THE EMPEROR'S CONFESSION.
SAINTE BEUVE'S wonderful criticism on the manufac- tured type of Cxsar will occur to everyone who reads that strange confession which the Ex-Emperor of the French somehow regards as his apology for the crime and disaster of the War. "We see them," said that great critic, "perhaps without a drop of hereditary blood in their veins, without a single primitive trait of the founding genius of their race, seem to become by force of application, study, culture, its worthy and legitimate inheritors. As the cranium of a child is changed in form under a continued pressure, so they make up their character in the mould of their inflexible vocation. They are in some sort deformed into sovereigns, into emperors. Everything is pushed in one direction, and they come out from the mould in unvarying similitude. By long habit changed in nature, they really acquire something of the high qualities of their office—the love of greatness, and the semblance of greatness, an imposing assurance, a sang-froid, a tranquillity, a presence of mind which nothing disturbs, and which sometimes wears the aspect of genius itself, a feeling of superiority to all who surround them which is justified when it makes itself accepted. We must ask of them, however, none of those diversities of genius which distinguish the first, the divine Caesar. In war, placed face to face with difficulties, obstacles, quadrilaMres, they are at a stand, at their wits' end. In peace, obliged to face problems of State where the spon- taneous force of genius is required, they hesitate, vacillate, are irresolute, 'We must do something great,' they say ; but this deed of power, of which they never cease to dream, they know not how to perform, even how to imitate. It must be pre- pared for them, brought to them already shaped and in order, and they accept it, often without too much discrimination, without distinguishing the semblance from the reality." If Sainte Beuve had wished to describe the Emperor in his last phase, he could not have described better, not only what he really is, but what he himself ostentatiously asserts himself to be. Frank is not the word for the Emperor's confession ; we have in it almost the flagrant realism of a literary Pre- Raphaelite artist describing his own incompetence, vacillation, and imbecility, and describing it with point, one might say, ardour. Such a document almost raises our conception of what human sincerity under certain conditions is capable of, while it also suggests a doubt of the Emperor's ability to conceive the real effect of his own picture. Sainte Beuve speaks of the type of men who are 'deformed into Cazisars,' but this 'document may almost be said to maintain from beginning to end that its writer is that, and nothing better. It asserts the following propositions :—that the Emperor never had, from beginning to end, the command of events ; that his military plans had for years been over-ruled by the Chamber of Deputies, so that his Army was not in a condition for war ; that he was the sport of the national feeling in making war ; that he had conceived a campaign of which the whole idea depended on swiftness of movement, though knowing that the military organization admitted only the most slow and cumbrous movement ; that having lost the initiative, he vacillated as to what to do next ; that too late he decided on the retreat on Chalons, and on going himself to the capital to resume the reins of political government ; that he was over-ruled as to the retreat by the Government at Paris, and prevented from appearing in the capital by the meeting of the Chambers which took all powers out of his hands ; that he let McMahon march, against his own and the Emperor's better judgment, to the relief of Metz and Bazaine ; that when finding he was too late, MacMahon retreated, and the Government of Paris telegraphed an urgent order to go on, the Emperor again acquiesced in a forward movement which he felt sure was utter destruction, in deference to the Regency ; that he sur- rendered his sword to the King under the impression that, as the war was directed against him personally, his captivity might save France ; and that he followed up this patriotic step by the very inconsistent policy of avowing to his captor that he had been the involuntary instrument rather than the cause of the war. Throughout this confession there runs a sort of note of fatalism which may explain to the careful eye the strange indifference of the Imperial avowals. It would have lent character and dignity to the document if that fatalistic tone had been more predominant. For as it is, it reads like a detailed confession of incapacity without even as much as usual of that consciousness of a deep underlying dignity of character which has hitherto redeemed the public speeches of the Em- peror from anything like common-place. And worst of all, the confession ends by throwing all the fault of failure on that deep- rooted anarchy of French society, from which the Emperor pro- mised to save France,—ends with a very plain statement indeed, that "the excesses of the tribune and the press" must be put down with a strong hand before French society can be saved again. In other words, the Emperor adds to an elaborate confession of political and military incapacity a virtual threat, if ever he could be restored, to try a new coup d'etat.
