The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827
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Various >> The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827
THE MIRROR OF LITERATURE, AMUSEMENT, AND INSTRUCTION.
VOL. 10, No. 263.] SUPPLEMENTARY NUMBER. [PRICE 2d.
* * * * *
SIR WALTER SCOTT'S LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE.
(_Continued from page 5._ [Note: see Mirror 262])
Robespierre was a coward, who signed death-warrants with a hand that
shook, though his heart was relentless. He possessed no passions on
which to charge his crimes; they were perpetrated in cold blood, and
upon mature deliberation.
Marat, the third of this infernal triumvirate, had attracted the
attention of the lower orders, by the violence of his sentiments in the
journal which he conducted from the commencement of the revolution, upon
such principles that it took the lead in forwarding its successive
changes. His political exhortations began and ended like the howl of a
blood-hound for murder; or, if a wolf could have written a journal, the
gaunt and famished wretch could not have ravened more eagerly for
slaughter. It was blood which was Marat's constant demand, not in drops
from the breast of an individual, not in puny streams from the slaughter
of families, but blood in the profusion of an ocean. His usual
calculation of the heads which he demanded amounted to two hundred and
sixty thousand; and though he sometimes raised it as high as three
hundred thousand, it never fell beneath the smaller number. It may be
hoped, and for the honour of human nature we are inclined to believe,
there was a touch of insanity in this unnatural strain of ferocity; and
the wild and squalid features of the wretch appear to have intimated a
degree of alienation of mind. Marat was, like Robespierre, a coward.
Repeatedly denounced in the assembly, he skulked instead of defending
himself, and lay concealed in some obscure garret or cellar among his
cut-throats, until a storm appeared, when, like a bird of ill omen, his
death-screech was again heard. Such was the strange and fatal
triumvirate, in which the same degree of cannibal cruelty existed under
different aspects. Danton murdered to glut his rage; Robespierre to
avenge his injured vanity, or to remove a rival whom he envied; Marat,
from the same instinctive love of blood, which induces a wolf to
continue his ravage of the flocks long after his hunger is appeased.
Passing by the horrors of the reign of terror, we shall close the second
volume with a vivid and powerful picture, which we cannot refrain
quoting--
THE DEATH OF ROBESPIERRE.
Meantime the convention continued to maintain the bold and commanding
front which they had so suddenly and critically assumed. Upon learning
the escape of the arrested deputies, and hearing of the insurrection at
the Hotel de Ville, they instantly passed a decree outlawing Robespierre
and his associates, inflicting a similar doom upon the mayor of Paris,
the procureur and other members of the commune, and charging twelve of
their members, the boldest who could be selected, to proceed with the
armed force to the execution of the sentence. The drums of the National
Guards now beat to arms in all the sections under authority of the
convention, while the tocsin continued to summon assistance with its
iron voice to Robespierre and the civic magistrates. Every thing
appeared to threaten a violent catastrophe, until it was seen clearly
that the public voice, and especially amongst the National Guards, was
declaring itself generally against the Terrorists.
The Hotel de Ville was surrounded by about fifteen hundred men, and
cannon turned upon the doors. The force of the assailants was weakest in
point of number, but their leaders were men of spirit, and night
concealed their inferiority of force.
The deputies commissioned for the purpose read the decree of the
assembly to those whom they found assembled in front of the city-hall,
and they shrunk from the attempt of defending it, some joining the
assailants, others laying down their arms and dispersing. Meantime the
deserted group of Terrorists within conducted themselves like scorpions,
which, when surrounded by a circle of fire, are said to turn their
stings on each other, and on themselves. Mutual and ferocious upbraiding
took place among these miserable men. "Wretch, were these the means you
promised to furnish?" said Payan to Henriot, whom he found intoxicated
and incapable of resolution or exertion; and seizing on him as he spoke,
he precipitated the revolutionary general from a window. Henriot
survived the fall only to drag himself into a drain, in which he was
afterwards discovered and brought out to execution. The younger
Robespierre threw himself from the window, but had not the good fortune
to perish on the spot. It seemed as if even the melancholy fate of
suicide, the last refuge of guilt and despair, was denied to men who had
so long refused every species of mercy to their fellow-creatures. Le Bas
alone had calmness enough to despatch himself with a pistol-shot. Saint
Just, after imploring his comrades to kill him, attempted his own life
with an irresolute hand, and failed, Couthon lay beneath the table
brandishing a knife, with which he repeatedly wounded his bosom, without
daring to add force enough to reach his heart. Their chief, Robespierre,
in an unsuccessful attempt to shoot himself, had only inflicted a
horrible fracture on his under-jaw.
