Representative Men: Seven Lectures
and wise master-workman. He is never weak and literary, but acts with
the solidity and the precision of natural agents. He has not lost his
native sense and sympathy with things. Men give way before such a man
as before natural events. To be sure, there are men enough who are
immersed in things, as farmers, smiths, sailors, and mechanics
generally; and we know how real and solid such men appear in the
presence of scholars and grammarians; but these men ordinarily lack
the power of arrangement, and are like hands without a head. But
Bonaparte superadded to this mineral and animal force, insight and
generalization, so that men saw in him combined the natural and the
intellectual power, as if the sea and land had taken flesh and begun
to cipher. Therefore the land and sea seem to presuppose him. He came
unto his own, and they received him. This ciphering operative knows
what he is working with, and what is the product. He knew the properties
of gold and iron, of wheels and ships, of troops and diplomatists, and
required that each should do after its kind.
The art of war was the game in which he exerted his arithmetic. It
consisted, according to him, in having always more forces than the
enemy, on the point where the enemy is attacked, or where he attacks:
and his whole talent is strained by endless manoeuvre and evolution,
to march always on the enemy at an angle, and destroy his forces in
detail. It is obvious that a very small force, skilfully and rapidly
manoeuvring, so as always to bring two men against one at the point
of engagement, will be an overmatch for a much larger body of men.
The times, his constitution, and his early circumstances, combined to
develop this pattern democrat. He had the virtues of his class, and
the conditions for their activity. That common sense, which no sooner
respects any end, than it finds the means to effect it; the delight
in the use of means; in the choice, simplification, and combining of
means; the directness and thoroughness of his work; the prudence with
which all was seen, and the energy with which all was done, make him
the natural organ and head of what I may almost call, from its extent,
the modern party.
Nature must have far the greatest share in every success, and so in
his. Such a man was wanted, and such a man was born; a man of stone
and iron, capable of sitting on horseback sixteen or seventeen hours,
of going many days together without rest or food, except by snatches,
and with the speed and spring of a tiger in action; a man not
embarrassed by any scruples; compact, instant, selfish, prudent, and
of a perception which did not suffer itself to be balked or misled by
any pretences of others, or any superstition, or any heat or haste of
his own. "My hand of iron," he said, "was not at the extremity of my
arm; it was immediately connected with my head." He respected the power
of nature and fortune, and ascribed to it his superiority, instead of
valuing himself, like inferior men, on his opinionativeness and waging
war with nature. His favorite rhetoric lay in allusion to his star:
and he pleased himself, as well as the people, when he styled himself
the "Child of Destiny." "They charge me," he said, "with the commission
of great crimes: men of my stamp do not commit crimes. Nothing has
been more simple than my elevation: 'tis in vain to ascribe it to
intrigue or crime: it was owing to the peculiarity of the times, and
to my reputation of having fought well against the enemies of my
country. I have always marched with the opinion of great masses, and
with events. Of what use, then, would crimes be to me?" Again he said,
speaking of his son, "My son cannot replace me; I could not replace
myself. I am the creature of circumstances." He had a directness of
action never before combined with so much comprehension. He is a
realist, terrific to all talkers, and confused truth-obscuring persons.
He sees where the matter hinges, throws himself on the precise point
of resistance, and slights all other considerations. He is strong in
the right manner, namely, by insight. He never blundered into victory,
but won his battles in his head, before he won them on the field. His
principal means are in himself. He asks counsel of no other. In 1796,
he writes to the Directory: "I have conducted the campaign without
consulting any one. I should have done no good, if I had been under
the necessity of conforming to the notions of another person. I have
gained some advantages over superior forces, and when totally destitute
of everything, because, in the persuasion that your confidence was
reposed in me, my actions were as prompt as my thoughts."
History is full, down to this day, of the imbecility of kings and
governors. They are a class of persons much to be pitied, for they
know not what they should do. The weavers strike for bread; and the
king and his ministers, not knowing what to do, meet them with bayonets.
But Napoleon understood his business. Here was a man who, in each
moment and emergency, knew what to do next. It is an immense comfort
and refreshment to the spirits, not only of kings, but of citizens.
Few men have any next; they live from hand to mouth, without plan, and
are ever at the end of their line, and, after each action, wait for
an impulse from abroad. Napoleon had been the first man of the world
if his ends had been purely public. As he is, he inspires confidence
and vigor by the extraordinary unity of his action. He is firm, sure,
self-denying, self-postponing, sacrificing everything to his
aim,--money, troops, generals, and his own safety also, to his aim;
not misled, like common adventurers, by the splendor of his own means.
