Produced by John Bickers, and Dagny





THE NAPOLEON OF THE PEOPLE


By Honore De Balzac


Translated by Ellen Marriage and Clara Bell.



PREPARER'S NOTE

The Napoleon of the People was originally published in Le Medicin de
Campagne (The Country Doctor). It is a story told to a group of peasants
by the character of Goguelat, an ex-soldier who served under Napoleon in
an infantry regiment. It was later included in Folk-tales of Napoleon:
Napoleonder from the Russian, a collection of stories by various
authors. This translation is by Ellen Marriage and Clara Bell.





THE NAPOLEON OF THE PEOPLE


Napoleon, you see, my friends, was born in Corsica, which is a French
island warmed by the Italian sun; it is like a furnace there, everything
is scorched up, and they keep on killing each other from father to son
for generations all about nothing at all--'tis a notion they have. To
begin at the beginning, there was something extraordinary about the
thing from the first; it occurred to his mother, who was the handsomest
woman of her time, and a shrewd soul, to dedicate him to God, so that he
should escape all the dangers of infancy and of his after life; for she
had dreamed that the world was on fire on the day he was born. It was
a prophecy! So she asked God to protect him, on condition that Napoleon
should re-establish His holy religion, which had been thrown to the
ground just then. That was the agreement; we shall see what came of it.

Now, do you follow me carefully, and tell me whether what you are about
to hear is natural.

It is certain sure that only a man who had had imagination enough to
make a mysterious compact would be capable of going further than anybody
else, and of passing through volleys of grape-shot and showers of
bullets which carried us off like flies, but which had a respect for his
head. I myself had particular proof of that at Eylau. I see him yet;
he climbs a hillock, takes his field-glass, looks along our lines, and
says, "That is going on all right." One of the deep fellows, with a
bunch of feathers in his cap, used to plague him a good deal from all
accounts, following him about everywhere, even when he was getting
his meals. This fellow wants to do something clever, so as soon as the
Emperor goes away he takes his place. Oh! swept away in a moment! And
this is the last of the bunch of feathers! You understand quite clearly
that Napoleon had undertaken to keep his secret to himself. That is why
those who accompanied him, and even his especial friends, used to drop
like nuts: Duroc, Bessieres, Lannes--men as strong as bars of steel,
which he cast into shape for his own ends. And here is a final proof
that he was the child of God, created to be the soldier's father; for
no one ever saw him as a lieutenant or a captain. He is a
commandant straight off! Ah! yes, indeed! He did not look more than
four-and-twenty, but he was an old general ever since the taking of
Toulon, when he made a beginning by showing the rest that they knew
nothing about handling cannon. Next thing he does, he tumbles upon us.
A little slip of a general-in-chief of the army of Italy, which had
neither bread nor ammunition nor shoes nor clothes--a wretched army as
naked as a worm.

"Friends," he said, "here we all are together. Now, get it well into
your pates that in a fortnight's time from now you will be the victors,
and dressed in new clothes; you shall all have greatcoats, strong
gaiters, and famous pairs of shoes; but, my children, you will have to
march on Milan to take them, where all these things are."

So they marched. The French, crushed as flat as a pancake, held up their
heads again. There were thirty thousand of us tatterdemalions against
eighty thousand swaggerers of Germans--fine tall men and well equipped;
I can see them yet. Then Napoleon, who was only Bonaparte in those days,
breathed goodness knows what into us, and on we marched night and day.
We rap their knuckles at Montenotte; we hurry on to thrash them at
Rivoli, Lodi, Arcola, and Millesimo, and we never let them go. The army
came to have a liking for winning battles. Then Napoleon hems them in on
all sides, these German generals did not know where to hide themselves
so as to have a little peace and comfort; he drubs them soundly, cribs
ten thousand of their men at a time by surrounding them with fifteen
hundred Frenchmen, whom he makes to spring up after his fashion, and at
last he takes their cannon, victuals, money, ammunition, and everything
they have that is worth taking; he pitches them into the water, beats
them on the mountains, snaps at them in the air, gobbles them up on the
earth, and thrashes them everywhere.

