^r: '■u,^^..rr 'r\A'^^A^ .An^^'r,' ^^C^^CA^.!:^^.-:^AXo ^m m^ft^ ^A,±e'^ '^^MM&m. LIBRARY OF, CONGRESS. Cliap. ..:!..., Copyright No. Slielf„.lD.^-l UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. '^^m^^ ^/^0/^^-^'^A^, ^'^^-^^'^A-.. ,^a/^^:a^^^^ ^^^r^-:;x;AC:c >^^::.^ OA'/vOa^'^ S^Aa'^'^^^Ca'^A^a '^;(*iA' A/^C' iTwWiiBlrTT ^ooc:^..^c;^ ^-^^ ^' ' "': ' ' ''■- ii.^'^'^'^^^ ^'^^ir^*^ -^^^^^^^1% > -- '^ '^^ :^2^r.^:A;^^^^?5P ^%;^^^! Napoleone di Buonaparte. By Brev. Maj.-Gen. J. Watts de Peyster. Reprinted from the "College Student," Lancaster, Pa. /. WATTS DE PEYSTER, Lilt. D. (iSp2), LL. D. {i8g6), Franklin mid Marshall College ; LL. D. Nebraska College, {i8yo) ; M. A. Columbia College, or University . Brevet Major-Ge7ieral, N. Y. Awarded the^Gold Medal of i8gi by the " Society of Lette7's, Science and Art," Lon- don, England, "For Literary and Scientific Attainments" {of which Society he is Honorary Fellow or Member). 75 Years. NAPOLEONE Dl BUONAPARTE. BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE REAL NAPOLEON BONAPARTE,' ^ J. -WATTS DE PEYSTER, ^ Brevet Major -General, New York, "with Rank from 20th April, 1863" ("for Meritorious Services rendered to the National Guard and to the United States prior to and during the Rebellion," by "Concurrent Resolution" or Special Law, 95th April, 1866.) M. A. Columbia College, LL. D. Nebraska College 1870, Litt. D. 1892 and LL. D. 1896 Franklin and Marshall College, Life Member of the Royal Historical Society of Great Britain, Honorary Fellow of the Society of Science, Letters and Art of London 1893, and awarded their Gold Medal for 1894 for Scientific and Literary Attainments, Member of the Maatschappig der Nederland- T^ ische Letterkunde, Leyden, Holland, &c. &c. &c. -^^JO^ B'/ 41^ D LANCASTER, PA. : Reprinted by the "College Student," Franklin and Marshall College. 1896. COPYRIGHT. 1896, BY J. WATTS de PEYSTER. Napoleone di Buonaparte, ' ' Flagellum Dei. " — ' ' hmtiinentia Peccaiomm Flagella . ' ' THE MODERN ATTILA. " I wovJd not be the villain For the whole space that's in the Tyrant's grasp, And the rich East to boot." — Shakspere's Macbeth — Title Page. QUOTED IN COXE'S "EXPOSE), OR NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE UNMASKED," 1809. "This Napoleone de Buonaparte, who once styled himself Brutus Buona- parte.^ citoyen sans culotte ! breathed his first innocent air in Corsica,"* and con- tinued to be nothing more in character but a Corsican to his life's end. " The dawn of this great tnan'' s stern and inflexible disposition first displayed itself at Toulon, where he had the appointment of chef- de-brigade, when so much mischief was done to the inhabitants of that city after the British had retreated ; and when, under a deceitful proclamation, those who were deemed disaffected or suspected only, were assembled on the Champ de Mars, to the number of 1,500, and there butchered. This exploit he authenticated by his mem- orable letter to the Deputies who were sent to the different armies by the Convention, when, under the assumed name of Brutus Buonaparte, he stated that 'upon the *NoTE. — In reverting to the first mode in which Napoleone Buonaparte spelt his name, it is mentioned that that orthography has-been adhered to from motives of propriety. Though Buonaparte, when in Egypt, chose to drop the final letter in Napoleone, and discard the second letter of his surname, to familiarize the sounds and render them more closely analogous to the French idiom, he cannot prevent them from sinking wholly into oblivion. — Co:>:e's Expose, p. 20. field of glory, his feet imi?idated with the blood of traitors, he announced, with a heart beating with joy, that their orders were executed and France revenged ; that neither sex nor age had beeji spared ; and that those who escaped, or were only mu- tilated by the discharge of the republican cannon, were dispatched by the swords of liberty and the bayonets of equality.' "* At page 855, Vol. IV, Dr. Leo gives the original French of this letter or report, which Buonaparte's friends deny, alleging he was an angel of mercy instead of an angel of murder. Dr. Heinrich L,eo, in his lyehrbuch der Universalgeschichte,Vol. IV, 85i,*givesthe synonyms and meaning of Napoleone — "to become a word of terror to all Europe" — Neapolio, Nepoluccio, tracing it back to the famous old Germdi-aNibelung^ and concludes that this last fitly descended and belonged to a man who was an out-and-out Nibelung, (whether the author means by this a mali- cious dwarf, a grizzly spectre [Popanz], or a blasting fog, the writer cannot determine), and a Todesdorn — Sting of Death, or Death Inflicter. *NoTE. — The reader in following the narrative, it is imagined, will observe, that from this massacre at Toulon, and through the long and frightful round of enormities committed by Buonaparte, or by his com- mand, extending to the massacre at Madrid, one fero- cious principle only has actuated his conduct ; and thus accustomed to the shedding of human blood, it may, without exaggeration, be said of him that Napolbone di Buonaparte. To this — the Reign of Terror and re- sulting bloodshed — Buonaparte with his wars of confiscations and extortions was a fit successor. Whoever may object to such a compari- son, unquestionably Attila, the Hun (A. D. 433-453), was a perfect