Napoleon the Little
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Victor Hugo >> Napoleon the Little
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She does not mingle jackals with them.
She puts and keeps apart the disgusting beasts. M. Bonaparte will be
with Claudius, with Ferdinand VII of Spain, with Ferdinand II of
Naples, in the hyena cage.
He is a bit of a brigand, and a great deal of a knave. One is always
conscious of the poor prince of industry, who lived from hand to mouth
in England; his present prosperity, his triumph, his empire, and his
inflation amount to nothing; the purple mantle trails over shoes down
at heel. Napoleon the Little, nothing more, nothing less. The title of
this book is well chosen.
The meanness of his vices prejudices the grandeur of his crimes. What
would you have? Peter the Cruel massacred, but he did not steal; Henry
III assassinated, but he did not swindle; Timour crushed children under
horses' hoofs, much as M. Bonaparte exterminated women and old men on
the boulevard, but he did not lie. Hear the Arabian historian:
"Timour-Beg, Sahib-Keran (master of the world and of the age, master of
the planetary conjunctions), was born at Kesch, in 1336; he slaughtered
a hundred thousand captives; as he was besieging Siwas, the
inhabitants, to mollify him, sent him a thousand little children,
bearing each a Koran on its head, and crying, 'Allah! Allah!' He caused
the sacred books to be removed with respect, and the children to be
crushed beneath the hoofs of wild horses. He used seventy thousand
human heads, with cement, stone, and brick, in building towers at
Herat, Sebzvar, Tekrit, Aleppo, and Bagdad; he detested lying; when he
had given his word, men could rely upon it."
M. Bonaparte is not of this stature. He has not that dignity which the
great despots of the East and of the West mingle with ferocity. The
amplitude of the Caesars is wanting in him. To bear one's self worthily
and make a fair appearance among all the illustrious executioners who
have tortured mankind in the course of four thousand years, one must
not have any mental hesitation between a general of division and a
bass-drummer on the Champs-Elysees; one must not have been a constable
in London; one must not have undergone, with lowered eyes, in the Court
of Peers, the haughty scorn of M. Magnan; one must not have been called
"pickpocket" by the English newspapers; one must not have been menaced
with Clichy; in a word, there must have been nothing of the sneak in
the man.
Monsieur Louis Napoleon, you are ambitious, you aim high, but you must
have the truth told you. Well, what would you have us do in the matter?
In vain have you, by overturning the tribune of France, realized, after
your fashion, the wish of Caligula: "I would that mankind had but one
head, so that I might cut it off with a blow;" in vain have you
banished the republicans by thousands, as Philip III expelled the
Moors, and as Torquemada drove out the Jews; in vain have you dungeons
like Peter the Cruel, hulks like Hariadan, _dragonnades_ like Pere
Letellier, and _oubliettes_ like Ezzelino III; in vain have you
perjured yourself like Ludovic Sforza; in vain have you massacred and
assassinated _en masse_ like Charles IX; in vain have you done all
this, in vain have you recalled all these names to men's minds when
they think of your name,--you are nothing but a rogue. A man is not a
monster for the wishing.
II
From every agglomeration of men, from every city, from every nation,
there inevitably arises a collective force.
Place this collective force at the service of liberty, let it rule by
universal suffrage, the city becomes a commune, the nation becomes a
republic.
This collective force is not, of its nature, intelligent. Belonging to
all, it belongs to no one; it floats about, so to speak, outside of the
people.
Until the day comes when, according to the true social formula,--_as
little government as possible_,--this force may be reduced to a mere
street and road police, paving the streets, lighting the lamps, and
looking after malefactors; until that day comes, this collective force,
being at the mercy of many chances and many ambitions, needs to be
guarded and protected by jealous, clear-sighted, well-armed
institutions.
It may be subjugated by tradition, it may be surprised by stratagem.
A man may rush upon it, seize it, bridle it, quell it, and cause it to
trample upon the citizens.
The tyrant is the man, who, born of tradition, like Nicholas of Russia,
or of stratagem, like Louis Bonaparte, seizes for his own profit, and
according to his caprice disposes of the collective force of a people.
This man, if he be by birth what Nicholas is, is the enemy of society;
if he have done what Louis Bonaparte has done, he is a public robber.
