But with a sinister energy the dangerous fluid of divine right radiates from the golden circlet, and slowly spreads its waves through the brain of the wearer, the chosen man. Vainly he endeavours to master and transform the millennial force that has been stored up in this crown, or to make light of it; it masters him, and from time to time forces him to quit the realm of his self-control. When, a year after his coronation as emperor, he crowns himself in Milan with the iron crown of the Lombards (for the border States, like France itself, are to become monarchies), his voice reverberates through the cathedral as he thunders the traditional formula of the Carlovingian kings: “God gave it to me, woe to him who touches it!” Of course, it is only the statesman who speaks, for sound political reasons saying something he does not believe. But, though he is well aware of the contradiction, he will not always be able to solve it with the same vigour as in Notre Dame.

In the first place, the new position makes it necessary to impose new fetters on the mind. The Ministry of Police is revived; and France is parcelled out into four great sectors, in which the most trusty members of the Council of State, each with an army of spies, keep watch upon the mood of the country, for he wants to collect “moral statistics.” Fouché is reappointed Minister of Police, and, since Napoleon’s ties with Talleyrand become increasingly close, the Emperor is by degrees enmeshed in the nets of the two great intriguers—though he is aware that they are playing a double game between himself and the Bourbons, and, by a second relay of spies, fruitlessly endeavours to keep watch and ward over his watchers.

Sinister figures, these two ex-clerics, whom he hates, who hate him, but whom he will never be able to shake off.

Fouché is a man of humble origin, pale, with a cold manner, taciturn, parchmenty. Though orders flash on his breast and a lace ruffle waves there, were it not for his piercing eyes he would look like a mummy in court dress.

Talleyrand is in all respects the man of noble birth. Lame though he be, the prettiest women pay court to him. His charm is that of a rolling sphere, whose living summit is everywhere and nowhere. The assertion that he betrayed his master only for the sake of France, is belied by his immeasurable avarice and venality. For the nonce, he continues to serve the Emperor; but, from the first, the two men have mistrusted one another. Once, indeed, Talleyrand made a sacrifice for Napoleon. Late in the evening, when the two were on a journey together, the Emperor summoned the minister to his bedside for a talk about public affairs. Suddenly Napoleon fell asleep, and Talleyrand sat on guard till morning, not stirring, lest he should wake his master. That is his version of the affair. But the man’s whole nature is so remote from any idea of sacrifice or sympathy, that we may suppose rather that his motive was the hope that Napoleon might reveal some important secret by talking in his sleep.

A dozen times every year, the name of Madame de Staël crops up. Afraid of her and her works, he keeps her away from Paris with an obstinacy which arouses wonder. Yet she says of him: “His look grows infinitely tender when he speaks to women.” Throughout Europe, the champions of the freedom of the spirit fall away from him; Byron, who had greatly admired him; Beethoven, who cancels the original dedication of the _Eroica_ to Napoleon. With painfully mixed feelings the Emperor must have read the tribute of the mad tsar Paul, who had already acclaimed the First Consul as the suppressor of the revolution.

Since Marengo, he has been doing his utmost to maintain peace on the Continent, and for four years he has been successful. His hope is that the re-establishment of monarchy will appease the united princes, will assuage the anger they still cherish against France. The death of two men comes to thwart his plans. Tsar Paul is murdered, and this enemy of England is succeeded by a youthful son, an idealist, trained by French apostles of the enlightenment, a man with democratic leanings, gentle, muddle-headed, animated by the wish to be a better sovereign. Alexander, therefore, quickly comes to an understanding with England, where, after Fox’s brief predominance and death, a transient attempt at peace with France has been followed by a revival of the old jealous enmity. England fails to evacuate Malta as had been arranged, imposes new conditions, and is the first to break the peace. Once more there arises the menace of a European coalition under English leadership, a coalition that will aim at a Bourbon restoration, for talent enthroned in France sets so dangerous an example to all other countries.

Thus, a year after the coronation, the war with England is resumed, and will not end until Napoleon’s star sets. There is no campaigning, at first; simply a state of war, in which this great military commander cannot force a decision, and which, therefore, he cannot bring to a close. England has two notable advantages over her continental rivals, and over France in particular. It is an island realm; and it spreads athwart the world. Napoleon’s historical sense, growing ever more alert, shows England to him as a new empire of Alexander, extending like Alexander’s from homeland isles and peninsulas to Asia and to Africa, invincible so long as it remains a united whole. The dream of our new oriental splits upon this rock.