type of Buona- parte in every particular, and the stu- dent who will study the type and paradigm, will discover how they and their careers complement each other. Both were "Scourges of God" — Attila for about nineteen years ; Buonaparte for exactly the same space of time, 1796-1815. Nor were their strategy and tactics dissimilar. "Direness, familiar to his slanght'rons thoughts, Cannot once start him !" Again : Wherever atrocities could be committed, whenever devastation could take place, like the demon of evil, he was ready to direct the storm. In his route to Pavia he set fire to the village of Beuasco, which he owned himself was a horrid sight, and gave orders to set even the city of Pavia in flames ; but the timely appearance of the French garrison, which had been shut up in the castle, prevented that dreadful catastro- phe from taking place ; for had the blood of a single Frenchman been spilled, he would have erected, he declared, a column, on which should have been in- scribed ' ' Here Pavia stood. " He demanded of the city two hundred hostages, to be sent to France, and then calmly ordered the whole municipality to be shot, as a salutarj' example, as his dispatches mentioned, for the observation of Italy at large. After the battle of Salo, on the Lake da Guarda— human nature shudders at the bare recital of the deed— he commanded all who, from severe wounds, were deemed unfit for service, to be mingled with the dead, which were to be conveyed away in wagons, and to be then strangled, or suffo- cated under them, and then thrown into an extensive pit prepared for the purpose and covered with quicklime ! Several of these unhappy people, not having life quite extinguished in them, the lime coming in contact with their green wounds, were suddenly roused into an excruciating sense of their situation ; and the dreadful screams which were uttered, till the ground was finally closed on their suf- ferings, so affected the humane rector of Salo that he died from the horror which had seized him on hearing their cries. — Coxe's Expost. It is mentioned in Adolphus's History of France that so early as the year 1794 the number of French who fell by various means of destruction — on the scaf- Victory was purchased with life, not by science. Whoever is unprejudiced and will study up the statistics of Buonaparte's wars — not in French authorities, for they are too often altogether untrustworthy, but in such compilations as those of von Kausler — the student will find that it was scarcely won- derful that succeeding to the command of the finest classes of experienced officers of every grade, as well as enthusiastic troops, he was so successful at first. Consuming these without mercy, and acquiring greater and more extensive pow- er, he could sweep in hundreds of thou- fold, in the waves, and on the field by the hands ot their countrj'meu — is estimated at 900,000 ; of whom 15,000 were women, 22,000 children ; and that more than 20,000 dwellings had been destroyed. — Coxe''s Expose. Since that period [the 'capture of Toulon and sub- sequent massacre], and during Buonaparte's career, the destruction of the human species, in battles, sieges, naval combats, executions, military vengeance, massa- cres, pestilence, and other attendant consequences of twelve additional years of war and devastation in and out of the kingdom, and including the war of extermi- nation in I,a Vendee and St. Domingo — the calculation of 2,000,000 of lives must be deemed very far within the compass of a fair statement, than an overcharge. The individual who sacrifices his life for the benefit of the many is a character above all praise ; but to allow for a single moment that the many are to be sacrificed for the benefit of the few ; that is, that the good which may be done in the future, and whicli can never com- pensate for the mischief of the past, will justify the means of so attaining that good, is a species of philoso- phical calculation far be3'ond the conception of the writer's reasoning faculties. Two centuries of the severest despotism, under the most despotic monarchs France ever knew, would not have produced a hun- dredth part of the mischief which republican despotism accomplished from the conmiencement of the French Revolution, even to the year 1794, "covering the world with blood, with tears, and with calamities." When the Bastile was destroyed there were not three persons confined within its w!ills ; but France became afterwards, by her own act, one continued bastile ; the Place de Greve was extended over the surface of her soil, and the whole nation became in a manner execu- tioners against one another. — Coxe^s Expost. Napoleone di Buonaparte. sands of conscripts each year, but gradu- ally had to rely on levies less and less ac- climated to war. Still utterly regardless of sacrificing his best and bravest, and con- tinuing to use up all his accessible forces, the end had to come sooner or later — to lose ground daily from the very exhaustion of the human fuel which he continued to pour relentlessly into the furnace of war. In no period of his career did he win by scientific generalship — Moreau and others declared he ruined the Art of War — but by what in political life would be demagogism, by appeals to the interests and cupidity in every sense of those whom he could not compel to serve his purposes, if the other appeals failed.