The former has no account to settle with regular legal justice, with
the articles of codes. He has behind him, spying upon and watching him,
hatred in their hearts, and vengeance in their hands, Orloff in his
palace, and Mouravieff among the people; he may be assassinated by one
of his army, or poisoned by one of his family; he runs the risk of
barrack conspiracies, of revolts of regiments, of secret military
societies, of domestic plots, of sudden, mysterious maladies, of
terrible blows, of great catastrophes. The other ought simply to go to
Poissy.
The former has the wherewithal to die in the purple, and to end his
life with pomp and royally, as monarchs end and tragedies. The other
must live; live between four walls behind bars, through which the
people can look at him, sweeping courtyards, making horse-hair brushes
or list shoes, emptying buckets, with a green cap on his head, wooden
shoes on his feet, and straw in his shoes.
Ah! ye leaders of the old parties, ye men of absolutism, in France you
voted _en masse_ among 7,500,000; outside of France you applauded,
taking this Cartouche for the hero of order. He is ferocious enough for
it, I admit; but look at his size. Don't be ungrateful to your real
colossi; you have cashiered your Haynaus and your Radetzkys too
precipitately. Above all, weigh this comparison, which so naturally
presents itself to the mind. What is this Mandrin of Lilliput beside
Nicholas, Czar, Emperor, and Pope, a power half-Bible, half-knout, who
damns and condemns, drills eight hundred thousand soldiers and two
hundred thousand priests, holds in his right hand the keys of paradise,
and in his left hand the keys of Siberia, and possesses, as his
chattel, sixty millions of men--their souls as if he were God, their
bodies as if he were the tomb!
III
If there should not be ere long a sudden, imposing, and overwhelming
catastrophe, if the present situation of the nation should be prolonged
and endure, the grand injury, the fearful injury, would be the moral
injury.
The boulevards of Paris, the streets of Paris, the rural districts and
the towns of twenty departments of France, were strewn on the 2nd of
December with dead and dying citizens; there were seen, before their
thresholds, fathers and mothers slaughtered, children sabred,
dishevelled women in pools of blood, disemboweled by grape-shot; there
were seen, in the houses, suppliants massacred, some shot in heaps in
their cellars, others despatched by the bayonet under their beds,
others struck down by a bullet on their own hearths. The impress of
bloodstained hands of all sizes may be seen at this moment, here on a
wall, there on a door, there in a recess; for three days after the
victory of Louis Bonaparte, Paris walked in ruddy mire; a cap full of
human brains was hung on a tree on Boulevard des Italiens. I, who write
these lines, saw, among other victims, on the night of the 4th, near
the Mauconseil barricade, an aged white-haired man, stretched on the
pavement, his bosom pierced with a bayonet, his collar-bone broken; the
gutter that ran beneath him bore away his blood. I saw, I touched with
my hands, I helped to undress, a poor child seven years old, killed,
they told me, on Rue Tiquetonne; he was pale, his head rolled from one
shoulder to the other while they were taking off his clothes; his
half-closed eyes were fixed and staring, and as I leaned over his
half-opened mouth, it seemed that I could still hear him murmur
faintly, "Mother!"
Well, there is something more heart-rending than murdered child, more
lamentable than that old man shot dead, more horrible than that cap
full of human brains, more frightful than those pavements red with
carnage, more irreparable than those men and women, those fathers and
those mothers, stabbed and murdered,--it is the vanishing honour of a
great people!
Assuredly those pyramids of dead bodies which one saw in the
cemeteries, after the wagons from the Champ-de-Mars had emptied their
contents; those immense open trenches, which they filled in the morning
with human bodies, making speed because of the increasing light of
day,--all this was frightful; but what is still more frightful is to
think that, at this hour, the nations are in doubt; and that in their
eyes France, that great moral splendour, has disappeared!
That which is more heart-rending than skulls cleft by the sword, than
breasts riddled by bullets, more disastrous than houses pillaged, than
murder filling the streets, than blood shed in rivers, is to think that
now, among all the peoples of the earth, men are saying to one another:
"Do you know that that nation of nations, that people of the 14th of
July, that people of the 10th of August, that people of 1830, that
people of 1848, that race of giants which razed bastiles, that race of
men whose faces cast a bright light, that fatherland of the human race
which produced heroes and thinkers, those heroes who made all the
revolutions and gave birth to all births, that France whose name meant
liberty, that soul of the world, so to say, which shone resplendent in
Europe, that light.... Well! some one has stepped upon it, and put it
out. There is no longer a France. It is at an end. Look! everywhere
darkness. The world is feeling its way."
