Napoleon BonaparteAbbott, John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot)
History
Napoleon Bonaparte
Abbott, John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot)
Emperors -- France -- Biography; Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821
surely guide them to wealth, and fame, and fortune. He contemplated
them, not as equals and confiding friends, but as efficient and
valuable instruments for the accomplishment of his purposes. Murat
was to Napoleon a body of ten thousand horsemen, ever ready for a
resistless charge. Lannes was a phalanx of infantry, bristling with
bayonets, which neither artillery nor cavalry could batter down or
break. Augereau was an armed column of invincible troops, black,
dense, massy, impetuous, resistless, moving with gigantic tread
wherever the finger of the conqueror pointed. These were but the
members of Napoleon's body, the limbs obedient to the mighty soul
which swayed them. They were not the companions of his thoughts,
they were only the servants of his will. The number to be found
with whom the soul of Napoleon could dwell in sympathetic friendship
was few--very few.
Napoleon had formed a very low estimate of human nature, and
consequently made great allowance for the infirmities incident
to humanity. Bourrienne reports him as saying, "Friendship is but
a name. I love no one; no, not even my brothers. Joseph perhaps a
little. And if I do love him, it is from habit, and because he is
my elder. Duroc! Ah, yes! I love him too. But why? His character
please me. He is cold, reserved, and resolute, and I really believe
that he never shed a tear. As to myself, I know well that I have
not one true friend. As long as I continue what I am, I may have
as many pretended friends as I please. We must leave sensibility
to the women. It is their business. Men should have nothing to do
with war or government. I am not amiable. No; I am not amiable. I
never have been. But I am just."
In another mood of mind, more tender, more subdued, he remarked,
at St. Helena, in reply to Las Casas, who with great severity was
condemning those who abandoned Napoleon in his hour of adversity:
"You are not acquainted with men. They are difficult to comprehend
if one wishes to be strictly just. Can they understand or explain
even their own characters? Almost all those who abandoned me would had
I continued to be prosperous, never perhaps have dreamed of their
own defection. There are vices and virtues which depend upon
circumstances. Our last trials were beyond all human strength! Besides
I was forsaken rather than betrayed; there was more weakness than
of perfidy around me. It was the denial of St. Peter . Tears and
penitence are probably at hand. And where will you find in the
page of history any one possessing a greater number of friends
and partisans? Who was ever more popular and more beloved? Who was
ever more ardently and deeply regretted? Here from this very rock
on viewing the present disorders in France who would not be tempted
to say that I still reign there? No; human nature might have appeared
in a more odious light."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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