napoleon was born in the year 1769, the third son of carlo maria buonaparte, an honest notary public of the city of ajaccio in the island of corsica, and his good wife, letizia ramolino. he therefore was not a frenchman, but an italian whose native island (an old greek, carthaginian and roman colony in the mediterranean sea) had for years been struggling to regain its independence, first of all from the genoese, and after the middle of the eighteenth century from the french, who had kindly offered to help the corsicans in their struggle for freedom and had then occupied the island for their own benefit.
during the first twenty years of his life, young napoleon was a professional corsican patriot—a corsican sinn feiner, who hoped to deliver his beloved country from the yoke of the bitterly hated french enemy. but the french revolution had unexpectedly recognised the claims of the corsicans and gradually napoleon, who had received a good training at the military school of brienne, drifted into the service of his adopted country. although he never learned to spell french correctly or to speak it without a broad italian accent, he became a frenchman. in due time he came to stand as the highest expression of all french virtues. at present he is regarded as the symbol of the gallic genius.
napoleon was what is called a fast worker. his career does not cover more than twenty years. in that short span of time he fought more wars and gained more victories and marched more miles and conquered more square kilometers and killed more people and brought about more reforms and generally upset europe to a greater extent than anybody (including alexander the great and jenghis khan) had ever managed to do.
he was a little fellow and during the first years of his life his health was not very good. he never impressed anybody by his good looks and he remained to the end of his days very clumsy whenever he was obliged to appear at a social function. he did not enjoy a single advantage of breeding or birth or riches. for the greater part of his youth he was desperately poor and often he had to go without a meal or was obliged to make a few extra pennies in curious ways.
he gave little promise as a literary genius. when he competed for a prize offered by the academy of lyons, his essay was found to be next to the last and he was number 15 out of 16 candidates. but he overcame all these difficulties through his absolute and unshakable belief in his own destiny, and in his own glorious future. ambition was the main-spring of his life. the thought of self, the worship of that capital letter "n" with which he signed all his letters, and which recurred forever in the ornaments of his hastily constructed palaces, the absolute will to make the name napoleon the most important thing in the world next to the name of god, these desires carried napoleon to a pinnacle of fame which no other man has ever reached.
when he was a half-pay lieutenant, young bonaparte was very fond of the "lives of famous men" which plutarch, the roman historian, had written. but he never tried to live up to the high standard of character set by these heroes of the older days. napoleon seems to have been devoid of all those considerate and thoughtful sentiments which make men different from the animals. it will be very difficult to decide with any degree of accuracy whether he ever loved anyone besides himself. he kept a civil tongue to his mother, but letizia had the air and manners of a great lady and after the fashion of italian mothers, she knew how to rule her brood of children and command their respect. for a few years he was fond of josephine, his pretty creole wife, who was the daughter of a french officer of martinique and the widow of the vicomte de beauharnais, who had been executed by robespierre when he lost a battle against the prussians. but the emperor divorced her when she failed to give him a son and heir and married the daughter of the austrian emperor, because it seemed good policy.
during the siege of toulon, where he gained great fame as commander of a battery, napoleon studied macchiavelli with industrious care. he followed the advice of the florentine statesman and never kept his word when it was to his advantage to break it. the word "gratitude" did not occur in his personal dictionary. neither, to be quite fair, did he expect it from others. he was totally indifferent to human suffering. he executed prisoners of war (in egypt in 1798) who had been promised their lives, and he quietly allowed his wounded in syria to be chloroformed when he found it impossible to transport them to his ships. he ordered the duke of enghien to be condemned to death by a prejudiced court-martial and to be shot contrary to all law on the sole ground that the "bourbons needed a warning." he decreed that those german officers who were made prisoner while fighting for their country's independence should be shot against the nearest wall, and when andreas hofer, the tyrolese hero, fell into his hands after a most heroic resistance, he was executed like a common traitor.
