Читать книгу The Life and Legacy of Napoleon Bonaparte: All 4 Volumes - William Milligan Sloane - Страница 12

Table of Contents

Napoleon as a Student of Politics—Nature of Rousseau's Political Teachings—The Abbé Raynal—Napoleon Aspires to be the Historian of Corsica—Napoleon's First Love—His Notions of Political Science—The Books He Read—Napoleon at Lyons—His Transfer to Douay—A Victim to Melancholy—Return to Corsica.

1786–87.

In one sense it is true that the first Emperor of the French was a man of no age and of no country; in another sense he was, as few have been, the child of his surroundings and of his time. The study of politics was his own notion; the matter and method of the study were conditioned by his relations to the thought of Europe in the eighteenth century. He evidently hoped that his military and political attainments would one day meet in the culmination of a grand career. To the world and probably to himself it seemed as if the glorious period of the Consulate were the realization of this hope. Those years of his life which so appear were, in fact, the least successful. The unsoundness of his political instructors, and the temper of the age, combined to thwart this ambitious purpose, and render unavailing all his achievements.

Rousseau had every fascination for the young of that time—a captivating style, persuasive logic, the sentiment of a poet, the intensity of a prophet. A native of Corsica would be doubly drawn to him by his interest in that romantic island. Sitting at the feet of such a teacher, a young scholar would learn through convincing argument the evils of a passing social state as they were not exhibited elsewhere. He would discern the dangers of ecclesiastical authority, of feudal privilege, of absolute monarchy; he would see their disastrous influence in the prostitution, not only of social, but of personal morality; he would become familiar with the necessity for renewing institutions as the only means of regenerating society. All these lessons would have a value not to be exaggerated. On the other hand, when it came to the substitution of positive teaching for negative criticism, he would learn nothing of value and much that was most dangerous. In utter disregard of a sound historical method, there was set up as the cornerstone of the new political structure a fiction of the most treacherous kind. Buonaparte in his notes, written as he read, shows his contempt for it in an admirable refutation of the fundamental error of Rousseau as to the state of nature by this remark: "I believe man in the state of nature had the same power of sensation and reason which he now has." But if he did not accept the premises, there was a portion of the conclusion which he took with avidity, the most dangerous point in all Rousseau's system; namely, the doctrine that all power proceeds from the people, not because of their nature and their historical organization into families and communities, but because of an agreement by individuals to secure public order, and that, consequently, the consent given they can withdraw, the order they have created they can destroy. In this lay not merely the germ, but the whole system of extreme radicalism, the essence, the substance, and the sum of the French Revolution on its extreme and doctrinaire side.

Rousseau had been the prophet and forerunner of the new social dispensation. The scheme for applying its principles is found in a work which bears the name of a very mediocre person, the Abbé Raynal, a man who enjoyed in his day an extended and splendid reputation which now seems to have had only the slender foundations of unmerited persecution and the friendship of superior men. In 1770 appeared anonymously a volume, of which, as was widely known, he was the compiler. "The Philosophical and Political History of the Establishments and Commerce of the Europeans in the Two Indies" is a miscellany of extracts from many sources, and of short essays by Raynal's brilliant acquaintances, on superstition, tyranny, and similar themes. The reputed author had written for the public prints, and had published several works, none of which attracted attention. The amazing success of this one was not remarkable if, as some critics now believe, at least a third of the text was by Diderot. However this may be, the position of Raynal as a man of letters immediately became a foremost one, and such was the vogue of a second edition published over his name in 1780 that the authorities became alarmed. The climax to his renown was achieved when, in 1781, his book was publicly burned, and the compiler fled into exile.

By 1785 the storm had finally subsided, and though he had not yet returned to France, it is supposed that through the friendship of Mme. du Colombier, the friendly patroness of the young lieutenant, communication was opened between the great man and his aspiring reader.[13] "Not yet eighteen," are the startling words in the letter, written by Buonaparte, "I am a writer: it is the age when we must learn. Will my boldness subject me to your raillery? No, I am sure. If indulgence be a mark of true genius, you should have much indulgence. I inclose chapters one and two of a history of Corsica, with an outline of the rest. If you approve, I will go on; if you advise me to stop, I will go no further." The young historian's letter teems with bad spelling and bad grammar, but it is saturated with the spirit of his age. The chapters as they came to Raynal's hands are not in existence so far as is known, and posterity can never judge how monumental their author's assurance was. The abbé's reply was kindly, but he advised the novice to complete his researches, and then to rewrite his pieces. Buonaparte was not unwilling to profit by the counsels he received: soon after, in July, 1786, he gave two orders to a Genevese bookseller, one for books concerning Corsica, another for the memoirs of Mme. de Warens and her servant Claude Anet, which are a sort of supplement to Rousseau's "Confessions."