In this situation they were found like wolves in their lair, foul with
blood, mutilated, despairing, and yet not able to die. Robespierre lay
on a table in an anti-room, his head supported by a deal-box, and his
hideous countenance half-hidden by a bloody and dirty cloth bound round
the shattered chin.[1]
[1] It did not escape the minute observers of this scene, that
he still held in his hand the bag which had contained the fatal
pistol, and which was inscribed with the words, _Au grand
monarque_, alluding to the sign, doubtless, of the gunsmith who
sold the weapon, but singularly applicable to the high
pretensions of the purchaser.
The captives were carried in triumph to the convention, who, without
admitting them to the bar, ordered them, as outlaws, for instant
execution. As the fatal cars passed to the guillotine, those who filled
them, but especially Robespierre, were overwhelmed with execrations from
the friends and relatives of victims whom he had sent on the same
melancholy road. The nature of his previous wound, from which the cloth
had never been removed till the executioner tore it off, added to the
torture of the sufferer. The shattered jaw dropped, and the wretch
yelled aloud, to the horror of the spectators.[2] A mask taken from that
dreadful head was long exhibited in different nations of Europe, and
appalled the spectator by its ugliness, and the mixture of fiendish
expression with that of bodily agony.
[2] The fate of no tyrant in history was so hideous at the
conclusion, excepting perhaps that of Jugurtha.
Thus fell Maximilian Robespierre, after having been the first person in
the French republic for nearly two years, during which time he governed
it upon the principles of Nero or Caligula. His elevation to the
situation which he held involved more contradictions than perhaps
attach to any similar event in history. A low-born and low-minded
tyrant was permitted to rule with the rod of the most frightful
despotism a people, whose anxiety for liberty had shortly before
rendered them unable to endure the rule of a humane and lawful
sovereign. A dastardly coward arose to the command of one of the bravest
nations in the world; and it was under the auspices of a man who dared
scarce fire a pistol, that the greatest generals in France began their
careers of conquest. He had neither eloquence nor imagination; but
substituted in their stead a miserable, affected, bombastic style,
which, until other circumstances gave him consequence, drew on him
general ridicule. Yet against so poor an orator, all the eloquence of
the philosophical Girondists, all the terrible powers of his associate
Danton, employed in a popular assembly, could not enable them to make an
effectual resistance. It may seem trifling to mention, that in a nation
where a good deal of prepossession is excited by amiable manners and
beauty of external appearance, the person who ascended to the highest
power was not only ill-looking, but singularly mean in person, awkward
and constrained in his address, ignorant how to set about pleasing even
when he most desired to give pleasure, and as tiresome nearly as he was
odious and heartless.
To compensate all these deficiencies, Robespierre had but an insatiable
ambition, founded on a vanity which made him think himself capable of
filling the highest situation; and therefore gave him daring, when to
dare is frequently to achieve. He mixed a false and over-strained, but
rather fluent species of bombastic composition, with the grossest
flattery to the lowest classes of the people; in consideration of which,
they could not but receive as genuine the praises which he always
bestowed on himself. His prudent resolution to be satisfied with
possessing the essence of power, without seeming to desire its rank and
trappings, formed another art of cajoling the multitude. His watchful
envy, his long-protracted but sure revenge, his craft, which to vulgar
minds supplies the place of wisdom, were his only means of competing
with his distinguished antagonists. And it seems to have been a merited
punishment of the extravagances and abuses of the French revolution,
that it engaged the country in a state of anarchy which permitted a
wretch such as we have described, to be for a long period master of her
destiny. Blood was his element, like that of the other Terrorists, and
he never fastened with so much pleasure on a new victim, as when he was
at the same time an ancient associate. In an epitaph, of which the
following couplet may serve as a translation, his life was represented
as incompatible with the existence of the human race:--
"Here lies Robespierre--let no tear be shed;
Reader, if he had lived, thou hadst been dead."
