HKB
general the Austrians had, was one of those flashes of inspiration which military writers, from Napoleon to Lord Wolseley, have shown to be a determining factor in every doubtful fray.
"Approfondissez--go to the bottom of things," wrote Lord Chesterfield; and this might have been the life-motto of the Emperor. But to adopt this fundamental common-sense with regard to the character of Napoleon is almost impossible; it is, to use the metaphor of Lord Rosebery, like trying to span a mountain with a tape. We can but indicate a few leading features. In the first place, he had, like the great Stagirite, an eye at once telescopic and microscopic. Beyond the mécanique céleste, beyond the nebulous reign of chaos and old night, his ken pierced the primal truth--the need of a Creator: "not every one can be an atheist who wishes it." No man saw deeper into the causes of things. The influence of sea power on history, to take one example, was never absent from his thoughts. Slowly and laboriously he built and rebuilt his fleets, only to fall into the hands of his "Punic" rival. Beaten at sea, he has but two weapons left against England--to "conquer her by land," or to stir up a maritime rival who will sooner or later avenge him. We have the Emperor Alexander's testimony from the merchants of Manchester, Birmingham, and Liverpool how nearly his Continental System had ruined us. The rival raised up beyond the western waves by the astute sale of Louisiana is still growing. In less than a decade Napoleon had a first crumb of comfort (when such crumbs were rare) in hearing of the victories of the Constitution over British frigates.
As for his microscopic eye, we know of nothing like it in all history. In focussing the facets, we seem to shadow out the main secret of his success--his ceaseless survey of all sorts and conditions of knowledge. "Never despise local information," he wrote Murat, who was at Naples, little anticipating the extremes of good and evil fortune which awaited him there. Another characteristic--one in which he surpassed alike the theory of Macchiavelli and the practice of the Medici--was his use of la bascule, with himself as equilibrist or average adjuster, as the only safe principle of government. Opinions on the whole[7] lean to the idea that, up to the First Consulate, Napoleon was an active Freemason, at a time when politics were permitted, and when the Grand Orient, having initiated Voltaire almost on his deathbed, and having been submerged by the Terror, was beginning to show new life. In any case, we have in O'Meara the Emperor's statement (and this is rather against the theory of Napoleon being more than his brother Joseph, a mere patron of the craft) that he encouraged the brotherhood. Cambacérès had more Masonic degrees than probably any man before or since, and no man was so long and so consistently trusted by Napoleon, with one short and significant exception. Then there was the gendarmerie d'élite, then the ordinary police, the myrmidons of Fouché of Nantes--in fact, if we take Lord Rosebery literally, Napoleon had "half-a-dozen police agencies of his own." There was also Talleyrand and, during the Concordats, the whole priest-craft of Christendom as enlisting sergeants and spies extraordinary for the Emperor. Finally, when he wishes to attack Russia, he convokes a Sanhedrim at Paris, and wins the active sympathies of Israel. "He was his own War Office, his own Foreign Office, his own Admiralty."[8] His weak spot was his neglect of woman as a political factor; this department he left to Josephine, who was a failure. She gained popularity, but no converts. The Faubourg St. Germain mistrusted a woman whose chief friend was the wife of Thermidorian Tallien--Notre Dame de Septembre. In vain Napoleon raged and stormed about the Tallien friendship, till his final mandate in 1806; and then it was too late.