in short, when we study the character of the emperor, we begin to understand those anxious british mothers who used to drive their children to bed with the threat that "bonaparte, who ate little boys and girls for breakfast, would come and get them if they were not very good." and yet, having said these many unpleasant things about this strange tyrant, who looked after every other department of his army with the utmost care, but neglected the medical service, and who ruined his uniforms with eau de cologne because he could not stand the smell of his poor sweating soldiers; having said all these unpleasant things and being fully prepared to add many more, i must confess to a certain lurking feeling of doubt.
here i am sitting at a comfortable table loaded heavily with books, with one eye on my typewriter and the other on licorice the cat, who has a great fondness for carbon paper, and i am telling you that the emperor napoleon was a most contemptible person. but should i happen to look out of the window, down upon seventh avenue, and should the endless procession of trucks and carts come to a sudden halt, and should i hear the sound of the heavy drums and see the little man on his white horse in his old and much-worn green uniform, then i don't know, but i am afraid that i would leave my books and the kitten and my home and everything else to follow him wherever he cared to lead. my own grandfather did this and heaven knows he was not born to be a hero. millions of other people's grandfathers did it. they received no reward, but they expected none. they cheerfully gave legs and arms and lives to serve this foreigner, who took them a thousand miles away from their homes and marched them into a barrage of russian or english or spanish or italian or austrian cannon and stared quietly into space while they were rolling in the agony of death.
if you ask me for an explanation, i must answer that i have none. i can only guess at one of the reasons. napoleon was the greatest of actors and the whole european continent was his stage. at all times and under all circumstances he knew the precise attitude that would impress the spectators most and he understood what words would make the deepest impression. whether he spoke in the egyptian desert, before the backdrop of the sphinx and the pyramids, or addressed his shivering men on the dew-soaked plains of italy, made no difference. at all times he was master of the situation. even at the end, an exile on a little rock in the middle of the atlantic, a sick man at the mercy of a dull and intolerable british governor, he held the centre of the stage.
after the defeat of waterloo, no one outside of a few trusted friends ever saw the great emperor. the people of europe knew that he was living on the island of st. helena—they knew that a british garrison guarded him day and night—they knew that the british fleet guarded the garrison which guarded the emperor on his farm at longwood. but he was never out of the mind of either friend or enemy. when illness and despair had at last taken him away, his silent eyes continued to haunt the world. even to-day he is as much of a force in the life of france as a hundred years ago when people fainted at the mere sight of this sallow-faced man who stabled his horses in the holiest temples of the russian kremlin, and who treated the pope and the mighty ones of this earth as if they were his lackeys.
to give you a mere outline of his life would demand couple of volumes. to tell you of his great political reform of the french state, of his new codes of laws which were adopted in most european countries, of his activities in every field of public activity, would take thousands of pages. but i can explain in a few words why he was so successful during the first part of his career and why he failed during the last ten years. from the year 1789 until the year 1804, napoleon was the great leader of the french revolution. he was not merely fighting for the glory of his own name. he defeated austria and italy and england and russia because he, himself, and his soldiers were the apostles of the new creed of "liberty, fraternity and equality" and were the enemies of the courts while they were the friends of the people.
but in the year 1804, napoleon made himself hereditary emperor of the french and sent for pope pius vii to come and crown him, even as leo iii, in the year 800 had crowned that other great king of the franks, charlemagne, whose example was constantly before napoleon's eyes.
once upon the throne, the old revolutionary chieftain became an unsuccessful imitation of a habsburg monarch. he forgot his spiritual mother, the political club of the jacobins. he ceased to be the defender of the oppressed. he became the chief of all the oppressors and kept his shooting squads ready to execute those who dared to oppose his imperial will. no one had shed a tear when in the year 1806 the sad remains of the holy roman empire were carted to the historical dustbin and when the last relic of ancient roman glory was destroyed by the grandson of an italian peasant. but when the napoleonic armies had invaded spain, had forced the spaniards to recognise a king whom they detested, had massacred the poor madrilenes who remained faithful to their old rulers, then public opinion turned against the former hero of marengo and austerlitz and a hundred other revolutionary battles. then and only then, when napoleon was no longer the hero of the revolution but the personification of all the bad traits of the old regime, was it possible for england to give direction to the fast-spreading sentiment of hatred which was turning all honest men into enemies of the french emperor.
