MACMILLAN'S MAGAZINE. JULY, 1881. FROM THE CAMBRIDGE LECTURE-ROOMS: BONAPARTE.1 IN commencing the last of these lectures on Bonaparte I naturally look back, survey what I have done, and compare it with what at the outset I hoped and intended to do. You will remember that I began by recognising the impossibility of treating so large and full a career with any completeness, and by inquiring how it might most conveniently be divided. I determined first to lighten the ship by throwing overboard all those military details which belong less to the historian than to the professional specialist; next I pointed out that the career falls naturally into two parts which are widely different and easily separable from each other. The line of demarcation I drew at the establishment of the Hereditary Empire in 1804. On one side of this line, I remarked, you have Bonaparte, on the other side Napoleon. The two names may be taken to represent two distinct historical developments. To study Bonaparte is in the main to study a problem of internal French history. It is to inquire how the Monarchy, which fell so disastrously in 1792, burying for a time the greatness of the Bourbon name, was revived by a young military adventurer from Corsica; and how this restored Monarchy gave domestic tranquillity and, at first, a strong sense of happiness, to the French people, and at The last of a long course of lectures, printed here as containing a condensed statement of results. No. 261.-VOL. XLIV. the same time European ascendency to the French State. On the other hand, to study Napoleon is to study not French but European history; it is to inquire how the balance of power was overturned, how the federal system of Europe crumbled as the throne of the Bourbons had done before, how a universal Monarchy was set up, and then how it fell again by a sudden reaction. Availing myself of this distinction, I proposed to investigate the first problem only; I dismissed Napoleon altogether, and fixed my attention on Bonaparte. And now I find without much surprise that this problem taken alone is too much for me. I have given you not so much a history as the introduction to a history. I break off on this side even of the Revolution of Brumaire. As to the Consulate,—with its peculiar institutions, its rich legislation, and its rapid development into the Empire,-I can scarcely claim even to have introduced you to it. I say I am not surprised at this, and I shall be well content if the sixteen lectures I have delivered have thrown real light upon the large outlines of the subject, and have in any way explained a phenomenon so vast, and in the ordinary accounts so utterly romantic and inconceivable, as the Napoleonic Monarchy. For everything here has to be done almost from the beginning. In other departments the lecturer follows in the track of countless investigators who have raised and dis M cussed already the principal questions, who have collected and arranged all the needful information. It is quite otherwise in these periods of recent history, where investigation, properly speaking, has scarcely begun its work. I can refer you to very few satisfactory textbooks. Histories no doubt there are, full and voluminous enough, but they are not histories in the scientific sense of the word. Some are only grandiose romances. Others are thoroughly respectable and valuable in their kind, but were never intended for students; so that even where they are accurate, even where they are not corrupted by prejudice, or carelessness, or study of effect, they throw little light upon the problems which the student finds most important. In such circumstances it is really a considerable task to sweep away the purely popular, romantic, and fantastic views of the subject which prevail, and to bring out clearly the exact questions which need to be investigated; as indeed it is true generally of scientific investigation that the negative work of destroying false views, and then the preparatory work of laying down the lines of a sound method, are almost more important than the positive work of investigation itself. The great problem I have raised and examined has been the connexion of Bonaparte's power with the Revolution. Let me try, in quitting the subject, to sum up the conclusions to which we have been led. The first is this, that Bonaparte does not, properly speaking, come out of the Revolution, but out of the European war. What is the popular theory? In few words it is this, that a revolutionary period is often terminated by a military dictatorship, as is shown by the examples of Cæsar, Cromwell, and the Italian tyrants of the fourteenth century; that the cause of this is to be sought in the craving for rest, and the general lassitude and disappointment which follow a vain struggle for liberty; and that Bonaparte's rise to power is simply an example of the working of this historic law. Now to begin with, I should state the historic law itself somewhat differently. It is rather this, that when from any cause the government of a state is suddenly overthrown, the greatest organised power which is left in the country is tempted to take its place. Such for instance was the Municipality of Paris when the French Monarchy fell on the 10th of August. Accordingly the Municipality of Paris seized the control of affairs by a violent coup d'état. But as a general rule the greatest organised power which is at hand when a government falls, is the army. It is therefore natural that as a general rule a revolution should be followed by a usurpation of the army. And this might no doubt have happened in France as early as 1792. Instead of the ascendency of the Jacobins there might have been a tyranny of Dumouriez, but for the accident that the French army at that moment was undergoing a transformation. But there is also another possibility. A military dictatorship, or the form of government called Imperialism, may be brought into existence by quite another cause, namely, by any circumstance which may give an abnormal importance in the State to the army. It is from this cause, for instance, that the Monarchy in Prussia has been so military as to be practically an Imperialism. This also is the true explanation