2. Logic as Metaphysics
3. Mind
4. Morality, Law, and the State
5. History
6. Death and Return
Chapter XXXIII. AROUND THE HEARTLAND: 1789–1812
I. Switzerland
II. Sweden
III. Denmark
IV. Poland
V. Turkey in Europe
Chapter XXXIV. RUSSIA: 1796–1812
I. Milieu
II. Paul I: 1796–1801
III. The Education of an Emperor
IV. The Young Czar: 1801–04
V. The Jews under Alexander
VI. Russian Art
VII. Russian Literature
VIII. Alexander and Napoleon: 1805–12
BOOK V: FINALE: 1811–15
Chapter XXXV. TO MOSCOW: 1811–15
I. The Continental Blockade
II. France in Depression: 1811
III. Preface to War: 1811–12
IV. The Road to Moscow: June 26-September 14, 1812
V. The Burning of Moscow: September 15–19, 1812
VI. The Way Back: October 19-November 28, 1812
Chapter XXXVI. TO ELBA: 1813–14
I. To Berlin
II. To Prague
III. To the Rhine
IV. To the Breaking Point
V. To Paris
VI. To Peace
Chapter XXXVII. TO WATERLOO: 1814–15
I. Louis XVIII
II. The Congress of Vienna: September, 1814-June, 1815
III. Elba
IV. The Incredible Journey: March 1–20, 1815
V. Rebuilding
VI. The Last Campaign
1. June 15, 1815: Belgium
2. June 16: Ligny
3. June 17: Rain
4. Sunday, June 18: Waterloo
Chapter XXXVIII. TO ST. HELENA
I. The Second Abdication: June 22, 1815
II. The Second Restoration: July 7, 1815
III. Surrender: July 4-August 8, 1815
Chapter XXXIX. TO THE END
I. St. Helena
II. Sir Hudson Lowe
III. The Great Companions
IV. The Great Dictator
V. The Last Battle
Chapter XL. AFTERWARD: 1815–40
I. The Family
II. Homecoming
III. Perspective
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL GUIDE
NOTES
INDEX
List of Illustrations
THE page numbers following the captions refer to discussions in the text of the subject or the artist, or sometimes both.
Part I. This section follows page 156
FIG. 1-JACQUES-LOUIS DAVID: Unfinished Portrait of Bonaparte
FIG. 2-ENGRAVING AFTER A DAGUERREOTYPE: The Palace of Versailles
FIG. 3-ENGRAVING: The Destruction of the Bastille, July 14, 1789
FIG. 4-ENGRAVING: Louis XVI
FIG. 5-ENGRAVING AFTER A PAINTING BY CHAPPEL: Marie Antoinette
FIG. 6-MINIATURE ON IVORY BY AVY: Vicomte Paul de Barras
FIG. 7-SKETCH: Georges Jacques Danton, April 5, 1789
FIG. 8-JEAN-ANTOINE HOUDON: Mirabeau
FIG. 9-ENGRAVING BY HENRY COLBURN AFTER AN 1808 PAINTING BY FRANÇOIS GÉRARD: Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord
FIG. 10-BOZE: Jean-Paul Marat
FIG. 11-ANTOINE-JEAN GROS: Napoleon on the Bridge at Arcole, DETAIL
FIG. 12-STUDIO OF FRANÇOIS GÉRARD: The Empress Josephine
FIG. 13-Napoleon’s Study at Malmaison
FIG. 14-DAVID: Bonaparte Crossing the Alps
FIG. 15-GÉRARD: Emperor Napoleon I in His Coronation Robes
FIG. 16-DAVID: The Coronation of Napoleon
FIG. 17-MME. VIGÉE-LEBRUN: Madame de Staël as Corinne
FIG. 18-GIRODET: François-René de Chateaubriand
FIG. 19-GÉRARD: Madame Récamier
FIG. 20-DAVID: Self-Portrait
FIG. 21-ENGRAVING: François-Joseph Talma
FIG. 22-SÉVRES PLAQUE: Baron Georges-Léopold Cuvier
FIG. 23-ENGRAVING: Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck
FIG. 24-ENGRAVING BY B. METZEROTH: Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile, Paris
FIG. 25-ENGRAVING: Napoleon I
FIG. 26-GÉRARD: Empress Marie Louise
FIG. 27-WOODCUT: Edmund Kean as Hamlet
FIG. 28-SKETCH BY C. MARTIN: J. M. W. Turner
FIG. 29-JOHN CONSTABLE: The Hay Wain
FIG. 30-J. M. W. TURNER: Calais Pier
FIG. 31-ENGRAVING BY WILLIAM SHARP AFTER A PAINTING BY GEORGE ROMNEY: Thomas Paine
FIG. 32-SKETCH: Robert Owen
FIG. 33 -Portrait of Erasmus Darwin
FIG. 34-ENGRAVING: Sir Humphry Davy
