The Paris Sketch Book of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh; and the Irish Sketch Book. William Makepeace Thackeray

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СКАЧАТЬ other favourite Government is a prosperous slavery. What, then, is to be the épée de Brennus Government? Is it to be a mixture of the two? ‘Society,’ writes the Prince axiomatically, ‘contains in itself two principles—the one of progress and immortality, the other of disease and disorganisation.’ No doubt; and as the one tends towards liberty, so the other is only to be cured by order: and then, with a singular felicity, Prince Louis picks us out a couple of Governments, in one of which the common regulating power is as notoriously too weak, as it is in the other too strong, and talks in rapturous terms of the manner in which they fulfil their ‘providential mission’!

      From these considerations on things in general, the Prince conducts us to Napoleon in particular, and enters largely into a discussion of the merits of the imperial system. Our author speaks of the Emperor’s advent in the following grandiose way:—

      ‘Napoleon, on arriving at the public stage, saw that his part was to be the testamentary executor of the Revolution. The destructive fire of parties was extinct; and when the Revolution, dying, but not vanquished, delegated to Napoleon the accomplishment of her last will, she said to him, “Establish upon solid bases the principal result of my efforts. Unite divided Frenchmen. Defeat feudal Europe that is leagued against me. Cicatrise my wounds. Enlighten the nations. Execute that in width, which I have had to perform in depth. Be for Europe what I have been for France. And, even if you must water the tree of civilisation with your blood—if you must see your projects misunderstood, and your sons without a country, wandering over the face of the earth, never abandon the sacred cause of the French people. Ensure its triumph by all the means which genius can discover and humanity approve.”

      ‘This grand mission Napoleon performed to the end. His task was difficult. He had to place upon new principles a society still boiling with hatred and revenge; and to use, for building up, the same instruments which had been employed for pulling down.

      ‘The common lot of every new truth that arises, is to wound rather than to convince—rather than to gain proselytes, to awaken fear. For, oppressed as it long has been, it rushes forward with additional force; having to encounter obstacles, it is compelled to combat them, and overthrow them; until, at length, comprehended and adopted by the generality, it becomes the basis of new social order.

      ‘Liberty will follow the same march as the Christian religion. Armed with death from the ancient society of Rome, it for a long while excited the hatred and fear of the people. At last, by force of martyrdoms and persecutions, the religion of Christ penetrated into the conscience and the soul; it soon had kings and armies at its orders, and Constantine and Charlemagne bore it triumphant throughout Europe. Religion then laid down her arms of war. It laid open to all the principles of peace and order which it contained; it became the prop of Government, as it was the organising element of society. Thus will it be with liberty. In 1793 it frightened people and sovereigns alike; thus, having clothed itself in a milder garb, it insinuated itself everywhere in the train of our battalions. In 1815 all parties adopted its flag, and armed themselves with its moral force—covered themselves with its colours. The adoption was not sincere, and liberty was soon obliged to reassume its warlike accoutrements. With the contest their fears returned. Let us hope that they will soon cease, and that liberty will soon resume her peaceful standards, to quit them no more.

      ‘The Emperor Napoleon contributed more than any one else towards accelerating the reign of liberty, by saving the moral influence of the Revolution, and diminishing the fears which it imposed. Without the Consulate and the Empire, the Revolution would have been only a grand drama, leaving grand revolutions but no traces: the Revolution would have been drowned in the counter-revolution. The contrary, however, was the case. Napoleon rooted the Revolution in France, and introduced, throughout Europe, the principal benefits of the crisis of 1789. To use his own words, “He purified the Revolution,” he confirmed kings, and ennobled people. He purified the Revolution in separating the truths which it contained from the passions that, during its delirium, disfigured it. He ennobled the people in giving them the consciousness of their force, and those institutions which raise men in their own eyes. The Emperor may be considered as the Messiah of the new ideas; for—and we must confess it—in the moments immediately succeeding a social revolution, it is not so essential to put rigidly into practice all the propositions resulting from the new theory, but to become master of the regenerative genius, to identify one’s self with the sentiments of the people, and boldly to direct them towards the desired point. To accomplish such a task your fibre should respond to that of the people, as the Emperor said; you should feel like it, your interests should be so intimately raised with its own, that you should vanquish or fall together.’

      Let us take breath after these big phrases—grand round figures of speech—which, when put together, amount, like certain other combinations of round figures, to exactly 0. We shall not stop to argue the merits and demerits of Prince Louis’s notable comparison between the Christian religion and the Imperial-revolutionary system. There are many blunders in the above extract as we read it; blundering metaphors, blundering arguments, and blundering assertions; but this is surely the grandest blunder of all; and one wonders at the blindness of the legislator and historian who can advance such a parallel. And what are we to say of the legacy of the dying Revolution to Napoleon? Revolutions do not die, and, on their deathbeds, making fine speeches, hand over their property to young officers of artillery. We have all read the history of his rise. The constitution of the year III. was carried. Old men of the Montagne, disguised royalists, Paris sections, Pittetcobourg, above all, with his money-bags, thought that here was a fine opportunity for a revolt, and opposed the new constitution in arms: the new constitution had knowledge of a young officer, who would not hesitate to defend its cause, and who effectually beat the majority. The tale may be found in every account of the Revolution, and the rest of his story need not be told. We know every step that he took: we know how, by doses of cannon-balls promptly administered, he cured the fever of the sections—that fever which another camp-physician (Menou) declined to prescribe for; we know how he abolished the Directory; and how the Consulship came; and then the Empire; and then the disgrace, exile, and lonely death. Has not all this been written by historians in all tongues?—by memoir-writing pages, chamberlains, marshals, lackeys, secretaries, contemporaries, and ladies-of-honour? Not a word of miracle is there in all this narration; not a word of celestial missions, or political Messiahs. From Napoleon’s rise to his fall, the bayonet marches alongside of him: now he points it at the tails of the ‘five hundred,’—now he charges with it across the bloody Arcola—now he flies before it over the fatal plain of Waterloo.

      Unwilling, however, as he may be to grant that there are any spots in the character of his hero’s government, the Prince is, nevertheless, obliged to allow that such existed; that the Emperor’s manner of rule was a little more abrupt and dictatorial than might possibly be agreeable. For this the Prince has always an answer ready—it is the same poor one that Napoleon uttered a million of times to his companions in exile—the excuse of necessity. He would have been very liberal, but that the people were not fit for it; or that the cursed war prevented him—or any other reason why. His first duty, however, says his apologist, was to form a general union of Frenchmen, and he set about his plan in this wise:—

      ‘Let us not forget, that all which Napoleon undertook, in order to create a general fusion, he performed without renouncing the principles of the Revolution. He recalled the émigrés, without touching upon the law by which their goods had been confiscated and sold as public property. He re-established the Catholic religion at the same time that he proclaimed the liberty of conscience, and endowed equally the ministers of all sects. He caused himself to be consecrated by the Sovereign Pontiff, without conceding to the Pope’s demand any of the liberties of the Gallican Church. He married a daughter of the Emperor of Austria, without abandoning any of the rights of France to the conquests she had made. He re-established noble titles, without attaching to them any privileges or prerogatives, and these titles were conferred on all ranks, on all services, on all professions. Under the Empire all idea of caste was destroyed; no man ever thought of vaunting his pedigree—no man ever was asked how he was born, СКАЧАТЬ