There are the troops in full feather again! For, look you, the Emperor
(who, for that matter, was a wit) soon sent for the inhabitant, and told
him that he had come there to deliver him. Whereupon the civilian finds
us free quarters and makes much of us, so do the women, who showed great
discernment. To come to a final end; in Ventose '96, which was at that
time what the month of March is now, we had been driven up into a corner
of the _Pays des Marmottes_; but after the campaign, lo and behold! we
were the masters of Italy, just as Napoleon had prophesied. And in the
month of March following, in one year and in two campaigns, he brings
us within sight of Vienna; we had made a clean sweep of them. We had
gobbled down three armies one after another, and taken the conceit out
of four Austrian generals; one of them, an old man who had white hair,
had been roasted like a rat in the straw before Mantua. The kings were
suing for mercy on their knees. Peace had been won. Could a mere mortal
have done that? No. God helped him, that is certain. He distributed
himself about like the five loaves in the Gospel, commanded on the
battlefield all day, and drew up his plans at night. The sentries always
saw him coming; he neither ate nor slept. Therefore, recognizing these
prodigies, the soldier adopts him for his father. But, forward!

The other folk there in Paris, seeing all this, say among themselves:

"Here is a pilgrim who appears to take his instructions from Heaven
above; he is uncommonly likely to lay a hand on France. We must let him
loose on Asia or America, and that, perhaps, will keep him quiet."

The same thing was decreed for him as for Jesus Christ; for, as a matter
of fact, they give him orders to go on duty down in Egypt. See his
resemblance to the Son of God! That is not all, though. He calls all his
fire-eaters about him, all those into whom he had more particularly put
the devil, and talks to them in this way:

"My friends, for the time being they are giving us Egypt to stop our
mouths. But we will swallow down Egypt in a brace of shakes, just as we
swallowed Italy, and private soldiers shall be princes, and shall have
broad lands of their own. Forward!"

"Forward, lads!" cry the sergeants.

So we come to Toulon on the way to Egypt. Whereupon the English put to
sea with all their fleet. But when we are on board, Napoleon says to us:

"They will not see us: and it is right and proper that you should know
henceforward that your general has a star in the sky that guides us and
watches over us!"

So said, so done. As we sailed over the sea we took Malta, by way of
an orange to quench his thirst for victory, for he was a man who
must always be doing something. There we are in Egypt. Well and good.
Different orders. The Egyptians, look you, are men who, ever since the
world has been the world, have been in the habit of having giants to
reign over them, and armies like swarms of ants; because it is a country
full of genii and crocodiles, where they have built up pyramids as big
as our mountains, the fancy took them to stow their kings under the
pyramids, so as to keep them fresh, a thing which mightily pleases them
all round out there. Whereupon, as we landed, the Little Corporal said
to us:

"My children, the country which you are about to conquer worships a lot
of idols which you must respect, because the Frenchman ought to be
on good terms with all the world, and fight people without giving
annoyance. Get it well into your heads to let everything alone at first;
for we shall have it all by and by! and forward!"

So far so good. But all those people had heard a prophecy of Napoleon,
under the name of _Kebir Bonaberdis_; a word which in our lingo means,
"The Sultan fires a shot," and they feared him like the devil. So the
Grand Turk, Asia, and Africa have recourse to magic, and they send a
demon against us, named the Mahdi, who it was thought had come down from
heaven on a white charger which, like its master was bullet-proof, and
the pair of them lived on the air of that part of the world. There are
people who have seen them, but for my part I cannot give you any certain
informations about them. They were the divinities of Arabia and of the
Mamelukes who wished their troopers to believe that the Mahdi had the
power of preventing them from dying in battle. They gave out that he was
an angel sent down to wage war on Napoleon, and to get back Solomon's
seal, part of their paraphernalia which they pretended our general had
stolen. You will readily understand that we made them cry peccavi all
the same.

Ah, just tell me now how they came to know about that compact of
Napoleon's? Was that natural?

They took it into their heads for certain that he commanded the genii,
and that he went from place to place like a bird in the twinkling of an
eye; and it is a fact that he was everywhere. At length it came about
that he carried off a queen of theirs. She was the private property of
a Mameluke, who, although he had several more of them, flatly refused to
strike a bargain, though "the other" offered all his treasures for her
and diamonds as big as pigeon's eggs. When things had come to that pass,
they could not well be settled without a good deal of fighting; and
there was fighting enough for everybody and no mistake about it.

Then we are drawn up before Alexandria, and again at Gizeh, and before
the Pyramids. We had to march over the sands and in the sun; people
whose eyes dazzled used to see water that they could not drink and shade
that made them fume. But we made short work of the Mamelukes as usual,
and everything goes down before the voice of Napoleon, who seizes Upper
and Lower Egypt and Arabia, far and wide, till we came to the capitals
of kingdoms which no longer existed, where there were thousands and
thousands of statues of all the devils in creation, all done to
the life, and another curious thing too, any quantity of lizards. A
confounded country where any one could have as many acres of land as he
wished for as little as he pleased.