FIG. 35-LITHOGRAPH AFTER A PAINTING BY JOHN OPIE: Mary Wollstonecraft
FIG. 36-CARICATURE FROM A DRAWING BY MACHSE: William Godwin, “The Ridiculous Philosopher”
FIG. 37-ENGRAVING BY JOHN LINNELL: Thomas Malthus
FIG. 38-J. WATTS: Jeremy Bentham
FIG. 39-ENGRAVING: Jane Austen
FIG. 40-WILLIAM ALLAN: Sir Walter Scott
FIG. 41-P. VANDYKE: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
FIG. 42-F. L. CHANTREY: Robert Southey
FIG. 43-R. WESTALL: Lord Byron
FIG. 44-ENGRAVING BY THOMAS LANDSEER AFTER AN 1818 DRAWING BY BENJAMIN R. HAYDON: William Wordsworth
FIG. 45-WILLIAM BLAKE: Percy Bysshe Shelley
FIG. 46-BLAKE: The Flight into Egypt
Part II. This section follows page 528
FIG. 47-SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE: Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington
FIG. 48-GEORGE ROMNEY: William Pitt the Younger
FIG. 49-LAWRENCE: George IV as Prince Regent
FIG. 50-ROMNEY: Lady Hamilton as Ariadne
FIG. 51-L. F. ABBOTT: Nelson after Losing His Arm at Teneriffe
FIG. 52-HENRY SCHEFFER: Prince Eugène de Beauharnais, Viceroy
FIG. 53-Portrait of Pauline Bonaparte
FIG. 54-DAVID: Pope Pius VII
FIG. 55-ENGRAVING AFTER A PAINTING BY LAWRENCE: Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich
FIG. 56-PAINTING AFTER A PORTRAIT BY DROUAIS: Emperor Joseph II
FIG. 57-ENGRAVING: Queen Louise of Prussia
FIG. 58-Karl Friedrich Gauss
FIG. 59 -Statue of Alessandro Volta
FIG. 60-KARL GOTTHARD LANGHANS: The Brandenburg Gate
FIG. 61-WOODCUT AFTER A DRAWING BY JOHANNES VEIT: Friedrich von Schlegel
FIG. 62-ENGRAVING BY F. HUMPHREY: August Wilhelm von Schlegel
FIG. 63-PORTRAIT AFTER AN 1808 PAINTING BY DAHLING: Johann Gottlieb Fichte
FIG. 64-DRAWING: Johann Christian Friedrich von Schiller
FIG. 65-CHARCOAL DRAWING BY GEBBERS: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, age 77
FIG. 66-WOODCUT: Ludwig van Beethoven
FIG. 67-JOHN CAWSE: Carl Maria von Weber
FIG. 68-ENGRAVING BY H. P. HANSEN AFTER A PAINTING BY RIEPENHAUSEN: Adam Gottlob Oehlenschläger
FIG. 69-SKETCH: Esaias Tegnér
FIG. 70-ENGRAVING BY X. A. VON R. CREMER AFTER A PAINTING BY GEBBERS: Hegel in His Study
FIG. 71-ENGRAVING: The Winter Palace, St. Petersburg
FIG. 72-GÉRARD: Czar Alexander I
FIG. 73-ENGRAVING: Marshal Michel Ney
FIG. 74-PAINTING AFTER AN EYEWITNESS SKETCH BY J. A. KLEIN: The Retreat from Moscow
FIG. 75-DRAWING BY ALFRED CROQUIS: Talleyrand, author of “Palmerston, une Comédie de Deux Ans”
FIG. 76-JEAN-BAPTISTE ISABEY: Louis XVIII
FIG. 77-GEORGE DAWE: Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blüeher
FIG. 78-J. JACKSON: Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington
FIG. 79-MARCHAND: View of Longwood
FIG. 80-LITHOGRAPH BY JOSEF KRIEHUBER AFTER A PAINTING BY MORITZ MICHAEL DAFFINGER: Napoleon II, the Duke of Reichstadt
FIG. 81-Napoleon at St. Helena
FIG. 82-Napoleon’s Tomb in the Hôtel des Invalides, Paris
BOOK I
THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
1789–99
CHAPTER I
The Background of Revolution
1774–89
I. THE FRENCH PEOPLE
FRANCE was the most populous and prosperous nation in Europe. Russia in 1780 had 24 million inhabitants, Italy 17 million, Spain 10 million, Great Britain 9 million, Prussia 8.6 million, Austria 7.9 million, Ireland 4 million, Belgium 2.2 million, Portugal 2.1 million, Sweden 2 million, Holland 1.9 million, Switzerland 1.4 million, Denmark 800,000, Norway 700,000, France 25 million.1 Paris was the largest city in Europe, with some 650,000 inhabitants, the best-educated and most excitable in Europe.