the english people from the very beginning had felt deeply disgusted when their newspapers told them the gruesome details of the terror. they had staged their own great revolution (during the reign of charles i) a century before. it had been a very simple affair compared to the upheaval of paris. in the eyes of the average englishman a jacobin was a monster to be shot at sight and napoleon was the chief devil. the british fleet had blockaded france ever since the year 1798. it had spoiled napoleon's plan to invade india by way of egypt and had forced him to beat an ignominious retreat, after his victories along the banks of the nile. and finally, in the year 1805, england got the chance it had waited for so long.
near cape trafalgar on the southwestern coast of spain, nelson annihilated the napoleonic fleet, beyond a possible chance of recovery. from that moment on, the emperor was landlocked. even so, he would have been able to maintain himself as the recognised ruler of the continent had he understood the signs of the times and accepted the honourable peace which the powers offered him. but napoleon had been blinded by the blaze of his own glory. he would recognise no equals. he could tolerate no rivals. and his hatred turned against russia, the mysterious land of the endless plains with its inexhaustible supply of cannon-fodder.
as long as russia was ruled by paul i, the half-witted son of catherine the great, napoleon had known how to deal with the situation. but paul grew more and more irresponsible until his exasperated subjects were obliged to murder him (lest they all be sent to the siberian lead-mines) and the son of paul, the emperor alexander, did not share his father's affection for the usurper whom he regarded as the enemy of mankind, the eternal disturber of the peace. he was a pious man who believed that he had been chosen by god to deliver the world from the corsican curse. he joined prussia and england and austria and he was defeated. he tried five times and five times he failed. in the year 1812 he once more taunted napoleon until the french emperor, in a blind rage, vowed that he would dictate peace in moscow. then, from far and wide, from spain and germany and holland and italy and portugal, unwilling regiments were driven northward, that the wounded pride of the great emperor might be duly avenged. the rest of the story is common knowledge. after a march of two months, napoleon reached the russian capital and established his headquarters in the holy kremlin. on the night of september 15 of the year 1812, moscow caught fire. the town burned four days. when the evening of the fifth day came, napoleon gave the order for the retreat. two weeks later it began to snow. the army trudged through mud and sleet until november the 26th when the river berezina was reached. then the russian attacks began in all seriousness. the cossacks swarmed around the "grande armee" which was no longer an army but a mob. in the middle of december the first of the survivors began to be seen in the german cities of the east.
then there were many rumours of an impending revolt. "the time has come," the people of europe said, "to free ourselves from this insufferable yoke." and they began to look for old shotguns which had escaped the eye of the ever-present french spies. but ere they knew what had happened, napoleon was back with a new army. he had left his defeated soldiers and in his little sleigh had rushed ahead to paris, making a final appeal for more troops that he might defend the sacred soil of france against foreign invasion.
children of sixteen and seventeen followed him when he moved eastward to meet the allied powers. on october 16, 18, and 19 of the year 1813, the terrible battle of leipzig took place where for three days boys in green and boys in blue fought each other until the elbe ran red with blood. on the afternoon of the 17th of october, the massed reserves of russian infantry broke through the french lines and napoleon fled.
back to paris he went. he abdicated in favour of his small son, but the allied powers insisted that louis xviii, the brother of the late king louis xvi, should occupy the french throne, and surrounded by cossacks and uhlans, the dull-eyed bourbon prince made his triumphal entry into paris.
as for napoleon he was made the sovereign ruler of the little island of elba in the mediterranean where he organised his stable boys into a miniature army and fought battles on a chess board.