While he was busy inland, where he meant to carry out some wonderful
ideas of his, the English burn his fleet for him in Aboukir Bay, for
they never could do enough to annoy us. But Napoleon, who was respected
East and West, and called "My Son" by the Pope, and "My dear Father" by
Mahomet's cousin, makes up his mind to have his revenge on England,
and to take India in exchange for his fleet. He set out to lead us into
Asia, by way of the Red Sea, through a country where there were palaces
for halting-places, and nothing but gold and diamonds to pay the troops
with, when the Mahdi comes to an understanding with the Plague, and
sends it among us to make a break in our victories. Halt! Then every man
files off to that parade from which no one comes back on his two feet.
The dying soldier cannot take Acre, into which he forces an entrance
three times with a warrior's impetuous enthusiasm; the Plague was too
strong for us; there was not even time to say "Your servant, sir!" to
the Plague. Every man was down with it. Napoleon alone was as fresh as a
rose; the whole army saw him drinking in the Plague without it doing him
any harm whatever.

There now, my friends, was that natural, do you think?

The Mamelukes, knowing that we were all on the sick-list, want to stop
our road; but it was no use trying that nonsense with Napoleon. So he
spoke to his familiars, who had tougher skins than the rest:

"Go and clear the road for me."

Junot, who was his devoted friend, and a first-class fighter, only takes
a thousand men, and makes a clean sweep of the Pasha's army, which
had the impudence to bar our way. Thereupon back we came to Cairo, our
headquarters, and now for another story.

Napoleon being out of the country, France allowed the people in Paris
to worry the life out of her. They kept back the soldiers' pay and all
their linen and clothing, left them to starve, and expected them to
lay down law to the universe, without taking any further trouble in
the matter. They were idiots of the kind that amuse themselves with
chattering instead of setting themselves to knead the dough. So our
armies were defeated, France could not keep her frontiers; The Man was
not there. I say The Man, look you, because that was how they called
him; but it was stuff and nonsense, for he had a star of his own and all
his other peculiarities, it was the rest of us that were mere men. He
hears this history of France after his famous battle of Aboukir,
where with a single division he routed the grand army of the Turks,
twenty-five thousand strong, and jostled more than half of them into the
sea, rrrah! without losing more than three hundred of his own men. That
was his last thunder-clap in Egypt. He said to himself, seeing that all
was lost down there, "I know that I am the saviour of France, and to
France I must go."

But you must clearly understand that the army did not know of his
departure; for if they had, they would have kept him there by force to
make him Emperor of the East. So there we all are without him, and in
low spirits, for he was the life of us. He leaves Kleber in command,
a great watchdog who passed in his checks at Cairo, murdered by an
Egyptian whom they put to death by spiking him with a bayonet, which
is their way of guillotining people out there; but he suffered so much,
that a soldier took pity on the scoundrel and handed his flask to him;
and the Egyptian turned up his eyes then and there with all the pleasure
in life. But there is not much fun for us about this little affair.
Napoleon steps aboard of a little cockleshell, a mere nothing of a
skiff, called the _Fortune_, and in the twinkling of an eye, and in the
teeth of the English, who were blockading the place with vessels of the
line and cruisers and everything that carries canvas, he lands in France
for he always had the faculty of taking the sea at a stride. Was that
natural? Bah! as soon as he landed at Frejus, it is as good as saying
that he has set foot in Paris. Everybody there worships him; but he
calls the Government together.

"What have you done to my children, the soldiers?" he says to the
lawyers. "You are a set of good-for-nothings who make fools of other
people, and feather your own nests at the expense of France. It will not
do. I speak in the name of every one who is discontented."

Thereupon they want to put him off and to get rid of him; but not a bit
of it! He locks them up in the barracks where they used to argufy and
makes them jump out of the windows. Then he makes them follow in his
train, and they all become as mute as fishes and supple as tobacco
pouches. So he becomes Consul at a blow. He was not the man to doubt the
existence of the Supreme Being; he kept his word with Providence, who
had kept His promise in earnest; he sets up religion again, and gives
back the churches, and they ring the bells for God and Napoleon. So
every one is satisfied: _primo_ the priests with whom he allows no
one to meddle; _segondo_, the merchant folk who carry on their trades
without fear of the _rapiamus_ of the law that had pressed too heavily
on them; _tertio_, the nobles; for people had fallen into an unfortunate
habit of putting them to death, and he puts a stop to this.

