n
case of a political crash the money remains. Soult tried to have himself
elected king of Portugal,[3366] and Bernadotte finds means to have
himself elected king of Sweden. After Leipsic, Murat bargains with the
allies, and, to retain his Neapolitan kingdom, he agrees to furnish a
contingent against France; before the battle of Leipsic, Bernadotte is
with the allies and fights with them against France. In 1814, Bernadotte
and Joseph, each caring for himself, the former by intrigues and with
the intriguers of the interior, also by feeling his way with the foreign
sovereigns while the latter, in the absence of Napoleon, by "singular
efforts" and "assiduities" beforehand with Marie Louise thinks of taking
the place of the falling emperor.[3367] Prince Eugene alone, or almost
alone, among the great personalities of the reign, is really loyal, his
loyalty remaining always intact exempt from concealed motives and above
suspicion. Everywhere else, the coming crash or sinister rumors are
heard or anticipated; alarm descends from high places, spreads through
the army and echoes along the lines of the lowest ranks. In 1815, the
soldier has full confidence in himself and in Napoleon; "but he is
moody, distrustful of his other leaders.... Every march incomprehensible
to him makes him uneasy and he thinks himself betrayed."[3368] At
Waterloo, dragoons that pass him with their swords drawn and old
corporals shout to the Emperor that Soult and Vandamme, who are at this
moment about going into battle, are haranguing their troops against him
or deserting him; that General Dhenin, who has repulsed a charge of the
enemy and whose thigh is fractured by a cannon-ball, has just passed
over to the enemy. The mechanism which, for fifteen years, has worked so
well, breaks down of itself through its own action; its cog-wheels have
got out of gear; cracks show themselves in the metal which seemed
so sound; the divinations of popular instinct verify this; the
exaggerations of the popular imagination expand it and suddenly the
whole machine rattles down to the ground.

All this is due to Napoleon having introduced into it the craving for
success as central motor, as the universal main-spring, unscrupulous
ambition, in short, a crude egoism, and in the first place his own
egoism, [3369] and this incentive, strained to excess,[3370] puts the
machine out of order and then ruins it. After him, under his successors,
the same machinery is to work in the