Ah! it was so grand. Where are those times, those glorious times,
interspersed with storms, but glorious, when all was life, when all was
liberty, when all was glory? those times when the French people, awake
before all others, and up before the light, their brows illumined by
the dawn of the future already risen for them, said to the other
nations, still drowsy and overborne, and scarcely able to shake their
chains in their sleep: "Fear naught, I work for all, I dig the earth
for all,--I am the workman of the Almighty!"
What profound grief! Regard that torpor where formerly there was such
power! that shame, where formerly there was such pride! that noble
people, whose heads were once held erect and are now lowered!
Alas! Louis Bonaparte has done more than kill persons, he has caused
men's minds to dwindle, he has withered the heart of the citizen. One
must belong to the race of the invincible and the indomitable, to
persevere now in the rugged path of renunciation and of duty. An
indescribable gangrene of material prosperity threatens to cause public
honesty to degenerate into rottenness. Oh! what happiness to be
banished, to be disgraced, to be ruined,--is it not, brave workmen? Is
it not, worthy peasants, driven from France, who have no roof to
shelter you, and no shoes to your feet? What happiness to eat black
bread, to lie on a mattress thrown on the ground, to be out at elbows,
to be away from all this, and to those who say to you: "You are
French!" to answer, "I am proscribed!"
What a pitiful thing is this delight of self-interest and cupidity,
wallowing in the slough of the 2nd of December! Faith! let us live, let
us go into business, let us speculate in zinc and railway shares, let
us make money; it is degrading but it is an excellent thing; a scruple
less, a louis more; let us sell our whole soul at that rate. One runs
to and fro, one rushes about, one cools his heels in anterooms, one
drinks deep of every kind of shame, and if one cannot get a concession
of railways in France or of lands in Africa, one asks for an office. A
host of intrepid devotions besiege the Elysee, and collect about the
man. Junot, beside the first Bonaparte, defied the splashing of shells,
these fellows beside the second, defy the splashing of mud. What care
they about sharing his ignominy, provided they share his fortune? The
competition is to see who shall carry on this traffic in himself most
cynically; and among these creatures there are young men with pure
limpid eyes, and all the appearance of generous youth; and there are
old men, who have but one fear, which is, that the office solicited may
not reach them in time, and that they may not succeed in dishonouring
themselves before they die. One would sell himself for a prefecture,
another for a collectorship, another for a consulate; one wants a
tobacco license, another an embassy. All want money, some more, some
less; for it is of the salary they think, not of the duties. Every one
has his hand out. All offer themselves. One of these days we shall have
to appoint an assayer of consciences at the Mint.
What! this is what we have come to! What! those very men who supported
the _coup d'etat_, those very men who recoiled from the red
_croquemitaine_ and the twaddle about Jacquerie in 1852; those very
men to whom that crime seemed a good thing, because, according to them,
it rescued from peril their consols, their ledgers, their money-boxes,
their bill-books,--even they do not comprehend that material interest,
surviving alone, would, after all, be only a melancholy waif in an
immense moral shipwreck, and that it is a fearful and monstrous
situation, when men say: "All is saved, save honour!"
The words independence, enfranchisement, progress, popular pride,
national pride, French greatness, may no longer be pronounced in
France. Hush! these words make too much noise; let us walk on tiptoe,
and speak low; we are in a sick man's chamber.
Who is this man?--He is the chief, the master. Every one obeys
him.--Ah! every one respects him, then?--No, every one despises
him.--Oh! what a plight!