But there were enemies to be cleared out of the way, and he was not the
one to go to sleep after mess; and his eyes, look you, traveled all over
the world as if it had been a man's face. The next thing he did was
to turn up in Italy; it was just as if he had put his head out of the
window and the sight of him was enough; they gulp down the Austrians at
Marengo like a whale swallowing gudgeons! _Haouf_! The French Victories
blew their trumpets so loud that the whole world could hear the noise,
and there was an end of it.

"We will not keep on at this game any longer!" say the Germans.

"That is enough of this sort of thing," say the others.

Here is the upshot. Europe shows the white feather, England knuckles
under, general peace all round, and kings and peoples pretending to
embrace each other. While then and there the Emperor hits on the idea of
the Legion of Honor. There's a fine thing if you like!

He spoke to the whole army at Boulogne. "In France," so he said, "every
man is brave. So the civilian who does gloriously shall be the soldier's
sister, the soldier shall be his brother, and both shall stand together
beneath the flag of honor."

By the time that the rest of us who were away down there in Egypt had
come back again, everything was changed. We had seen him last as a
general, and in no time we find that he is Emperor! And when this was
settled (and it may safely be said that every one was satisfied) there
was a holy ceremony such as was never seen under the canopy of heaven.
Faith, France gave herself to him, like a handsome girl to a lancer, and
the Pope and all his cardinals in robes of red and gold come across the
Alps on purpose to anoint him before the army and the people, who clap
their hands.

There is one thing that it would be very wrong to keep back from you.
While he was in Egypt, in the desert not far away from Syria, _the Red
Man_ had appeared to him on the mountain of Moses, in order to say,
"Everything is going on well." Then again, on the eve of victory at
Marengo, the Red Man springs to his feet in front of the Emperor for the
second time, and says to him:

"You shall see the world at your feet; you shall be Emperor of the
French, King of Italy, master of Holland, ruler of Spain, Portugal, and
the Illyrian Provinces, protector of Germany, saviour of Poland, first
eagle of the Legion of Honor and all the rest of it."

That Red Man, look you, was a notion of his own, who ran on errands and
carried messages, so many people say, between him and his star. I myself
have never believed that; but the Red Man is, undoubtedly, a fact.
Napoleon himself spoke of the Red Man who lived up in the roof of the
Tuileries, and who used to come to him, he said, in moments of trouble
and difficulty. So on the night after his coronation Napoleon saw him
for the third time, and they talked over a lot of things together.

Then the Emperor goes straight to Milan to have himself crowned King of
Italy, and then came the real triumph of the soldier. For every one
who could write became an officer forthwith, and pensions and gifts of
duchies poured down in showers. There were fortunes for the staff that
never cost France a penny, and the Legion of Honor was as good as an
annuity for the rank and file; I still draw my pension on the strength
of it. In short, here were armies provided for in a way that had never
been seen before! But the Emperor, who knew that he was to be Emperor
over everybody, and not only over the army, bethinks himself of the
bourgeois, and sets them to build fairy monuments in places that had
been as bare as the back of my hand till then. Suppose, now, that you
are coming out of Spain and on the way to Berlin; well, you would see
triumphal arches, and in the sculpture upon them the common soldiers are
done every bit as beautifully as the generals!

In two or three years Napoleon fills his cellars with gold, makes
bridges, palaces, roads, scholars, festivals, laws, fleets, and harbors;
he spends millions on millions, ever so much, and ever so much more to
it, so that I have heard it said that he could have paved the whole of
France with five-franc pieces if the fancy had taken him; and all this
without putting any taxes on you people here. So when he was comfortably
seated on his throne, and so thoroughly the master of the situation,
that all Europe was waiting for leave to do anything for him that he
might happen to want; as he had four brothers and three sisters, he said
to us, just as it might be by way of conversation, in the order of the
day:

"Children, is it fitting that your Emperor's relations should beg their
bread? No; I want them all to be luminaries, like me in fact! Therefore,
it is urgently necessary to conquer a kingdom for each one of them, so
that the French nation may be masters everywhere, so that the Guard may
make the whole earth tremble, and France may spit wherever she likes,
and every nation shall say to her, as it is written on my coins, 'God
protects you.'"

"All right!" answers the army, "we will fish up kingdoms for you with
the bayonet."