The commencement of the third volume introduces us to the family of
Bonaparte, who resided in the island of Corsica, which was, in ancient
times, remarkable as the scene of Seneca's exile, and in the last
century was distinguished by the memorable stand which the natives made
in defence of their liberties against the Genoese and French, during a
war which tended to show the high and indomitable spirit of the
islanders, united as it is with the fiery and vindictive feelings proper
to their country and climate.
BIRTH OF BONAPARTE.
Charles Bonaparte, the father of Napoleon, died at the age of about
forty years, of an ulcer in the stomach, on the 24th of February, 1785.
His celebrated son fell a victim to the same disease. During Napoleon's
grandeur, the community of Montpellier expressed a desire to erect a
monument to the memory of Charles Bonaparte. His answer was both
sensible and in good taste. "Had I lost my father yesterday," he said,
"it would be natural to pay his memory some mark of respect consistent
with my present situation. But it is twenty years since the event, and
it is one in which the public can take no concern. Let us leave the dead
in peace."
The subject of our narrative was born, according to the best accounts,
and his own belief, upon the 15th day of August, 1769, at his father's
house in Ajaccio, forming one side of a court which leads out of the Rue
Charles.[3] We read with interest, that his mother's good constitution,
and bold character of mind, having induced her to attend mass upon the
day of his birth, (being the Festival of the Assumption,) she was
obliged to return home immediately, and as there was no time to prepare
a bed or bedroom, she was delivered of the future victor upon a
temporary couch prepared for her accommodation, and covered with an
ancient piece of tapestry, representing the heroes of the Iliad. The
infant was christened by the name of Napoleon, an obscure saint, who had
dropped to leeward, and fallen altogether out of the calendar, so that
his namesake never knew which day he was to celebrate as the festival of
his patron. When questioned, on this subject by the bishop who
confirmed him, he answered smartly, that there were a great many saints,
and only three hundred and sixty-five days to divide amongst them. The
politeness of the pope promoted the patron in order to compliment the
god-child, and Saint Napoleon des Ursins was accommodated with a
festival. To render this compliment, which no one but a pope could have
paid, still more flattering, the feast of Saint Napoleon was fixed for
the fifteenth August, the birthday of the emperor, and the day on which
he signed the Concordat. So that Napoleon had the rare honour of
promoting his patron saint.
[3] Benson's "Sketches of Corsica," p. 4.
NAPOLEON'S EARLY LIFE.
The young Napoleon had, of course, the simple and hardy education proper
to the natives of the mountainous island of his birth, and in his
infancy was not remarkable for more than that animation of temper, and
wilfulness and impatience of inactivity, by which children of quick
parts and lively sensibility are usually distinguished. The winter of
the year was generally passed by the family of his father at Ajaccio,
where they still preserve and exhibit, as the ominous play-thing of
Napoleon's boyhood, the model of a brass cannon, weighing about thirty
pounds.[4] We leave it to philosophers to inquire, whether the future
love of war was suggested by the accidental possession of such a toy; or
whether the tendency of the mind dictated the selection of it; or,
lastly, whether the nature of the pastime, corresponding with the taste
which chose it, may not have had each their action and reaction, and
contributed between them to the formation of a character so warlike.
[4] "Sketches of Corsica," p. 4.
The same traveller who furnishes the above anecdote, gives an
interesting account of the country retreat of the family of Bonaparte
during the summer.
Going along the sea-shore from Ajaccio towards the Isle Sanguiniere,
about a mile from the town, occur two stone pillars, the remains of a
doorway, leading up to a dilapidated villa, once the residence of Madame
Bonaparte's half-brother on the mother's side, whom Napoleon created
Cardinal Fesch.[5] The house is approached by an avenue, surrounded and
overhung by the cactus and other shrubs, which luxuriate in a warm
climate. It has a garden and a lawn, showing amidst neglect vestiges of
their former beauty, and the house is surrounded by shrubberies,
permitted to run to wilderness. This was the summer residence of Madame
Bonaparte and her family. Almost enclosed by the wild olive, the cactus,
the clematis, and the almond-tree, is a very singular and isolated
granite rock, called Napoleon's grotto, which seems to have resisted the
decomposition which has taken place around. The remains of a small
summer-house are visible beneath the rock, the entrance to which is
nearly closed by a luxuriant fig-tree. This was Bonaparte's frequent
retreat, when the vacations of the school at which he studied permitted
him to visit home. How the imagination labours to form an idea of the
visions, which, in this sequestered and romantic spot, must have arisen
before the eyes of the future hero of a hundred battles!