but no sooner had he left france than the people began to realise what they had lost. the last twenty years, however costly, had been a period of great glory. paris had been the capital of the world. the fat bourbon king who had learned nothing and had forgotten nothing during the days of his exile disgusted everybody by his indolence.
on the first of march of the year 1815, when the representatives of the allies were ready to begin the work of unscrambling the map of europe, napoleon suddenly landed near cannes. in less than a week the french army had deserted the bourbons and had rushed southward to offer their swords and bayonets to the "little corporal." napoleon marched straight to paris where he arrived on the twentieth of march. this time he was more cautious. he offered peace, but the allies insisted upon war. the whole of europe arose against the "perfidious corsican." rapidly the emperor marched northward that he might crush his enemies before they should be able to unite their forces. but napoleon was no longer his old self. he felt sick. he got tired easily. he slept when he ought to have been up directing the attack of his advance-guard. besides, he missed many of his faithful old generals. they were dead.
early in june his armies entered belgium. on the 16th of that month he defeated the prussians under blucher. but a subordinate commander failed to destroy the retreating army as he had been ordered to do.
two days later, napoleon met wellington near waterloo. it was the 18th of june, a sunday. at two o'clock of the afternoon, the battle seemed won for the french. at three a speck of dust appeared upon the eastern horizon. napoleon believed that this meant the approach of his own cavalry who would now turn the english defeat into a rout. at four o'clock he knew better. cursing and swearing, old blucher drove his deathly tired troops into the heart of the fray. the shock broke the ranks of the guards. napoleon had no further reserves. he told his men to save themselves as best they could, and he fled.
for a second time, he abdicated in favor of his son. just one hundred days after his escape from elba, he was making for the coast. he intended to go to america. in the year 1803, for a mere song, he had sold the french colony of louisiana (which was in great danger of being captured by the english) to the young american republic. "the americans," so he said, "will be grateful and will give me a little bit of land and a house where i may spend the last days of my life in peace and quiet." but the english fleet was watching all french harbours. caught between the armies of the allies and the ships of the british, napoleon had no choice. the prussians intended to shoot him. the english might be more generous. at rochefort he waited in the hope that something might turn up. one month after waterloo, he received orders from the new french government to leave french soil inside of twenty-four hours. always the tragedian, he wrote a letter to the prince regent of england (george iv, the king, was in an insane asylum) informing his royal highness of his intention to "throw himself upon the mercy of his enemies and like themistocles, to look for a welcome at the fireside of his foes..."
on the 15th of july he went on board the "bellerophon," and surrendered his sword to admiral hotham. at plymouth he was transferred to the "northumberland" which carried him to st. helena. there he spent the last seven years of his life. he tried to write his memoirs, he quarrelled with his keepers and he dreamed of past times. curiously enough he returned (at least in his imagination) to his original point of departure. he remembered the days when he had fought the battles of the revolution. he tried to convince himself that he had always been the true friend of those great principles of "liberty, fraternity and equality" which the ragged soldiers of the convention had carried to the ends of the earth. he liked to dwell upon his career as commander-in-chief and consul. he rarely spoke of the empire. sometimes he thought of his son, the duke of reichstadt, the little eagle, who lived in vienna, where he was treated as a "poor relation" by his young habsburg cousins, whose fathers had trembled at the very mention of the name of him. when the end came, he was leading his troops to victory. he ordered ney to attack with the guards. then he died.
but if you want an explanation of this strange career, if you really wish to know how one man could possibly rule so many people for so many years by the sheer force of his will, do not read the books that have been written about him. their authors either hated the emperor or loved him. you will learn many facts, but it is more important to "feel history" than to know it. don't read, but wait until you have a chance to hear a good artist sing the song called "the two grenadiers." the words were written by heine, the great german poet who lived through the napoleonic era. the music was composed by schumann, a german who saw the emperor, the enemy of his country, whenever he came to visit his imperial father-in-law. the song therefore is the work of two men who had every reason to hate the tyrant.
go and hear it. then you will understand what a thousand volumes could not possibly tell you.
