The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851. Various
humiliated Prussia too deeply to be forgiven. And then Napoleon had in those around him politicians who revered Austria for its antiquity and prestige, and who, like Lord Aberdeen, made the Cæsar of Vienna the pivot on which their ideas of policy turned. Talleyrand was one of them. He worshipped Austria, opposed all his master's plans for crushing her, and even dared to thwart those plans by revealing them to Alexander, and prompting him secretly to oppose them. Such treachery fully warrants all the suspicion and harshness with which Napoleon treated Talleyrand. The latter's conduct is fully revealed in this volume by Lord Holland. In fact, the way in which Napoleon found his policy most seriously counteracted, and his projects foiled, was his weakness in employing the men of the ancien regime, the nobles, whom he preferred for their pleasing and good manners, but who invariably betrayed the parvenu master, who employed and courted them. By an instance of this grievously misplaced confidence Napoleon lost his throne. In the last events and negotiations of 1814 Napoleon employed Caulaincourt, who, had he had full power, might have made an arrangement. Talleyrand and his party at the same time employed M. de Vitrolles, and sent him to the Emperor of Austria to learn on what terms he would be induced either to support Napoleon or abandon him. The Emperor of Austria was naturally most unwilling to proceed to the latter extreme. But M. Vitrolles, a secret agent of the Bourbons, so falsified and misrepresented everything to the Emperor that the sacrifice of Napoleon was assented to.
Our last extract relates some traits of the great Napoleon which seem more than ordinarily worth his nephew's attention just now. They are taken from a somewhat elaborate character of the Emperor which occupies nearly a third of the volume.
"Nothing could exceed the order and regularity with which his household both as Consul and Emperor was conducted. The great things he accomplished, and the savings he made, without even the imputation of avarice or meanness, with the sum comparatively inconsiderable of fifteen millions of francs a year, are marvellous, and expose his successors, and indeed all European Princes, to the reproach of negligence or incapacity. In this branch of his government he owed much to Duroc. It is said that they often visited the markets of Paris (les halles) dressed in plain clothes and early in the morning. When any great accounts were to be submitted to the Emperor, Duroc would apprize him in secret of some of the minutest details. By an adroit allusion to them or a careless remark on the points upon which he had received such recent and accurate information, Napoleon contrived to impress his audience with a notion that the master's eye was every where. For instance, when the Tuileries were furnished, the upholsterer's charges though not very exorbitant, were suspected by the Emperor to be higher than the usual profit of that trade would have warranted. He suddenly asked some minister who was with him how much the egg at the end of the bell-rope should cost? 'J'ignore,' was the answer.—'Eh bien! nous verrons,' said he, and then cut off the ivory handle, called for a valet, and bidding him dress himself in plain and ordinary clothes, and neither divulge his immediate commission or general employment to any living soul, directed him to inquire the price of such articles at several shops in Paris, and to order a dozen as for himself. They were one-third less dear than those furnished to the palace. The Emperor, inferring that the same advantage had been taken in the other articles, struck a third off the whole charge, and directed the tradesman to be informed that it was done at his express command, because on inspection he had himself discovered the charges to be by one-third too exorbitant. When afterwards in the height of his glory he visited Caen with the Empress Maria Louisa, and a train of crowned heads and princes, his old friend, M. Mechin, the Prefect, aware of his taste for detail, waited upon him with five statistical tables of the expenditure, revenue, prices, produce, and commerce of the departments. 'C'est bon,' said he, when he received them the evening of his arrival, 'vous et moi nous ferous bien de l'esprit sur tout cela demain au Conseil.' Accordingly, he astonished all the leading proprietors of the department at the meeting next day, by his minute knowledge of the prices of good and bad cyder, and of the produce and other circumstances of the various districts of the department. Even the Royalist gentry were impressed with a respect for his person, which gratitude for the restitution of their lands had failed to inspire, and which, it must be acknowledged, the first faint hope of vengeance against their enemies entirely obliterated in almost every member of that intolerant faction. Other princes have shown an equal fondness for minute details with Napoleon, but here is the difference. The use they made of their knowledge was to torment their inferiors and weary their company: the purpose to which Napoleon applied it was to confine the expanses of the State to the objects and interests of the community."
Lord Holland dwells at some length on the treatment to which Napoleon was subjected by the English Government, and on the generous attempts of Lady Holland to alleviate his captivity. This part of the volume has much present interest, and will be read with great eagerness by all. Of the Emperor's temper, he says:
"Napoleon, even in the plenitude of his power, seldom gratified his revenge by resorting to any act either illegal or unjust, though he frequently indulged his ill-humor by speaking both of and to those who had displeased him in a manner mortifying to their feelings and their pride. The instances of his love of vengeance are very few: they are generally of an insolent rather than a sanguinary character, more discreditable to his head than his heart, and a proof of his want of manners, taste, and possibly feeling, but not of a dye to affect his humanity. Of what man, possessed of such extended yet such disputed authority, can so much be said? Of Washington? Of Cromwell? But Washington, if he had ever equal provocation and motives for revenge, certainly never possessed such power to gratify it. His glory, greater in truth than that of Cæsar, Cromwell, and Bonaparte, was that he never aspired: but he disdained such power; he never had it, and cannot therefore deserve immoderate praise for not exerting what he did not possess. In the affair of General Lee, he did not, if I recollect, show much inclination to forgive. Even Cromwell did not possess the power of revenge to the same extent as Napoleon. There is reason, however, to infer from his moderation and forbearance that he would have used it as sparingly. But Cromwell is less irreproachable, on the score of another vice, viz., ingratitude. Napoleon not only never forgot a favor, but, unlike most ambitious characters, never allowed subsequent injuries to cancel his recollection of services. He was uniformly indulgent to the faults of those whom he had once distinguished. He saw them, he sometimes exposed and rectified, but he never punished or revenged them. Many have blamed him for this on the score of policy; but if it was not sense and calculation, it should be ascribed to good-nature. None, I presume, will impute it to weakness or want of discernment."
This account of Napoleon's ideas on religion is curious, and we think new.
"Whatever were the religious sentiments of this extraordinary man, such companions were likely neither to fix nor to shake, to sway nor to alter them. I have been at some pains to ascertain the little that can be known of his thoughts on such subjects, and, though it is not very satisfactory, it appears to me worth recording.
"In the early periods of the Revolution, he, in common with many of his countrymen, conformed to the fashion of treating all such matters, both in conversation and action, with levity and even derision. In his subsequent career, like most men exposed to wonderful vicissitudes, he professed, half in jest and half in earnest, a sort of confidence in fatalism and predestination. But on some solemn public occasions, and yet more in private and sober discussion, he not only gravely disclaimed and reproved infidelity, but both by actions and words implied his conviction that a conversion to religious enthusiasm might befal himself, or any other man. He had more than tolerance—he had indulgence and respect for extravagant and ascetic notions of religious duty. He grounded that feeling not on their soundness or their truth, but on the uncertainty of what our minds may be reserved for, on the possibility of our being prevailed upon to admit and even to devote ourselves to tenets which at first excite our derision. It has been observed that there was a tincture of Italian superstition in his character; a sort of conviction from reason that the doctrines of revelation were not true, and yet a persuasion, or at least an apprehension, that he might live to think them so. He was satisfied that the seeds of belief were deeply sown in the human heart. It was on that principle that he permitted and justified, though he did not dare to authorize, the revival of La Trappe and other austere orders. He contended that they might operate as a safety-valve for the fanatical and visionary ferment which would otherwise burst forth and disturb society. In his remarks on the death of Duroc, and in the reasons he alleged against suicide, both in calm and speculative discussion and in moments