"Incidents ought not to govern policy," he said, "but policy,
incidents." "To be hurried away by every event, is to have no political
system at all. His victories were only so many doors, and he never for
a moment lost sight of his way onward, in the dazzle and uproar of the
present circumstance. He knew what to do, and he flew to his mark. He
would shorten a straight line to come at his object. Horrible anecdotes
may, no doubt, be collected from his history, of the price at which
he bought his successes; but he must not therefore be set down as
cruel; but only as one who knew no impediment to his will; not
bloodthirsty, not cruel,--but woe to what thing or person stood in his
way! Not bloodthirsty, but not sparing of blood,--and pitiless. He saw
only the object: the obstacle must give way. "Sire, General Clarke
cannot combine with General Junot, for the dreadful fire of the Austrian
battery."--"Let him carry the battery."--"Sire, every regiment that
approaches the heavy artillery is sacrified: Sire, what orders?"--
"Forward, forward!" Seruzier, a colonel of artillery, gives, in his
"Military Memoirs," the following sketch of a scene after the battle
of Austerlitz.--"At the moment in which the Russian army was making
its retreat, painfully, but in good order, on the ice of the lake, the
Emperor Napoleon came riding at full speed toward the artillery. 'You
are losing time,' he cried; 'fire upon those masses; they must be
engulfed; fire upon the ice!' The order remained unexecuted for ten
minutes. In vain several officers and myself were placed on the slope
of a hill to produce the effect; their balls and mine rolled upon the
ice, without breaking it up. Seeing that, I tried a simple method of
elevating light howitzers. The almost perpendicular fall of the heavy
projectiles produced the desired effect. My method was immediately
followed by the adjoining batteries, and in less than no time we buried
'some' [Footnote: As I quote at second-hand, and cannot procure
Seruzier, I dare not adopt the high figure I find.] thousands of
Russians and Austrians under the waters of the lake."
In the plenitude of his resources, every obstacle seemed to vanish.
"There shall be no Alps," he said; and he built his perfect roads,
climbing by graded galleries their steepest precipices, until Italy
was as open to Paris as any town in France. He laid his bones to, and
wrought for his crown. Having decided what was to be done, he did that
with might and main. He put out all his strength. He risked everything,
and spared nothing, neither ammunition, nor money, nor troops, nor
generals, nor himself.
We like to see everything do its office after its kind, whether it be
a milch-cow or a rattlesnake; and, if fighting be the best mode of
adjusting national differences (as large majorities of men seem to
agree), certainly Bonaparte was right in making it thorough. "The grand
principle of war," he said, "was, that an army ought always to be
ready, by day and by night, and at all hours, to make all the resistance
it is capable of making." He never economized his ammunition, but, on
a hostile position, rained a torrent of iron,--shells, balls,
grape-shot,--to annihilate all defense. On any point of resistance,
he concentrated squadron on squadron in overwhelming numbers, until
it was swept out of existence. To a regiment of horse-chasseurs at
Lobenstein, two days before the battle of Jena, Napoleon said, "My
lads, you must not fear death; when soldiers brave death, they drive
him into the enemy's ranks." In the fury of assault, he no more spared
himself. He went to the edge of his possibility. It is plain that in
Italy he did what he could, and all that he could. He came, several
times, within an inch of ruin; and his own person was all but lost.
He was flung into the marsh at Arcola. The Austrians were between him
and his troops, in the melee, and he was brought off with desperate
efforts. At Lonato, and at other places, he was on the point of being
taken prisoner. He fought sixty battles. He had never enough. Each
victory was a new weapon. "My power would fall, were I not to support
it by new achievements. Conquest has made me what I am, and conquest
must maintain me." He felt, with every wise man, that as much life is
needed for conservation as for creation. We are always in peril, always
in a bad plight, just on the edge of destruction, and only to be saved
by invention and courage.
This vigor was guarded and tempered by the coldest prudence and
punctuality. A thunderbolt in the attack, he was found invulnerable
in his intrenchments. His very attack was never the inspiration of
courage, but the result of calculation. His idea of the best defense
consists in being still the attacking party. "My ambition," he says,
"was great, but was of a cold nature." In one of his conversations
with Las Casas, he remarked, "As to moral courage, I have rarely met
with the two-o'clock-in-the-morning kind; I mean unprepared courage,
that which, is necessary on an unexpected occasion; and which, in spite
of the most unforeseen events, leaves full freedom of judgment and
decision;" and he did not hesitate to declare that he was himself
eminently endowed with this "two-o'clock-in-the-morning courage, and
that he had met with few persons equal to himself in this respect."
Everything depended on the nicety of his combinations, and the stars
were not more punctual than his arithmetic. His personal attention
descended to the smallest particulars. "At Montebello, I ordered
Kellermann to attack with eight hundred horse, and with these he
separated the six thousand Hungarian grenadiers, before the very eyes
of the Austrian cavalry. This cavalry was half a league off, and
required a quarter of an hour to arrive on the field of action; and
I have observed, that it is always these quarters of an hour that
decide the fate of a battle." "Before he fought a battle, Bonaparte
thought little about what he should do in case of success, but a great
deal about what he should do in case of a reverse of fortune. "The
same prudence and good sense mark all his behavior. His instructions