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by
Will Durant
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November 15 - December 10, 2019
War had become profitable, peace would be ruinous.
Then a veritable “devil of a man,” Aleksandr Suvorov, arrived with eighteen thousand Russians, and led them and some Austrian divisions in a ferocious campaign that wrested from the French one after another of the regions that Napoleon had won in 1796–97;
One cannot be human without being heir to human weaknesses.”
“We have no government because we have no constitution, or at least not the one we need; your genius must give us one.”
HERE we stop time in its flight, and look at a people suffering concentrated history.
And indeed were not these the reality and continuum of history, beside which the surface agitations of governments and heroes were the incidental and evanescent contours of a dream?
The bourgeoisie triumphed in the Revolution because it had more money and brains than either the aristocracy or the plebs.
It looked upon poverty as the punishment for stupidity, and upon its own riches as the just reward of application and intelligence.
The Church had lost its wealth and political power, but its vital roots remained in the loyalty of the clergy and the needs and hopes of the people.
Liberty of speech and press was not destroyed by Napoleon; it was dead when he came to power.
Lowered heads lasted longest.
Promiscuity flourished, venereal disease spread, foundlings multiplied, perversions floundered on.
Like almost everything else, manners felt the swing of the pendulum to revolt and return.
Meanwhile the Incroyables and the Merveilleuses—Unbelievable male and Marvelous female dandies—labored to win attention by extravagant garb.
Tivoli Gardens,
Revolutions do not favor pure science, but they stimulate applied science to meet the needs of a society fighting for its liberty.
“Who made all this” machinery, Laplace replied, “I had no need of that hypothesis.”
In any event it is good that a philosopher should remind himself, now and then, that he is a particle pontificating on infinity.
Immortals die soon after death.
She had soon lost respect for her husband, who was too obedient to be interesting, and too incompetent to be solvent.
“Between God and love I recognize no mediator but my conscience”; and conscience could be managed.
“Neither she nor her father cared for opinion in the presence of misfortune.”
Her husband mourned her with a depth of affection that only long unity can bring.
Was the Revolution justified by its causes or results? Did it leave any significant gains for the French people or humanity? Could its gains have been achieved without their cost in chaos and suffering? Does its record suggest any conclusions about revolutions in general? Does it shed any light upon the nature of man?
A development without violence we should call an evolution; a quick and violent or illegal change of personnel without a change in the form of government would be a coup d’état; any open resistance to an existing authority is a rebellion.
In this sense the conquerors were liberators, who tarnished their gifts with the exactions of their rule.
very much as a national economy in the United States compelled the erosion of “states’ rights” by a federal government compelled to be strong.
But individual freedom contains its own nemesis; it tends to increase until it overruns the restraints necessary for social order and group survival; freedom unlimited is chaos complete.
Since new laws are not buttressed by tradition and habit, they usually depend upon force as their sanction and support; the apostles of freedom become, or yield to, wielders of power;
Revolution—or legislation—repeatedly redistributes concentrated wealth, and the inequality of ability or privilege concentrates it again. The diverse capabilities of individuals demand and necessitate unequal rewards. Every natural superiority begets advantages of environment or opportunity. The Revolution tried to reduce these artificial inequalities, but they were soon renewed, and soonest under regimes of liberty. Liberty and equality are enemies: the more freedom men enjoy, the freer they are to reap the results of their natural or environmental superiorities; hence inequality multiplies
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The twentieth century approaches its end without having yet found a natural substitute for religion in persuading the human animal to morality.
Despite its shortcomings—and perhaps because of its excesses—the Revolution left a powerful impression upon the memory, emotions, aspirations, literature, and art of France, and of other nations from Russia to Brazil.
In those days one could have loved Napoleon.
“For money Talleyrand would sell his soul—and he would be right, for he would be trading muck for gold.”
Echoing Mirabeau, he called the graceful cripple “merde in a silk stocking,”
“infernal machine,”
He knew from his own intense nature how little the soul of man is prone to
Napoleon, himself a skeptic, concluded that social order rested ultimately on the human animal’s natural and carefully cultivated fear of supernatural powers. He came to look upon the Catholic Church as the most effective instrument ever devised for the control of men and women, for their grumbling or silent habituation to economic, social, and sexual inequality, and for their public obedience to divine commandments uncongenial to human flesh.
Realizing that England, controlling the seas, could at will take any French colony, Napoleon sold the territory of Louisiana to the United States for eighty million francs (May 3, 1803). England, still technically at peace, instructed its naval force to capture any French vessel they might encounter. War was officially declared on May 16, 1803, and continued for twelve years.
Despite his ailments, he had in him a fund of energy that never failed till Moscow burned.
“I am always working,” he told Councilor Roederer; “I work when I am dining, I work at the theater; in the middle of the night I wake up and work.”
“When I wish to turn from a business, I close the drawer that contains it, and I open that which contains another. … If I wish to sleep I shut up all the drawers, and I am soon asleep.”
Goethe thought that Napoleon’s mind was the greatest that the world had ever produced.
Méneval, awed by the nearness of power and fame, ascribed to his master “the highest intellect which has ever been granted to a human being.”
Let us agree that Napoleon’s was among the most perceptive, penetrating, retentive, and logical minds ever seen in one who was predominantly a man of action.
He tried to be on his guard against chance, and repeatedly told himself that “it is only a step from victory to disaster.”
“I have conceived many plans,” he said, “but I was never free to execute one of them. For all that I held the rudder, and with a strong hand, the waves were a good deal stronger. I was never in truth my own master; I was always governed by circumstance.”
The Emperor felt that showmanship was a necessary prop of rule.
“I love power as a musician loves his violin.”
“Death is nothing; but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.”
