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But this multitude of information and observations form only the smallest portion of the mental population swarming in this immense brain; for, on his idea of the real, germinate and swarm his concepts of the possible; without these concepts there would be no way to handle and transform things, and that he did handle and transform them we all know. Before acting, he has decided on his plan, and if this plan is adopted, it is one among several others,1170 after examining, comparing, and giving it the preference; he has accordingly thought over all the others. Behind each combination adopted by him we detect those he has rejected; there are dozens of them behind each of his decisions, each maneuver effected, each treaty signed, each decree promulgated, each order issued, and I venture to say, behind almost every improvised action or word spoken. For calculation enters into everything he does, even into his apparent expansiveness, also into his outbursts when in earnest; if he gives way to these, it is on purpose, foreseeing the effect, with a view to intimidate or to dazzle. He turns everything in others as well as in himself to account—his passion, his vehemence, his weaknesses, his talkativeness, he exploits it all for the advancement of the edifice he is constructing.1171 Certainly among his diverse faculties, however great, that of the constructive imagination is the most powerful. At the very beginning we feel its heat and boiling intensity beneath the coolness and rigidity of his technical and positive instructions.

"When I plan a battle," said he to Roederer, "no man is more spineless than I am. I over exaggerate to myself all the dangers and all the evils that are possible under the circumstances. I am in a state of truly painful agitation. But this does not prevent me from appearing quite composed to people around me; I am like a woman giving birth to a child.1172

Passionately, in the throes of the creator, he is thus absorbed with his coming creation; he already anticipates and enjoys living in his imaginary edifice. "General," said Madame de Clermont-Tonnerre to him, one day, "you are building behind a scaffolding which you will take down when you have done with it." "Yes, Madame, that's it," replied Bonaparte; "you are right. I am always living two years in advance."1173 His response came with "incredible vivacity," as if a sudden inspiration, that of a soul stirred in its innermost fiber.—Here as well, the power, the speed, fertility, play, and abundance of his thought seem unlimited. What he has accomplished is astonishing, but what he has undertaken is more so; and whatever he may have undertaken is far surpassed by what he has imagined. However vigorous his practical faculty, his poetical faculty is stronger; it is even too vigorous for a statesman; its grandeur is exaggerated into enormity, and its enormity degenerates into madness. In Italy, after the 18th of Fructidor, he said to Bourrienne:

"Europe is a molehill; never have there been great empires and great revolutions, except in the Orient, with its 600,000,000 inhabitants."1174

The following year at Saint-Jean d'Acre, on the eve of the last assault, he added

"If I succeed I shall find in the town the pasha's treasure and arms for 300,000 men. I stir up and arm all Syria.... I march on Damascus and Aleppo; as I advance in the country my army will increase with the discontented. I proclaim to the people the abolition of slavery, and of the tyrannical government of the pashas. I reach Constantinople with armed masses. I overthrow the Turkish Empire; I found in the East a new and grand empire, which fixes my place with posterity, and perhaps I return to Paris by the way of Adrianople, or by Vienna, after having annihilated the house of Austria." 1175

Become consul, and then emperor, he often referred to this happy period, when, "rid of the restraints of a troublesome civilization," he could imagine at will and construct at pleasure.1176

"I created a religion; I saw myself on the road to Asia, mounted on an elephant, with a turban on my head, and in my hand a new Koran, which I composed to suit myself."

Confined to Europe, he thinks, after 1804, that he will reorganize Charlemagne's empire.

"The French Empire will become the mother country of other sovereignties... I mean that every king in Europe shall build a grand palace at Paris for his own use; on the coronation of the Emperor of the French these kings will come and occupy it; they will grace this imposing ceremony with their presence, and honor it with their salutations."1177 The Pope will come; he came to the first one; he must necessarily return to Paris, and fix himself there permanently. Where could the Holy See be better off than in the new capital of Christianity, under Napoleon, heir to Charlemagne, and temporal sovereign of the Sovereign Pontiff? Through the temporal the emperor will control the spiritual,1178 and through the Pope, consciences."

In November, 1811, unusually excited, he says to De Pradt:

"In five years I shall be master of the world; only Russia will remain, but I will crush her.1179... Paris will extend out to St. Cloud."

