France -- Civilization; France -- Politics and government; France -- Social life and customs -- 19th century
Now, in 1809, however full these atlases, they are clearly imprinted on
Napoleon's mind he knows not only the total and the partial summaries,
but also the slightest details; he reads them readily and at every hour;
he comprehends in a mass, and in all particulars, the various nations he
governs directly, or through some one else; that is to say, 60,000,000
men, the different countries he has conquered or overrun, consisting of
70,000 square leagues[1168]. At first, France increased by the addition
of Belgium and Piedmont; next Spain, from which he is just returned,
and where he has placed his brother Joseph; southern Italy, where, after
Joseph, he has placed Murat; central Italy, where he occupies Rome;
northern Italy, where Eugène is his delegate; Dalmatia and Istria, which
he has joined to his empire; Austria, which he invades for the second
time; the Confederation of the Rhine, which he has made and which
he directs; Westphalia and Holland, where his brothers are only his
lieutenants; Prussia, which he has subdued and mutilated and which he
oppresses, and the strongholds of which he still retains; and, add
a last mental tableau, that which represents the northern seas, the
Atlantic and the Mediterranean, all the fleets of the continent at sea
and in port from Dantzic to Flessingen and Bayonne, from Cadiz to Toulon
and Gaëta, from Tarentum to Venice, Corfu, and Constantinople.[1169]--On
the psychological and moral atlas, besides a primitive gap which he will
never fill up, because this is a characteristic trait, there are some
estimates which are wrong, especially with regard to the Pope and to
Catholic conscience. In like manner he rates the energy of national
sentiment in Spain and Germany too low. He rates too high his own
prestige in France and in the countries annexed to her, the balance of
confidence and zeal on which he may rely. But these errors are rather
the product of his will than of his intelligence, he recognizes them at
intervals; if he has illusions it is because he fabricates them; left
to himself his good sense would rest infallible, it is only his passions
which blurred the lucidity of his intellect.--As to the other two
atlases, the topographical and the military, they are as complete and as
exact as ever; No matter how much the realities they contain will swell
and daily become ever more complex, they continue to correspond to it in
their fullness and precision, trait for trait.
V. His Imagination and its Excesses.
His constructive imagination.--His projects and dreams.
--Manifestation of the master faculty and its excesses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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