And military honour, where is it? Let us say no more, if you please, of
what the army did in December, but of what it is undergoing at this
moment, of that which is at its head, of that which is on its head. Do
you think of that? Does it think of that? O army of the republic! army
that had for captains, generals paid with four francs a day; army that
had for leaders, Carnot, austerity, Marceau, unselfishness, Hoche,
honour, Kleber, devotion, Joubert, probity, Desaix, valour, Bonaparte,
genius! O, French army, poor, unfortunate, heroic army, gone astray in
the train of these men! What will they do with it? whither will they
lead it? how will they occupy it? what parodies are we destined to see
and hear? Alas! what are these men who command our regiments, and who
govern us? The master--we know him. This fellow, who had been a
minister, was going to be "seized" on the 3rd of December; it was for
that reason he _made_ the 2nd. That other is the "borrower" of the
twenty-five millions from the Bank. That other is the man of the gold
ingots. To that other, before he was made minister, "a friend"
said:--"_I say! you are humbugging us about the shares in that affair;
that won't go down with me. If there's any swindling going on, let me
at least have a finger in it._" That other, who wears epaulettes, has
just been convicted of selling mortgaged property; that other, who also
wears epaulettes, received, on the morning of the 2nd of December,
100,000 francs, for "emergencies." He was only a colonel; if he had
been a general he would have had more. This man, who is a general, when
he was a body-guard of Louis XVIII, being on duty behind the king's
chair during mass, cut a gold tassel from the throne and put it in his
pocket; he was expelled from the guards for that. Surely, to these men,
also, we might rear a column, _ex aere capto_, with the money they
stole. This other, who is a general of division, "converted" 52,000
francs, to the knowledge of Colonel Caharras, in the construction of
the villages of Saint Andre and Saint Hippolyte, near Mascara. This
one, who is general-in-chief, was christened at Ghent, where he is
known, _le general Cinq-cents-francs_. This one, who is Minister of
War, has only General Rulhiere's clemency to thank that he was not sent
before a court-martial. Such are the men. No matter; forward! beat,
drums, sound, trumpets, wave, flags! Soldiers, from the top of yon
pyramids the forty thieves look down upon you!
Let us go farther into this mournful subject, and survey it in all its
aspects.
The mere spectacle of fortune like that of M. Bonaparte, placed at the
head of the state, would suffice to demoralize a people.
There is always, and it is the fault of our social institutions, that
ought, above all, to enlighten and civilize, there is always, in a
large population like that of France, a class which is ignorant, which
suffers, covets, and struggles, placed between the brutish instinct
which impels it to take, and the moral law which invites it to labour.
In the grievous and oppressed condition in which it still is, this
class, in order to maintain itself in probity and well-doing, requires
all the pure and holy light that emanates from the Gospel; it requires
that, on the one hand, the spirit of Jesus Christ, and, on the other,
the spirit of the French Revolution, should address to it the same
manly words, and should never cease to point out to it, as the only
lights worthy of the eyes of man, the exalted and mysterious laws of
human destiny,--self-denial, devotion, sacrifice, the labour which
leads to material well-being, the probity which leads to inward
well-being; even with this perennial instruction, at once divine and
human, this class, so worthy of sympathy and fraternity, often
succumbs. Suffering and temptation are stronger than virtue. Now do you
comprehend the infamous counsel which the success of M. Bonaparte gives
to this class?
A poor man, in rags, without money, without work, is there in the
shadow, at the corner of the street, seated on a stone; he is
meditating, and at the same time repelling, a bad action; now he
wavers, now he recovers himself; he is starving, and feels a desire to
rob; to rob he must make a false key, he must scale a wall; then, the
key made and the wall scaled, he will stand before the strong box; if
any one wakes, if any one resists, he must kill. His hair stands on
end, his eyes become haggard, his conscience, the voice of God, revolts
within him, and cries to him: "Stop! this is evil! these are crimes!"
At that moment the head of the state passes by; the man sees M.
Bonaparte in his uniform of a general, with the _cordon rouge_, and
with footmen in gold-laced liveries, dashing towards his palace in a
carriage drawn by four horses; the unhappy wretch, hesitating before
his crime, greedily gazes on this splendid vision; and the serenity of
M. Bonaparte, and his gold epaulettes, and his _cordon rouge_, and
the liveries, and the palace, and the four-horse carriage, say to him:
"Succeed."
He attaches himself to this apparition, he follows it, he runs to the
Elysee; a gilded mob rushes in after the prince. All sorts of carriages
pass under that portal, and he has glimpses of happy, radiant men! This
one is an ambassador; the ambassador looks at him, and says: "Succeed."
This is a bishop; the bishop looks at him and says: "Succeed." This is
a judge; the judge looks at him, and smiles on him, and says:
"Succeed."
Thus, to escape the gendarmes,--therein consists henceforth the whole
moral law. To rob, to pillage, to poignard, to assassinate, all this is
criminal only when one is fool enough to allow himself to be caught.
Every man who meditates a crime has a constitution to violate, an oath
to break, an obstacle to destroy. In a word, take your measures well.
Be adroit. Succeed. The only guilty actions are the _coups_ that fail.
You put your hand in the pocket of a passer-by, in the evening, at
nightfall, in a lonely place; he seizes you; you let go; he arrests
you, and takes you to the guard-house. You are guilty; to the galleys!