To render Paris the physical capital of Europe is, through his own confession, "one of his constant dreams."

"At times," he says,1180"I would like to see her a city of two, three, four millions of inhabitants, something fabulous, colossal, unknown down to our day, and its public establishments adequate to its population.... Archimedes proposed to lift the world if he could be allowed to place his lever; for myself, I would have changed it wherever I could have been allowed to exercise my energy, perseverance, and budgets."

At all events, he believes so; for however lofty and badly supported the next story of his structure may be, he has always ready a new story, loftier and more unsteady, to put above it. A few months before launching himself, with all Europe at his back, against Russia, he said to Narbonne:1181

"After all, my dear sir, this long road is the road to India. Alexander started as far off as Moscow to reach the Ganges; this has occurred to me since St. Jean d'Acre.... To reach England to-day I need the extremity of Europe, from which to take Asia in the rear.... Suppose Moscow taken, Russia subdued, the czar reconciled, or dead through some court conspiracy, perhaps another and dependent throne, and tell me whether it is not possible for a French army, with its auxiliaries, setting out from Tiflis, to get as far as the Ganges, where it needs only a thrust of the French sword to bring down the whole of that grand commercial scaffolding throughout India. It would be the most gigantic expedition, I admit, but practicable in the nineteenth century. Through it France, at one stroke, would secure the independence of the West and the freedom of the seas."

While uttering this his eyes shone with strange brilliancy, and he accumulates subjects, weighing obstacles, means, and chances: the inspiration is under full headway, and he gives himself up to it. The master faculty finds itself suddenly free, and it takes flight; the artist,1182 locked up in politics, has escaped from his sheath; he is creating out of the ideal and the impossible. We take him for what he is, a posthumous brother of Dante and Michael Angelo. In the clear outlines of his vision, in the intensity, coherency, and inward logic of his dreams, in the profundity of his meditations, in the superhuman grandeur of his conceptions, he is, indeed, their fellow and their equal. His genius is of the same stature and the same structure; he is one of the three sovereign minds of the Italian Renaissance. Only, while the first two operated on paper and on marble, the latter operates on the living being, on the sensitive and suffering flesh of humanity.

1101 (return) [ Reforms introduced by Napoleon after his coup d'état 9 Nov. 1799. (SR.)]

1102 (return) [ The main authority is, of course, the "correspondance de l'Empereur Napoléon I.," in thirty-two-volumes. This correspondance, unfortunately, is still incomplete, while, after the sixth volume, it must not be forgotten that much of it has been purposely stricken out. "In general," say the editors (XVI., p.4), "we have been governed simply by this plain rule, that we were required to publish only what the Emperor himself would have given to the public had he survived himself, and, anticipating the verdict of time, exposed to posterity his own personality and system."—The savant who has the most carefully examined this correspondence, entire in the French archives, estimates that it comprises about 80,000 pieces, of which 30,000 have been published in the collection referred to; passages in 20,000 of the others have been stricken out on account of previous publication, and about 30,000 more, through considerations of propriety or policy. For example, but little more than one-half of the letters from Napoleon to Bigot de Préameneu on ecclesiastical matters have been published; many of these omitted letters, all important and characteristic, may be found in "L'Église romaine et le Premier Empire," by M. d'Haussonville. The above-mentioned savant estimates the number of important letters not yet published at 2,000.]

1103 (return) [ "Mémorial de Sainte Héléne," by Las Casas (May 29, 1816).—"In Corsica, Paoli, on a horseback excursion, explained the positions to him, the places where liberty found resistance or triumphed. Estimating the character of Napoleon by what he saw of it through personal observation, Paoli said to him, "Oh, Napoleon, there is nothing modern in you, you belong wholly to Plutarch!"—Antonomarchi, "Mémoires," Oct. 25, 1819. The same account, slightly different, is there given: "Oh. Napoleon," said Paoli to me, "you do not belong to this century; you talk like one of Plutarch's characters. Courage, you will take flight yet!"]

1104 (return) [ De Ségur, "Histoire et Mémoires," I., 150. (Narrative by Pontécoulant, member of the committee in the war, June, 1795.) "Boissy d'Anglas told him that he had seen the evening before a little Italian, pale, slender, and puny, but singularly audacious in his views and in the vigor of his expressions.—The next day, Bonaparte calls on Pontécou1ant, Attitude rigid through a morbid pride, poor exterior, long visage, hollow and bronzed.... He is just from the army and talks like one who knows what he is talking about."]