During May of the same year he jotted down with considerable fullness his notions of the true relations between Church and State. He had been reading Roustan's reply to Rousseau, and was evidently overpowered with the necessity of subordinating ecclesiastical to secular authority. The paper is rude and incomplete, but it shows whence he derived his policy of dealing with the Pope and the Roman Church in France. It has very unjustly been called an attempted refutation of Christianity: it is nothing of the sort. Ecclesiasticism and Christianity being hopelessly confused in his mind, he uses the terms interchangeably in an academic and polemic discussion to prove that the theory of the social contract must destroy all ecclesiastical assumption of supreme power in the state.

Some of the lagging days were spent not only in novel-reading, as the Emperor in after years confessed to Mme. de Rémusat, but in attempts at novel-writing, to relieve the tedium of idle hours. It is said that first and last Buonaparte read "Werther" five times through. Enough remains among his boyish scribblings to show how fantastic were the dreams both of love and of glory in which he indulged. Many entertain a suspicion that amid the gaieties of the winter he had really lost his heart, or thought he had, and was repulsed. At least, in his "Dialogue on Love," written five years later, he says, "I, too, was once in love," and proceeds, after a few lines, to decry the sentiment as harmful to mankind, a something from which God would do well to emancipate it. This may have referred to his first meeting and conversation with a courtesan at Paris, which he describes in one of his papers, but this is not likely from the context, which is not concerned with the gratification of sexual passion. It is of the nobler sentiment that he speaks, and there seems to have been in the interval no opportunity for philandering so good as the one he had enjoyed during his boyish acquaintance with Mlle. Caroline du Colombier. It has, at all events, been her good fortune to secure, by this supposition, a place in history, not merely as the first girl friend of Napoleon, but as the object of his first pure passion.

But these were his avocations; the real occupation of his time was study. Besides reading again the chief works of Rousseau, and devouring those of Raynal, his most beloved author, he also read much in the works of Voltaire, of Filangieri, of Necker, and of Adam Smith. With note-book and pencil he extracted, annotated, and criticized, his mind alert and every faculty bent to the clear apprehension of the subject in hand. To the conception of the state as a private corporation, which he had imbibed from Rousseau, was now added the conviction that the institutions of France were no longer adapted to the occupations, beliefs, or morals of her people, and that revolution was a necessity. To judge from a memoir presented some years later to the Lyons Academy, he must have absorbed the teachings of the "Two Indies" almost entire.

The consuming zeal for studies on the part of this incomprehensible youth is probably unparalleled. Having read Plutarch in his childhood, he now devoured Herodotus, Strabo, and Diodorus; China, Arabia, and the Indies dazzled his imagination, and what he could lay hands upon concerning the East was soon assimilated. England and Germany next engaged his attention, and toward the close of his studies he became ardent in examining the minutest particulars of French history. It was, moreover, the science of history, and not its literature, which occupied him—dry details of revenue, resources, and institutions; the Sorbonne, the bull Unigenitus, and church history in general; the character of peoples, the origin of institutions, the philosophy of legislation—all these he studied, and, if the fragments of his notes be trustworthy evidence, as they surely are, with some thoroughness. He also found time to read the masterpieces of French literature, and the great critical judgments which had been passed upon them.[14]

The agreeable and studious life at Valence was soon ended. Early in August, 1786, a little rebellion, known as the "Two-cent Revolt," broke out in Lyons over a strike of the silk-weavers for two cents an ell more pay and the revolt of the tavern-keepers against the enforcement of the "Banvin," an ancient feudal right levying a heavy tax on the sale of wine. The neighboring garrisons were ordered to furnish their respective quotas for the suppression of the uprising. Buonaparte's company was sent among others, but those earlier on the ground had been active, several workmen had been killed, and the disturbance was already quelled when he arrived. The days he spent at Lyons were so agreeable that, as he wrote his uncle Fesch, he left the city with regret "to follow his destiny." His regiment had been ordered northward to Douay in Flanders; he returned to Valence and reached that city about the end of August. His furlough began nominally on October first, but for the Corsican officers a month's grace was added, so that he was free to leave on September first.