Ah! there was no backing out of it, look you! If he had taken it into
his head to conquer the moon, we should have had to put everything in
train, pack our knapsacks, and scramble up; luckily, he had no wish for
that excursion. The kings who were used to the comforts of a throne, of
course, objected to be lugged off, so we had marching orders. We march,
we get there, and the earth begins to shake to its centre again. What
times they were for wearing out men and shoe-leather! And the hard
knocks that they gave us! Only Frenchmen could have stood it. But you
are not ignorant that a Frenchman is a born philosopher; he knows that
he must die a little sooner or a litter later. So we used to die without
a word, because we had the pleasure of watching the Emperor do _this_ on
the maps.

[Here the soldier swung quickly round on one foot, so as to trace a
circle on the barn floor with the other.]

"There, that shall be a kingdom," he used to say, and it was a kingdom.
What fine times they were! Colonels became generals whilst you were
looking at them, generals became marshals of France, and marshals became
kings. There is one of them still left on his feet to keep Europe in
mind of those days, Gascon though he may be, and a traitor to France
that he might keep his crown; and he did not blush for his shame, for,
after all, a crown, look you, is made of gold. The very sappers and
miners who knew how to read became great nobles in the same way. And I
who am telling you all this have seen in Paris eleven kings and a crowd
of princes all round about Napoleon, like rays about the sun! Keep this
well in your minds, that as every soldier stood a chance of having a
throne of his own (provided he showed himself worthy of it), a corporal
of the Guard was by way of being a sight to see, and they gaped at him
as he went by; for every one came by his share after a victory, it
was made perfectly clear in the bulletin. And what battles they were!
Austerlitz, where the army was manoeuvred as if it had been a review;
Eylau, where the Russians were drowned in a lake, just as if Napoleon
had breathed on them and blown them in; Wagram, where the fighting was
kept up for three whole days without flinching. In short, there were as
many battles as there are saints in the calendar.

Then it was made clear beyond a doubt that Napoleon bore the Sword
of God in his scabbard. He had a regard for the soldier. He took the
soldier for his child. He was anxious that you should have shoes,
shirts, greatcoats, bread, and cartridges; but he kept up his majesty,
too, for reigning was his own particular occupation. But, all the same,
a sergeant, or even a common soldier, could go up to him and call him
"Emperor," just as you might say "My good friend" to me at times. And he
would give an answer to anything you put before him. He used to sleep
on the snow just like the rest of us--in short, he looked almost like
an ordinary man; but I who am telling you all these things have seen him
myself with the grape-shot whizzing about his ears, no more put out by
it than you are at this moment; never moving a limb, watching through
his field-glass, always looking after his business; so we stood our
ground likewise, as cool and calm as John the Baptist. I do not know
how he did it; but whenever he spoke, a something in his words made
our hearts burn within us; and just to let him see that we were his
children, and that it was not in us to shirk or flinch, we used to walk
just as usual right up to the sluts of cannon that were belching smoke
and vomiting battalions of balls, and never a man would so much as say,
"Look out!" It was a something that made dying men raise their heads to
salute him and cry, "Long live the Emperor!"

Was that natural? Would you have done this for a mere man?

Thereupon, having fitted up all his family, and things having so turned
out that the Empress Josephine (a good woman for all that) had no
children, he was obliged to part company with her, although he loved her
not a little. But he must have children, for reasons of State. All the
crowned heads of Europe, when they heard of his difficulty, squabbled
among themselves as to who should find him a wife. He married an
Austrian princess, so they say, who was the daughter of the Caesars, a
man of antiquity whom everybody talks about, not only in our country,
where it is said that most things were his doing, but also all over
Europe. And so certain sure is that, that I who am talking to you have
been myself across the Danube, where I saw the ruins of a bridge built
by that man; and it appeared that he was some connection of Napoleon's
at Rome, for the Emperor claimed succession there for his son.

So, after his wedding, which was a holiday for the whole world, and when
they let the people off their taxes for ten years to come (though they
had to pay them just the same after all, because the excisemen took no
notice of the proclamation)--after his wedding, I say, his wife had a
child who was King of Rome; a child was born a King while his father was
alive, a thing that had never been seen in the world before! That day a
balloon set out from Paris to carry the news to Rome, and went all the
way in one day. There, now! Is there one of you who will stand me out
that there was nothing supernatural in that? No, it was decreed on high.
And the mischief take those who will not allow that it was wafted over
by God Himself, so as to add to the honor and glory of France!

But there was the Emperor of Russia, a friend of our Emperor's, who was
put out because he had not married a Russian lady. So the Russian backs
up our enemies the English; for there had always been something to
prevent Napoleon from putting a spoke in their wheel. Clearly an end
must be made of fowl of that feather. Napoleon is vexed, and he says to
us:

"Soldiers! You have been the masters of every capital in Europe, except
Moscow, which is allied to England. So, in order to conquer London and
India, which belongs to them in London, I find it absolutely necessary
that we go to Moscow."

