Various - History is a Set of Lies Agreed Upon - Writings about the Great Napoleon Bonaparte

WRITINGS ABOUT THE
GREAT
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

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By Is aac Mclellan

By Pierre-Louis-Thophile-G eorges Goyau

By Id a M. Tarbell

By Ralph W aldo Emerson

By Sarah Kn owles Bolton

B y Lyndon Orr

B y Lyndon Orr

NAP OLEON'S WILL

By Rich ard Whately

Wild was the night, yet a wilder night

Hung round the soldier's pillow;

In his bosom there waged a fiercer fight

Than the fight on the wrathful billow.

A few fond mourners were kneeling by,

The few that his stern heart cherished;

They knew, by his glazed and unearthly eye,

That life had nearly perished.

They knew by his awful and kingly look,

By the order hastily spoken,

That he dreamed of days when the nations shook,

And the nations' hosts were broken.

He dreamed that the Frenchman's sword still slew,

And triumphed the Frenchman's eagle,

And the struggling Austrian fled anew,

Like the hare before the beagle.

The bearded Russian he scourged again,

The Prussian's camp was routed,

And again on the hills of haughty Spain

His mighty armies shouted.

Over Egypt's sands, over Alpine snows,

At the pyramids, at the mountain,

Where the wave of the lordly Danube flows,

And by the Italian fountain,

On the snowy cliffs where mountain streams

Dash by the Switzer's dwelling,

He led again, in his dying dreams,

His hosts, the proud earth quelling.

Again Marengo's field was won,

And Jena's bloody battle;

Again the world was overrun,

Made pale at his cannon's rattle.

He died at the close of that darksome day,

A day that shall live in story;

In the rocky land they placed his clay,

And left him alone with his glory."

A poem from
Poems That Every Child Should Know, 1904

Emperor of the French, second son of Charles Marie Bonaparte and Maria Ltitia Ramolino, b. at Ajaccio, in Corsica, 15 August, 1769; d. on the Island of St. Helena, 5 May, 1821.

His childhood was spent in Corsica; at the end of the year 1778 he entered the college of Autun, in 1779 the military school of Brienne, and in 1783 the military school of Paris. In 1785, when he was in garrison at Valence, as a lieutenant, he occupied his leisure with researches into the history of Corsica and read many of the philosophers of his time, particularly Rousseau. These studies left him attached to a sort of Deism, an admirer of the personality of Christ, a stranger to all religious practices, and breathing defiance against "sacerdotalism" and "theocracy". His attitude under the Revolution was that of a citizen devoted to the new ideas, in testimony of which attitude we have his scolding letter, written in 1790, to Battafuoco, a deputy from the Corsican noblesse, whom the "patriots" regarded as a traitor, and also a work published by Bonaparte in 1793, "Le Souper de Beaucaire", in which he takes the side of the Mountain in the Convention against the Federalist tendencies of th e Girondins.

His military genius revealed itself in December, 1793, when he was twenty-four years of age, in his recapture of Toulon from the English. He was made a general of brigade in the artillery, 20 December, and in 1794 contributed to Massna's victories in Italy. The political suspicions aroused by his friendship with the younger Robespierre after 9 Thermidor of the Year III (27 July, 1794), the intrigues which led to his being removed from the Italian frontier and sent to command a brigade against the Vendeans in the west, and ill health, which he used as a pretext to refuse this post and remain in Paris, almost brought his career to an end. He contemplated leaving France to take command of the sultan's artillery. But in 1795 when the Convention was threatened, Bonaparte was selected for the duty of pouring grapeshot upon its enemies from the platform of the church of Saint Roch (13 Vendmiaire, Year IV). He displayed great moderation in his hour of victory, and managed to earn at once the gratitude of the Convention and the esteem of its enemies.

On 8 March, 1798, he contracted a civil marriage with the widow of Alexandre de Beauharnais, Marie Josphine Rose Tascher de la Pagerie, who was born in Martinique, in 1763, of a family originally belonging to the neighbourhood of Blois. In the same month Napoleon set out for Italy, where the Directory, prompted by Carnot, had appointed him commander in chief against the First Coalition. The victory of Montenotte, over the Austrians commanded by Beaulieu, and those of Millesimo, Dego, Ceva, and Mondovi, over Colle's Piedmontese troops, forced Victor Amadeus, King of Sardinia, to conclude the armistice of Cherasco (28 April, 1796). Wishing to effect a junction on the Danube with the Army of the Rhine, Bonaparte spent the following May in driving Beaulieu across Northern Italy, and succeeded in pushing him back into the Tyrol. On 7 May he was ordered by the Directory to leave half of his troops in Lombardy, under Kellermann's command, and march with the other half against Leghorn, Rome, and Naples. Unwilling to share the glory with Kellermann, Bonaparte replied by tendering his resignation, and the order was not insisted on. In a proclamation to his soldiers (20 May, 1796) he declared his intention of leading them to the banks of the Tiber to chastise those who had "whetted the daggers of civil war in France" and "basely assassinated" Basseville, the French minister, to "re-establish the Capitol, place there in honour the statues of heroes who had made themselves famous", and to "arouse the Roman people benumbed by many centuries of bondage". In June he entered the Romagna, appeared at Bologna and Ferrara, and made prisoners of several prelates. The Court of Rome demanded an armistice, and Bonaparte, who was far from eager for this war against the Holy See, granted it. The Peace of Bologna (23 June, 1796) obliged the Holy See to give up Bologna and Ferrara to French occupation, to pay twenty one million francs, to surrender 100 pictures, 500 manuscripts, and the busts of Junius and Marcus Brutus. The Directory thought these terms too easy, and when a prelate was sent to Paris to negotiate the treaty, he was told that as an indispensable condition of peace, Pius VI must revoke the Briefs relating to the Civil Constitution of the clergy and to the Inquisition. The Pope refused, and negotiations were broken off; they failed again at Florence, where an attempt had been made to renew them.