leon as a favourite uncle and playmate. Napoleon always en-joyed the company of children, and he entered into her wild pranks with gaiety and good humour. She made him play whist (at which he invariably cheated) and blind-man's-buff; Napoleon helped her with her French lessons. When she told him about her friend who was terrified of meeting the "Corsican ogre," and introduced her, Napoleon obligingly made a horrible face and growled at her. Betsy was shut up in the cellar by her father for showing Napoleon a new toy which had arrived from England, depicting "Boney" climbing up a ladder and then falling headlong to St. Helena. Napoleon consoled her with sweets during her imprisonment. Lascases and Gourgaud were outraged by Betsey's casual behaviour to-wards the Emperor. But Napoleon was enjoying his first holi-day for a long time. "I thought I was at a masked ball," he said, "listening to the absurd questions of these girls." Betsy has her niche in history for introducing this interlude of rustic farce into Napoleon's life. The Balcombe family remained staunch friends of Napoleon till they left in 1820, and Napo-leon gave Betsy a lock of his hair. She thought then that he had the look of a dying man. Shortly before her death she was presented by Napoleon III with an estate in Algeria, in memory of her friendship with his uncle.

The move to Longwood and the arrival of Sir Hudson Lowe as Governor embittered the remainder of Napoleon's life. It is true that Napoleon was determined to exploit every grievance, and make himself into a "martyr." He told his followers from the start that it was their duty to complain. He boasted to Admiral Malcolm that: "I have worn the imperial crown of France, the iron crown of Italy. England has now given me a greater and more glorious crown than either of themfor it is that worn by the Saviour of the Worlda crown of thorns." Sometimes he thought that "from the point of view of history, I should have died at Moscow, Dresden or Waterloo."

..

Napoleon was fairly well supplied with books and periodicals at St. Helena, and spent much of his time in dictating his "memoirs," which were first published in 1823. They are a disappointing monument to his genius: mostly accounts of his earlier campaigns, written in a dull, impersonal style, alto-gether lacking in the characteristic tone of his bulletins, proc-lamations and conversations. Only in his will, dictated a month before his death, does he recapture his power over words. "I desire that my ashes repose on the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the French people whom I have loved so dearly I die prematurely, murdered by the English oligarchy and its hired assassin. The English people will not be slow in avenging me. ... I urge my son never to forget that he was born a French prince, and never to lend himself to being an instru-ment in the hands of the triumvirs who are oppressing thepeoples of Europe."

The records of Napoleon's conversations kept by his com-panions at St. Helena were much more valuable and influential than his formal "memoirs." Napoleon encouraged his followers to write down what he said, and told them that theywould make their fortunes by doing so. Gourgaud, Bertrand, and Marchand, the valet, kept journals which were not intended for publication, and have only appeared in this century. These give a comparatively true and unvarnished picture of Napoleon at St. Helena. Lascases, Montholon and O'Meara[i] published their accounts immediately after Napoleon's death; they sold in enormous numbers, and launched the Napoleonic Legend. Through the distortions of their different styles, the authentic voice of Napoleon can be heard, deliberately im-pressing on the world what he wanted people to believe about his career and his policy.

Attuning himself to the trend of politics since 1814, Napo-leon refashioned his career in the interests of his son and of his own reputation as an historical figure. The Powers which had overthrown him in 1814 and 1815 were now the Holy Alliance, the declared enemies of liberalism and nationalism, and it was not difficult for Napoleon to show himself as the champion of these forces. His reign had been based, not only on equality but on liberty, and here he could point to the liberal constitution of the Hundred Days. His autocracy was only intended for the temporary emergency. "If I had won in 1812, my constitutional reign would have begun." He was "the natural mediator in the struggle of the past against the Revolution"the synthesis of monarchy and liberalism. He always wanted peace, but the dynasties of the ancien regime would not allow it. If he had been given time, he would have fulfilled national aspirations. "There are in Europe more than thirty million French, fifteen million Spanish, fifteen million Italians and thirty million Germans. I would have wished to make each of these peoples a single united body." He would have restored Polish independence; Germany would demand more time, and it was necessary first to "simplify their complications." His policy in Italy was intended "to supervise, guarantee and advance the national education of the Italians." He admitted his error in offending the pride of the Spanish people by dethroning the Bourbon dynasty, but it was done with the best intentions of regenerating Spain. "Europe thus divided into nationalities freely formed and free internally, peace between states would become easier; the United States of Europe would become a possibility."

All this, with its suppression of awkward facts and its skillful twisting of Napoleon's real policy, could be made plausible the generation growing up after Waterloo, which had not

seen the battlefields of the Empire. It was not difficult, also, the author of the Concordat to pose as the champion of Catholicism. In his will, he wrote: "I die in the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman faith in which I was born more than fifty years ago." He died attended by the full rites of the Church. Lascases and Montholon represent Napoleon at St. Helena as turning to a belief in the Christian religion; but Bertrand. thought that the declaration in his will was "policy." A month before his death, he said to Bertrand: "I am glad I have no religion. It is a great consolation; I have no imaginary fears, no fear of the future." Bertrand and Gourgaud record conversations in which Napoleon argued from an agnostic or materialist point of view. He was too intelligent to be a dogmatic atheist, but he could not himself believe, though he thought it proper that "one should die in the faith of one's fathers." It is probable, therefore, that he remained an agnostic, but one who was profoundly convinced of the social importance of religion. "A religion is necessary," he said to Gourgaud, "to cement the union of men in society." On the whole, he thought that Mohammedanism was a more effective religion than Christianity.