Thereupon the greatest army that ever wore gaiters, and left its
footprints all over the globe, is brought together, and drawn up with
such peculiar cleverness, that the Emperor passed a million men in
review, all in a single day.

"Hourra!" cry the Russians, and there is all Russia assembled, a lot
of brutes of Cossacks, that you never can come up with! It was country
against country, a general stramash; we had to look out for ourselves.
"It was all Asia against Europe," as the Red Man had said to Napoleon.
"All right," Napoleon had answered, "I shall be ready for them."

And there, in fact, were all the kings who came to lick Napoleon's hand.
Austria, Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Poland, and Italy, all speaking us
fair and going along with us; it was a fine thing! The Eagles had never
cooed before as they did on parade in those days, when they were reared
above all the flags of all the nations of Europe. The Poles could not
contain their joy because the Emperor had a notion of setting up their
kingdom again; and ever since Poland and France have always been like
brothers. In short, the army shouts, "Russia shall be ours!"

We cross the frontiers, all the lot of us. We march and better march,
but never a Russian do we see. At last all our watch-dogs are encamped
at Borodino. That was where I received the Cross, and there is no
denying that it was a cursed battle. The Emperor was not easy in his
mind; he had seen the Red Man, who said to him, "My child, you are going
a little too fast for your feet; you will run short of men, and your
friends will play you false."

Thereupon the Emperor proposes a treaty. But before he signs it, he says
to us:

"Let us give these Russians a drubbing!"

"All right!" cried the army.

"Forward!" say the sergeants.

My clothes were all falling to pieces, my shoes were worn out with
trapezing over those roads out there, which are not good going at
all. But it is all one. "Since here is the last of the row," said I to
myself, "I mean to get all I can out of it."

We were posted before the great ravine; we had seats in the front row.
The signal is given, and seven hundred guns begin a conversation fit to
make the blood spirt from your ears. One should give the devil his due,
and the Russians let themselves be cut in pieces just like Frenchmen;
they did not give way, and we made no advance.

"Forward!" is the cry; "here is the Emperor!"

So it was. He rides past us at a gallop, and makes a sign to us that a
great deal depends on our carrying the redoubt. He puts fresh heart into
us; we rush forward, I am the first man to reach the gorge. Ah! _mon
Dieu_! how they fell, colonels, lieutenants, and common soldiers, all
alike! There were shoes to fit up those who had none, and epaulettes for
the knowing fellows that knew how to write.... Victory is the cry all
along the line! And, upon my word, there were twenty-five thousand
Frenchmen lying on the field. No more, I assure you! Such a thing was
never seen before, it was just like a field when the corn is cut, with a
man lying there for every ear of corn. That sobered the rest of us. The
Man comes, and we make a circle round about him, and he coaxes us round
(for he could be very nice when he chose), and persuades us to dine
with Duke Humphrey, when we were hungry as hunters. Then our consoler
distributes the Crosses of the Legion of Honor himself, salutes the
dead, and says to us, "On to Moscow!"

"To Moscow, so be it," says the army.

We take Moscow. What do the Russians do but set fire to their city!
There was a blaze, two leagues of bonfire that burned for two days! The
buildings fell about our ears like slates, and molten lead and iron
came down in showers; it was really horrible; it was a light to see our
sorrows by, I can tell you! The Emperor said, "There, that is enough of
this sort of thing; all my men shall stay here."

We amuse ourselves for a bit by recruiting and repairing our frames,
for we really were much fatigued by the campaign. We take away with us
a gold cross from the top of the Kremlin, and every soldier had a little
fortune. But on the way back the winter came down on us a month earlier
than usual, a matter which the learned (like a set of fools) have never
sufficiently explained; and we are nipped with the cold. We were no
longer an army after that, do you understand? There was an end of
generals and even of the sergeants; hunger and misery took the command
instead, and all of us were absolutely equal under their reign. All we
thought of was how to get back to France; no one stooped to pick up
his gun or his money; every one walked straight before him, and armed
himself as he thought fit, and no one cared about glory.

