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36 - A Brief History of France From Caesars to Waterloo by Agnes Mary Frances Robinson · A Brief History of France From Caesars to Waterloo

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  Speaker 1: Section thirty six of a short History of France by
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  Speaker 1: Mary Ducloux. This librovox recording is in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: Read by Pamelinagami Part four, Chapter three, Napoleon, Part two.
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  Speaker 1: It was a last echo of Danton's terrible policy fair
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  Speaker 1: poor royalist, a warning that in his dealings with them,
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  Speaker 1: the present Master of France would exact an eye for
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  Speaker 1: an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and perhaps even
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  Speaker 1: an eye for a tooth. But if in Europe the
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  Speaker 1: rumor of this brutal murder provoked a thrill of horror,
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  Speaker 1: in France, it served his turn to the mass of
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  Speaker 1: the French public. The innocent young duke, kidnapped from his
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  Speaker 1: German home, was as surely a conspirator and a would
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  Speaker 1: be assassin as Pichegru or Cadudal. Had he not paid
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  Speaker 1: the penalty of his crimes. His affair was, as the
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  Speaker 1: Wrench say shows Juget, and his memory, a thing to abhor.
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  Speaker 1: The general adoration for Bonaparte was still increased by the
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  Speaker 1: danger from which he had so narrowly escaped, and the
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  Speaker 1: lesson to be drawn from the whole affair appeared the
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  Speaker 1: need of protecting him by every means Now, the obvious
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  Speaker 1: way of defending a sovereign against assassination is to make
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  Speaker 1: his throne hereditary. There is far less inducement to remove
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  Speaker 1: a king who leaves an air behind him. So just
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  Speaker 1: a week after the shooting of the hapless Onngia, the
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  Speaker 1: Senate sent a solemn message to Bonaparte, adjuring him to
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  Speaker 1: assume an hereditary crown, to take the style and title
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  Speaker 1: of Napoleon Emperor. The country consulted, as before by a
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  Speaker 1: Plebecit responded by a vote in which three million, five
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  Speaker 1: hundred thousand eyes took all the sting from a bare
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  Speaker 1: five thousand no's. Meanwhile, Cadudal was executed and peach Grew
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  Speaker 1: was found strangled in his prison. The happiest moment of
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  Speaker 1: my life, the Emperor said one day in his exile,
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  Speaker 1: was perhaps after my victories in Italy, what enthusiasm, what
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  Speaker 1: cries of long lived the liberator of Italy and all
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  Speaker 1: at twenty five From that time I saw what I
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  Speaker 1: might become. I already saw the world beneath me, as
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  Speaker 1: if I were being carried through the air. He must
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  Speaker 1: indeed have felt the world beneath him. On that eighteenth
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  Speaker 1: of May eighteen o four, when he stood in Notre Dame,
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  Speaker 1: crowned with Laurel, as we see him in David's Great picture,
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  Speaker 1: his generals all round him, a mass of gold and
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  Speaker 1: frothing feathers, his wife kneeling at his feet, her heavy
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  Speaker 1: jeweled train held by attendant princesses behind him on the
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  Speaker 1: steps of the altar. The Pope of Rome come so
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  Speaker 1: far to consecrate the lord's anointed. But as Popius lifted
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  Speaker 1: from the altar the very crown of Charlemagne, Napoleon suddenly
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  Speaker 1: reached out his arm, seized the symbol of sovereignty, and
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  Speaker 1: with his own hand, unaided, settled it firmly on his brows.
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  Speaker 1: I found the crown of France and the gutter, he said,
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  Speaker 1: one day later, and I picked it up on the
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  Speaker 1: point of my sword. The Emperor soon found himself at
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  Speaker 1: war with half the world. The Peace of Amia had
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  Speaker 1: but lasted a twelvemonth, and Napoleon was again fighting England
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  Speaker 1: tooth and nail. By a characteristic act of his arbitrary authority,
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  Speaker 1: he detained as prisoners of war all the English traveling
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  Speaker 1: or residing in France at the moment when war was declared.
