Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. IV, No. 19, Dec 1851. Various
sailors, pilots, smugglers, and fishermen. He made objections, and carefully weighed their answers. Upon his return to Paris his friend Bourrienne said to him, "Well, general! what do you think of the enterprise? Is it feasible?" "No!" he promptly replied, shaking his head. "It is too hazardous. I will not undertake it. I will not risk on such a stake the fate of our beautiful France." At the same time that he was making this survey of the coast, with his accustomed energy of mind, he was also studying another plan for resisting the assaults of the British government. The idea of attacking England, by the way of Egypt in her East Indian acquisitions, had taken full possession of his imagination. He filled his carriage with all the books he could find in the libraries of Paris, relating to Egypt. With almost miraculous rapidity he explored the pages, treasuring up, in his capacious and retentive memory, every idea of importance. Interlineations and comments on the margin of these books, in his own hand-writing, testify to the indefatigable energy of his mind.
Napoleon was now almost adored by the republicans all over Europe, as the great champion of popular rights. The people looked to him as their friend and advocate. In England, in particular, there was a large, influential, and increasing party, dissatisfied with the prerogatives of the crown, and with the exclusive privileges of the nobility, who were never weary of proclaiming the praises of this champion of liberty and equality. The brilliance of his intellect, the purity of his morals, the stoical firmness of his self-endurance, his untiring energy, the glowing eloquence of every sentence which fell from his lips, his youth and feminine stature, and his wondrous achievements, all combined to invest him with a fascination such as no mortal man ever exerted before. The command of the army for the invasion of England was now assigned to Napoleon. He became the prominent and dreaded foe of that great empire. And yet the common people who were to fight the battles almost to a man loved him. The throne trembled. The nobles were in consternation. "If we deal fairly and justly with France," Lord Chatham is reported frankly to have avowed, "the English government will not exist for four-and-twenty hours." It was necessary to change public sentiment and to rouse feelings of personal animosity against this powerful antagonist. To render Napoleon unpopular, all the wealth and energies of the government were called into requisition, opening upon him the batteries of ceaseless invective. The English press teemed with the most atrocious and absurd abuse. It is truly amusing, in glancing over the pamphlets of that day, to contemplate the enormity of the vices attributed to him, and their contradictory nature. He was represented as a perfect demon in human form. He was a robber and a miser, plundering the treasuries of nations that he might hoard his countless millions, and he was also a profligate and a spendthrift, squandering upon his lusts the wealth of empires. He was wallowing in licentiousness, his camp a harem of pollution, ridding himself by poison of his concubines as his vagrant desires wandered from them; at the same time he was physically an imbecile– a monster – whom God in his displeasure had deprived of the passions and the powers of healthy manhood. He was an idol whom the entranced people bowed down before and worshiped, with more than Oriental servility. He was also a sanguinary heartless, merciless butcher, exulting in carnage, grinding the bones of his own wounded soldiers into the dust beneath his chariot wheels, and finding congenial music for his depraved and malignant spirit in the shrieks of the mangled and the groans of the dying. To Catholic Ireland he was represented as seizing the venerable Pope by his gray hairs, and thus dragging him over the marble floor of his palace. To Protestant England, on the contrary, he was exhibited as in league with the Pope, whom he treated with the utmost adulation, endeavoring to strengthen the despotism of the sword with the energies of superstition.
The philosophical composure with which Napoleon regarded this incessant flow of invective was strikingly grand. "Of all the libels and pamphlets," said Napoleon subsequently, "with which the English ministers have inundated Europe, there is not one which will reach posterity. When I have been asked to cause answers to be written to them, I have uniformly replied, 'My victories and my works of public improvement are the only response which it becomes me to make.' When there shall not be a trace of these libels to be found, the great monuments of utility which I have reared, and the code of laws that I have formed, will descend to the most remote ages, and future historians will avenge the wrongs done me by my contemporaries. There was a time," said he again, "when all crimes seemed to belong to me of right; thus I poisoned Hoche,4 I strangled Pichegru5 in his cell, I caused Kleber6 to be assassinated in Egypt, I blew out Desaix's7 brains at Marengo, I cut the throats of persons who were confined in prison, I dragged the Pope by the hair of his head, and a hundred similar absurdities. As yet," he again said, "I have not seen one of those libels which is worthy of an answer. Would you have me sit down and reply to Goldsmith, Pichon, or the Quarterly Review? They are so contemptible and so absurdly false, that they do not merit any other notice, than to write false, false, on every page. The only truth I have seen in them is, that I one day met an officer, General Rapp, I believe, on the field of battle, with his face begrimed with smoke and covered with blood, and that I exclaimed, 'Oh, comme il est beau! O, how beautiful the sight!' This is true enough. And of it they have made a crime. My commendation of the gallantry of a brave soldier, is construed into a proof of my delighting in blood."