1105 (return) [ Coston, "Biographie des premières années de Napoléon Buonaparte," 2 vols. (1840), passim.—Yung, "Bonaparte et son Temps," I., 300, 302. (Pièces généalogiques.)—King Joseph, "Mémoires," I., 109, 111. (On the various branches and distinguished men of the Bonaparte family.)—Miot de Melito, "Mémoires," II., 30. (Documents on the Bonaparte family, collected on the spot by the author in 1801.)]

1106 (return) [ "Mémorial," May 6, 1816.—Miot de Melito, II., 30. (On the Bonapartes of San Miniato): "The last offshoot of this branch was a canon then still living in this same town of San Miniato, and visited by Bonaparte in the year IV, when he came to Florence."]

1107 (return) [ "Correspondance de l'Empereur Napoléon I." (Letter of Bonaparte, Sept.29, 1797, in relation to Italy): "A people at bottom inimical to the French through the prejudices, character, and customs of centuries."]

1108 (return) [ Miot de Melito, I., 126, (1796): "Florence, for two centuries and a half, had lost that antique energy which, in the stormy times of the Republic, distinguished this city. Indolence was the dominant spirit of all classes.. . Almost everywhere I saw only men lulled to rest by the charms of the most exquisite climate, occupied solely with the details of a monotonous existence, and tranquilly vegetating under its beneficent sky."—(On Milan, in 1796, cf. Stendhal, introduction to the "Chartreuse de Parme.")]

1109 (return) [ "Miot de Melito," I., 131: "Having just left one of the most civilized cities in Italy, it was not without some emotion that I found myself suddenly transported to a country (Corsica) which, in its savage aspect, its rugged mountains, and its inhabitants uniformly dressed in coarse brown cloth, contrasted so strongly with the rich and smiling landscape of Tuscany, and with the comfort, I should almost say elegance, of costume worn by the happy cultivators of that fertile soil."]

1110 (return) [ Miot de Melito, II., 30: "Of a not very important family of Sartène."—II., 143. (On the canton of Sartène and the Vendettas of 1796).—Coston, I., 4: "The family of Madame Laetitia, sprung from the counts of Cotalto, came originally from Italy."]

1111 (return) [ His father, Charles Bonaparte, weak and even frivolous, "too fond of pleasure to care about his children," and to see to his affairs, tolerably learned and an indifferent head of a family, died at the age of thirty-nine of a cancer in the stomach, which seems to be the only bequest he made to his son Napoleon.—His mother, on the contrary, serious, authoritative, the true head of a family, was, said Napoleon, "hard in her affections she punished and rewarded without distinction, good or bad; she made us all feel it."—On becoming head of the household, "she was too parsimonious-even ridiculously so. This was due to excess of foresight on her part; she had known want, and her terrible sufferings were never out of her mind.... Paoli had tried persuasion with her before resorting to force... . Madame replied heroically, as a Cornelia would have done.... From 12 to 15,000 peasants poured down from the mountains of Ajaccio; our house was pillaged and burnt, our vines destroyed, and our flocks. ... In other respects, this woman, from whom it would have been so difficult to extract five francs, would have given up everything to secure my return from Elba, and after Waterloo she offered me all she possessed to restore my affairs." (" Mémorial," May 29, 1816, and "Mémoires d'Antonomarchi," Nov. 18, 1819.—On the ideas and ways of Bonaparte's mother, read her "Conversation" in "Journal et Mémoires," vol. IV., by Stanislas Girardin.) Duchesse d'Abrantès," Mémoires," II., 318, 369. "Avaricious out of all reason except on a few grave occasions.... No knowledge whatever of the usages of society.... very ignorant, not alone of our literature, but of her own."—Stendhal, "Vie de Napoleon": "The character of her son is to be explained by the perfectly Italian character of Madame Laetitia."]

1112 (return) [ The French conquest is effected by armed force between July 30, 1768, and May 22, 1769. The Bonaparte family submitted May 23, 1769, and Napoleon was born on the following 15th of August.]