On this rock, too, are wrecked the mathematician’s calculations. The day after Aboukir, he had said that a decade would be needed for the rebuilding of France’s fleet. Half that time has elapsed, and England’s naval predominance has steadily grown. During the brief peace, the soldiers of the unsuccessful Egyptian campaign are brought back to France in English bottoms; England is confirmed in the possession of the Cape and other overseas colonies; and France has more urgent claims on her energies than the building of the new fleet.

Fundamentally, what was a ship to the Emperor? He was competent to design a big gun, to cast it, to place every screw; and to repair every wheel and every shaft of an ammunition wagon. He knew when every horse in a cavalry squadron would have to be re-shod, and how much it would cost; and he knew exactly how many loaves a field bakery could turn out a day. This far-reaching knowledge was one of the secrets of his predominance; made his subordinates zealous in their terror of his incessant control, whether in peace time or in war time; aroused respect for the all-embracing intelligence of the chief; and ensured the exact carrying-out of his military ideas.

But one who would know a ship, must grow up in a ship, just as one who would know ordnance must have passed his youth among big guns. Even though his admirals were astonished to find how quickly he made himself at home in naval matters, how shrewd were his questions, and how sensible were his orders, still their commendation of Napoleon was no more than the praise of a kindly expert who, tacitly, is criticising a talented amateur. Napoleon knew this well enough. Since he lacked a great admiral quite as much as a great fleet, and had never been willing to entrust the conduct of a campaign to any subordinate, he invented a new kind of war which was to enable him, after all, to get the better of England. The European ports from Hamburg to Taranto were to be closed to English ships, and thus the nation of traders was to be vanquished in a trade war. At the same time, he revived his plans of invasion; for, could he but set foot on the island, he would be the military commander, and in his own element.

Just as he had done before the Egyptian campaign, so now in Boulogne, he studies the possibilities of embarkation and disembarkation. On land, his fantasy has found satisfaction and his mathematical powers have gained conquests in ardent imaginings; and yet, all the time, his battles have been realities, have realised these imaginings. But here, at sea, he is an amateur, not an expert; is, for the first time, the onlooker instead of the man of action. In none other of his private letters do we find sentences akin to those which he writes from the coast to Josephine after a stormy night in which a gunboat has broken away from her moorings: “A wonderful sight! The minute-guns were firing; watch-fires were lighted along the coast. A raging, foaming sea; uncertainty and anxiety throughout the night. But a kindly spirit brooded over the ocean and the night. No lives were lost, and I lay down to sleep with the feeling that I had been witnessing a romantic and epic vision—so that I could almost believe that I had been looking on quite alone.”

A wonderful sight; but, alas, only a sight! The Ossianic note is sounded again, for the first time after fifteen years. Napoleon waxes romantic. How moving and how significant are the closing words of this artist, who suddenly feels that he has been robbed of the human material with which he works, and who is even a little alarmed (we cannot help but read this through the lines) at the unwonted sensation of being quite alone.

The unfamiliar element leads him astray. When a storm is threatening, he orders a naval review. Admiral Bruix does not carry out the order. The Emperor finds that no preparations are being made, and sends for the admiral. A terrible scene.

“Why did you not obey my orders?”

“Your Majesty can see that for yourself. You would not needlessly risk brave men’s lives in such weather!”

The Emperor, surrounded by his rigid officers, turns pale with wrath, and says: “Sir, I have given you an order. The consequences are no concern of yours. Do what you are told!”

“Sire, I cannot obey.”

An ominous pause. Napoleon strides towards Bruix, riding-switch in hand, threateningly, though the switch is not raised. The admiral draws back a step, and lays his hand on his sword-hilt. A petrified group.

“You will leave Boulogne within twenty-four hours, and betake yourself to Holland. Rear-Admiral Magon, carry out my orders.”

A naval review is held in a raging storm. A number of chaloupes are capsized, and their crews struggle in the water. The Emperor, to save himself, jumps into the first boat; all who can, follow his example. Two hundred bodies are washed ashore next day.

This incident, unique in Napoleon’s career, a blunder, an act of cruelty, a direct disobedience on the part of a subordinate, is a warning symptom. But there is a third indication.

A year before, an American inventor had come to Paris, and had offered the French admiralty two new inventions: one of them a ship to be propelled by steam power instead of by the wind; the other, a submarine boat which was to sink ships by the discharge of a kind of torpedo. “The man is a charlatan,” was Napoleon’s comment on Fulton, after an experiment in which the inventor’s “plunging boat” had secured a partial success; and he brushed the whole matter aside. If the American had brought him models of a machine gun and a field telegraph, he would have opened his purse.