* Take for instance those "Infernal Col- umns," which inflicted such horrible mis- eries in gleaning the unwilling or re- fractory when the harvests of conscripts, levied with wicked injustice, had either failed or had been incompletely gathered. Never let it be forgotten, Buonaparte's blackguard and inhuman declaration, which is in no place literally quoted — when Met- ter nich called his attention to the unhappy •youth, unfit for military service, who filled his ranks — that "he on the lives of 200,000 men." In exactly the same sense that Attila was styled the original " Scourge of God," with equal truth Buonaparte may be thus desig- nated the modern Scourge of God-f Their * " He [Buonaparte] understands enough of mankind to dazzle the weak, to dupe the vain, overawe the tim- id, and to make the wicked his instruments, but be- yond all this Buonaparte is grossly and totally igno- rant." "Napoleon's Last Voyages," London and Phil- adelphia, 1S95, quoting MioT' s Mejfioirs 'de I' ^'Expe- dition en Egypte. t Note.— Fi,AGEl.LUM Dei. As this term has led to erroneous interpretations, it would be wiser to trans- late it God's Scourge, just as Isaiah styles the Assyrian the rod of His anger and the staff of His indignation. Do ordinary readers actually imagine what was a Fi,AGEl.l,UM, It was not only an instrument of terri- careers lasted about as long and had just about the same termination as that of the great Hun. Attila' s invasion of Gaul was about equivalent to Bounaparte's Moscow campaign. Attila was not actually defeated disastrously at Chalons, but the moral effect was the same. His subsequent campaigns were not the successes previously achieved. The Hunnish king did not personally have a Waterloo, but immediately after his death his sons and his Huns did experience such a cataclysm on the Netad — " the great plain between the Drave and the Danube" — where their power was broken forever. Moscow may be said to have been the Chalons of Buonaparte. When the fa- mous Fre.nch engineer. General Haxo, saw Moscow bursting into flame he said to the Baron L,ejeune, "This must lead soon to our having to defend Paris." (Lejeune, 222.) Knox, in his famous " Races of Men," styles Buonaparte's grand army which perished in Russia " an army or horde of disciplined savages." "Hol- land [purest Anglo-Saxon], too, would have risen," " in their last struggle for liberty " [1848?] ; but she remembered the Celtic treachery ; the betrayal of the cause of lib- erty by the French Celt in '92 [how true !]; THE PLUNDER OF EUROPE BY A BODY OF DISCIPLINED SAVAGES under Napoleon ; so she responded not to the Celt." P. 55. " The Races of Men^^^ by Robert Knox, M. D. , Corresponding Member of the Na- tional Academy of Medicine, &c. , L,ondon, 1850. ble punishment, but of absolute torture. It was a scourge, "a dreadful instrument," not with a single lash, but triple and sometimes more. " It was knotted with bones or heavy indented circles of bronze, or ter- minated by hooks, in which case it was aptly denomi- nated a scorpion." It bruised, it tore, it cut and it could eviscerate. It is a term most applicable to Buo- naparte. He was a bandit, a robber, a ravisher, a thief, and his brothers, except Louis, in one line or the other, no better than their leader. New York's Tweed might have taken a lesson from Lucien. Napolrone di Buonaparte. If the following anecdotes related by Gen. Baron Lejeune are absolutely true, it will go to prove that Attila's Huns could not have been more barbarous savages — although worse than our Apaches — than some of those under Buonaparte, as re- lated by lycjeune (271-2). "At Croupi (26th November, 1812), in an inn, assigned as quarters to Marshal Davout, under the thatch, in the manger, three in- fants were discovered, one hardly more than a year old and the others scarcely more than just born. Their clothes were those of the poor. They were benumbed with cold and remained silent. * * * j begged the Marshal's steward to give them a little soup, if he could make any, and did not occupy myself farther about them. Soon the warmth of the horses' breaths awakened these little creatures and their plaintive cries resounded for a long time throughout the rooms in which we were huddled together. * * * At 2 A. M. we were told that the village was in flames. Our isolated house was the only one intact, and the children still cried ; but at the mo- ment of departure, a little before day, they cried no longer. I asked the steward what he had done for them, and this man, who did not suffer less than we did, assuming the satisfied air of one who believes he had done a good deed answered, 'I could not shut an eye; their cries pierced my heart ; I had no nurse to give them ; then I took an axe; I broke the ice of the watering- place, or drinking trough, and I drowned them to put an end to their sufferings. To \what a degree can misfortune debase the human heart." G. Bertin, in his "Campagne de 1812," a wonderful collection of the testimony of eye witnesses, cites the above. " For a long time our soldiers were re- duced to feeding upon horseflesh. To such a degree had famine and misery brutified them, that these unfortunate creatures did not wait until the animal was dead to cut off the eatable parts. As