The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5

H >> Hippolyte A. Taine >> The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36

In effect, if he has endowed them magnificently it is with domains
assigned to them in conquered countries, which insures their fortune
being his fortune. Besides, in order that they may not enjoy any
pecuniary stability, he expressly encourages them and all his grand
dignitaries to make extravagant outlays; thus, through their financial
embarrassments be holds them in a leash. "We have seen most of his
marshals, constantly pressed by their creditors, come to him for
assistance, which he has given as he fancied, or as he found it for
his interest to attach some one to him."[58]

Thus, beyond the universal ascendancy which his power and genius have
conferred on him, he craves a personal, supplementary, and
irresistible hold on everybody. Consequently,[59]"he carefully
cultivates all the bad passions . . . . he is glad to find the bad
side in a man, so as to get him in his power"; the thirst for money in
Savary, the Jacobin defects of Fouché, the vanity and sensuality of
Cambacérès, the careless cynicism and "the easy immorality" of
Talleyrand, the "dry bluntness " of Duroc, the courtier-like
insipidity of Maret, "the silliness" of Berthier; he brings this out,
diverts himself with it, and profits by it. "Where he sees no vice,
he encourages weaknesses, and, in default of anything better, he
provokes fear, so that he may be ever and continually the strongest. .
. .He dreads ties of affection, and strives to alienate people from
each other. . . . He sells his favors only by arousing anxiety; he
thinks that the best way to attach individuals to him is to compromise
them, and often, even, to ruin them in public opinion." - " If
Caulaincourt is compromised," said he, after the murder of the Duc
d'Enghien, "it is no great matter, he will serve me all the better."

Once that the creature is in his clutches, let him not imagine that he
can escape or withhold anything of his own accord; all that he has
belongs to him. Zeal and success in the performance of duty, punctual
obedience within limits previously designated, is not enough; behind
the functionary he claims the man. "All that may well be," he
replies, to whatever may be said in praise of him,[60] "but he does
not belong to me as I would like." It is devotion which he exacts,
and, by devotion, he means the irrevocable and complete surrender "of
the entire person, in all his sentiments and opinions." According to
him, writes a witness, "one must abandon every old habit, even the
most trifling, and be governed by one thought alone,. that of his
will and interests."[61] For greater security, his servitors ought to
extinguish in themselves the critical sense. "What he fears the most
is that, close to him or far off, the faculty of judging should be
applied or even preserved."

"His idea is a marble groove," out of which no mind should
diverge.[62] Especially as no two minds could think of diverging at
the same time, and on the same side, their concurrence, even when
passive, their common understanding, even if kept to themselves, their
whispers, almost inaudible, constitute a league, a faction, and, if
they are functionaries, "a conspiracy." On his return from Spain he
declares, with a terrible explosion of wrath and threats,[63] "that
the ministers and high dignitaries whom he has created must stop
expressing their opinions and thoughts freely, that they cannot be
otherwise than his organs, that treason has already begun when they
begin to doubt, and that it is under full headway when, from doubt,
they proceed to dissent." If, against his constant encroachments, they
strive to preserve a last refuge, if they refuse to abandon their
conscience to him, their faith as Catholics or their honor as honest
men, he is surprised and gets irritated. In reply to the Bishop of
Ghent, who, in the most respectful manner, excuses himself for not
taking a second oath that is against his conscience, he rudely turns
his back, and says, "Very well, sir, your conscience is a
blockhead!"[64] Portalis, director of the publishing office,[65]
having received a papal brief from his cousin, the Abbé d'Astros,
respected a confidential communication; he simply recommended his
cousin to keep this document secret, and declared that, if it were
made public, he would prohibit its circulation; by way of extra
precaution he notified the prefect of police. But he did not
specially denounce his cousin, have the man arrested and the document
seized. On the strength of this, the Emperor, in full council of
state, apostrophizes him to his face, and, "with one of those looks
which go straight through one,"[66] declares that he has committed
"the vilest of perfidies"; he bestows on him for half an hour a
hailstorm of reproaches and insults, and then orders him out of the
room as if a lackey who had been guilty of a theft. Whether he keeps
within his function or not, the functionary must be content to do
whatever is demanded of him, and readily anticipate every commission.
If his scruples arrest him, if he alleges personal obligations, if he
had rather not fail in delicacy, or even in common loyalty, he incurs
the risk of offending or losing the favor of the master, which is the
case with M. de Rémusat,[67] who is unwilling to become his spy,
reporter, and denunciator for the Faubourg Saint-Germain, who does not
offer, at Vienna, to pump out of Madame d'André the address of her
husband so that M. d'André may be taken and immediately shot. Savary,
who was the negotiator for his being given up, kept constantly telling
M. de Rémusat, "You are going against your interest - I must say that
I do not comprehend you!" And yet Savary, himself minister of the
police, executor of most important services, head manager of the
murder of the Duc d'Enghien and of the ambuscade at Bayonne,
counterfeiter of Austrian bank-notes for the campaign of 1809 and of
Russian banknotes for that of 1812,[68] Savary ends in getting weary;
he is charged with too many dirty jobs; however hardened his
conscience it has a tender spot; he discovers at last that he has
scruples. It is with great repugnance that, in February, 1814, he
executes the order to have a small infernal machine prepared, moving
by clock-work, so as to blow up the Bourbons on their return into
France.[69] "Ah," said he, giving himself a blow on the forehead, "it
must be admitted that the Emperor is sometimes hard to serve!"