of the rise of Imperialism in ancient Rome. Not the mere lassitude of parties at Rome, but the necessity of a centralised military power to hold together the vast Empire of Rome which military force had created this was the real ground of the power of the Cæsars. Now in explaining the rise of Bonaparte, I think that too much is made of the cause formerly mentioned, and infinitely too little of this. It is no doubt true that the lassitude of the French mind in 1799 was great, and that the people felt a sensible relief in committing their affairs to the strong hand of Bonaparte; but I do not think that this lassitude was more than a very secondary cause of his rise to power. It is true also that in 1799 the Government of the Directory had sunk into such contempt, that it might be regarded as at an end, so that it was open to an organised power like the army to take its place by a sudden coup d'état. But this cause too is as nothing, and might almost be left out of the account, compared with another, which in the popular theory is wholly overlooked and neglected. I trace the rise of Bonaparte's Imperialism to the levée en masse, and to the enormous importance which was given to the army and to military affairs generally by a war of far greater magnitude than France had ever been engaged in before. No doubt there were many secondary causes, but the point on which I insist is. that they were entirely secondary, and that this cause alone is primary. You will not find by studying the Revolution itself any sufficient explanation of Bonaparte's power. Bonaparte did not rise directly out of the Revolution, but out of the war. Indirectly, as the Revolution caused the war, it may be said to have caused the rise of Bonaparte, but a war of the same magnitude, if there had been no revolution, would have caused a similar growth of Imperialism. If under the Old Régime France had had to put into the field fourteen armies and to maintain this military effort for several years, the old Monarchy itself would have been transformed into an Imperialism. That Imperialism appeared now in such a naked undisguised form was the necessary effect of this unprecedented war occurring at the moment when France was without an established government. The circumstances of the Revolution itself, the Reign of Terror, the fall of Robespierre, the establishment of the Directory, all these things made little difference. Bonaparte's empire was the result of two large, simple causesthe existence of a mighty war, and at the same time the absence of an established government. so it alone determined its character. Bonaparte was driven by his position into a series of wars, because nothing but war could justify his authority. His rule was based on a condition of public danger, and he was obliged, unless he would abdicate, to provide a condition of danger for the country. Why he was so successful in his wars, and made conquests unprecedented in modern history, is a question which I have not had occasion to discuss thoroughly. But I remarked that Imperialism in its first fresh youth is almost necessarily successful in war, for Imperialism is neither more nor less than the form a state assumes when it postpones every other object to military efficiency. The second great fact about Bonaparte's connexion with the Revolution is that he overthrew Jacobinism. From this fact, too, it may be perceived that he was the child, not of the Parisian Revolution, but of the levée en masse. Bonaparte cancelled Jacobinism; he destroyed its influence and persecuted it with unscrupulous violence. He placed himself at the head of the reaction against it. He restored with no little success the dominion of the old monarchical and ecclesiastical ideas. But it is of the utmost importance to define how far this reaction extended. It was not properly a reaction from Liberalism, but only from Jacobinism. It was not a reaction from the French Revolution of 1789, but from the Parisian Revolution of 1792. For there were two Revolutions, widely different from each other; and, to my mind, he who does not understand this, will never understand anything in the modern history of France. The struggle in modern France is not between the spirit of the Old Régime and that of the Revolution; this is wholly erroneous, It is a struggle between the principles of 1789 and those of 1792, in other words, between the principles of European Liberalism, and a fatal political heresy. The Monarchy of the Bourbons was itself Liberal for the most part As the war alone created the power, throughout the reign of Louis XVI.; it was Liberal again in the Constitution of 1791; Liberal under the Charter of Louis XVIII. Since its second fall in 1830 the principles of 1789 have been represented in various ways by Louis Philippe, Louis Napoleon, and the present Republic. There have been two great aberrations towards the heresy of 1792-namely, in 1848 and in the Parisian insurrection of 1871; and in 1830 an apprehension of the revival of those ideas drove the Government of Charles X. into measures which looked like a revival of the Old Régime. The struggle then throughout has been to keep to the lines of 1789, and not to be led again into the abyss of 1792. All serious governments alike, that of Bonaparte, that of the Restoration, that of Louis Philippe, that of Louis Napoleon and the present opportunist Republic, have adhered to the principles of 1789-the Old Régime has been utterly dead, and even Charles X. did not seriously dream of reviving it—and the only difference among them has lain in the mode of their resistance to the ideas of 1792. How to guard against the revival of those insane chimeras, against a new outbreak of that fanaticism in which phrases half philosophical half poetical intoxicate undisciplined minds and excite to madness the nervous excitable vanity of the city of Paris, this has been the one question; 1792 has been the one enemy. The Restoration and Louis Philippe tried to carry on Parliamentary Government in the face of this danger-but in vain; 1792 revived in 1848. The two Napoleons tried another method, a Liberal Absolutism, in which the principles of 1789 were placed under the guardianship of a dictator, and