soon as a horse tottered and fell no attempt was made to get him on his feet again, but immediately the soldiers precipitated themselves upon him to rip open the flank and tear out the liver, which is the least repulsive portion, and even without having taken the trouble to kill him previous to such torture, they seemed, I say, to become irritated at the final efforts which the animal was making to escape from his slaughterers, and they were heard to cry out with fury, while striking the beast, ' Rascal, wretch, can you not then remain quiet.'" (L,ejeune, 249-50-) In a work examined before this article was written, "A complete picture of Napoleon and the French people," from the German, 1806, Buonaparte's army of Italy is com- pared to "a horde of banditti," and the author adds, " He suffered them to commit ravages and excesses such as even the most barbarous ages since Attila have never been committed against a friendly and a submit- ting people." General Baron IvCJeune published some time since a volume, entitled "de Valmy . a Wagram," and now, in October, 1895, his second volume appeared, " En Prison et en Guerre — a travers 1' Europe (1809-1814). In this last above quoted he corroborates in a great many particulars the statement of Colonel Pion des Loches in regard to the Russian campaign, which I translated and which was printed in the Golden Magazitie. General Lejeune, brave and able as he proved throughout his military career, which was terminated by the bursting of a shell at Hanau, in 1813, was equally dis- tinguished as a painter of battle-scenes, an art to which he devoted himself after his last wound. In the narration of the events of which he was an eye witness, he was likewise very interesting, although in his, as in Marbot's narratives, the French Napoleone di Buonaparte. always had the best of it in fighting, and their stories always leave their readers won- dering how under such circumstances the Allies ever got possession at last of Paris. This reminds one of the astonishment of the Georgia farmer when Sherman was "picnicking " through his native state. Re- lieved of all his expletives his remarks about amount to this : '' For about four years we-uns have heard nothing but we-uns licking you-uns, and I can't get it through my wool how you-uns, after being so tarna- tion badly whipped, are down here, camped on my farm, killin' my hogs, eatin' my ba- con, swillin' my sorghum, diggin' up my sweet petaters and burnin' my fence rails." These visible and sensible facts consti- tuted an aggregated argumentum ad hoiiii- nem to which all his Southern bragging- could find neither explanation nor contra- diction nor excuse. Two phases in the career of Buonaparte have been dwelt upon with more admiration on the part of his friends and more aston- ishment and disgust on the part of philoso- phers and opponents than the servile adu- lation paid to the Corsican upstart by the oldest nobility and monarchs of Continental Europe. The assemblages at Tilsit in 1807, •at Urfurt in 1809, and at Dresden in 1813, were simply repetitions of " the crowd of vulgar kings, besides sagacious and virtu- ous sovereigns, which bowed before the throne of Attila, ranged in submissive or- der, watching his nod, trembling at his frown, and obedient without hesitation." (Gibbon, iii, 392.) Among these kings there were sovereigns who were equal at that pe- riod in dignity to the Czar of Russia, the Emperor of Austria, and King of Prussia. If Buonaparte did not slay his own brother, as Attila is charged with having done, he certainly murdered the Duke d'Enghien, a prince as exalted in character, race and po- sition with Bleda. Moreover, if the Empe- ror of Austria gave his best beloved child to that same upstart, who had repudiated his lawful wife without a legal divorce, Hono- oria, the sister of the Emperor Valentinian, was willing to deliver her person into the arms of a barbarian, of whose language she was ignorant — Marie Louise understood French imperfectly — whose religion and manners she abhorred. Attila was a predestinarian and Napoleon was a believer in Fate, or such other term as may be applied to the doctrine of "What must be, will be." This doctrine, which is the only explanation of the operation and effects of Unchangeable, Inflexible and Inexorable Daw, can alone account for the rise, progress and fall of such excep- tional characters or prodigies 01 combined capacity and crime as Buonaparte, and this law is as certain as those laws which regUr late the eccentric circuits of comets not always possible to be foreseen and cal- culated, but still regulated by the same decree which governs the certain orbits of the planets. Napoleon declared that he appeared out of time, because the world was no longer adapted to the full develop- opment of a man of his character ; but the fact is, at no time, except the period in which he appeared, could he have so risen and so thriven. It was as necessary for him to succeed the Reign of Terror, because, to use the liomely adage, "set a thief to catch a thief," none but a criminal of his calibre could have grappled with such a seething and surging condition of crime. No mor- tal actuated by virtue could have controlled the millions steeped in vice and totally re- gardless of the controlling interests of