CHAPTER XX

SOLDIER, STATESMAN, DESPOT

Questionings -- The Industrious Burgher -- The Industrious Sovereign -- End of the Marvelous -- Public Virtue and Private Weakness -- The Man and The Age -- Latin and German -- First Struggles -- Usurpation of Power -- Political Theories -- The Napoleonic System -- Its Foundation -- Stimulus to Despotism -- The Surrender of France -- The Master Soldier.

[Sidenote: Review]

The tomb of Erasmus in Basel is marked by a stone slab on which are an epitaph, an effigy, and then the pathetic word "Terminus." Should these fateful syllables be written over the mortal remains of Napoleon Bonaparte? No. Beyond his death there was more, far more than the work he wrought during his life. Men ever love a seeming mystery, and while they do, a favorite theme of speculation will be the career of the great Corsican in its historical aspect. Before our long study can be brought to a close, two questions must be considered, or rather two sides of one question must be viewed. Why did he rise, and what did he accomplish? The answers will be as various as the investigators who give them. But the man as seen in the preceding pages certainly displays these recognizable characteristics: he was a man of the people, he had a transcendent military genius, he was indefatigable, and he had unsurpassed energy.

No mere man, even the most remarkable, can climb without supports of some kind, however unstable they may be. Napoleon Bonaparte did not soar, he rose on the ladder of power by stages easily traceable: first by the protection of the Robespierres; then by the necessities and velleities of Barras and the Directory; afterward by the encouragement of all France, which was sick of the inefficient Directory; and still later by the army, which adored a leader who frankly repaid devotion in the hard cash of booty, and bravery in the splendid rewards of that glory which was a national passion. With such opportunities, Bonaparte unfolded what was certainly his supereminent quality--the quality which endeared him to the French masses as did no other, the quality which above all others distinguished him from the hated tyrants under whom they had so long suffered, the quality which even the meanest intellect could mark as distinctively middle-class, in opposition to its negation in the upper class--the quality, namely, of untiring industry; laborious, self-initiated, self-guided, self-improving industry. This burgher quality Napoleon possessed as no burgher ever