If he exacts so much from the human creature, it is because, in
playing the game he has to play, he must absorb everything; in the
situation in which be has placed himself, caution is unnecessary. "Is
a statesman," said he, "made to have feeling? Is he not wholly an
eccentric personage, always alone by himself, he on one side and the
world on the other?"[70]

In this duel without truce or mercy, people interest him only whilst
they are useful to him; their value depends on what he can make out of
them; his sole business is to squeeze them, to extract to the last
drop whatever is available in them.

"I find very little satisfaction in useless sentiments," said he
again,[71] "and Berthier is so mediocre that I do not know why I waste
my time on him. And yet when I am not set against him, I am not sure
that I do not like him."

He goes no further. According to him, this indifference is necessary
in a statesman. The glass he looks through is that of his own
policy;[72] he must take care that it does not magnify or diminish
objects. - Therefore, outside of explosions of nervous sensibility,
"he has no consideration for men other than that of a foreman for his
workmen,"[73] or, more precisely, for his tools; once the tool is worn
out, little does he care whether it rusts away in a corner or is cast
aside on a heap of scrap-iron. "Portalis, Minister of Justice,[74]
enters his room one day with a downcast look and his eyes filled with
tears. 'What's the matter with you, Portalis?' inquired Napoleon,
'are you ill? 'No, sire, but very wretched. The poor Archbishop of
Tours, my old schoolmate . . .' 'Eh, well, what has happened to him?'
'Alas, sire, he has just died.' 'What do I care? he was no longer good
for anything.'" Owning and making the most of men and of things, of
bodies and of souls, using and abusing them at discretion, even to
exhaustion, without being responsible to any one, he reaches that
point after a few years where he can say as glibly and more
despotically than Louis XIV. himself,

"My armies, my fleets, my cardinals, my councils, my senate, my
populations, my empire."[75]

Addressing army corps about to rush into battle:

"Soldiers, I need your lives, and you owe them to me."

He says to General Dorsenne and to the grenadiers of the guard:[76]

"I hear that you complain that you want to return to Paris, to your
mistresses. Undeceive yourselves. I shall keep you under arms until
you are eighty. You were born to the bivouac, and you shall die
there."

How he treats his brothers and relations who have become kings; how he
reins them in; how he applies the spur and the whip and makes them
trot and jump fences and ditches, may be found in his correspondence;
every stray impulse to take the lead, even when justified by an
unforeseen urgency and with the most evident good intention, is
suppressed as a deviation, is arrested with a brusque roughness which
strains the loins and weakens the knees of the delinquent. The
amiable Prince Eugene, so obedient and so loyal,[77] is thus warned:

"If you want orders or advice from His Majesty in the alteration of
the ceiling of your room you should wait till you get them; were Milan
burning and you asked orders for putting out the fire, you should let
Milan burn until you got them. . . His Majesty is displeased, and very
much displeased, with you; you must never attempt to do his work.
Never does he like this, and he will never forgive it."

This enables us to judge of his tone with subalterns. The French
battalions are refused admission into certain places in Holland:[78]

"Announce to the King of Holland, that if his ministers have acted on
their own responsibility, I will have them arrested and all their
heads cut off."