[5] The mother of Letitia Ramolini, wife of Carlo Bonaparte,
married a Swiss officer in the French service, named Fesch,
after the death of Letitia's father.
Bonaparte's ardour for the abstract sciences amounted to a passion, and
was combined with a singular aptitude for applying them to the purposes
of war, while his attention to pursuits so interesting and exhaustless
in themselves, was stimulated by his natural ambition and desire of
distinction. Almost all the scientific teachers at Brienne, being
accustomed to study the character of their pupils, and obliged by their
duty to make memoranda and occasional reports on the subject, spoke of
the talents of Bonaparte, and the progress of his studies, with
admiration. Circumstances of various kinds, exaggerated or invented,
have been circulated concerning the youth of a person so remarkable. The
following are given upon good authority.[6]
[6] They were many years since communicated to the author by
Messrs. Joseph and Louis Law, brothers of General Baron
Lauriston, Bonaparte's favourite aid-de-camp. These gentlemen,
or at least Joseph, were educated at Brienne, but at a later
period than Napoleon. Their distinguished brother was his
contemporary.
The conduct of Napoleon among his companions was that of a studious and
reserved youth, addicting himself deeply to the means of improvement,
and rather avoiding than seeking the usual temptations to dissipation of
time. He had few friends, and no intimates; yet at different times, when
he chose to exert it, he exhibited considerable influence over his
fellow-students, and when there was any joint plan to be carried into
effect, he was frequently chosen dictator of the little republic.
In the time of winter, Bonaparte, upon one occasion, engaged his
companions in constructing a fortress out of the snow, regularly
defended by ditches and bastions, according to the rules of
fortification. It was considered as displaying the great powers of the
juvenile engineer in the way of his profession, and was attacked and
defended by the students, who divided into parties for the purpose,
until the battle became so keen that their superiors thought it proper
to proclaim a truce.
The young Bonaparte gave another instance of address and enterprise upon
the following occasion. There was a fair held annually in the
neighbourhood of Brienne, where the pupils of the Military School used
to find a day's amusement; but on account of a quarrel betwixt them and
the country people upon a former occasion, or for some such cause, the
masters of the institution had directed that the students should not on
the fair-day be permitted to go beyond their own precincts, which were
surrounded with a wall. Under the direction of the young Corsican,
however, the scholars had already laid a plot for securing their usual
day's diversion. They had undermined the wall which encompassed their
exercising ground, with so much skill and secrecy, that their operations
remained entirely unknown till the morning of the fair, when a part of
the boundary unexpectedly fell, and gave a free passage to the
imprisoned students, of which they immediately took the advantage, by
hurrying to the prohibited scene of amusement.
But although on these, and perhaps other occasions, Bonaparte displayed
some of the frolic temper of youth, mixed with the inventive genius and
the talent for commanding others by which he was distinguished in after
time, his life at school was in general that of a recluse and severe
student, acquiring by his judgment, and treasuring in his memory, that
wonderful process of almost unlimited combination, by means of which he
was afterwards able to simplify the most difficult and complicated
undertakings. His mathematical teacher was proud of the young islander,
as the boast of his school, and his other scientific instructors had the
same reason to be satisfied.
In languages Bonaparte was less a proficient, and never acquired the art
of writing or spelling French, far less foreign languages, with accuracy
or correctness; nor had the monks of Brienne any reason to pride
themselves on the classical proficiency of their scholar. The full
energies of his mind being devoted to the scientific pursuits of his
profession, left little time or inclination for other studies.
Though of Italian origin, Bonaparte had not a decided taste for the fine
arts, and his taste in composition seems to have leaned towards the
grotesque and the bombastic. He used always the most exaggerated
phrases; and it is seldom, if ever, that his bulletins present those
touches of sublimity which are founded on dignity and simplicity of
expression.
Notwithstanding the external calmness and reserve of his deportment, he
who was destined for such great things had, while yet a student at
Brienne, a full share of that ambition for distinction and dread of
disgrace, that restless and irritating love of fame, which is the spur
to extraordinary attempts. Sparkles of this keen temper sometimes showed
themselves. On one occasion, a harsh superintendant imposed on the
future emperor, for some trifling fault, the disgrace of wearing a
penitential dress, and being excluded from the table of the students,
and obliged to eat his meal apart. His pride felt the indignity so
severely, that it brought on a severe nervous attack; to which, though
otherwise of good constitution, he was subject upon occasions of
extraordinary irritation. Father Petrault, the professor of mathematics,
hastened to deliver his favourite pupil from the punishment by which he
was so much affected.