You do not let go: you have a knife about you, you bury it in the man's
throat; he falls; he is dead; now take his purse, and make off. Bravo!
capitally done! You have shut the victim's mouth, the only witness who
could speak. Nobody has anything to say to you.
If you had only robbed the man, you would have been in the wrong; kill
him, and you are right.
Succeed, that is the point.
Ah! this is indeed alarming!
On the day when the human conscience shall lose its bearings, on the
day when success shall carry the day before that forum, all will be at
an end. The last moral gleam will reascend to heaven. Darkness will be
in the mind of man. You will have nothing to do but to devour one
another, wild beasts that you are!
With moral degradation goes political degradation. M. Bonaparte treats
the people of France like a conquered country. He effaces the
republican inscriptions; he cut down the trees of liberty, and makes
firewood of them. There was on Place Bourgogne a statue of the
Republic; he puts the pickaxe to it; there was on our coinage a figure
of the Republic, crowned with ears of corn; M. Bonaparte replaces it by
the profile of M. Bonaparte. He has his bust crowned and harangued in
the market-places, just as the tyrant Gessler made the people salute
his cap. The rustics in the faubourgs were in the habit of singing in
chorus, in the evening, as they returned from work; they used to sing
the great republican songs, the Marseillaise, the Chant du Depart; they
were ordered to keep silent; the faubourgers will sing no more; there
is amnesty only for obscenities and drunken songs. The triumph is so
complete, that they no longer keep within bounds. Only yesterday they
kept in hiding, they did their shooting at night; it was shocking, but
there was still some shame; there was a remnant of respect for the
people; they seemed to think that it had still enough life in it to
revolt, if it saw such things. Now they show themselves, they fear
nothing, they guillotine in broad day. Whom do they guillotine? Whom?
the men of the law, and the law is there! Whom? the men of the people!
and the people is there! Nor is this all. There is a man in Europe, who
horrifies Europe: that man sacked Lombardy, he set up the gibbets of
Hungary; he had a woman whipped under the gibbet upon which hung her
husband and her son; we still remember the terrible letter in which
that woman recounts the deed, and says: "My heart has turned to stone."
Last year this man took it into his head to visit England as a tourist,
and, while in London, he took it into his head to visit a brewery, that
of Barclay and Perkins. There he was recognized; a voice whispered: "It
is Haynau!"--"It is Haynau!" repeated the workmen!--It was a fearful
cry; the crowd rushed upon the wretch, tore out his infamous white hair
by handfuls, spat in his face, and thrust him out. Well, this old
bandit in epaulettes, this Haynau, this man who still bears on his
cheek the immense buffet of the English people, it is announced that
"Monseigneur the Prince-President invites him to visit France." It is
quite right; London put an affront on him, Paris owes him an ovation.
It is a reparation. Be it so. We will be there to see. Haynau was
cursed and hooted at the brewery of Barclay and Perkins, he will
receive bouquets at the brewery of Saint-Antoine. The Faubourg
Saint-Antoine will receive an order to conduct itself properly. The
Faubourg Saint-Antoine, mute, motionless, impassive, will see them
pass, triumphant and conversing together, like two friends, through its
old revolutionary streets, one in French, the other in Austrian
uniform,--Louis Bonaparte, the murderer of the boulevard, arm-in-arm
with Haynau, the whipper of women! Go on, add insult to insult,
disfigure this France of ours, fallen flat on the pavement! make her
unrecognizable! crush the faces of the people with your heels!
Oh! inspire me, seek for me, give me, invent for me a means, whatever
it may be, short of a poignard, which I repudiate,--a Brutus for that
man! bah! he is not worthy of even a Louvel!--find me some means of
laying that man low, and of delivering my country! of laying that man
low, that man of craft, that man of lies, that man of success, that man
of evil! Some means, the first that offers,--pen, sword, paving-stone,
_emeute_,--by the people, by the soldier; yes, whatever it be, so it be
honourable, and in open day, I take it, we all take it, we proscribed,
if it can re-establish liberty, set free the republic, deliver our
country from shame, and drive back to his dust, to his oblivion, to
his cloaca, this imperial ruffian, this prince pick-pocket, this gypsy
king, this traitor, this master, this groom of Franconi's! this
radiant, imperturbable, self-satisfied governor, crowned with his
successful crime, who goes and comes, and peacefully parades trembling
Paris, and who has everything on his side,--the Bourse, the
shopkeepers, the magistracy, all influences, all guarantees, all
invocations, from the _Nom de Dieu_ of the soldier to the Te Deum of
the priest!
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