The people of France were divided into three orders, or classes (états—states or estates): the clergy, some 130,0002 souls; the nobility, some 400, 000; and the Tiers État, which included everybody else; the Revolution was the attempt of this economically rising but politically disadvantaged Third Estate to achieve political power and social acceptance commensurate with its growing wealth. Each of the classes was divided into subgroups or layers, so that nearly everyone could enjoy the sight of persons below him.
The richest class was the ecclesiastical hierarchy—cardinals, archbishops, bishops, and abbots; among the poorest were the pastors and curates of the countryside; here the economic factor crossed the lines of doctrine, and in the Revolution the lower clergy joined with the commonalty against their own superiors. Monastic life had lost its lure; the Benedictines, numbering 6,434 in the France of 1770, had been reduced to 4,300 in 1790; nine orders of “religious” had been disbanded by 1780, and in 1773 the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) had been dissolved. Religion in general had declined in the French cities; in many towns the churches were half empty; and among the peasantry pagan customs and old superstitions competed actively with the doctrines and ceremonies of the Church.3 The nuns, however, were still actively devoted to teaching and nursing, and were honored by rich and poor alike. Even in that skeptical and practical age there were thousands of women, children, and men who eased the buffets of life with piety, fed their imaginations with tales of the saints, interrupted the succession of toilsome days with holyday ritual and rest, and found in religious hopes an anodyne to defeat and a refuge from bewilderment and despair.
The state supported the Church because statesmen generally agreed that the clergy gave them indispensable aid in preserving social order. In their view the natural inequality of human endowment made inevitable an unequal distribution of wealth; it seemed important, for the safety of the possessing classes, that a corps of clerics should be maintained to provide the poor with counsels of peaceful humility and expectation of a compensating Paradise. It meant much to France that the family, buttressed with religion, remained as the basis of national stability through all vicissitudes of the state. Moreover, obedience was encouraged by belief in the divine right of kings—the divine origin of their appointment and power; the clergy inculcated this belief, and the kings felt that this myth was a precious aid to their personal security and orderly rule. So they left to the Catholic clergy almost all forms of public education; and when the growth of Protestantism in France threatened to weaken the authority and usefulness of the national Church, the Huguenots were ruthlessly expelled.
Grateful for these services, the state allowed the Church to collect tithes and other income from each parish, and to manage the making of wills—which encouraged moribund sinners to buy promissory notes, collectible in heaven, in exchange for earthly property bequeathed to the Church. The government exempted the clergy from taxation, and contented itself with receiving, now and then, a substantial don gratuit, or free grant, from the Church. So variously privileged, the Church in France accumulated large domains, reckoned by some as a fifth of the soil;4 and these it ruled as feudal properties, collecting feudal dues. It turned the contributions of the faithful into gold and silver ornaments which, like the jewels of the crown, were consecrated and inviolable hedges against the inflation that seemed ingrained in history.
Many parish priests, mulcted of parish income by the tithe, labored in pious poverty, while many bishops lived in stately elegance, and lordly archbishops, far from their sees, fluttered about the court of the king. As the French government neared bankruptcy, while the French Church (according to Talleyrand’s estimate) enjoyed an annual income of 150 million livres,*the tax-burdened Third Estate wondered why the Church should not be compelled to share its wealth with the state. When the literature of unbelief spread, thousands of middle-class citizens and hundreds of aristocrats shed the Christian faith, and were ready to view with philosophic calm the raids of the Revolution upon the sacred, guarded hoard.
The nobility was vaguely conscious that it had outlived many of the functions that had been its reasons for being. Its proudest element, the nobility of the sword (noblesse d’épée), had served as the military guard, economic director, and judiciary head of the agricultural communities; but much of these services had been superseded by the centralization of power and administration under Richelieu and Louis XIV; many of the seigneurs now lived at the court and neglected their domains; and their rich raiment, fine manners, and general amiability5 seemed, in 1789, insufficient reason for owning a fourth of the soil and exacting feudal dues.