reli- gion, principle, or morality, with such expo- nents and examples as Barras, Fouche, Tal- leyrand, and hundreds of others, who soon became the supporters, advisers and ex- ecutives of Buonaparte. Even those who still possessed or professed a deference to virtue were soon converted by interest into subservient instruments or will-less NapoIvEone di Buonaparte. flatterers. Yea, even those considered the best of the crowd will not bear close scru- tiny, for Caulincourt, in the eyes of the true and honest, cannot cleanse his vesture of the stain of his connection with that most atrocious crime, the murder of the Duke d'Enghien and Duroc, however notable as faithful and devoted to his master, is charged with having known no conscience but that master's will. Even Macdonald, generally accepted as immaculate, was published by the German (Arndt, 93) as " having stolen and plundered like a common Knecht^'''' and the General Intendant, Dumas, "believed by many Germans as one inspired by a nobler soul was stained by many traces of his associates." Charras, in his "1813" (17), testifies Buonaparte "used his victory over Prussia without generosity, without justice, with- out pity." Attila, barbarian as he was, who flourished in the Dark Ages, exhibited more generosity and magnanimity than the mod- ern Attila, born at the period of the Ency- clopsedists and the light of the rising sun of mercy even to the speechless animals. The coincidences between Buonaparte and Attila are not confined to the duration and destructions of their careers. They resembled each other in size ; both were men of low stature, with full chests and short legs ; also in demeanor. Just as At- tila had a custom of fiercely rolling his eyes as if he wished to enjoy the terror which he inspired, Buonaparte got up fits of simulated rage for the same purpose. Both knew that success "must depend on a degree of skill with which the passions of the multitude were combined and guided for the service of a single man." As an instance of this perception of the influence of superstition, Gibbon tells us (iii, 390) : " One of the shepherds of the Huns per- ceived that a heifer, who was grazing, had wounded herself in the foot, and curiously followed the track of the blood till he dis- covered, among the long grass, the point of an ancient sword, which he dug out of the ground and presented to Attila. That mag- nanimous, or rather that artful, prince ac- cepted, with pious gratitude, this celestial favor ; and so the rightful possessor of the Sword of Mars asserted his divine and in- defeasible claim to the dominion of the earth." Just as the great Hun made the most of this simple superstition, Buonaparte resort- ed to similar discoveries, or rather inven- tions, to stimulate the confidence and enthusiasm of the French, as volatile and vain as those barbarians. During the period when Buonaparte was menacing England he visited Boulogne, and omens were resorted to for exciting and keeping up the enthusiasm of the troops. When the earth was removed to drain it or prepare it for Buonaparte's tent, it was pre- tended that a Roman battle-axe was found, which was converted into a portent of the success of the pending expedition, designed to rival that of Caesar into Britain. Med- als of William the Conqueror were also produced as having been dug up upon the same spot. What was this find but a type of the Normans' conquest and a victory more glorious than that of Hastings? (Scott, iv, 297-298.) It is very difficult to believe that a rusted sword, found by accident, should be adopt- ed, even by barbarian people, as a symbol of the deity ; but how much more, that within the century a people considered as highly enlightened should desire to build a temple to a living man and consecrate his SWORD. Nevertheless the words of the high authority who makes the statement which follows, clinches the parallel set forth between Buonaparte and Attila. P. Bon- dois. Professor of History in the Lyceum Buffon, and also Moliere, in his "Napo- leon and Society in His Time" (1793-1821), Napoleone di Buonaparte. Paris, 1895, Chapter VII, "Vassal Europe," Page 187, reads thus : "Among the official corps the Napoleonic enthusiasm approached delirium, after the peace of Presburg. The- Tribunate pro- posed to reestablish in his favor the ancient triumph, to raise a temple to him in Paris, TO CONSECRATE THE SWORD WHICH HE WORE AT AUSTERLITZ. ' ' "No wonder (188) Napoleon intoxicated himself with the incense lavished upon him and commenced to take his divinity into serious consideration ; he was very near passing himself off for God, not after his death, but while yet alive." (189) "A Saint Napoleon was imagined, whose festival was confounded with that of the Virgin Mary on the 15th August," and "next to the Persons of the Sacred Trin- ity (161) the name of the Emperor was in- troduced," evidences to what a pitch he had reached in his desire to interpret reli- gious texts." " this man Is now become a god — — whose bend doth awe the world." He was also ever with a folly, which jus- tifies Michelet in asserting that "there were moments when Napoleon was insane," uttering boasts and publishing predictions which events stultified. Thus, when he went to Spain in 1808, he declared that he would drive the Leopards, as he styled the Lion Emblems