1113 (return) [ Antonomarchi, "Mémoires," October 4, 1819. "Mémorial," May 29, 1816.]

1114 (return) [ "Miot de Melito," II., 33: "The day I arrived at Bocognano two men lost their lives through private vengeance. About eight years before this one of the inhabitants of the canton had killed a neighbor, the father of two children.... On reaching the age of sixteen or seventeen years these children left the country in order to dog the steps of the murderer, who kept on the watch, not daring to go far from his village.... Finding him playing cards under a tree, they fired at and killed him, and besides this accidentally shot another man who was asleep a few paces off. The relatives on both sides pronounced the act justifiable and according to rule." Ibid., I., 143: "On reaching Bastia from Ajaccio the two principal families of the place, the Peraldi and the Visuldi, fired at each other, in disputing over the honor of entertaining me."]

1115 (return) [ Bourrienne, "Mémoires," I., 18, 19.]

1116 (return) [ De Ségur, "Histoire et Mémoires," I,, 74.]

1117 (return) [ Yung, I., 195. (Letter of Bonaparte to Paoli, June 12, 1789); I., 250 (Letter of Bonaparte to Buttafuoco, January 23 1790).]

1118 (return) [ Yung, I., 107 (Letter of Napoleon to his father, Sept. 12, 1784); I., 163 (Letter of Napoleon to Abbé Raynal, July, 1786); I., 197 (Letter of Napoleon to Paoli, June 12, 1789). The three letters on the history of Corsica are dedicated to Abbé Raynal in a letter of June 24, 1790, and may be found in Yung, I., 434.]

1119 (return) [ Read especially his essay "On the Truths and Sentiments most important to inculcate on Men for their Welfare" (a subject proposed by the Academy of Lyons in 1790). "Some bold men driven by genius.. .. Perfection grows out of reason as fruit out of a tree.... Reason's eyes guard man from the precipice of the passions... The spectacle of the strength of virtue was what the Lacedaemonians principally felt.... Must men then be lucky in the means by which they are led on to happiness?.... My rights (to property) are renewed along with my transpiration, circulate in my blood, are written on my nerves, on my heart.... Proclaim to the rich—your wealth is your misfortune, withdrawn within the latitude of your senses.... Let the enemies of nature at thy voice keep silence and swallow their rabid serpents' tongues.... The wretched shun the society of men, the tapestry of gayety turns to mourning.... Such, gentlemen, are the Sentiments which, in animal relations, mankind should have taught it for its welfare."]

1120 (return) [ Yung, I., 252 (Letter to Buttafuoco). "Dripping with the blood of his brethren, sullied by every species of crime, he presents himself with confidence under his vest of a general, the sole reward of his criminalities."—I., 192 (Letter to the Corsican Intendant, April 2, 1879). "Cultivation is what ruins us"—See various manuscript letters, copied by Yung, for innumerable and gross mistakes in French.—Miot de Melito, I., 84 (July, 1796). "He spoke curtly and, at this time, very incorrectly."—Madame de Rémusat, I., 104. "Whatever language he spoke it never seemed familiar to him; he appeared to force himself in expressing his ideas."—Notes par le Comte Chaptal (unpublished), councillor of state and afterwards minister of the interior under the Consulate: "At this time, Bonaparte did not blush at the slight knowledge of administrative details which he possessed; he asked a good many questions and demanded definitions and the meaning of the commonest words in use. As it very often happened with him not to clearly comprehend words which he heard for the first time, he always repeated these afterwards as he understood them; for example, he constantly used section for session, armistice for amnesty, fulminating point for culminating point, rentes voyagères for 'rentes viagères,' etc."]

1121 (return) [ De Ségur, I., 174]

1122 (return) [ Cf. the "Mémoires" of Marshal Marmont, I., 15, for the ordinary sentiments of the young nobility. "In 1792 I had a sentiment for the person of the king, difficult to define, of which I recovered the trace, and to some extent the power, twenty-two years later; a sentiment of devotion almost religious in character, an innate respect as if due to a being of a superior order. The word King then possessed a magic, a force, which nothing had changed in pure and honest breasts.... This religion of royalty still existed in the mass of the nation,, and especially amongst the well-born, who, sufficiently remote from power, were rather struck with its brilliancy than with its imperfections.... This love became a sort of worship."]

