The Memoirs of François René Vicomte de Chateaubriand sometime Ambassador to England. volume 3 (of 6): Mémoires d'outre-tombe volume 3Chateaubriand, François-René, vicomte de
History
The Memoirs of François René Vicomte de Chateaubriand sometime Ambassador to England. volume 3 (of 6): Mémoires d'outre-tombe volume 3
Chateaubriand, François-René, vicomte de
Chateaubriand, François-René, vicomte de, 1768-1848
One would gladly doubt the truth of the facts reported by Count
Waldburg-Truchsess, but General Koller, in a _Sequel to Waldburgs
Itinerary_, has confirmed a part of his colleague's narrative;
General Schouvaloff, on his part, has certified, in conversation with
myself, the exactness of the facts: his measured words said more than
Waldburg's expansive recital. Lastly, Fabry's[179] _Itinéraire_ is
composed of authentic French documents furnished by eye-witnesses.
[Sidenote: His humiliation.]
Now that I have done justice on the commissaries and the Allies, is
it really the conqueror of the world whom one sees in Waldburg's
_Itinerary?_ The hero reduced to disguises and tears, weeping under a
post-boy's jacket in the corner of a back-room at an inn! Was it thus
that Marius bore himself on the ruins of Carthage, that Hannibal died
in Bithynia, Cæsar in the Senate? How did Pompey disguise himself? By
covering his head with his toga! He who had donned the purple taking
shelter beneath the white cockade, uttering the cry of safety: "God
save the King!"--that King, one of whose heirs he had had shot! The
master of the nations encouraging the commissaries in the humiliations
which they heaped upon him in order the better to hide him, delighted
to have General Koller whistling before him and a coachman smoking in
his face, compelling General Schouwaloff's aide-de-camp to enact the
part of the Emperor, while he, Bonaparte, wore the dress of an Austrian
colonel and wrapped himself in the cloak of a Russian general. He must
have loved life cruelly: those immortals cannot consent to die.
Moreau said of Bonaparte:
"His chief characteristics are falsehood and the love of life: let me
beat him, and I should see him at my feet begging me for mercy."
Moreau thought thus, being unable to grasp Bonaparte's nature; he fell
into the same error as Lord Byron. At least, at St. Helena, Napoleon,
dignified by the Muses, although petty in his quarrels with the English
Governor, had to support only the weight of his own immensity. In
France, the evil which he had done appeared to him personified by the
widows and orphans, and constrained him to tremble before the hands of
a few women.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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