of England, into the sea, and he left the work undone and quitted the Peninsula with a speed as extraordinar- ily rapid as unaccountable, unless he dreaded the effects of Spanish vengeance, such as that from which, at a later date, his brother Joseph had a narrow escape. Previous to his contemplated Invasion of England, he had a medal struck, in assured anticipation of occupying London, bearing triumphant effigies and a legend purporting that it had been minted in the British cap- ital. When his plan failed he had the die destroyed, but exemplars have been pre- served and it appeared among the medals of his reign, of that date. In the same way, in his carriage captured at Waterloo, feeling assured of victory, there were cap- tured large packages of a proclamation, dated at the Royal Palace of Lacken, falsely dated and located, as if the French were in possession of the capital, Brussels. Before entering Russia, in 1812, he issued a manifesto, predicting the certain conquest of that country and humiliation of the Czar. The world knows how the verdict was ter- ribly reversed. On quitting Moscow, 1812, with equal presumption he declared woe to the Russians if they attempted to cross his path. They did cross it and his army perished, and had it not been for the enor- mous reinforcements brought up to his res- cue on the Berezina, he and his remnants would have been captured. As it was, 50,- 000 lives were sacrificed to get him and his suite in safety over that river, and almost as many more perished miserably, with the only result of enabling him to effect his his own flight in safety back to the Rhine. In 1814, after ephemeral successes, he de- clared he was nearer to Munich than the Allies were to Paris ; and, again, "if I gain a battle, as I am sure to do" — when every battle was occasioning greater actual losses, and enormously and greater irreparable losses than those sustained by the Allies — " I shall be master and exact better condi- tions. * * * Xhe tomb of the Russians is marked out under the walls of Paris ! My measures are all taken and victory can- not fail me." Within two months he was on his way to Elba. One question ! It is supposable that At- tila, with what is known of him, would have offered up his capital. in which he had been collecting the spoils and the trophies of his whole career, as an incentive to his troops to assail that capital solely for his Napoleone di Buonaparte. own personal advantage. Would not the bold Hun have manoeuvred to obtain a bat- tle-field whence, if victorious, he could have turned to reoccupy the capital with all its riches preserved, or else himself have perished in the attempt, as he was willing and ready to do if he could not have re- treated from Chalons to recuperate his strength and renew the "Trial of Battle." In spite of his tremendous losses in Gaul, now France — -A. D. 451, corresponding in a measure to Buonaparte's reverses of 1812, the next year, A. D. 452, Attila was suffi- ciently formidable to invade Italy and threaten Rome. This corresponds to Na- poleon's reappearance in Germany in 1813. A. D. 453, Attila died. In 1814 Napoleon abdicated. On the Netad, A. D. 454, on the Second Hunnenschlacht, occurred the Waterloo of the Hunnish power. Buona- parte's first was Leipsic ; his second, La Belle Alliance, miscalled Waterloo. There Ellac, the eldest son of Attila — battle and results representing Buonaparte's utter overthrow in 1815 — lost his life and crown and 30,000 Huns their lives, just about the number of French who actually perished in the Belgian campaign of four days. Similar parallelisms might be added, but sufficient have been adduced, at this time, to manifest the truth of the simile be- tween the Corsican and the Hun. II. Don Juan, xi, 85. " I've seen the people ridden o'er like sand By slaves on horseback." — Byron. "Thus far, go forth, thou lay, which I will back Against the same given quantity of rhyme, For being as much the subject of attack As ever yet was any work sublime. By those ivho love to say that white is bi^ack. So much the better ! I may stand alone, But ivoiM not cliange my free tliouglits for a t/irone." — Byron. Mens regnum bona possidit. Seneca. My mind to me an empire is While grace affordeth health. — Southwell. Bourrienne (Scribner's iii, 311), who knew him so well, presents the follow- ing striking exposition or analysis of Buona- parte's negative and positive qualities. (This is quoted from the edition of Col. R. W. Phipps, late Royal Artillery, pub- lished by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1889, but the reader is kindly re- quested to compare this translation with that of John S. Memes's, Edinburgh, 1831, given herewith as a note.