The Emperor saw nothing of his star all the time, for the weather was so
bad. There was some misunderstanding between him and heaven. Poor man,
how bad he felt when he saw his Eagles flying with their backs turned
on victory! That was really too rough! Well, the next thing is the
Beresina. And here and now, my friends, any one can assure you on his
honor, and by all that is sacred, that _never_, no, never since there
have been men on earth, never in this world has there been such a
fricasse of an army, caissons, transports, artillery and all, in such
snow as that and under such a pitiless sky. It was so cold that you
burned your hand on the barrel of your gun if you happened to touch
it. There it was that the pontooners saved the army, for the pontooners
stood firm at their posts; it was there that Gondrin behaved like a
hero, and he is the sole survivor of all the men who were dogged enough
to stand in the river so as to build the bridges on which the army
crossed over, and so escaped the Russians, who still respected the Grand
Army on account of its past victories. And Gondrin is an accomplished
soldier, [pointing at Gondrin, who was gazing at him with the rapt
attention peculiar to deaf people] a distinguished soldier who deserves
to have your very highest esteem.

I saw the Emperor standing by the bridge, and never feeling the cold at
all. Was that, again, a natural thing? He was looking on at the loss
of his treasures, of his friends, and those who had fought with him in
Egypt. Bah! there was an end of everything. Women and wagons and guns
were all engulfed and swallowed up, everything went to wreck and ruin. A
few of the bravest among us saved the Eagles, for the Eagles, look you,
meant France, and all the rest of you; it was the civil and military
honor of France that was in our keeping, there must be no spot on the
honor of France, and the cold could never make her bow her head. There
was no getting warm except in the neighborhood of the Emperor; for
whenever he was in danger we hurried up, all frozen as we were--we who
would not stop to hold out a hand to a fallen friend.

They say, too, that he shed tears of a night over his poor family of
soldiers. Only he and Frenchmen could have pulled themselves out of such
a plight; but we did pull ourselves out, though, as I am telling you,
it was with loss, ay, and heavy loss. The Allies had eaten up all our
provisions; everybody began to betray him, just as the Red Man had
foretold. The rattle-pates in Paris, who had kept quiet ever since the
Imperial Guard had been established, think that _he_ is dead, and
hatch a conspiracy. They set to work in the Home Office to overturn the
Emperor. These things come to his knowledge and worry him; he says to
us at parting, "Good-bye, children; keep to your posts, I will come back
again."

Bah! Those generals of his lose their heads at once; for when he was
away, it was not like the same thing. The marshals fall out among
themselves, and make blunders, as was only natural, for Napoleon in his
kindness had fed them on gold till they had grown as fat as butter,
and they had no mind to march. Troubles came of this, for many of them
stayed inactive in garrison towns in the rear, without attempting to
tickle up the backs of the enemy behind us, and we were being driven
back on France. But Napoleon comes back among us with fresh troops;
conscripts they were, and famous conscripts too; he had put some
thorough notions of discipline into them--the whelps were good to set
their teeth in anybody. He had a bourgeois guard of honor too, and fine
troops they were! They melted away like butter on a gridiron. We may
put a bold front on it, but everything is against us, although the army
still performs prodigies of valor. Whole nations fought against nations
in tremendous battles, at Dresden, Lutzen, and Bautzen, and then it was
that France showed extraordinary heroism, for you must all of you bear
in mind that in those times a stout grenadier only lasted six months.

We always won the day, but the English were always on our track, putting
nonsense into other nations' heads, and stirring them up to revolt. In
short, we cleared a way through all these mobs of nations; for wherever
the Emperor appeared, we made a passage for him; for on the land as on
the sea, whenever he said, "I wish to go forward," we made the way.

There comes a final end to it at last. We are back in France; and in
spite of the bitter weather, it did one's heart good to breathe one's
native air again, it set up many a poor fellow; and as for me, it put
new life into me, I can tell you. But it was a question all at once of
defending France, our fair land of France. All Europe was up in arms
against us; they took it in bad part that we had tried to keep the
Russians in order by driving them back within their own borders, so
that they should not gobble us up, for those Northern folk have a strong
liking for eating up the men of the South, it is a habit they have; I
have heard the same thing of them from several generals.

So the Emperor finds his own father-in-law, his friends whom he had made
crowned kings, and the rabble of princes to whom he had given back their
thrones, were all against him. Even Frenchmen and allies in our own
ranks turned against us, by orders from high quarters, as at Leipsic.
Common soldiers would hardly be capable of such abominations; yet these
princes, as they called themselves, broke their words three times a day!
The next thing they do is to invade France. Wherever our Emperor shows
his lion's face, the enemy beats a retreat; he worked more miracles for
the defence of France than he had ever wrought in the conquest of
Italy, the East, Spain, Europe, and Russia; he has a mind to bury every
foreigner in French soil, to give them a respect for France, so he lets
them come close up to Paris, so as to do for them at a single blow, and
to rise to the highest height of genius in the biggest battle that ever
was fought, a mother of battles! But the Parisians wanting to save their
trumpery skins, and afraid for their twopenny shops, open their gates
and there is a beginning of the _ragusades_, and an end of all joy and
happiness; they make a fool of the Empress, and fly the white flag out
at the windows. The Emperor's closest friends among his generals forsake
him at last and go over to the Bourbons, of whom no one had ever heard
tell. Then he bids us farewell at Fontainebleau:

