ABSTRACT
From this time the interest of the domestic development of France is rivalled by the story of the victories of the French armies until we are in danger of forgetting what is happening in France altogether, and of fixing our eyes only upon the personal triumphs of Napoleon. Napoleon was without question a man of extraordinary force of brain and character, who under all circumstances and in all countries would have won for himself a high position. He had great powers of work and of organisation, exactitude, rapid insight, courage, willingness to accept responsibility, resolution in following a plan once undertaken—all the qualities of the soldier in their highest development; and with all he had the gift of genius which defies analysis. But his rise is much more than the story of a capable man winning for himself a high place in the world. It reflects also one of the most general laws that may be observed on the surface of history. We can see constantly how a period of confusion and of revolution ends in the establishment of some strong and often of a personal power. The instances that are usually quoted in comparison with Napoleon’s life history are the establishment of the Roman Empire by Julius Caesar after a century of confusion and revolution in Rome, and the personal rule of Oliver Cromwell which followed the Puritan revolution. But these are only the most obvious instances. We may see something of the same sort when the Tudor Monarchy follows the Wars of the Roses; when the strong concentration of the French kings under Charles VII and Louis XI brought to an end the long agony and turmoil of the Hundred Years’ War in France; or, again, when the Thirty Years’ War in Germany is followed very generally by the establishment of personal rule. So general a development must have common causes, and they are not difficult to determine. In the first place societies that have undergone great confusion from whatever cause feel the need of some established order as the first necessity of their social life. If they cannot obtain it by constitutional means, by mutual agreement, and through the employment of liberty, they are willing that it should be secured by the strong hand of a soldier. And again, in a revolution such as that which we have been examining, and in periods of confusion such as the others that we have referred to, we may see the decision slipping into the hands of those who control the largest amount of physical force. In France especially the will of the people and the votes of citizens, though often praised and idealised, had hardly decided any important issue since 1793. The Monarchy had been overthrown by violence, the Republic had been established and had been saved by violence, it was by violence that Robespierre had risen and by violence that he had been overthrown. It was natural therefore that France should be at last ruled by violence in its highest development; not by the unruly mobs of the Paris streets, but by the trained and victorious legions of France herself. Lastly, we may note that France was growing weary of political and social controversy. The ardent hopes of 1789 had in part been realised, but more generally they had been proved incapable of realisation, and whilst men were growing cynical or hostile to the squabbles of party politicians whose great words and aspirations were never translated into action, they were more and more dazzled by the victories that had been won in the past by the Generals of the Republic, and which were now to be won in an even more dazzling form by Napoleon Bonaparte. What Rousseau almost recommended in his Social Contract and Burke had prophesied in a splendid passage of the Reflections was now to come to pass. A movement that had begun in a passionate and even extravagant desire for liberty was to end in the rule of a soldier-dictator. 1