the method was successful at home, but in foreign affairs it was found to lead to such ambitious aggressiveness that in both cases it brought on the invasion and conquest of France. When, therefore, I say that Bonaparte put himself at the head of the reaction and revived the old monarchical and ecclesiastical ideas, I do not mean that he exploded the ideas of 1789, but those of 1792. Belonging to the France of the levée en masse, which had appeared to be Jacobinical only because the invasion had driven it into the arms of the Jacobins, he quietly put aside the whole system of false and confused thinking which had reigned since 1792, and which he called ideology. He went back to the system which had preceded it, and this was the system of 1789. It stood on a wholly different footing from Jacobinism, because it really was the political creed of almost the whole nation. It was what I may call Eighteenth-Century Liberalism. And in the first part of his reign, in the Consulate and even later, Bonaparte did stand out before Europe as the great representative of Liberal principles, and none the less so because he had abjured and was persecuting Jacobinism. "But what?" you will say, "how could Bonaparte represent Liberalism, when he had himself put aside all parliamentary institutions; when his own Senate and Corps Législatif were, in the first place, not representative at all; and in the second place were in every possible way baffled and insulted by him?" The answer is that Liberalism, as it was conceived in Europe in the eighteenth century, had very little to do with liberty, and that the leading representatives of it were generally absolute sovereigns. The great founders of Liberalism in Europe were such men as Frederick the Great, the Emperor Joseph, Charles III. of Spain, or ministers of absolute sovereigns, such as Turgot and Necker. It was in this succession that Bonaparte had his place, and from many utterances of his I gather that he regarded himself as the direct successor in Europe of Frederick the Great. Most of these sovereigns had not only been absolute, but had been active enemies of government by Assembly. Their Liberalism had consisted in their jealousy of the Church, their earnest desire for improvement, and a kind of rationalism or plain good sense in pro moting it. In their measures they are particularly arbitrary; and if Bonaparte made the coup d'état of Brumaire, we may say of the Emperor Joseph, the great representative of Liberalism, that his administration was one long coup d'état. If Bonaparte's reign seems in one point of view like a revival of the Old Régime, it is the Old Régime in its last phase, when it was penetrated with the ideas which were to be formulated in 1789, and when Turgot and Necker were its ministers. If Bonaparte ruled practically without Assemblies, we are to remember that in 1789 itself, when the States-General were summoned, there is no reason to think it was intended to create a standing Parliament, and Mirabeau held that they ought to be dismissed immediately after having voted the abolition of the exemptions of the noblesse and clergy. Such then are my conclusions about Bonaparte's relation to the French Revolution. But Bonaparte belongs to Europe as well as France, and in Europe he represents a new principle, that of conquest. I have considered him in this light also, and have pointed out that here too large causes had been working to prepare the way for him. In the system of Europe, in fact, there had been a revolution not less than in the internal government of France. The great event of this European Revolution had been the Partition of Poland. This was a proclamation of international lawlessness, of the end of the old federal system of Europe, and of the commencement of a sort of scramble for territory among the great states. And it ought particularly to be remarked that the leaders in this international Revolution were precisely the great Liberal sovereigns of the age, Frederick, Catharine, and Joseph. So long as sovereigns of tolerably equal power arranged such appropriations among themselves it might be done without causing a general confusion; but the moment some one power greatly outstripped all others in military strength the policy of the Partition of Poland would turn into a universal conquest. Now this immense superiority was given to France by her levée en masse. When she placed a new Frederick at her head it was only natural that she should take the lead in a more general application of the principle of the Partition of Poland, and none the less because she became at the same time the representative of Liberalism in Europe. By the Treaty of Campo Formio, France, under the leadership of Bonaparte, inaugurated the policy of universal partition and spoliation of the small states of Europe, which in a short time led to the Napoleonic Empire. So far Bonaparte has been to us simply a name for the Government of France, such as the almost irresistible pressure of circumstances caused it to be. Given the changes of 1789 and the fall of the Monarchy in 1792, given at same time the European war, an allpowerful military Government could not but arise in France, could not but adopt a warlike policy, and in the then condition of international morality, and considering the aggressive traditions of the French, would probably, whether it were directed by Bonaparte, Moreau, or Massena, embark in a career of conquest. But I have also made some inquiry in these lectures into the personal character of Bonaparte. In doing so, I have been forced to raise the general question, at once so interesting and so bewildering to the historical student, of the personal influence of great men. My desire is to see this question, like other historical questions, treated inductively and without ungrounded assumptions. Great men have been so long a favourite declamatio that we can scarcely treat them coolly, or avoid being misled by one or other of the exaggerated notions and bombastic conceits that have been put in currency about them. For a long time it was a commonplace to describe such persons as Bonaparte as a sort of madmen, who amused themselves with devastating the earth purely for their |