Prisoners

"All authority is in the throne; and what is the throne? This wooden frame covered with velvet? No, I am the throne."

"If the art of war were nothing but the art of avoiding risks, glory would become the prey of mediocre minds.... I have made all the calculations; fate will do the rest."

"Le mot impossible n'est pas français."

"From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step."

"I have gained the battle of Lutzen like the general-in-chief of the Army of Italy and of the Army of Egypt!"

"Where do you think you are going? Can’t you see that the battle is won? Come on, stand firm!"

"Conscripts, for shame! It was on you that I was basing my hopes. I expected much from your young courage, and you are running away!"

"So…Bessieres lived like Bayard; he died like Turenne. We should all be envious of his fate."

"I am not satisfied with the order which is kept in Madrid; Belliard is too weak; with the Spaniards it is necessary to be severe. I have arrested here fifteen of the worst characters, and I have ordered them to be shot. Arrest thirty at Madrid... If you treat the mob with kindness, these creatures fancy themselves invulnerable; if you hang a few, they get tired of the game, and become as submissive and humble as they ought to be."

"My intention is that the main village where the insurrection started shall be burnt, and that thirty of the ringleaders shall be shot; an impressive example is needed to contain the hatred of the peasantry and of that soldiery. If you have not yet made an example, let there be one without delay... Let not the month pass without the principal village, borough, or small town which gave the signal for the insurrection being burned, and a large number of individuals being shot... Traces must be left in the cantons which have rebelled."

"I will bring the nobles of this Court down so low that they shall be obliged to beg their bread."

"I am the Roman Emperor."

"For my part, it is not the mystery of the incarnation which I discover in religion, but the mystery of social order, which associates with heaven that idea of equality which prevents the rich from destroying the poor. [Incorrect translation, should be prevents the rich from being massacred by the poor.] Religion is indeed a kind of vaccine innoculation, which, by satisfying our natural love for the marvellous, keeps us out of the hands of charlatans and conjurors. The priests are better than the Cagliostros, the Kants, and all the visionaries of Germany."

"Commerce unites men and make them; therefore it is fatal to despotic power."

"Anarchy is the stepping stone to absolute power."

"A form of government that is not the result of a long sequence of shared experiences, efforts, and endeavors can never take root."

"Even in the midst of war I have never neglected the establishment of useful institutions and the promotion of peace and order at home. There still remains much to be done, and I certainly shall never rest from my labours. But is not military success still more necessary to dazzle or to content our people? Remember that a First Consul bears no resemblance to those Kings by the grace of God who look on their countries as their inherited property. Their authority is supported by ancient tradition. With us ancient tradition has fallen into contempt, and carries less than no weight. The French Government of to-day bears no sort of resemblance to that of the countries which surround us. Hated by its neighbours, obliged to deal at home with large classes of enemies, we have need to impose on our friends and foes by deeds of glory gained only by war."

"The barbarous custom of having men beaten who are suspected of having important secrets to reveal must be abolished. It has always been recognized that this way of interrogating men, by putting them to torture, produces nothing worthwhile. The poor wretches say anything that comes into their mind and what they think the interrogator wishes to know."

"The sanhedrin is at least useful to me.*"

"I hope the time is not far off when I shall be able to unite all the wise and educated men of all the countries and establish a uniform regime based on the principles of the Quran which alone are true and which alone can lead men to happiness."

"I do not care to play the part of Monk; I will not play it myself, and I do not choose that others shall do so. But those Paris lawyers who have got into the Directory understand nothing of government. They are poor creatures. I am going to see what they want to do at Rastadt; but I doubt much that we shall understand each other, or long agree together. They are jealous of me, I know, and notwithstanding all their flattery, I am not their dupe; they fear more than they love me. They were in a great hurry to make me General of the army of England, so that they might get me out of Italy, where I am the master, and am more of a sovereign than commander of an army. They will see how things go on when I am not there. I am leaving Berthier, but he is not fit for the chief command, and, I predict, will only make blunders. As for myself, my dear Miot, I may inform you, I can no longer obey; I have tasted command, and I cannot give it up. I have made up my mind, if I cannot be master I shall leave France; I do not choose to have done so much for her and then hand her over to lawyers."

"What I have done up to this is nothing. I am only at the beginning of the course I must run. Do you imagine that I triumph in Italy in order to aggrandise the pack of lawyers who form the Directory, and men like Carnot and Barras? What an idea!"

"From the heights of these pyramids, forty centuries look down on us."

"All great events hang by a hair. The man of ability takes advantage of everything and neglects nothing that can give him a chance of success; whilst the less able man sometimes loses everything by neglecting a single one of those chances."

"My waking thoughts are all of thee. Your portrait and the remembrance of last night's delirium have robbed my senses of repose. Sweet and incomparable Josephine, what an extraordinary influence you have over my heart. Are you vexed? Do I see you sad? Are you ill at ease? My soul is broken with grief, and there is no rest for your lover."

"Hand weapons were the main weapons of the ancients; it is with his short sword that the legionary conquered the world. It is with the Macedonian lance that Alexander conquered Asia."

"You Frenchmen, not content with having robbed us of everything we held dear, have also corrupted our character. The actual condition of my country, and the impossibility of changing it, is another reason for escaping from an earth, where I am obliged to praise men from a sense of duty, whom I must hate from a sense of virtue. When I arrive in my fatherland, what attitude am I to hold—what language am I to use? A good patriot ought to die when his fatherland has ceased to exist. If the deliverance of my fellow-countrymen depended upon the death of a single man, I would go immediately and plunge the sword which would avenge my country and its violated laws into the breast of tyrants."