The revolutionary government were in the habit of celebrating the 21st of January with great public rejoicing, as the anniversary of the execution of the king. They urged Napoleon to honor the festival by his presence, and to take a conspicuous part in the festivities. He peremptorily declined. "This fête," said he, "commemorates a melancholy event, a tragedy; and can be agreeable to but few people. It is proper to celebrate victories; but victims left upon the field of battle are to be lamented. To celebrate the anniversary of a man's death is an act unworthy of a government; it creates more enemies than friends – it estranges instead of conciliating; it irritates instead of calming; it shakes the foundations of government instead of adding to their strength." The ministry urged that it was the custom with all nations to celebrate the downfall of tyrants; and that Napoleon's influence over the public mind was so powerful, that his absence would be regarded as indicative of hostility to the government, and would be highly prejudicial to the interests of the Republic. At last Napoleon consented to attend, as a private member of the Institute, taking no active part in the ceremonies, but merely walking with the members of the class to which he belonged. As soon as the procession entered the Church of St. Sulpice, all eyes were searching for Napoleon. He was soon descried, and every one else was immediately eclipsed. At the close of the ceremony, the air was rent with the shouts, "Long live Napoleon!" The Directory were made exceedingly uneasy by ominous exclamations in the streets, "We will drive away these lawyers, and make the Little Corporal king." These cries wonderfully accelerated the zeal of the Directors, in sending Napoleon to Egypt. And most devoutly did they hope that from that distant land he would never return.
AN INDIAN PET
The ichneumon, called in India the neulah, benjee, or mungoos, is known all over that country. I have seen it on the banks of the Ganges, and among the old walls of Jaunpore, Sirhind, and at Loodianah; for, like others of the weasel kind, this little animal delights in places where it can lurk and peep – such as heaps of stones and ruins; and there is no lack of these in old Indian cities.
That the neulah is a fierce, terrible, blood-thirsty, destructive little creature, I experienced to my cost; but notwithstanding all the provocation I received, I was led to become his friend and protector, and so finding him out to be the most charming and amiable pet in the world.
In my military career (for I was for a long time attached to the army) I was stationed at Jaunpore, and having a house with many conveniences, I took pleasure in rearing poultry; but scarcely a single chicken could be magnified to a hen: the rapacious neulahs, fond of tender meat, waylaying all my young broods, sucking their blood, and feasting on their brains. But such devastations could not be allowed to pass with impunity; so we watched the enemy, and succeeded in shooting several of the offenders, prowling among the hennah or mehendy hedges, where the clucking-hens used to repose in the shade, surrounded by their progeny.
After one of these battues, my little daughter happened to go to the fowl-house in the evening in search of eggs, and was greatly startled by a melancholy squeaking which seemed to proceed from
Lazare Hoche, a very distinguished young general, who died very suddenly in the army. "Hoche," said Bonaparte, "was one of the first generals that ever France produced. He was brave, intelligent, abounding in talent, decisive, and penetrating."
Charles Pichegru, a celebrated French general, who entered into a conspiracy to overthrow the consular government and restore the Bourbons. He was arrested and conducted to the Temple, where he was one morning found dead in his bed. The physicians, who met on the occasion, asserted that he had strangled himself with his cravat. "Pichegru," said Napoleon, "instructed me in mathematics at Brienne when I was about ten years old. As a general he was a man of no ordinary talent. After he had united himself with the Bourbons, he sacrificed the lives of upward of twenty thousand of his soldiers by throwing them purposely in the enemies' hands, whom he had informed beforehand of his intentions."
General Kleber fell beneath the poinard of an assassin in Egypt, when Napoleon was in Paris.
General Desaix fell, pierced by a bullet, on the field of Marengo. Napoleon deeply deplored his loss, as that of one of his most faithful and devoted friends.