The Paris Sketch Book of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh; and the Irish Sketch Book. William Makepeace Thackeray

raised with its own, that you should vanquish or fall together.’

      Let us take breath after these big phrases—grand round figures of speech—which, when put together, amount, like certain other combinations of round figures, to exactly 0. We shall not stop to argue the merits and demerits of Prince Louis’s notable comparison between the Christian religion and the Imperial-revolutionary system. There are many blunders in the above extract as we read it; blundering metaphors, blundering arguments, and blundering assertions; but this is surely the grandest blunder of all; and one wonders at the blindness of the legislator and historian who can advance such a parallel. And what are we to say of the legacy of the dying Revolution to Napoleon? Revolutions do not die, and, on their deathbeds, making fine speeches, hand over their property to young officers of artillery. We have all read the history of his rise. The constitution of the year III. was carried. Old men of the Montagne, disguised royalists, Paris sections, Pittetcobourg, above all, with his money-bags, thought that here was a fine opportunity for a revolt, and opposed the new constitution in arms: the new constitution had knowledge of a young officer, who would not hesitate to defend its cause, and who effectually beat the majority. The tale may be found in every account of the Revolution, and the rest of his story need not be told. We know every step that he took: we know how, by doses of cannon-balls promptly administered, he cured the fever of the sections—that fever which another camp-physician (Menou) declined to prescribe for; we know how he abolished the Directory; and how the Consulship came; and then the Empire; and then the disgrace, exile, and lonely death. Has not all this been written by historians in all tongues?—by memoir-writing pages, chamberlains, marshals, lackeys, secretaries, contemporaries, and ladies-of-honour? Not a word of miracle is there in all this narration; not a word of celestial missions, or political Messiahs. From Napoleon’s rise to his fall, the bayonet marches alongside of him: now he points it at the tails of the ‘five hundred,’—now he charges with it across the bloody Arcola—now he flies before it over the fatal plain of Waterloo.

      Unwilling, however, as he may be to grant that there are any spots in the character of his hero’s government, the Prince is, nevertheless, obliged to allow that such existed; that the Emperor’s manner of rule was a little more abrupt and dictatorial than might possibly be agreeable. For this the Prince has always an answer ready—it is the same poor one that Napoleon uttered a million of times to his companions in exile—the excuse of necessity. He would have been very liberal, but that the people were not fit for it; or that the cursed war prevented him—or any other reason why. His first duty, however, says his apologist, was to form a general union of Frenchmen, and he set about his plan in this wise:—

      ‘Let us not forget, that all which Napoleon undertook, in order to create a general fusion, he performed without renouncing the principles of the Revolution. He recalled the émigrés, without touching upon the law by which their goods had been confiscated and sold as public property. He re-established the Catholic religion at the same time that he proclaimed the liberty of conscience, and endowed equally the ministers of all sects. He caused himself to be consecrated by the Sovereign Pontiff, without conceding to the Pope’s demand any of the liberties of the Gallican Church. He married a daughter of the Emperor of Austria, without abandoning any of the rights of France to the conquests she had made. He re-established noble titles, without attaching to them any privileges or prerogatives, and these titles were conferred on all ranks, on all services, on all professions. Under the Empire all idea of caste was destroyed; no man ever thought of vaunting his pedigree—no man ever was asked how he was born, but what he had done.

      ‘The first quality of a people which aspires to liberal government is respect to the law. Now, a law has no other power than lies in the interest which each citizen has to defend or to contravene it. In order to make a people respect the law, it was necessary that it should be executed in the interest of all, and should consecrate the principle of equality in all its extension. It was necessary to restore the prestige with which the Government had been formerly invested, and to make the principles of the Revolution take root in the public manners. At the commencement of a new society, it is the legislator who makes or corrects the manners; later, it is the manners which make the law, or preserve it, from age to age intact.’