1123 (return) [ Bourrienne, "Mémoires," I. 27.—Ségur, I. 445. In 1795, at Paris, Bonaparte, being out of military employment, enters upon several commercial speculations, amongst which is a bookstore, which does not succeed. (Stated by Sebastiani and many others.)]

1124 (return) [ "Mémorial," Aug. 3, 1816.]

1125 (return) [ Bourrienne, I., 171. (Original text of the "Souper de Beaucaire.")]

1126 (return) [ Yung, II., 430, 431. (Words of Charlotte Robespierre.) Bonaparte as a souvenir of his acquaintance with her, granted her a pension, under the consulate, of 3600 francs.—Ibid. (Letter of Tilly, chargé d'affaires at Genoa, to Buchot, commissioner of foreign affairs.) Cf. in the "Mémorial," Napoleon's favorable judgment of Robespierre.]

1127 (return) [ Yung, II., 455. (Letter from Bonaparte to Tilly, Aug. 7, 1794.) Ibid., III., 120. (Memoirs of Lucien.) "Barras takes care of Josephine's dowry, which is the command of the army in Italy." Ibid., II., 477. (Grading of general officers, notes by Schérer on Bonaparte.) "He knows all about artillery, but is rather too ambitious, and too intriguing for promotion."]

1128 (return) [ De Ségur, I., 162.—La Fayette, "Mémoires," II., 215. "Mémorial" (note dictated by Napoleon). He states the reasons for and against, and adds, speaking of himself: "These sentiments, twenty-five years of age, confidence in his strength, his destiny, determined him." Bourrienne, I., 51: "It is certain that he has always bemoaned that day; he has often said to me that he would give years of his life to efface that page of his history."]

1129 (return) [ "Mémorial," I., Sept 6, 1815. "It is only after Lodi that the idea came to me that I might, after all, become a decisive actor on our political stage. Then the first spark of lofty ambition gleamed out." On his aim and conduct in the Italian campaign of Sybel, "Histoire de l'Europe pendant la Révolution Française" (Dosquet translation), vol. IV., books II. and III., especially pp.182, 199, 334, 335, 406, 420, 475, 489.]

1130 (return) [ Yung, III., 213. (Letter of M. de Sucy, August 4, 1797.)]

1131 (return) [ Ibid., III., 214. (Report of d'Entraigues to M. de Mowikinoff, Sept., 1797.) "If there was any king in France which was not himself, he would like to have been his creator, with his rights at the end of his sword, this sword never to be parted with, so that he might plunge it in the king's bosom if he ever ceased to be submissive to him."—Miot de Melito, I., 154. (Bonaparte to Montebello, before Miot and Melzi, June, 1797.) Ibid, I., 184. (Bonaparte to Miot, Nov. 18, 1797, at Turin.)]

1132 (return) [ D'Haussonville, "L'Église Romaine et la Premier Empire," I., 405. (Words of M. Cacault, signer of the Treaty of Tolentino, and French Secretary of Legation at Rome, at the commencement of negotiations for the Concordat.) M. Cacaut says that he used this expression, "After the scenes of Tolentino and of Leghorn, and the fright of Manfredini, and Matéi threatened, and so many other vivacities."]

1133 (return) [ Madame de Staël, "Considérations sur la Révolution Française," 3rd part, ch. XXVI., and 4th part, ch. XVIII.]

1134 (return) [ Portrait of Bonaparte in the "Cabinet des Etampes," "drawn by Guérin, engraved by Fiesinger, deposited in the National Library, Vendémiaire 29, year VII."]

1135 (return) [ Madame de Rémusat, "Mémoires," I., 104.—Miot de Melito, I., 84.]

1136 (return) [ Madame de Staël, "Considerations," etc., 3rd part, ch. XXV.—Madame de Rémusat, II., 77.]

1137 (return) [ Stendhal, "Mémoires sur Napoléon," narration of Admiral Decrès.—Same narration in the "Mémorial."]

1138 (return) [ De Ségur, I., 193.]

1139 (return) [ Roederer, "Oeuvres complétes," II., 560. (Conversations with General Lasalle in 1809, and Lasalle's judgment on the débuts of Napoleon).]