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  Speaker 1: Anew his wrath against England flamed fiery than ever since
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  Speaker 1: his discovery of the Royalist plot, For in his eyes,
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  Speaker 1: Perfidious Albion was not only a rival and enemy, but
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  Speaker 1: the harborer of all conspirators. The refuge of the Count
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  Speaker 1: of Artois the chartered meeting place of assassins. But he
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  Speaker 1: would soon reduce those proud Islanders to nothingness. During the
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  Speaker 1: summer of eighteen o four, he concentrated his extraordinary intelligence
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  Speaker 1: on an immense project, that of the utter destruction of
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  Speaker 1: his enemy, and he spent five weeks on the north
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  Speaker 1: coast in front of Dover. Why did he not succeed?
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  Speaker 1: Is there a power that protects the brave against a tyrant?
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  Speaker 1: Napoleon seems to have forgotten nothing. His army was ready.
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  Speaker 1: His navy, by a brilliant series of feints, was to
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  Speaker 1: decoy our ships to defend the coasts of Egypt and
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  Speaker 1: of India. Give me three days undisturbed in the Dover Straits,
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  Speaker 1: and with God's help, I'll make an end of England
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  Speaker 1: those three days. Happily he was not to have in vain.
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  Speaker 1: He stands on the shores of Boulogne, mapping out his
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  Speaker 1: future conquests and muttering to himself. Jeffrey Untell Purros Anglais
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  Speaker 1: in Vain, his ships set out for the east, and
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  Speaker 1: the most convincing order. No visible arm from heaven intervened.
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  Speaker 1: Did a clerk in the French War Office copying out
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  Speaker 1: the orders for the French fleet. He must have been
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  Speaker 1: a functionary of some rank, betray the Emperor's secret, as
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  Speaker 1: it has been supposed, John Bull remains unmoved, cruises calmly
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  Speaker 1: in the Channel, lets them dash on a post towards
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  Speaker 1: Calcutta and Alexandria. After one bare week of emotion, London
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  Speaker 1: is cool as a cucumber. Admiral Cornwallis continues to blockade
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  Speaker 1: the best French ships in breast Harbor, and there they
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  Speaker 1: remain bottled up, as our modern phrase goes, while Nelson
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  Speaker 1: keeps an imperturbable eye on Toulon in Vain's swift as swallows,
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  Speaker 1: the French ship skimmed past the coasts of Ireland to Egypt,
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  Speaker 1: to the West Indies. John Bull never turned a hare,
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  Speaker 1: smoked his pipe on his safe cliffs, and never thought
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  Speaker 1: of changing his plans. There were no zeppelins in those days,
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  Speaker 1: and with the English boats in the channel. No fear,
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  Speaker 1: despite the concentration of frenchmen and flat bottomed boats on
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  Speaker 1: the sands across the ditch. No fear lest the fuming
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  Speaker 1: Emperor should slip across some dark night and invite himself
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  Speaker 1: to breakfast. It is true that one fine day the
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  Speaker 1: Corsican was the taste of English hospitality on an island,
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  Speaker 1: but not on ours. Napoleon, in his best years, was
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  Speaker 1: never obstinate. When he saw that one of his plans
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  Speaker 1: was doomed to failure, he immediately substituted another. As he
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  Speaker 1: himself explained to Las Cassese and the Memorial in his
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  Speaker 1: own remarkable words, I was never bent on enforcing circumstances
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  Speaker 1: to fit into my conceptions. As a rule, I let
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  Speaker 1: myself be led by the course of events. Who beforehand
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  Speaker 1: can say what unsuspected accident may change the shape of things?
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  Speaker 1: How often I have had to alter the very essence
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  Speaker 1: of a plan. Indeed, I nearly always acted on a
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  Speaker 1: general view of things, rather than in accordance with a
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  Speaker 1: settled project. End of Section thirty six