conquer. He declared at St. Helena that he "had always
marched supported by the opinions of six millions of men."
The old woman who met him incognito climbing the hill of Tarare, and
replying to his assertion that "Napoleon was only a tyrant like the
rest," exclaimed, "It may be so, but the others are the kings of the
nobility, while he is one of us, and we have chosen him ourselves,"
expressed a great truth. As long as Napoleon represented popular
sovereignty he was invincible; but when, deeming himself strong enough to
stand alone, he endeavored to conciliate the old order of things, and,
divorcing the daughter of the people, took for a bride the daughter of
kings and allied himself with them--at that moment, like another Samson,
"his strength departed from him." Disasters came as they had come to him
before, but this time the heart of the people was no longer with him. He
fell.
This man has been studied as a soldier, a statesman, an organizer, a
politician. In all he was undeniably great. But men will always like to
know something about him as a man. Can he stand that ordeal? These
volumes will answer that question. They are written by one who joined
the First Consul at the Hospice on Mt. St. Bernard, on his way to
Marengo, in June, 1800, and who was with him as his chief personal
attendant, day and night, never leaving him "any more than his shadow"
(eight days only) excepted until that eventful day, fourteen years later,
when, laying aside the sceptre of the greatest empire the world had known
for seventeen centuries, he walked down the horseshoe steps at
Fontainebleau in the presence of the soldiers whom he had led to victory
from Madrid to Moscow, once more a private citizen.
That men of Anglo-Saxon speech may have an opportunity to see and judge
the Emperor from "close at hand," and view him as he appeared in the eyes
of his personal attendants, these volumes have been translated, and are
now submitted to the public. Though the remark of Frederick the Great
that "No man is a hero to his valet" is not altogether borne out in this
instance, still it will be seen that there is here nothing of that
"divinity which doth hedge a king." In these volumes Napoleon appears as
a man, a very great man, still a mere man, not, a demigod. Their perusal
will doubtless lead to a truer conception of his character, as manifested
both in his good and in his evil traits. The former were natural to him;
the latter were often pr
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