The more ancient families among them called themselves la noblesse de race, tracing their origin to the Germanic Franks who had conquered and renamed Gaul in the fifth century; in 1789 Camille Desmoulins would turn this boast against them as alien invaders when he called for revolution as a long-delayed racial revenge. Actually some ninety-five percent of the French nobility were increasingly bourgeois and Celtic, having mated their lands and titles to the new wealth and agile brains of the middle class.
A rising portion of the aristocracy—the noblesse de robe, or nobility of the gown—consisted of some four thousand families whose heads had been appointed to judicial or administrative posts that automatically endowed their holders with nobility. As most such posts had been sold by the king or his ministers to raise revenue for the state, many of the purchasers felt warranted in regaining their outlay by a genial susceptibility to bribes;6“venality in office” was “unusually widespread in France,”7 and was one of a hundred complaints against the dying regime. Some of these titles to office and rank were hereditary, and as their holders multiplied, especially in the parlements, or law courts, of the various districts, their pride and power grew to the point where in 1787 the Parlement of Paris claimed the right to veto the decrees of the king. In terms of time the Revolution began near the top.
In Qu’est-ce que le Tiers état?—a pamphlet published in January, 1789—the Abbé Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès asked and answered three questions: What is the Third Estate? Everything. What has it been till now? Nothing. What does it want to be? Something,8 or, in Chamfort’s emendation, tout—everything. It was nearly everything. It included the bourgeoisie, or middle class, with its 100,000 families9 and its many layers—bankers, brokers, manufacturers, merchants, managers, lawyers, physicians, scientists, teachers, artists, authors, journalists, the press (the fourth “estate,” or power); and the menu peuple, “little people” (sometimes called “the people”), consisting of the proletariat and tradesmen of the towns, the transport workers on land or sea, and the peasantry.
The upper middle classes held and managed a rising and spreading force: the power of mobile money and other capital in aggressive, expansive competition with the power of static land or a declining creed. They speculated on the stock exchanges of Paris, London, and Amsterdam, and, in Necker’s estimate, controlled half the money of Europe.10 They financed the French government with loans, and threatened to overthrow it if their loans and charges were not met. They owned or managed the rapidly developing mining and metallurgical industry of northern France, the textile industry of Lyons, Troyes, Abbeville, Lille, and Rouen, the iron and salt works of Lorraine, the soap factories of Marseilles, the tanneries of Paris. They managed the capitalist indu
stry that was replacing the craft shops and guilds of the past; they welcomed the doctrine of the Physiocrats11 that free enterprise would be more stimulating and productive than the traditional regulation of industry and trade by the state. They financed and organized the transformation of raw materials into finished goods, and transported these from producer to consumer, making a profit at both ends. They benefited from thirty thousand miles of the best roads in Europe, but they denounced the obstructive tolls that were charged on the roads and canals of France, and the different weights and measures jealously maintained by individual provinces. They controlled the commerce that was enriching Bordeaux, Marseilles, and Nantes; they formed great stock companies like the Compagnie des Indes and the Compagnie des Eaux; they widened the market from the town to the world; and through such trade they developed for France an overseas empire second only to England’s. They felt that they, not the nobility, were the creators of France’s growing wealth, and they determined to share equally with nobles and clergy in governmental favors and appointments, in status before the law and at the royal courts, in access to all the privileges and graces of French society. When Manon Roland, refined and accomplished but bourgeoise, was invited to visit a titled lady, and was asked to eat with the servants there instead of sitting at table with the noble guests, she raised a cry of protest that went to the hearts of the middle class.12 Such resentments and aspirations were in their thoughts when they joined in the revolutionary motto, “Liberty, equality, and fraternity”; they did not mean it downward as well as upward, but it served its purpose until it could be revised. Meanwhile the bourgeoisie became the most powerful of the forces that were making for revolution.
It was they who filled the theaters and applauded Beaumarchais’ satires of the aristocracy. It was they, even more than the nobility, who joined the Freemason lodges to work for freedom of life and thought; they who read Voltaire and relished his erosive wit, and agreed with Gibbon that all religions are equally false for the philosopher and equally useful for the statesman. They secretly admired the materialism of d’Holbach and Helvétius; it might not be quite just to the mysteries of life and mind, but it was a handy weapon against a Church that controlled most of the minds, and half the wealth, of France. They agreed with Diderot that nearly everything in the existing regime was absurd—though they smiled at his longing for Tahiti. They did not take to Rousseau, who smelled of socialism and reeked with certainty; but they, more than any other section of French society, felt and spread the influence of literature and philosophy.