1140 (return) [ Another instance of this commanding influence is found in the case of General Vandamme, an old revolutionary soldier still more brutal and energetic than Augereau. In 1815, Vandamme said to Marshal d'Ornano, one day, on ascending the staircase of the Tuileries together: "My dear fellow, that devil of a man (speaking of the Emperor) fascinates me in a way I cannot account for. I, who don't fear either God or the devil, when I approach him I tremble like a child. He would make me dash through the eye of a needle into the fire!" ("Le Général Vandamme," by du Casse, II., 385).]

1141 (return) [ Roederer, III., 356. (Napoleon himself says, February 11, 1809): "I, military! I am so, because I was born so; it is my habit, my very existence. Wherever I have been I have always had command. I commanded at twenty-three, at the siege of Toulon; I commanded at Paris in Vendémiaire; I won over the soldiers in Italy the moment I presented myself. I was born for that."]

1142 (return) [ Observe the various features of the same mental and moral structure among different members of the family. (Speaking of his brothers and sisters in the "Memorial" Napoleon says): "What family as numerous presents such a splendid group?"—"Souvenirs", by PASQUIER (Etienne-Dennis, duc), chancelier de France, in VI volumes, Librarie Plon, Paris 1893. Vol. I. p. 400. (This author, a young magistrate under Louis XVI., a high functionary under the Empire, an important political personage under the restoration and the July monarchy, is probably the best informed and most judicious of eye-witnesses during the first half of our century.): "Their vices and virtues surpass ordinary proportions and have a physiognomy of their own. But what especially distinguishes them is a stubborn will, and inflexible resolution.... All possessed the instinct of their greatness." They readily accepted "the highest positions; they even got to believing that their elevation was inevitable.... Nothing in the incredible good fortune of Joseph astonished him; often in January, 1814, I heard him say over and over again that if his brother had not meddled with his affairs after the second entry into Madrid, he would still be on the throne of Spain. As to determined obstinacy we have only to refer to the resignation of Louis, the retirement of Lucien, and the resistances of Fesch; they alone could stem the will of Napoleon and sometimes break a lance with him.—Passion, sensuality, the habit of considering themselves outside of rules, and self-confidence combined with talent, super abound among the women, as in the fifteenth century. Elisa, in Tuscany, had a vigorous brain, was high spirited and a genuine sovereign, notwithstanding the disorders of her private life, in which even appearances were not sufficiently maintained." Caroline at Naples, "without being more scrupulous than her sisters," better observed the proprieties; none of the others so much resembled the Emperor; "with her, all tastes succumbed to ambition"; it was she who advised and prevailed upon her husband, Murat, to desert Napoleon in 1814. As to Pauline, the most beautiful woman of her epoch, "no wife, since that of the Emperor Claude, surpassed her in the use she dared make of her charms; nothing could stop her, not even a malady attributed to the strain of this life-style and for which we have so often seen her borne in a litter."—Jerome, "in spite of the uncommon boldness of his debaucheries, maintained his ascendancy over his wife to the last."—On the "pressing efforts and attempts" of Joseph on Maria Louise in 1814, Chancelier Pasquier, after Savary's papers and the evidence of M. de Saint-Aignan, gives extraordinary details.—"Mes souvenirs sur Napoléon, 346, by the count Chaptal: "Every member of this numerous family (Jérôme, Louis, Joseph, the Bonaparte sisters) mounted thrones as if they had recovered so much property."]

1143 (return) [ Burkhardt, "Die Renaissance in Italien," passim.—Stendhal, "Histoire de la peinture en Italie"(introduction), and" Rome, Naples, et Florence," passim.—"Notes par le Comte Chaptal": When these notes are published, many details will be found in them in support of the judgment expressed in this and the following chapters. The psychology of Napoleon as here given is largely confirmed by them.]

1144 (return) [ Roederer, III, 380 (1802).]

1145 (return) [ Napoleon uses the French word just which means both fair, justifiable, pertinent, correct, and in music true.]

1146 (return) [ "Mémorial."]

1147 (return) [ De Pradt, "Histoire de l'Ambassade dans la grande-duché de Varsovie en 1812," preface, p. X, and 5.]

1148 (return) [ Roederer, III., 544 (February 24, 1809). Cf. Meneval, "Napoléon et Marie-Louise, souvenirs historiques," I., 210-213.]