      Some of these fusions are amusing. No man in the Empire was asked how he was born, but what he had done; and, accordingly, as a man’s actions were sufficient to illustrate him, the Emperor took care to make a host of new title-bearers, princes, dukes, barons, and what not, whose rank has descended to their children. He married a princess of Austria; but, for all that, did not abandon his conquests—perhaps not actually; but he abandoned his allies, and, eventually, his whole kingdom. Who does not recollect his answer to the Poles, at the commencement of the Russian campaign? But for Napoleon’s imperial father-in-law, Poland would have been a kingdom, and his race, perhaps, imperial still. Why was he to fetch this princess out of Austria to make heirs for his throne? Why did not the man of the people marry a girl of the people? Why must he have a Pope to crown him—half a dozen kings for brothers, and a bevy of aides-de-camp dressed out like so many mountebanks from Astley’s, with dukes’ coronets, and grand blue velvet marshals’ batons? We have repeatedly his words for it. He wanted to create an aristocracy—another acknowledgment on his part of the Republican dilemma—another apology for the Revolutionary blunder. To keep the Republic within bounds, a despotism is necessary; to rally round the despotism, an aristocracy must be created; and for what have we been labouring all this while? for what have bastiles been battered down, and kings’ heads hurled, as a gage of battle, in the face of armed Europe? To have a Duke of Otranto instead of a Duke de la Trémoille, and Emperor Stork in place of King Log. Oh, lame conclusion! Is the blessed Revolution which is prophesied for us in England only to end in establishing a Prince Fergus O’Connor, or a Cardinal Wade, or a Duke of Daniel Whittle Harvey? Great as those patriots are, we love them better under their simple family names, and scorn titles and coronets.

      At present, in France, the delicate matter of titles seems to be better arranged, any gentleman, since the Revolution, being free to adopt any one he may fix upon; and it appears that the Crown no longer confers any patents of nobility, but contents itself with saying, as in the case of M. de Pontois, the other day, ‘Le Roi trouve convenable that you take the title of,’ etc.

      To execute the legacy of the Revolution, then; to fulfil his providential mission; to keep his place—in other words, for the simplest are always the best—to keep his place, and to keep his Government in decent order, the Emperor was obliged to establish a military despotism, to re-establish honours and titles; it was necessary, as the Prince confesses, to restore the old prestige of the Government, in order to make the people respect it; and he adds—a truth which one hardly would expect from him—‘At the commencement of a new society, it is the legislator who makes and corrects the manners; later, it is the manners which preserve the laws.’ Of course, and here is the great risk that all revolutionising people run; they must tend to despotism; ‘they must personify themselves in a man,’ is the Prince’s phrase: and, according as is his temperament or disposition—according as he is a Cromwell, a Washington, or a Napoleon—the Revolution becomes tyranny or freedom, prospers or falls.

      Somewhere in the St. Helena memorials, Napoleon reports a message of his to the Pope. ‘Tell the Pope,’ he says to an archbishop, ‘to remember that I have six hundred thousand armed Frenchmen, qui marcheront avec moi, pour moi, et comme moi.’ And this is the legacy of the Revolution, the advancement of freedom! A hundred volumes of imperial special pleading will not avail against such a speech as this—one so insolent, and at the same time so humiliating, which gives unwittingly the whole of the Emperor’s progress, strength, and weakness. The six hundred thousand armed Frenchmen were used up, and the whole fabric falls; the six hundred thousand are reduced to sixty thousand, and straightway all the rest of the fine imperial scheme vanishes: the miserable senate, so crawling and abject but now, becomes, of a sudden, endowed with a wondrous independence; the miserable sham nobles, sham Empress, sham kings, dukes, princes, chamberlains, pack up their plumes and embroideries, pounce upon what money and plate they can lay their hands on, and when the Allies appear before Paris, when for courage and manliness there is yet hope, when with fierce marches hastening to the relief of his capital, bursting through ranks upon ranks of the enemy, and crushing or scattering them from the path of