He says to M. de Ségur, member of the Academy commission which had
just approved M. de Chateaubriand's discourse:[79]

"You, and M. de Fontaines, as state councillor and grand master, I
ought to put in Vincennes. . . . Tell the second class of the
Institute that I will have no political subjects treated at its
meetings. . . . .If it disobeys, I will break it up like a bad club.

Even when not angry or scolding,[80] when the claws are drawn in, one
feels the clutch. He says to Beugnot, whom he has just berated,
scandalously and unjustly, - conscious of having done him injustice
and with a view to produce an effect on the bystanders, -

"Well, you great imbecile, you have got back your brains?"

On this, Beugnot, tall as a drum-major, bows very low, while the
smaller man, raising his hand, seizes him by the ear, "a heady mark of
favor," says Beugnot, a sign of familiarity and of returning good
humor. And better yet, the master deigns to lecture Beugnot on his
personal tastes, on his regrets, on his wish to return to France: What
would he like? To be his minister in Paris? "Judging by what he saw of
me the other day I should not be there very long; I might die of worry
before the end of the month." He has already killed Portalis, Cretet,
and almost Treilhard, even though he had led a hard life: he could no
longer urinate, nor the others either. The same thing would have
happened to Beignot, if not worse. . . .

" Stay here . . . . after which you will be old, or rather we all
shall be old, and I will send you to the Senate to drivel at your
ease."

Evidently,[81 the nearer one is to his person the more disagreeable
life becomes.[82] "Admirably served, promptly obeyed to the minute, he
still delights in keeping everybody around him in terror concerning
the details of all that goes on in his palace." Has any difficult task
been accomplished? He expresses no thanks, never or scarcely ever
praises, and, which happens but once, in the case of M. de Champagny,
Minister of Foreign Affairs, who is praised for having finished the
treaty of Vienna in one night, and with unexpected advantages;[83]
this time, the Emperor has thought aloud, is taken by surprise;
"ordinarily, he manifests approbation only by his silence." - When M.
de Rémusat, prefect of the palace, has arranged "one of those
magnificent fêtes in which all the arts minister to his enjoyment,"
economically, correctly, with splendor and success, his wife never
asks her husband[84] if the Emperor is satisfied, but whether he has
scolded more or less.

"His leading general principle, which he applies in every way, in
great things as well as in small ones, is that a man's zeal depends
upon his anxiety."

How insupportable the constraint he exercises, with what crushing
weight his absolutism bears down on the most tried devotion and on the
most pliable characters, with what excess he tramples on and wounds
the best dispositions, up to what point he represses and stifles the
respiration of the human being, he knows as well as anybody. He was
heard to say,

"The lucky man is he who hides away from me in the depths of some
province."

And, another day, having asked M. de Ségur what people would say of
him after his death, the latter enlarged on the regrets which would be
universally expressed. "Not at all," replied the Emperor; and then,
drawing in his breath in a significant manner indicative of universal
relief, he replied,

"They'll say, 'Whew!'"[85]

IV. His Bad Manners.

His bearings in Society. - His deportment toward Women. - His disdain
of Politeness.

There are very few monarchs, even absolute, who persistently, arid
from morning to night, maintain a despotic attitude. Generally, and
especially in France, the sovereign makes two divisions of his time,
one for business and the other for social duties, and, in the latter
case, while always head of the State, he is also head of his house:
for he welcomes visitors, entertains his guests, and, that his guests
may not be robots, he tries to put them at their ease. - That was the
case with Louis XIV.[86] - polite to everybody, always affable with
men, and sometimes gracious, always courteous with women, and some
times gallant, carefully avoiding brusqueness, ostentation, and
sarcasms, never allowing himself to use an offensive word, never
making people feel their inferiority and dependence, but, on the
contrary, encouraging them to express opinions, and even to converse,
tolerating in conversation a semblance of equality, smiling at a
repartee, playfully telling a story - such was his drawing-room
constitution. The drawing-room as well as every human society needs
one, and a liberal one; otherwise life dies out. Accordingly, the
observance of this constitution in by-gone society is known by the
phrase savoir-vivre, and, more rigidly than anybody else, Louis XIV.
submitted himself to this code of proprieties. Traditionally, and
through education, he had consideration for others, at least for the
people around him; his courtiers becoming his guests without ceasing
to be his subjects.