"Soldiers!"... I can hear him yet, we were all crying just like
children; the Eagles and the flags had been lowered as if for a funeral.
Ah! and it was a funeral, I can tell you; it was the funeral of the
Empire; those smart armies of his were nothing but skeletons now. So he
stood there on the flight of steps before his chateau, and he said:

"Children, we have been overcome by treachery, but we shall meet again
up above in the country of the brave. Protect my child, I leave him in
your care. _Long live Napoleon II._!"

He had thought of killing himself, so that no one should behold Napoleon
after his defeat; like Jesus Christ before the Crucifixion, he thought
himself forsaken by God and by his talisman, and so he took enough
poison to kill a regiment, but it had no effect whatever upon him.
Another marvel! he discovered that he was immortal; and feeling sure of
his case, and knowing that he would be Emperor for ever, he went to an
island for a little while, so as to study the dispositions of those folk
who did not fail to make blunder upon blunder. Whilst he was biding his
time, the Chinese and the brutes out in Africa, the Moors and what-not,
awkward customers all of them, were so convinced that he was something
more than mortal, that they respected his flag, saying that God would be
displeased if any one meddled with it. So he reigned over all the rest
of the world, although the doors of his own France had been closed upon
him.

Then he goes on board the same nutshell of a skiff that he sailed in
from Egypt, passes under the noses of the English vessels, and sets foot
in France. France recognizes her Emperor, the cuckoo flits from steeple
to steeple; France cries with one voice, "Long live the Emperor!" The
enthusiasm for that Wonder of the Ages was thoroughly genuine in these
parts. Dauphine behaved handsomely; and I was uncommonly pleased to
learn that people here shed tears of joy on seeing his gray overcoat
once more.

It was on March 1st that Napoleon set out with two hundred men to
conquer the kingdom of France and Navarre, which by March 20th had
become the French Empire again. On that day he found himself in Paris,
and a clean sweep had been made of everything; he had won back his
beloved France, and had called all his soldiers about him again, and
three words of his had done it all--"Here am I!" 'Twas the greatest
miracle God ever worked! Was it ever known in the world before that a
man should do nothing but show his hat, and a whole Empire became his?
They fancied that France was crushed, did they? Never a bit of it. A
National Army springs up again at the sight of the Eagle, and we all
march to Waterloo. There the Guard fall all as one man. Napoleon in his
despair heads the rest, and flings himself three times on the enemy's
guns without finding the death he sought; we all saw him do it, we
soldiers, and the day was lost! That night the Emperor calls all his old
soldiers about him, and there on the battlefield, which was soaked with
our blood, he burns his flags and his Eagles--the poor Eagles that had
never been defeated, that had cried, "Forward!" in battle after
battle, and had flown above us all over Europe. That was the end of
the Eagles--all the wealth of England could not purchase for her one
tail-feather. The rest is sufficiently known.

The Red Man went over to the Bourbons like the low scoundrel he is.
France is prostrate, the soldier counts for nothing, they rob him of
his due, send him about his business, and fill his place with nobles who
could not walk, they were so old, so that it made you sorry to see them.
They seize Napoleon by treachery, the English shut him up on a desert
island in the ocean, on a rock ten thousand feet above the rest of the
world. That is the final end of it; there he has to stop till the Red
Man gives him back his power again, for the happiness of France. A lot
of them say that he is dead! Dead? Oh! yes, very likely. They do not
know him, that is plain! They go on telling that fib to deceive the
people, and to keep things quiet for their tumble-down government.
Listen; this is the whole truth of the matter. His friends have left him
alone in the desert to fulfil a prophecy that was made about him, for I
forgot to tell you that his name Napoleon really means the _Lion of the
Desert_. And that is gospel truth. You will hear plenty of other things
said about the Emperor, but they are all monstrous nonsense. Because,
look you, to no man of woman born would God have given the power to
write his name in red, as he did, across the earth, where he will be
remembered for ever!... Long live "Napoleon, the father of the soldier,
the father of the people!"






End of Project Gutenberg's The Napoleon of the People, by Honore de Balzac