*) *The character of Bonaparte presents the most inex- plicable contrasts ; though the most obstinate of mor- tals, no man ever more easily allowed himself to be led away by the charm of illusions ; m many respects, to desire and to believe were with him one and the same "Bonaparte's character presents many unaccountable incongruities. Although the most positive man that perhaps ever existed, yet there never was one who more readily yielded to the charm of illusion. In many circumstances the wish and the act. And never had he been more under the empire of illusion than during the early part of the campaign of Moscow. The easy progress of his troops, the burn- ing of towns and villages on their approach, ought to have prepared him for a Parthian warfare, where re- treat, drawing him into the heart of the country, was only preparatory to rendering the advance more fear- ful. All wise men, too, before those disasters which marked the most terrible of retreats recorded in his- tory, were unanimous as to the propriety of spending the winter of 1812-13 in Poland — there to establish, though only provisionally, a grand nursery for the mighty enterprise of the following spring. But the illusions of an impatient ambition urged him on, and his ear was deaf to ever}' other sound save ' ' Forward ! ' ' Another illusion, justified perhaps by the past, was the belief that Alexander, the moment that he should be- hold the van of the French columns on the Russian territory, would propose conditions of peace. At length the burning of Moscow revealed to Napoleon that it was a war to the death ; and he that had been hitherto accustomed to receive propositions from van- quished enemies, now for the first time found his own rejected. — "Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, from the French of M. Fauvelet de Bourrietme, by John S. Memes, LL. D., Vol. IV, pp. 94-5, Edinburgh, 1831. Napolkone di Buonaparte. REALITY were to him one and THE SAME THING. He never indulged in greater il- lusions ihaji at the beginning of the cam- paign of Moscow. Even before the ap- proach of the disasters whith accompanied the most fatal retreat recorded in history, all sensible persons concurred in the opin- ion that the Emperor ought to have passed the winter of 1812-13 in Poland, and have resumed his vast enterprises in the spring. But his natural impatience impelled him forward, as it were, unconsciously, and he seemed to be under the influence of an in- visible [evil] demon [like the good daemon of Socrates] stronger than even his own strong will. This demon was ambition. He who knew so ivell the VALUE (t/TIME never sufficiently understood its POWER, and hoiu much is sometimes gained by delay ? Yet Csesar's Commentaries, which were his favorite study, ought to have shown him that Csesar did not conquer Gaul in one campaign." Dr. Dendy, in his " Philosophy of Mys- tery," Harper's Edition, 1847, 305~6, re- marks, ' ' There is a somewhat remote analogy to this [the effects of somnambu- lism] in the want of balance in the judg- ment and volition of ambitious minds. In the campaign of Russia, Napoleon's march was a sort of somnambulism, for he must have been madly excited to have taken action against his better judgment." In other words the question presents itself whether he was not partially insane. Mich- elet avers that, at times, he was so. After his divorce from Josephine and his marriage with Marie lyouise, he completely changed his habits of life, and, from comparative abstention, became luxurious and sensuous as well as sensual. For nearly two years he did not take the field, and he undertook the Russian campaign as monarchs with less power would get up a grand hunt. Deny it who may his health had deterio- rated. In 1805 he had fixed the date 1812 when the bow would lose its elasticity. Besides being actually ill at times, as at Borodino, on the march to Moscow, he suffered terribly from the heat. His body-- servant Constant attests this. On the re- treat or flight the exceeding cold in turn may have affected his brain. That exces- sive protracted cold does affect the mind is a well-known medical fact and has been the subject of investigation and scientific treatises aroused by the conditions observed during this very expedition. Again, emi- nent writers, especially Michelet, have come to the conclusion that unlimited and irresponsible power in a very short time produces or develops into insanity, of which the most marked peculiarity is a total disregard of human life and suffering, as in the case of the Roman Csesars and of the Popes prior to the Reformation. More- over, what makes this judgment the more applicable to Napoleon is the fact that even as Buonaparte had attracted so many flatter- ers, venal-advocates of whom a very few ad- hered to him at the last and shared his cap- tivity, — Nero, the worst of the Csesars, was found capable of inspiring attachment, and his reappearance wasjoyously expected; and, marvelous to state, he has suscitated advo- cates and excusers. The same is the case with Alexander Borgia, the worst of the Popes. He has kindled biographers who have striven to show that he has been ma- ligned and that he was even a wise and just ruler. Judas Iscariot has likewise re- cently roused an advocate, a legal light, who attempted to argue that his betrayal of his Master was not attributable to criminal but to comparatively innocent and mitigating motives. Finally, it is conceded that Buonaparte was subject to epilepsy, and that disease indubitably either tempora- neously or permanently affects the reason. The mortal who could declare, as Buona- parte did, that he was above all law and that no law was applicable to one in his 10 Napoleone di Buonaparte. position, could not have been in the posses- sion of even an ordinarily well-balanced mind. A judgment affected to such a de- gree amounted to an aberration of intellect. Consequently it is