His sisters, in particular, got from him everything that they wanted.

Neither of his wives ever had anything to complain of from Napoleon's personal manners. Although the fact is well known already, a saying of the Archduchess Marie Louise will put it in a new light. "I am sure," she said to me some time after her marriage, "that they think a great deal about me in Vienna, and that the general opinion is that I live a life of daily suffering. So true is it that truth is often not probable. I have no fear of Napoleon, but I begin to think that he is afraid of me."

Simple and even easy as he was in private life, he showed himself to little advantage in the great world. It is difficult to imagine anything more awkward than Napoleon's manner in a drawing room. The pains which he took to correct the faults of his nature and education only served to make his deficiencies more evident. I am satisfied that he would have made great sacrifices to add to his height and give dignity to his appearance, which became more common in proportion as his embonpoint increased. He walked by preference on tiptoe. His costumes were studied to form a contrast by comparison with the circle which surrounded him, either by their extreme simplicity or by their extreme magnificence. It is certain that he made Talma come to teach him particular attitudes. He showed much favor to this actor, and his affection was greatly founded on the likeness which really existed between them. He liked very much to see Talma on the stage; it might be said, in fact, that he saw himself reproduced. Out of his mouth there never came one graceful or even a wellturned speech to a woman, although the effort to make one was often expressed on his face and in the sound of his voice. . .

163. Place in History 1

In order to judge of this extraordinary man, we must follow him upon the grand theater for which he was born. Fortune

1 Metternich, Mémoires, vol. i, pp. 281–286.

had no doubt done much for Napoleon; but by the force of his character, the activity and lucidity of his mind, and by his genius for the great combinations of military science, he had risen to the level of the position which she had destined for him. Having but one passion, that of power, he never lost either his time or his means on those objects which might have diverted him from his aim. Master of himself, he soon became master of men and events. In whatever time he had appeared, he would have played a prominent part. But the epoch when he first entered on his career was particularly fitted to facilitate his elevation. Surrounded by individuals who, in the midst of a world in ruins, walked at random without any fixed guidance, given up to all kinds of ambition and greed, he alone was able to form a plan, hold it fast, and conduct it to its conclusion. It was in the course of the second campaign in Italy that he conceived the one which was to carry him to the summit of power. "When I was young," he said to me, "I was revolutionary from ignorance and ambition. At the age of reason, I have followed its counsels and my own instinct, and I crushed the Revolution.”

He was so accustomed to think of himself as necessary for the maintenance of the system he had created that at last he no longer understood how the world could go on without him. I have no doubt that he spoke from a deep and thorough conviction when, in our conversation at Dresden in 1813, he said to me these very words, "I shall perish, perhaps; but in my fall I shall drag down thrones, and with them the whole of society."

The prodigious successes of which his life was full had doubtless ended by blinding him; but up to the time of the campaign of 1812, when he for the first time succumbed under the weight of illusions, he never lost sight of the profound calculations by which he had so often conquered. Even after the disaster of Moscow, we have seen him defend himself with as much coolness as energy, and the campaign of 1814 was certainly the one in which he displayed most military talent, and

that with much reduced means. I have never been among those — and their number was considerable - who thought that after the events of 1814 and 1815 he tried to create a new career, by descending to the part of an adventurer, and by giving in to the most romantic projects. His character and the turn of his mind made him despise all that was petty. Like great gamblers, instead of being pleased with the chances of a petty game, they would have filled him with disgust.

It has often been asked whether Napoleon was radically good or bad. I have always thought that these epithets, as they are generally understood, are not applicable to a character such as his. Constantly occupied with one sole object, given up day and night to the task of holding the helm of an empire which, by progressive encroachments, had finished by including the interests of a great part of Europe, he never recoiled from fear of the wounds he might cause, nor even from the immense amount of individual suffering inseparable from the execution of his projects. As a war chariot crushes everything which it meets on its way, Napoleon thought of nothing but to advance. He took no notice of those who had not been on their guard; he was sometimes tempted to accuse them of stupidity. Unmoved by anything which was out of his path, he did not concern himself with it for good or evil. He could sympathize with family troubles, he was indifferent to political calamities. .

...

Napoleon had two aspects. As a private man, he was easy tempered and tractable, without being either good or bad. In his public capacity he admitted no sentiment; he was never influenced either by affection or by hatred. He crushed or removed his enemies, without thinking of anything but the necessity or advisability of getting rid of them. This object gained, he forgot them entirely and injured them no more. . . .

The opinion of the world is still divided, and perhaps will always be, on the question whether Napoleon did in fact deserve to be called a great man. It would be impossible to dispute the great qualities of one who, rising from obscurity,

became in a few years the strongest and most powerful of his contemporaries. But strength, power, and superiority are more or less relative terms. To appreciate properly the degree of genius which has been required for a man to dominate his age, it is necessary to have the measure of that age. This is the point from which opinions with regard to Napoleon diverge so essentially. If the era of the Revolution was, as its admirers think, the most brilliant, the most glorious epoch of modern history, Napoleon, who was able to take the first place in it, and to keep it for fifteen years, was certainly one of the greatest men who have ever appeared. If, on the contrary, he had only to move like a meteor above the mists of a general dissolution; if he had found nothing around him but the débris of a social condition ruined by the excess of false civilization; if he had only to combat a resistance weakened by universal lassitude, feeble rivalries, ignoble passions, in fact, adversaries everywhere disunited and paralyzed by their disagreements, the splendor of his success diminishes with the facility with which he obtained it. Now, as in our opinion, this was really the state of things, we are in no danger of exaggerating the idea of Napoleon's grandeur, though acknowledging that there was something extraordinary and imposing in his career.

The vast edifice which he constructed was exclusively the work of his hands, and he was himself the keystone of the arch. But this gigantic construction was essentially wanting in its foundation; the materials of which it was composed were nothing but the ruins of other buildings; some were rotten from decay, others had never possessed any consistency from their very beginning. The keystone of the arch has been withdrawn, and the whole edifice has fallen in.

Such is, in a few words, the history of the French Empire. Conceived and created by Napoleon, it only existed in him; and with him it was extinguished.

CHAPTER XXXIV

BISMARCK AND THE UNIFICATION OF GERMANY 1

AFTER Bismarck's dismissal in 1890 from the office of German Chancellor, he gave much time to the preparation of his memoirs. The groundwork of the first draft consisted of shorthand notes taken down at his dictation. These he carefully revised and supplemented with additions in his own hand. The manuscript was then privately printed and in this shape was subjected to additional revision and verification. We can be sure that the memoirs in their final form are exactly as Bismarck wished to leave them. They were not given to the world till 1898, a few months after their author's death.

164. "Blood and Iron" 2

William I, on becoming regent of Prussia in 1858 and king three years later, surrounded himself with that group of brilliant men whose labors did so much to create modern Germany. As chief of the general staff of the army he appointed Helmuth von Moltke, as war minister he named Albrecht von Roon, and in 1862 he summoned Bismarck to be his minister-president and foreign minister. Bismarck's duty was to carry on the government against the wishes of the Prussian parliament, which did not approve William's policy of building up a large and efficient army. In the following narrative Bismarck explains how he strengthened the king's resolution at a time when there seemed to be danger of a revolution in Prussia.

In the beginning of October, 1862, I went as far as Jüterbogk to meet the king, who had been at Baden-Baden for September 1 Bismarck the Man and the Statesman. Being the Reflections and Reminiscences of Otto, Prince von Bismarck, translated by A. J. Butler. 3 vols. Leipzig, 1899. Bernhard Tauchnitz.

2 Bismarck, Reflections and Reminiscences, vol. i, pp. 74-77.