The soul which governed this body was driven forward by three fundamental powers:

Self-confidence, energy, imagination.

“I am not as other men; the laws of morality and convention cannot be applied to me.” In these cold words, he emphasises the “I” with which he began his first political writing in the days of his youth. They are a plain acknowledgment of a fact, by a man of thirty to whom nothing is more alien than vanity. “I alone, because of my position, know what government is,” he said when he was Consul. “I am persuaded that no one save myself could govern France at this moment. Were I to die, it would be a great misfortune for the nation.” He utters such words seldom, and only when he is with an intimate; but these sayings show with what scientific aloofness he could contemplate the phenomenon, Napoleon. When, during the Russian disaster, he was asked who in spite of all would defend him in France, he replied: “My name.”

His contemporaries and posterity have held this fundamental feeling to be ambition. That view is mistaken. Common ambition distinguishes itself from Napoleon’s self-confidence as a restless, climbing animal does from a bird of prey whose free flight, by a law of nature, assumes wider and wider circles as it swings heavenwards. Napoleon’s aspiration is neither restless nor envious: it is nothing but his natural disposition which, as Consul, he once charmingly explained to his friend Roederer:

“I have no ambition whatever; or if I have, then it is so inborn, so intimately knit up with my very life, that it is as the blood in my veins. It does not incite me to outstrip my associates.... I have never had to fight for or against it; it does not urge me to greater speed than is natural to me, it comes out only when circumstances and my ideas demand.”

Already in the days when he was a general, ideas and circumstances forced upon him the conviction that he was the man predestined to rebuild France. It is nothing other than the conviction of his mission which makes him say to Roederer: “Circumstances have changed. I am now one of those who found States, not one of those who ruin States.” Another time, he speaks of Corneille, but he means himself when he says: “Whence did this man acquire his antique greatness? From himself, from his soul? Very well. Do you know what that is called, My Lord Cardinal? It is called genius. Genius is a flame, which comes from heaven, but seldom finds a head ready to receive it. Corneille is a man whom the world has recognised.” When his interlocutor observed that the poet had not seen the flame, so how could he recognise it, the Emperor answered scornfully: “Precisely for that reason I consider he is a great man!”

He thus, indirectly by anticipation, announces his own genius to the world, just as Goethe had announced his own.

The will-to-power, not as an endeavour or even as a question, but, rather, as simplicity, dwells within him close at hand. He calls interest the key to ordinary deeds; the will to govern the intellect, he describes as the strongest of all the passions: and the artistic urge of genius, he depicts in the following words: “I love power, yes, I love it, but after the manner of an artist: as a fiddler loves his fiddle in order to conjure from it tone, chords, harmonies.”

That is why it is his nature to command. “Wherever I may be, I command, or else I keep silence.” He might have added: “I negotiate,” for he had spent a quarter of his time in negotiating. Even as a young general of twenty-seven, he aroused the respect of all who came in contact with him. He never learned to obey; but to command came to him naturally at the very outset, just as a calf stands and walks in the first hour of its life. Because this power of commanding comes so naturally, he never acquires the art of asking; because he can command as no other, he is denied the gift of being able to ask favours.

His self-confidence confers on him a natural dignity that amazes and angers the legitimist world, which believes dignity to be consonant only with heredity and culture. The friends of his youth stand embarrassed when they recognise him as their commander in the field and yet realise the solitude which his position as leader entails. All his companions-in-arms speak of him with spontaneous homage. One of his intimates writes: “When he speaks, every one listens, for he speaks as an expert; if he is silent, his silence is respected; and no one would venture to say that he was silent because of ill humour. We all felt that between him and us there lived a great thought which was wholly occupying his mind and forbade familiar accost.” This statement is all the more surprising since it was made during a campaign, when tent life usually breaks down barriers. With absolute ingenuousness he once said, while playing and chatting with friends at Malmaison: “I have no sense of the ridiculous. Power is never ridiculous.”

An adept at analysis, the greatest psychologist of his epoch, he knows all about his own qualities, and is therefore able, by degrees, to elaborate these instincts into principles. “The goodness of a king,” he informs his brother Louis, King of Holland, “must always bear a regal stamp and must never be monkish.... The love which a king inspires should invariably be a manly love, wedded to reverence, fear, and esteem. If people speak of him as ‘a good man,’ his rule is a failure.” This love and fear which he himself inspires has the greatest practical results.

Nevertheless, the dignity which holds people at a distance is not assumed, for a leading element in it is a bewildering naturalness, which grows with the years and with his successes. His unsophisticated and frank realism, the sterling simplicity of his character, shows itself in a hundred gestures and words, and in the freshness with which he repeatedly makes fun of his own ardency. He expresses this in a profound saying: “A truly great man will rise superior to the events which he himself has brought about.” The greatest successes, whose fateful origin and consequences he fully grasps, he sums up to his intimates in a schoolboy’s laugh. Many have reported this, for between the boisterous gaiety of a soldier and the most delicate curl of the lip are many shades of good humour; he possesses all.