no more than just to fall back upon an idea which is as old as philosophy rendered by Dryden : Great evils are sure to madness near allied, And thin partitions do their bounds divide. - And by Pope : What thin partitions sense from thought divide. Does it not seem absolutely ridiculous to argue that Buonaparte had the slightest abhorrence of bloodshed or torture in one shape or another or in degree when he shot and permitted the infliction of torture ; when his troops could resort to the most atrocious modes of punishment, even em- palement, as in Calabria ; when he consid- ered an uprising of the oppressed as a favorable opportunity to teach a lesson against resistance to oppression by liberal blood-letting ; and could issue such orders as that of 5th of March, 1813, as Charras records in his "War of 1813 " (413), to the Viceroy Eugene Beauharnais to employ "if necessary terror and devastation " upon the slightest insult of a city or a " Prussian village." Buonaparte wrote to Eugene with a veritable demoniac ferocity : " Burn it, even if it should be Berlin." Baron Odeleben, i, 292, records a ferocity even more atrocious than this when, in 1813, Napoleon was compelled to evacuate Sax- ony, the country of an ally who had stuck to him to the last. ' ' He ordered his sub- ordinates to carry off with them all the cattle, to burn the woods, to destroy the fruit trees and everything else which could afford nourishment, so that the portion of Saxony on the right or east side of the Elbe should become a frightful desert. ' ' To sum up, to such an extent was meanly insane destruction carried on in Russia that the troops in advance destroyed the buildings which had escaped destruction and which might have served as shelters for the troops covering the retreat. Was there ever a more contemptible exhibition of pure malice than blowing up the bastions of Vienna when evacuating that city in 1809, and blowing up the palace of the Czars, the Kremlin, when compelled to abandon Moscow in 1812? Such spite very much resembles the action of a child which beats its own head against the floor when it can- not injure the object of its anger. lyaying hands or obtaining or examining every accessible work on the Corsican or Italian, Napoleonedi Buonaparte, closer and closer examination seems simply to prove that he was one of the most over- estimated of men, who have become so prominent in history, and one of God's scourges to chastise mortals. He was a compound of elements, in which the vile and criminal so greatly predominated that virtues which might have maintained their equipoise and influence if existing in no greater degree in ordinary men than in him, became transmuted into vices through the predominance of the evil and energy in his case. ' ' No one, ' ' says Dr. Johnson, ' ' ever rose from an ordinary situation in life to high destinies without great and commanding qualities in his mind being blended with meannesses which would be inconceivable in private life." Napoleon was a remark- able example of this singular but just ob- servation. He made it an invariable rule never to admit he had judged wrong in anything, and, with whatever injustice, to lay the blame of every disaster which oc- curred on others, rather than bear the blame of any part of it himself* What is more, he had no hesitation in declaring that he was above the application *L,ord Castlereagh and Sir Ctarles Stewart, from the original papers of the family by Sir Archibald Alison, Bart, D. C. L., LL. D., etc.. Vol. II, pp. 45-6, Edin- burgh and London, 1861. Napoleone di Buonaparte. or opei'ation of all law ; that the laws of morals were not applicable to him ; that his will was the sole law by which he ruled, by which he was to be governed, and the catechism which was taught— by his impe- rial and despotic command — throughout the Empire, is the best proof that he considered himself so far above humanity as actually to claim to be divine, if the term denti-god, as Ireland states, was actually applied by him to himself. At all events he accepted and even demanded an adulation which was utterly blasjahemous, and if he dispensed rewards and riches with a lavish hand it was simply because he had such a contempt for his fellow-beings that, destitute of virtue, as Thiers admits, he believed that his human beings, his fellows, were so desti- tute of virtue themselves that every one of both sexes, person and performance, devo- tion, body and soul, could only be pur- chased, and kept up to their duty by farther payments.* Two sayings are attributed to Bismarck, which have become proverbial : One, " Blood and Iron," as the sine qua non of Victory; and the other, that "great changes in human affairs and steps in pro- *Chapters i and ii of Eyre Evans Crowe's "History of the Reigns of Louis XVIII and Charles X," London, 1854, present the clearest explanation of the circum- stances which constitute the steps by which Buonaparte obtained his despotic elevation and maintained himself there ; also the basis of his success and the causes of his fall. There are ample corroborations of the worst which has been alleged against Napoleon in contempo- rary' records, which either have never been published, or, if in print, have been long since swallowed up in vast libraries and forgotten. In the "Car?iets of Gen. ICi