Napoleon had his posthumous victory in the creation of the Legend. His son, the King of Rome, died as an Austrian Archduke, the Duke of Reichstadt, in 1832; but in 1840 the government of Louis Philippe brought back Napoleon's body from St. Helena, and interred it with great pomp in the Invalides. Bertrand, Gourgaud and Marchand helped to bring back the coffin. In 1852, the Empire was restored in the person of Napoleon's nephew, Napoleon III. In 1855, Queen Victoria stood with Napoleon III in the Invalides and ordered her small son, the future Edward VII, to "kneel down before the tomb of the great Napoleon."

Despite the cynical remark of a French general in the First World War that "Napoleon was not a great generalhe only had to fight coalitions," it can safely be said that Napoleon was the greatest man of action whose life is known to historians in intimate detail. Talleyrand, his old friend and enemy, said after his death that "his genius was unbelievable. It is the most astonishing career that has been witnessed for the last thousand years. He was certainly the most extraordinary man I ever saw, and in my opinion the most extraordinary man that has lived for many centuries." It is tempting to compare him with the dictators of a later age, such as Hitler, but the comparison is really misleading. Napoleon did not owe his rise to power to the arts of a demagogue or a party-manager (though he was no mean exponent of the art of propaganda), but to his transcendent ability as a military leader and as a ruler. Such a combination of qualities can hardly be paralleled in the modern world; and he is more akin to the world con-querors of ancient times, who were his inspiration.

The "great men" of history cannot, of course, achieve much unless circumstances favour them, and Napoleon's career is a perfect example of the interaction of the individual and the mass. Napoleon remarked at St. Helena: "A man is only a man. His power is nothing if circumstances are not favour-able. Opinion is all-important. If I had not appeared someone else would have done the same thing. I consider that I count for no more than half in the battles which have won. The general's name is hardly worth mentioning, for the fact is that it is the army which wins the battle." In a sense, Napoleon merely exploited the energies and instruments created by the French Revolution; when they were exhausted, he was swept away. But it would be impossible to deny that without his personality the course of events would have been different.

It is significant that time has not confirmed his title of "Napoleon the Great." Talleyrand, who possessed the sense of moderation and balance which Napoleon lacked, said: "What tragedy that he gave his name to adventures instead of to the ages." Despite his enormous influence on the development of France and Europe, Napoleon failed to found a durable monument to his fame. There is considerable substance in Napoleon's claim at St. Helena that his dynasty alone could reconcile the Revolution with the past. The curse of France since 1815 has been the instability of her politics, and the deep rift in French society, created by the Revolution and aggravated by the collapse of monarchical and aristocratic institutions. The Bourbon dynasty was too wedded to clericalism and the ancien regime; the Orleanist dynasty lacked tradition and glamour. By 1810 Napoleon had practically achieved the fusion of monarchy and the Revolution in France. And its is arguable that a longer period of Napoleonic rule might have been a benefit to Europe. The liberal and national movements of the nineteenth century might have developed more fruitfully if the middle class in Europe had had a concrete experience of European unity and a thorough training in government through the Napoleonic administration.

Napoleon's work was ruined by his pursuit of the impossible dream of world dominion, beyond the capacity of France and of Napoleon himself. War undoubtedly fascinated and intoxicated Napoleon's mind as the supreme form of gambling. He once said "that the greatest immorality is to do a job for which one is not qualified"; and his mastery of the art of war tempted him to rely on it more and more. At the beginning of 1814 he made a remarkable statement: "I am not afraid to admit that I have waged war too much. I wanted to assure for France the mastery of the world." One of the poets of the Romantic Age after Waterloo said of him: "A streak of divine folly runs through all his work." He under-stood the romantic ambition for unlimited personal glory which is the driving force in Napoleon's career. Yet even as a romantic hero, he falls short of Nelson, because his career lacks the grand simplicity and poetry of a life dedicated to a single cause greater than himself.

Historians of Napoleon are apt either to be fascinated into adulation by his personality or repelled by the spectacle of the millions of lives sacrificed to his ambition. Fortunately it is not the duty of historians to usurp the function of the Deity and to pass judgment on a man's life (though they are often tempted to do so), but to tell the truth. The Greeks would have understood Napoleon's story as a simple case of Hubris followed by Nemesis; and perhaps it is better to leave it at that. As a man, Napoleon was not particularly cruel, wicked or vindictive; his sins were on the heroic scalethe sins of pride. Even his enemies admitted that he waged war accord-ing to the accepted standards of his age.

It is legitimate to admire his genius while deploring the ends to which it was put. Perhaps the greatest tribute that can be paid to him is the fact that his personality remains, with all its obvious faults of character and judgment, potentially greater and more complex than his achievements. Chateau-briand hardly exaggerates when he sums up Napoleon as "the mightiest breath of life which ever animated human clay."