Napoleon failed to conquer England because this was the one matter in which he was not confident of victory. Failure was inevitable because here, and here only, his self-confidence was at fault; because his belief in his own powers was weakened by his want of expert knowledge and by the inaccessibility of the foe. By land! Yes, if he could only get at this island by land! The thought brings back to his mind the scheme of five years ago, when he had planned an attack on India by way of Herat. But for such a scheme, quiet and time are needed.

His first aim is to keep the peace, to bring about which he has worked with his best powers for years. Immediately after the coronation, he writes in this sense to six monarchs, addressing each in a style appropriate to his correspondent’s character, thinking out the effect of every detail, and considering even the exact working of his signature. Note, for instance, how he writes to the shah:

“My reputation reaches so far, that you cannot fail to know who I am and what I have done; how I have made France supreme among the nations of the West; and how great an interest I take in the rulers of the East.... Orientals are full of courage and spirit, but their ignorance of certain arts and their neglect of military discipline put them at a disadvantage in war when they are faced by soldiers from the North.... Write me your wishes, and we will renew friendly and commercial relationships.... Written in my Imperial Palace of the Tuileries ... in the first year of my reign. Napoleon.” But, in the heading, the document sets forth a title which never existed, a title which Napoleon obviously uses to show the ruler of Persia that the writer is the general who made himself famous in the Egyptian campaign. The document purports to come from “Bonaparte, Emperor of the French.”

On his table, as he signs the letter to the shah, lies a letter to George III., though England and France are at war. It is penned with wonderful art, and is both moving and politic: “Does not all the blood that is being shed without apparent advantage to any one, touch the consciences of the governments? I am not ashamed to take the first step. It seems to me I have shown the world that I have no dread of war and its caprices. My heart, indeed, longs for peace; but war has never dimmed my fame. I implore Your Majesty not to deprive yourself of the good fortune of restoring peace to the world! Do not leave this precious task to your children. Never was there a more favourable opportunity of stilling angry passions. If this chance be missed, what will be the outcome of the war? During the last ten years, Your Majesty has won more territory and more treasure than all Europe possesses. What further could you expect from the war?”

How could the writer fail to smile at the realisation that the last argument could with equal force be turned against himself? The appeal is fruitless, for neither England nor the rulers on the mainland will tolerate the new power of France or its upstart emperor. A fourth coalition of the princes against the republic is imminent.

During the years of peace, he has been tolerably well content. His intimates at Malmaison have often described him as cheerful. Now he must take up arms once more, and resign himself to the knowledge that “it lies in the nature of things to continue this struggle between the past and the future, for the enduring coalition of our enemies makes it essential to attack them if we are to escape annihilation.” There is the simple truth, spoken without exaggeration and without bitterness. If he did not create this nature of things, at any rate he stabilised it. Even though the first wars of France in the revolutionary epoch were purely defensive, the subsequent campaigns became offensive, and were transformed into wars of conquest by the impetus of the people’s army and the outstanding genius of its commander.

Nevertheless, when he is thus challenged by opponents whom he has twice defeated, can we wonder that concrete plans which have hitherto followed his soaring imagination at a respectful distance, should now, likewise, begin to outsoar the boundaries of reason? In the opening years of the nineteenth century and here in the West, the Emperor might have kept the peace for another decade, that in the end he might measure his strength against England’s in Asia. But when Europe’s persistent desire for revenge upon revolutionary France spurs him into action, he conceives the great plan of a unified European realm. Now for the second time (and for the last time down to our own days) a great and saving work will be attempted, and the attempt will fail.

Thus it is that Napoleon’s crowning political thought issues out of a personal defensive. Now, when a new coalition is being formed, and formed against him, his ideal takes a fresh shape. For years his inward gaze has been concentrated on Alexander; now, instead, he sees the figure of Charlemagne. He goes to Aix-la-Chapelle, for a ceremonial visit to the tomb of the great Frankish emperor. “There will be no peace in Europe,” he says at this time to his trusted companions, “until the whole continent is under one suzerain, an emperor whose chief officers are kings, whose generals have become monarchs.... Would you tell me that this plan is but an imitation of the old imperial constitution? Well, there is nothing new under the sun!”

This gradual transformation of his ideal, and the sustenance of the new ideal by the historical imagination, has immeasurable consequences. Precisely because the adoption of the Carlovingian scheme involves for him a renunciation, he storms forward in pursuit of it as if he were fighting for a province. The haste with which he tries to reconstruct the empire of Charlemagne is new, is symptomatic of a fever which will drive him towards new goals before he has reached the old ones.