The time spent under the summer skies of the north would have been dreary enough if he had regularly received news from home. Utterly without success in finding occupation in Corsica, and hopeless as to France, Joseph had some time before turned his eyes toward Tuscany for a possible career. He was now about to make a final effort, and seek personally at the Tuscan capital official recognition with a view to relearning his native tongue, now almost forgotten, and to obtaining subsequent employment of any kind that might offer in the land of his birth. Lucien, the archdeacon, was seriously ill, and General Marbeuf, the last influential friend of the family, had died. Louis had been promised a scholarship in one of the royal artillery schools; deprived of his patron, he would probably lose the appointment. Finally, the pecuniary affairs of Mme. de Buonaparte were again entangled, and now appeared hopeless. She had for a time been receiving an annual state bounty for raising mulberry-trees, as France was introducing silk culture into the island. The inspectors had condemned this year's work, and were withholding a substantial portion of the allowance. These were the facts and they probably reached Napoleon at Valence; it was doubtless a knowledge of them which put an end to all his light-heartedness and to his study, historical or political. He immediately made ready to avail himself of his leave so that he might instantly set out to his mother's relief.

Despondent and anxious, he moped, grew miserable, and contracted a slight malarial fever which for the next six or seven years never entirely relaxed its hold on him. Among his papers has recently been found the long, wild, pessimistic rhapsody to which reference has already been made and in which there is talk of suicide. The plaint is of the degeneracy among men, of the destruction of primitive simplicity in Corsica by the French occupation, of his own isolation, and of his yearning to see his friends once more. Life is no longer worth while; his country gone, a patriot has naught to live for, especially when he has no pleasure and all is pain—when the character of those about him is to his own as moonlight is to sunlight. If there were but a single life in his way, he would bury the avenging blade of his country and her violated laws in the bosom of the tyrant. Some of his complaining was even less coherent than this. It is absurd to take the morbid outpouring seriously, except in so far as it goes to prove that its writer was a victim of the sentimental egoism into which the psychological studies of the eighteenth century had degenerated, and to suggest that possibly if he had not been Napoleon he might have been a Werther. Though dated May third, no year is given, and it may well describe the writer's feelings in any period of despondency. No such state of mind was likely to have arisen in the preceding spring, but it may have been written even then as a relief to pent-up feelings which did not appear on the surface; or possibly in some later year when the agony of suffering for himself and his family laid hold upon him. In any case it expresses a bitter melancholy, such as would be felt by a boy face to face with want.

At Valence Napoleon visited his old friend the Abbé Saint-Ruf, to solicit favor for Lucien, who, having left Brienne, would study nothing but the humanities, and was determined to become a priest. At Aix he saw both his uncle Fesch and his brother. At Marseilles he is said to have paid his respects to the Abbé Raynal, requesting advice, and seeking further encouragement in his historical labors. This is very doubtful, for there is no record of Raynal's return to France before 1787. Lodging in that city, as appears from a memorandum on his papers, with a M. Allard, he must soon have found a vessel sailing for his destination, because he came expeditiously to Ajaccio, arriving in that city toward the middle of the month, if the ordinary time had been consumed in the journey. Such appears to be the likeliest account of this period, although our knowledge is not complete. In the archives of Douay, there is, according to an anonymous local historian, a record of Buonaparte's presence in that city with the regiment of La Fère, and he is quoted as having declared at Elba to Sir Neil Campbell that he had been sent thither. But in the "Epochs of My Life," he wrote that he left Valence on September first, 1786, for Ajaccio, arriving on the fifteenth. Weighing the probabilities, it seems likely that the latter was doubtful, since there is but the slenderest possibility of his having been at Douay in the following year, the only other hypothesis, and there exists no record of his activities in Corsica before the spring of 1787. The chronology of the two years is still involved in obscurity and it is possible that he went with his regiment to Douay, contracted his malaria there, and did not actually get leave of absence until February first of the latter year.