On the eve of his coronation he exclaims: “Is the result not truly delightful, to be named brother by the kings?” Or he sends his ambassador to St. Petersburg with the words: “Our brother in Russia is fond of luxury and festivity. Very well, then, give him his fill of them!” Sometimes his simplicity of manner infringes etiquette, and the legitimists blanch: “When I was an insignificant lieutenant,” he begins once at table with the kings in Dresden. General consternation! Every one gazes into his plate. Napoleon clears his throat: “When I had the honour of serving as lieutenant in the second artillery regiment at Valence....” Or he is sitting with the tsar in Tilsit, and, since he is ever eager to learn, he asks off-handedly across the table: “How much does your tax on sugar bring in yearly?” We are told that this question places all present in a state of grave embarrassment. Why? Because, as a big man of business, he calls money by its name; whereas the kings never mention it by name, though they are glad enough to reap the harvest!

Since he was not vain, he knew when he had made mistakes. His whole life long he was in the habit of saying that next day he might lose a battle; he frequently consulted his friends and his experts, and was inspired with the feeling of God-given necessity. How well Napoleon could bear to be told the truth, we can learn from Marmont—who, when he praises, is one of the most trustworthy of witnesses, for he wrote his memoirs long after the Emperor had publicly stigmatised him as a traitor. “Napoleon had a strong sense of justice, and would readily forgive an improper word or other sign of anger in one who had good grounds for complaint, provided of course he was alone with the offender.... He made kindly allowance for others’ weaknesses and could never resist the appeal of well-grounded sorrow. One who chose time and place, could say anything to him. He was always willing to listen to the truth. Though it did not invariably influence him, there was no danger in uttering it.”

He saw through the wiles of flatterers, and they gained nothing from him. Byzantine bombast, devoid of political value, infuriated him. “How could you depict the French eagle tearing the English leopard to pieces, at a time when I cannot safely send even a fishing-smack out to sea? Break up your moulds instantly, and never show me anything of the kind again!”

On the other hand, those who fearlessly speak the truth to him, impress him. He praises Chateaubriand, who has attacked him. In the days when he was Consul he was wont, after a sitting of the Council of State, to invite to dinner the man who had most vigorously opposed his wishes. In the Russian campaign, a captive general tells him some home truths about the burning of Moscow. Napoleon dismisses the prisoner in a rage; but presently has him recalled, and shakes the Russian’s hand, saying: “You are a brave man!” Méhul plays a trick on the Emperor, producing his new opera as the work of an Italian composer, and thus earning approbation. Paisiello also plays a trick by introducing into one of his own compositions an aria by Cimarosa, a composer whose work Bonaparte cannot endure. The Consul applauds; and when afterwards told of the deception, he only laughs.

Madame de Staël has been a worry to him for fifteen years, voicing Europe’s call for freedom. He suppresses her books, banishes her from Paris, continues to take measures against her even when he is in Russia, speaks of her as the dangerous driving-wheel which sets the salons in motion; but he pays this enemy the high compliment of dreading her, and acknowledges as much in many of his private letters.

In the Bavarian muster rolls, he comes across the name of a former regimental comrade, a declared royalist. He makes this man his military attaché. They have not met for fourteen years. Now, during the campaign, they meet, and the old companion introduces himself. The Emperor rides with him out of the press, dismounts, and sits down on a convenient stone; the other wishes to hold his horse. “Let be,” says Napoleon; “that’s not your business,” and beckons a chasseur to take the bridle-rein. The Emperor promptly becomes reminiscent: “Do you remember how, at the lieutenants’ mess in Besançon, you flung your table napkin down and shouted: ‘I will not sit beside an officer who belongs to the Jacobin Club!’ That is ancient history, and is of no consequence now.” He beckons his attendant staff and points to his interlocutor, saying: “Look at this fellow. Ability of the old school. He and I worked at equations together.” Then, coming down to practical matters: “Have you plenty of ammunition? What is your artillery like? How soon will you be ready?”

Unique, perhaps, in Napoleon’s life, is the scene at Erfurt in the year of 1813, when von Müller, the Weimar chancellor, braves his anger. Two privy councillors have written letters in cipher. These have been seized at the outposts. The writers have been arrested. Müller has been sent for. The Emperor has stormed at him, threatening to burn Jena, to shoot the culprits. Müller breaks in impetuously: “No, Sire, you will not commit this abomination! You will not tarnish your record for all time by shedding innocent blood!” In his excitement, the German presses so close that the Emperor anticipates a personal attack, and lays his hand on his sword-hilt. Müller is dragged back by a companion. A pause. “You are a bold man, but I see that you are a good friend. Berthier shall look into the matter once more.” The privy councillors are pardoned.

