Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Volume III.Scott, Walter
History
Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Volume III.
Scott, Walter
France -- History -- 1789-1815; Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821
The torrent of satire and abuse poured forth from the English and
Anglo-Gallican periodical press, was calculated deeply to annoy and
irritate the person against whom it was chiefly aimed. In England we are
so much accustomed to see characters the most unimpeachable, nay, the
most venerable, assailed by the daily press, that we account the
individual guilty of folly, who, if he be innocent of giving cause for
the scandal, takes it to heart more than a passenger would mind the
barking of a dog, that yelps at every passing sound. But this is a
sentiment acquired partly by habit, partly by our knowledge, that
unsubstantiated scandal of this sort makes no impression on the public
mind. Such indifference cannot be expected on the part of foreigners,
who, in this particular, resemble horses introduced from neighbouring
counties into the precincts of forest districts, where they are liable
to be stung into madness by a peculiar species of gadfly, to which the
race bred in the country are from habit almost totally indifferent.
If it be thus with foreigners in general, it must be supposed that from
natural impatience of censure, as well as rendered susceptible and
irritable by his course of uninterrupted success, Napoleon Buonaparte
must have winced under the animated and sustained attacks upon his
person and government, which appeared in the English newspapers, and
Peltier's _Ambigu_. He attached at all times, as we have already had
occasion to remark, much importance to the influence of the press, which
in Paris he had taken under his own especial superintendence, and for
which he himself often condescended to compose or correct paragraphs. To
be assailed, therefore, by the whole body of British newspapers, almost
as numerous as their navy, seems to have provoked him to the extremity
of his patience; and resentment of these attacks aggravated the same
hostile sentiments against England, which, from causes of suspicion
already mentioned, had begun to be engendered in the British public
against France and her ruler.
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