"Send me 300 francs; that sum will enable me to go to Paris. There, at least, one can cut a figure and surmount obstacles. Everything tells me I shall succeed. Will you prevent me from doing so for the want of 100 crowns?"

"His Imperial and Royal Majesty entered his palace at the Tuileries last night in the midst of his faithful subjects."

"The Emperor has arrived at Fontainbleau."

"Tomorrow, Napoleon will be under our ramparts."

"Bonaparte has advanced with great strides, but he will never enter Paris."

"The usurper was seen sixty leagues from the capital."

"The tyrant has crossed Lyons."

"The monster slept at Grenoble."

"The tiger has arrived at Gap."

"The Corsican ogre has just landed at the Juan Gulf."

"The cannibal has left his lair."

"That monster, choked out of hell, formed by Beelzebub, formed to be the scorching of the earth"

"In early life he may have been a sincere republican; but he hated anarchy and disorder, and, before his campaign in Italy was over, he had begun to plan to make himself ruler of France. He worked systematically to transform the people's earlier ardor for liberty into a passion for military glory and plunder."

"I used to say of him that his presence on the field made the difference of forty thousand men."

"A quarter of an hour later came Napoleon. I received him with Countess Tauenzien at the foot of the staircase. He is excessively ugly, with a flat, swollen, sallow face; he is very corpulent besides, short, and entirely without figure; his great round eyes roll gloomily about, the expression of his features is severe, he looks like the incarnation of fate. Only his mouth is well shaped, and his teeth are good also."

"That illustrious war chief became the pacifier of France: he restored the country's national cohesion; that is his glory, his incontestable glory, against which nothing will prevail. Could he have achieved through liberty that pacification which he accomplished by authority? Supposing that this great winner of victories had been able to triumph over himself, could he at least have granted to the French certain political rights, have allowed some control, have called the nation to exercise certain liberties, have prepared her for a more intimate knowledge of affairs, thus helping her on the way to a more normal destiny? Did such an attempt hold out any prospect of success, could it even be undertaken, on the morrow of unheard-of convulsions, at a time when the parties of violence were under control, rather than exterminated, when so few Frenchmen had acquired any feeling and any taste for legality; at a time especially when France, triumphant though she was, within her extended frontiers and in the wide development of her offensive and defensive fronts, nevertheless remained a vast fortress besieged by Europe? If Bonaparte in that crisis had made a beginning with the founding of liberty, he would have proved himself superior to his age, superior to himself. It is impossible to say whether the undertaking would have surpassed his genius; it was certainly above the reach of his character. But while not attempting this, he devoted the respite left him by his truce with Europe to proceeding with his work of interior reconstruction and to reinfusing order and greatness into all parts of the Commonwealth."

"Napoleon, far more Italian than French, Italian by race, by instinct, imagination, and souvenir, considers in his plan the future of Italy, and, on casting up the final accounts of his reign, we find that the net profit is for Italy and the net loss is for France. Since Theodoric and the Lombard kings, the Pope, in preserving his temporal sovereignty and spiritual omnipotence, has maintained the sub-divisions of Italy; let this obstacle be removed and Italy will once more become a nation. Napoleon prepares the way, and constitutes it beforehand by restoring the Pope to his primitive condition, by withdrawing from him his temporal sovereignty and limiting his spiritual omnipotence, by reducing him to the position of managing director of Catholic consciences and head minister of the principal cult authorized in the empire."

"Condottiere without manners, without fatherland, without morality, an oriental despot, a new Attila, a warrior who knew only how to corrupt and annihilate."

"From the early days of the French Revolution political prophets had been foretelling that this revolution would find its embodiment in a man, who, through it, would subdue France and govern her with a power greater than that which had been Louis XIV's. Bonaparte saw it, as it had been divined by Mirabeau and Catherine, but with his Roman vision of history he had a clearer conception of it than the others. He more particularly feels it, since this history, which is revealed to his intellect, lives in him and seems to be living for his sake. He does not analyse it, he finds no subtle delectation in it; he goes for it, clearing away one obstacle after another; he sets out for the Empire after the fashion of Columbus, who reached the new world while imagining that he was encircling the old. The others are fearing, expecting or blindly seeking the predicted and inevitable "Man". He knows him, for he will be that man. He reveals to himself his ambition, as his destiny finds its explanation in history."

"Messieurs, nous avons un maître, ce jeune homme fait tout, peut tout, et veut tout."

"The ideal of Napoleon was the Empire of Constantine, and of Theodosius. He inherited this tradition as did all the Italian Ghibellines, from his ancestors... Instead of assisting the liberation of the individual conscience, he always postulated a Pope, of whom he would be the Emperor and master. It is a conception which takes its origins from the idea of the Ghibellines and the medieval commentators. When he dreams of the future it is always of the submissive world of a Justinian or a Theodosius, as imagined by the medieval imperialist thinkers. In the midst of such concepts modern freedom seemed an anachronism; worse, to him it could appear only as the people's whim, as a snare for his power."

"As long as there had been a civilian government, and a constitution, and a republic, there were at least the roots from which liberty might still spring, to blossom once more; now there came, with the sword, a regime on principle opposed to liberty."

"Bonaparte was a man of iron energy and was remorseless in the pursuit of his goal. But in those days there were not a few energetic, talented, and ambitious egoists besides him. The place Bonaparte succeeded in occupying would not have remained vacant."