The only grand quality about this wonderful confession is its grand sincerity,—a quality which a careful observer of all the Emperor's public manifestos will find running through them from first to last. Whatever deceptions and. intrigues the Emperor may have engaged in have been at least kept from the light. But the sincerity conceded,— and even that is not phrased with the usual dignity,— never was there such an avowal of imbecility, never did a document of the kind assert more ostentatiously I had. no will of my own, amid the confusion of events. I was pressed on this side and that, and yielded on all sides in turns, without believing that I was doing any good by yield- ing, and still less that I could do any good by resisting.' Take this about the retrogression after the disasters at Worth and. Speicheren, "Under these circumstances, profoundly de- pressed at witnessing all his combinations destroyed, and. driven in these few days to think no longer of any but a defensive position, the Emperor resolved imme- diately to lead back the Army to the Camp of Chalons, where it might have gathered together the debris of Marshal MacMahon's army, Failly's corps, and that of Douay. This plan, when communicated to Paris, was at first approved by the Council of Ministers ; but two days afterwards, a letter from M. Emile 011ivier informed the Emperor that upon mature consideration the Council had decided that it had been too hasty in approving the retreat of the army upon Chalons, since the abandonment of Lorraine could only produce a deplorable effect on the public mind ; in consequence of this, he advised the Emperor to renounce his project. For the moment, therefore, the Emperor yielded to this counsel." So the Emperor tried to concentrate and fight at Metz, but he "was paralyzed by the absolute ignorance in which we always remained concerning the position and strength of the hostile armies,"—an ignorance which the Emperor treats helplessly as a sort of fate. Then some of the Generals exhort the Emperor to go back to Paris and resume his political superintendence of the State. The Emperor vacillates : "These considerations had an indisputable weight which did not escape the Emperor, who, however, did not wish to leave the army till it had recrossed the Moselle to its left bank." ' Then the Ministers pur- suade the Empress - Regent to overpass the restricted authority entrusted to her by summoning the Chambers, and the Emperor looks helplessly on. The Ministers "appeared afraid to pronounce the name of the Emperor ; and he who had quitted the army and had only relinquished the command in order to resume the reins of Government, soon discovered that it would be impossible to play out the part which belonged to him." So he made no effort either to rule the army or the country, but wandered about a forlorn imperial ghost between Chalons and Rheims. Then MacMahon proposed retreating upon Paris, the Emperor agreeing that this was what ought to be done. But "the language of reason was not known in Paris. It was wished at all hazards to give public opinion the empty hope that Marshal Bazaine could still be succoured." MacMahon, though it was acting against his own judgment, was too gallant to refuse the hopeless duty. "As for the Emperor, he made no opposition. It did not enter ink his views to oppose the advice of the Government and of the Empress-
Regent, who had shown so much intelligence and energy in the midst of the greatest difficulties, although he perceived that his own influence was being completely nullified, since he was acting neither as head of the Government nor as head of the Army." Surely fatalism never before took so pallid and meaningless a hue. The Emperor was abdicating his functions and consenting to be nobody, not to save his country,—but in his own belief, apparently confirmed by facts, in order to assist in its destruction. Everybody being weak, vacillating, and confused, the Emperor gave way to all this weakness, vacillation, and confusion against his own judgment, lest any one should suppose he was playing for his own hand. When MacMahon, seeing he was too late, ordered a retreat, and, nevertheless, formal injunctions came by tele- graph during the night to continue his march, "unquestion- ably," says the defence, "the Emperor could have counter- manded this order, but he was resolved not to oppose the decision of the Regency, and had resigned himself to submit to the consequences of the fatality which attached itself to all the resolutions of the Government." And this grand resolve he carried out up to the moment when he ordered the surrender of Sedan, when he broke through the rule to set the example of a surrender which did more probably to break the spirit of France than the most terrible slaughter in a hand-to- hand fight would have done.
But the crowning imbecility was yet to come. "The Emperor being convinced," we are told, "according to the assertions of the Press, that the King [of Prussia] had declared that he had made war not against France, but against her Sovereign, did not hesitate to constitute himself a prisoner, hoping that the object of the war being attained by the sacrifice of his liberty, the conqueror would be less exacting towards France and the army." No doubt a generous con- ception, but how carried out ? In his interview with Count Bismarck, the Emperor having appealed to the generosity of the King for the Army and for France, "added that the war having been unfortunate, he would not altogether throw off the responsibility which lay upon him, but that he was bound to state that he had only obeyed a violently excited national feeling." "Bound to state,"—who bound him ? True or false, when he was proposing so magnani- mously to buy peace for France by the sacrifice of himself, what on earth bound him to put ready primed into Count Bismarck's hand the great argument which that able statesman has always known how to use against the new Government which repudiates the responsibility of the war ? It was only another piece of helpless vacillation. The Emperor first thought he would sacrifice himself to excuse France, and then thought he would excuse himself a little at the expense of France, and, as usual, cancelled all the meaning of his own actions.
The mistake of his policy, argues the Emperor, in conclusion, was his ever giving liberty to the anarchical powers of the tribune and the press. No, the mistake of his policy was the attempt to rule without the moral power. He had not industry enough to know the real condition of his army, nor the firm- ness to keep at peace when he was unfit for war. He had not sagacity enough either to trust his people or to distrust them. He gave a little liberty, just enough to shake his throne, but not enough to confirm it. He held fast to a parliament which France scorned and distrusted, while allowing it to hear language which increased that scorn and distrust. e kept up tyranny enough to justify the people in calling him a tyrant, and granted liberty enough to make the accusation easy and safe. He aimed at doing "something great" in the little spirit of conscious trepidation. His only hope for the campaign required swiftness and decision at a time when every branch of the military service was dis- organized and corrupt. At the first blow he lapsed into fatalism and threw up his hand. He lacked energy to claim his legal authority either in the Army or in the State. He threw cold water on every plan that was adopted, but did not prevent its adoption. He stood by to paralyze his; Generals, and when he surrendered his sword to save France, could not refrain from teaching Count Bismarck how to point a sword at the heart of the France he was trying to save. Truly may the French say of their late Emperor, after reading this marvellous con- fession, "I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot ; I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth." The logical corollary of such a document as the Emperor's defence is a formal abdication.
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