There is nothing of this sort with Napoleon. He preserves nothing of
the etiquette he borrows from the old court but its rigid discipline
and its pompous parade. "The ceremonial system," says an eyewitness,
"was carried out as if it had been regulated by the tap of a drum;
everything was done, in a certain sense, 'double-quick.'[87] . . .
This air of precipitation, this constant anxiety which it inspires,"
puts an end to all comfort, all ease, all entertainment, all agreeable
intercourse; there is no common bond but that of command and
obedience. " The few individuals he singles out, Savary, Duroc,
Maret, keep silent and simply transmit orders. . . . We did not appear
to them, in doing what we were ordered to do, and we did not appear to
ourselves, other than veritable machines, all resembling, or but
little short of it, the elegant gilded arm-chairs with which the
palaces of Saint-Cloud and the Tuileries had just been embellished."

For a machine to work well it is important that the machinist should
overhaul it frequently, which this one never fails to do, especially
after a long absence. Whilst he is on his way from Tilsit, "everybody
anxiously examines his conscience to ascertain what he has done that
this rigid master will find fault with on his return. Whether spouse,
family, or grand dignitary, each is more or less disturbed; while the
Empress, who knows him better than any one, naively says, 'As the
Emperor is so happy it is certain that he will do a deal of
scolding!'"[88] Actually, he has scarcely arrived when he gives a rude
and vigorous wrench of the bolt; and then, "satisfied at having
excited terror all around, he appears to have forgotten what has
passed and resumes the usual tenor of his life." "Through calculation
as well as from taste,[89] he never ceases to be a monarch"; hence, "a
mute, frigid court . . . . more dismal than dignified; every face
wears an expression of uneasiness . . . a silence both dull and
constrained." At Fontainebleau, "amidst splendors and pleasures,"
there is no real enjoyment nor anything agreeable, not even for
himself. "I pity you," said M. de Talleyrand to M. de Rémusat, "you
have to amuse the unamusable." At the theatre he is abstracted or
yawns. Applause is prohibited; the court, sitting out "the file of
eternal tragedies, is mortally bored . . . . the young ladies fall
asleep, people leave the theatre, gloomy and discontented." - There is
the same constraint in the drawing-room. "He did not know how to
appear at ease, and I believe that he never wanted anybody else to be
so, afraid of the slightest approach to familiarity, and inspiring
each with a fear of saying something offensive to his neighbor before
witnesses. . . . During the quadrille, he moves around amongst the
rows of ladies, addressing them with some trifling or disagreeable
remark," and never does he accost them otherwise than "awkwardly and
ill at his ease." At bottom, he distrusts them and is ill-disposed
toward them.[90] It is because "the power they have acquired in
society seems to him an intolerable usurpation. - "Never did he utter
to a woman a graceful or even a well-turned compliment, although the
effort to find one was often apparent on his face and in the tone of
his voice. . . . He talks to them only of their toilet, of which he
declares himself a severe and minute judge, and on which he indulges
in not very delicate jests; or again, on the number of their children,
demanding of them in rude language whether they nurse them themselves;
or again, lecturing them on their social relations."[91] Hence, "there
is not one who does not rejoice when he moves off."[92] He would often
amuse himself by putting them out of countenance, scandalizing and
bantering them to their faces, driving them into a corner the same as
a colonel worries his canteen women. "Yes, ladies, you furnish the
good people of the Faubourg Saint-Germain with something to talk
about. It is said, Madame A..., that you are intimate with Monsieur
B..., and you Madame C...., with Monsieur D ." On any intrigue
chancing to appear in the police reports, "he loses no time in
informing the husband of what is going on." - He is no less indiscreet
in relation to his own affairs;[93] when it is over he divulges the
fact and gives the name; furthermore, he informs Josephine in detail
and will not listen to any reproach: "I have a right to answer all
your objections with an eternal I!"

This term, indeed, answers to everything, and he explains it by
adding: "I stand apart from other men. I accept nobody's conditions,"
nor any species of obligation, no code whatever, not even the common
code of outward civility, which, diminishing or dissimulating
primitive brutality, allows men to associate together without
clashing. He does not comprehend it, and he repudiates it. "I have
little liking,"[94] he says, "for that vague, leveling word propriety
(convenances), which you people fling out every chance you get. It is
an invention of fools who want to pass for clever men; a kind of
social muzzle which annoys the strong and is useful only to the
mediocre. . . Ah, good taste ! Another classic expression which I do
not accept." "It is your personal enemy"; says Talleyrand to him, one
day, "if you could have shot it away with bullets, it would have
disappeared long ago!" - It is because good taste is the highest
attainment of civilization, the innermost vestment which drapes human
nudity, which best fits the person, the last garment retained after
the others have been cast off, and which delicate tissue continues to
hamper Napoleon; he throws it off instinctively, because it interferes
with his natural behavior, with the uncurbed, dominating, savage ways
of the vanquisher who knocks down his adversary and treats him as he
pleases.