It is also said that an early disposition to the popular side
distinguished Bonaparte even when at Brienne. Pichegru, afterwards so
celebrated, who acted as his monitor in the military school, (a singular
circumstance,) bore witness to his early principles, and to the peculiar
energy and tenacity of his temper. He was long afterwards consulted
whether means might not be found to engage the commander of the Italian
armies in the royal interest. "It will be but lost time to attempt it,"
said Pichegru. "I knew him in his youth--his character is inflexible--he
has taken his side, and he will not change it."
In 1783, Napoleon Bonaparte, then only fourteen years old, was, though
under the usual age, selected by Monsieur de Keralio, the inspector of
the twelve military schools, to be sent to have his education completed
in the general school of Paris. It was a compliment paid to the
precocity of his extraordinary mathematical talent, and the steadiness
of his application. While at Paris he attracted the same notice as at
Brienne; and among other society, frequented that of the celebrated Abbé
Raynal, and was admitted to his literary parties. His taste did not
become correct, but his appetite for study in all departments was
greatly enlarged; and notwithstanding the quantity which he daily read,
his memory was strong enough to retain, and his judgment sufficiently
ripe to arrange and digest, the knowledge which he then acquired; so
that he had it at his command during all the rest of his busy life.
Plutarch was his favourite author; upon the study of whom he had so
modelled his opinions and habits of thought, that Paoli afterwards
pronounced him a young man of an antique caste, and resembling one of
the classical heroes.
Some of his biographers have about this time ascribed to him the
anecdote of a certain youthful pupil of the military school, who desired
to ascend in the car of a balloon with the aëronaut Blanchard, and was
so mortified at being refused, that he made an attempt to cut the
balloon with his sword. The story has but a flimsy support, and indeed
does not accord well with the character of the hero, which was deep and
reflective, as well as bold and determined, and not likely to suffer its
energies to escape in idle and useless adventure.
A better authenticated anecdote states, that at this time he expressed
himself disrespectfully towards the king in one of his letters to his
family. According to the practice of the school, he was obliged to
submit the letter to the censorship of Monsieur Domairon, the professor
of belles lettres, who, taking notice of the offensive passage, insisted
upon the letter being burnt, and added a severe rebuke. Long afterwards,
in 1802, Monsieur Domairon was commanded to attend Napoleon's levee, in
order that he might receive a pupil in the person of Jerome Bonaparte,
when the first consul reminded his old tutor good-humouredly, that times
had changed considerably since the burning of the letter.
Napoleon Bonaparte, in his seventieth year, received his first
commission as second lieutenant in a regiment of artillery, and was
almost immediately afterwards promoted to the rank of first lieutenant
in the corps quartered at Valence. He mingled with society when he
joined his regiment, more than he had hitherto been accustomed to do;
mixed in public amusements, and exhibited the powers of pleasing, which
he possessed in an uncommon degree when he chose to exert them. His
handsome and intelligent features, with his active and neat, though
slight figure, gave him additional advantages. His manners could
scarcely be called elegant, but made up in vivacity and variety of
expression, and often in great spirit and energy, for what they wanted
in grace and polish.
He became an adventurer for the honours of literature also, and was
anonymously a competitor for the prize offered by the Academy of Lyons
on Raynal's question, "What are the principles and institutions, by
application of which mankind can be raised to the highest pitch of
happiness?" The prize was adjudged to the young soldier. It is
impossible to avoid feeling curiosity to know the character of the
juvenile theories respecting government, advocated by one who at length
attained the power of practically making what experiments he pleased.
Probably his early ideas did not exactly coincide with his more mature
practice; for when Talleyrand, many years afterwards, got the essay out
of the records of the academy, and returned it to the author, Bonaparte
destroyed it after he had read a few pages. He also laboured under the
temptation of writing a journey to Mount Cenis, after the manner of
Sterne, which he was fortunate enough finally to resist. The affectation
which pervades Sterne's peculiar style of composition was not likely to
be simplified under the pen of Bonaparte.