This scene, creditable to both participants, is another proof of Napoleon’s invulnerable dignity. It is invulnerable, unless the arrow is poisoned. A sense of honour is the vulnerable point of self-confidence. “If the French people expects certain advantages from me,” said Bonaparte when First Consul, “it must put up with my weaknesses, and the chief of these is that I cannot endure an affront.” It was he who said: “I am a man whom people may kill, but will not affront.” Bourrienne tells us that from Bonaparte’s earliest days he had no faith in law or morality, but always believed in honour. This compensated for his fundamental amoralism. The power exercised over him by his conception of honour distinguishes him absolutely from the condottieri of the Renaissance, with whom he ought never to have been compared. When he is Consul, betwixt night and morning he breaks off his intimacy with this very Bourrienne, who has been his private secretary for so long, because Bourrienne is involved in an unsavoury financial scandal. Years afterwards, he refuses to admit Bourrienne to the Legion of Honour, saying: “One who worships the golden calf may have money, but not honour.” When a bill signed by King Jerome goes to protest, Napoleon writes: “Sell your diamonds, your silver plate, your furniture, your horses—anything to pay your debts. Honour comes first!”

He was so sensitive on this point that after his coronation he summoned to his presence a notary who had long before advised Josephine against marrying a person of doubtful character; Napoleon wished to rehabilitate himself in this man’s mind. In exile at St. Helena, he remembered how his German teacher in Brienne had always treated him with contempt: “I should very much like to know whether Herr Bauer ever learned how I made good!”

He is a stickler for morality, just as he is for honour. “Nothing can be worse in a ruler than immorality. He makes it fashionable, and it poisons society.” Napoleon does not say this merely because he has been warned by the example of the Bourbons and the Directors. He has an inborn sense of decency, which is part of his dignity. No one has ever recorded having heard Napoleon, the soldier, tell an obscene story. Nor did he ever listen to one complacently. When he becomes First Consul, he forbids Josephine to have anything more to do with friends of hers who are leading gay lives. Years afterwards, when the empress allows Tallien to visit her, Napoleon writes to reprimand his wife, saying: “I can see no excuses for Tallien. I know that some poor devil has married her with her eight bastards, and I despise her even more than I did before. She was an amiable cocotte; now she is nothing more than a common woman.”

Talleyrand, who has had a liaison for many years, is told that he must marry his inamorata or quit Napoleon’s service within twenty-four hours. Berthier is made a prince, but the same condition is imposed on him, Napoleon saying: “This passion of yours has lasted too long, and is becoming ridiculous. You are a man of fifty, but may live to be eighty, and these thirty years are left you for marriage.” The revolution had encouraged nudity in mythological representations, but Napoleon wants nakedness to be draped. When, in one of the squares there is set up a fountain where there is a group of naiads with water spouting from their breasts, he has “these wet-nurses” removed as improper, and decrees that “the naiads were virgins.” His own women friends must not make themselves conspicuous. He lavishes money on them; but if they are actresses, he does not allow his liaison to be used as a reason for promotion. On the other hand, like any bourgeois he boasts of sharing his wife’s bedroom, saying: “It has a remarkable influence upon conjugal life, strengthens the man’s influence, guarantees his faithfulness, promotes intimacy and good morals; a couple will never become estranged if they spend the whole night together. As long as Josephine and I kept this custom, she was familiar with all my thoughts.”

One of the most sublime forms of his egotism is gratitude. This is not ordinary kindness, but the pride of a man who feels he is unique, and overwhelms with benefits any one who has ventured to be useful to him, lest he should possibly remain in the other’s debt. That was the consideration which really underlay his frequently declared policy, that he would never make use of any party, lest he should incur obligations. We must not look upon these things in a romantic light. But it is an actual fact that he was not content to promote only the friends of his youth, his fellow-students at the military academy. As soon as he rose to power, he found for the priest who had been headmaster at Brienne a sinecure at Malmaison as librarian—without any books! The sometime school porter became lodge keeper at his country house. A young lady of noble birth to whom, in his lieutenant days, he had once paid court for a whole evening, and who sixteen years later applied for help to the Emperor, received what she wanted, together with a post for her brother, and a friendly letter. He remembered many of his former associates in his will. Years after his brief intimacy with “Giorgina,” when he hears that she is in difficulties (though she has made no application to him), he provides her with a competency.

Hitherto we have been talking about money, or money’s worth. But the nature of his gratitude is different when he loves, as in the case of Josephine. When we consider his relationships with her, we realise the truth of Marmont’s tribute, which is all the more remarkable as coming from an enemy: “He had a grateful, kind, indeed affectionate, heart.” At the time of the coronation, he says to Roederer: “What right have I to put away a good wife merely because I have become a greater man than I was when we married?... Before all, I am a just man.” A little later, he writes to Josephine: “As far as I am concerned, I deem ingratitude the greatest weakness any one can have.”