V. His Policy.

His tone and bearing towards Sovereigns. - His Policy. - His means and
ends.- After Sovereigns he sets populations against him. - Final
opinion of Europe.

Such behavior render social intercourse impossible, especially among
the independent and armed personages known as nations or States. This
is why they are outlawed in politics and in diplomacy and every head
of a State or representative of a country, carefully and on principle,
abstains from them, at least with those on his own level. He is bound
to treat these as his equals, humor them, and, accordingly, not to
give way to the irritation of the moment or to personal feeling; in
short, to exercise self-control and measure his words. To this is due
the tone of manifestos, protocols, dispatches, and other public
documents the formal language of legations, so cold, dry, and
elaborated, those expressions purposely attenuated and smoothed down,
those long phrases apparently spun out mechanically and always after
the same pattern, a sort of soft wadding or international buffer
interposed between contestants to lessen the shocks of collision. The
reciprocal irritations between States are already too great; there are
ever too many unavoidable and regrettable encounters, too many causes
of conflict, the consequences of which are too serious; it is
unnecessary to add to the wounds of interest the wounds of imagination
and of pride; and above all, it is unnecessary to amplify these
without reason, at the risk of increasing the obstacles of to-day and
the resentments of to-morrow. - With Napoleon it is just the opposite:
his attitude, even at peaceful interviews, remains aggressive and
militant; purposely or in-voluntarily, he raises his hand and the blow
is felt to be coming, while, in the meantime, he insults. In his
correspondence with sovereigns, in his official proclamations, in his
deliberations with ambassadors, and even at public audiences,[95] he
provokes, threatens, and defies.[96] He treats his adversary with a
lofty air, insults him often to his face, and charges him with the
most disgraceful imputations.[97] He divulges the secrets of his
private life, of his closet, and of his bed; he defames or calumniates
his ministers, his court, and his wife;[98] he purposely stabs him in
the most sensitive part. He tells one that he is a dupe, a betrayed
husband; another that he is an abettor of assassination; he assumes
the air of a judge condemning a criminal, or the tone of a superior
reprimanding an inferior, or, at best, that of a teacher taking a
scholar to task. With a smile of pity, he points out mistakes, weak
points, and incapacity, and shows him beforehand that he must be
defeated. On receiving the envoy of the Emperor Alexander at
Wilna,[99] be says to him:

"Russia does not want this war; none of the European powers are in
favor of it; England herself does not want it, for she foresees the
harm it will do to Russia, and even, perhaps, the greatest. . . I know
as well as yourself, and perhaps even better, how many troops you
have. Your infantry in all amounts to 120,000 men and your cavalry to
about 60,000 or 70,000; I have three times as many. . . . The Emperor
Alexander is badly advised. How can he tolerate such vile people
around him - an Armfeld, an intriguing, depraved, rascally fellow, a
ruined debauchee, who is known only by his crimes and who is the enemy
of Russia; a Stein, driven from his country like an outcast, a
miscreant with a price on his head; a Bennigsen, who, it is said, has
some military talent, of which I know nothing, but whose hands are
steeped in blood?[100] . . . . Let him surround himself with the
Russians and I will say nothing. . . . Have you no Russian gentlemen
among you who are certainly more attached to him than these
mercenaries? Does he imagine that they are fond of him personally? Let
him put Armfeld in command in Finland and I have nothing to say; but
to have him about his person, for shame ! . . . . What a superb
perspective opened out to the Emperor Alexander at Tilsit, and
especially at Erfurt! . . . . He has spoilt the finest reign Russia
ever saw. . . . How can he admit to his society such men as a Stein,
an Armfeld, a Vinzingerode? Say to the Emperor Alexander, that as he
gathers around him my personal enemies it means a desire to insult me
personally, and, consequently, that I must do the same to him. I will
drive all his Baden, Wurtemburg, and Weimar relations out of Germany.
Let him provide a refuge for them in Russia!"

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36