Divine Fury (27 page)

The groundwork for this strategic deployment was laid early on and sustained throughout his reign. As early as 1797, while Napoleon served as the commander of the French army in Italy, he used his propaganda organ there, the
Courrier de l’armée d’Italie
, to present himself as a man of the heavens who “flies like lightning and strikes like thunder,” a man who is “everywhere and who sees everything,” because he “unites the most sublime virtues to a vast genius” (
un vaste génie
). Napoleon, the journal stressed, was “one of those men for whom power has no limits save for his own will.” With his rise to political office in 1799, followed by the promotion to life consul in 1802 and then to emperor in 1804, such representations only grew bolder and more frequent. An official biography lauded Napoleon typically as a visionary, ready to realize “grand conceptions of genius.” Mayors, prefects, and even priests made use of their positions as representatives of the realm to laud the genius of the emperor, or the emperor as a genius. Thus did the new mayor of the city of Feurs in the Loire Valley see fit in 1801 to praise “the genius who presided over the happy day of the 18th Brumaire” and who now guided the “ship of state with such wisdom and assurance.” Following Napoleon’s crossing of the Rhine in 1805, a local priest back home explained enthusiastically to his parishioners that “fifteen days of Napoleon’s genius had obtained more for Germany than Charlemagne had been able to accomplish—or had even dared to dream—in his entire life.” At the same time, in theater productions and in the ubiquitous festivals held to celebrate military victories and national holidays, Napoleon was regularly
addressed as “the genius,” a title that served as one of the most common descriptions of the consul-cum-emperor in the formal speeches delivered on such occasions. In official art, busts, medals, and engravings, finally, a self-conscious effort was made to present a collective image of Napoleon in keeping with his increasingly inflated self-estimation as a man “who had proven that he sees farther than other men.” “Omniscient, omnipotent, a prophet or oracle,” Napoleon could boast of knowing “more in his little finger than all other heads combined.” He was a master of fate, a controller of destiny, for whom the heavens had special regard, a point that Napoleon insisted on by a constant allusion to his star. If, as Horace had observed, the
genius
was the companion who controlled our birth star, governing the individual’s fortune in the universe, Napoleon’s genius was overseen by his own astral body, variously depicted as a comet, a meteor, or some other heavenly point of light. Like the
sidus Iulium
of Caesar, Napoleon’s star was taken as a measure of his special favor and a symbol of Fate’s alignment with his inexorable rule.
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Napoleon’s self-conscious efforts to construct his genius are crucial to any full understanding of his role as the genius of the age. But to assume that he alone was responsible for creating that image would be to reproduce the myth of omnipotence that his propaganda aimed to impart. In the end, neither Napoleon himself nor his agents of publicity had the power to compel conviction, and belief in his genius was never simply inscribed in the soft wax of passive minds. The more interesting truth is that the cult of Napoleon’s genius was often freely accepted and enthusiastically received, both within his lifetime and for generations thereafter, down to the present day. Not only did Napoleon play a role in fashioning his image, this image played a role in fashioning him.
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To come at the problem in this way is to acknowledge the importance of the social dimension of the construction of genius, to appreciate the ways in which shared categories of perception—common experiences, expectations, and beliefs—invariably affect the way messages and images are received. And to do that is to raise the question of which categories most influenced the reception of Napoleon’s genius, and helped, in turn, to shape it. Or, to put the question another way, just what was it about genius that appealed to Europeans at the beginning of the nineteenth century? Why should Napoleon, a modern leader, choose to present himself in this way?

The questions, at first glance, may seem straightforward, even self-evident. But they become less so when one considers just how unprecedented it was for a cult of genius to form around a living political leader. In the eighteenth century, genius was associated predominately
with scientists, artists, and men of letters, the better part of whom were dead. And although Napoleon’s contemporaries did speak on occasion of Richelieu or Frederick the Great, or George Washington or William Pitt, as statesmen of genius—and geniuses themselves—no modern European leader (and certainly no French monarch) had ever justified his rule by an explicit appeal to genius as such. A cynic might reply that Napoleon did so out of necessity, given that he lacked the luxury of a formal accession, a long lineage, or divine right, and that is undoubtedly true. It is also true that from at least the fourth century BCE, when Plato dreamed in the
Republic
of an ideal state governed by a philosopher-king, Europeans had flirted intermittently with the fantasy of marrying brilliance to power, combining, as Machiavelli put it in the
Prince
, the strength of the lion with the cunning of the fox. In the Old Regime, that fantasy had taken the form of the “wise legislator” imagined by Rousseau, or the “enlightened despot” who employed gentle force to effect a program of reason and reform. Napoleon was undoubtedly received through both of these categories. Yet it was above all the experience of the French Revolution that created the conditions for a genuine departure. For, by linking the cult of genius explicitly to politics and revolutionary change, and by allowing for the emergence of a new type of leader, the Revolution made possible the rule of genius in the flesh, a rule based largely on the force of character and on the force of word and deed. Already, in the fleeting success of a Mirabeau or Lafayette, a Georges Danton or Robespierre, one catches a glimpse of this possibility, as well as an attendant longing for a new type of hero to rival the ancients, a god-man who would save. And though the pretenders to that role had turned out to be traitors, tyrants, or dwarves, they did not eradicate the desire to fuse genius to power. In this respect, as in others, Napoleon was the Revolution’s child.

When Napoleon’s contemporaries gazed at this novel figure, then, they saw a figure cloaked in genius—a genius—who was the living heir to the revolutionary cult and a century’s reflection on the meaning of the term and the type. Again, the point may seem obvious, but it needs to be made, because there is a long tradition of exaggerating the degree to which the Romantic generation cast off the beliefs of the previous age, rejecting Enlightened principles and doctrines outright. A strong case can be made for disagreement, even divergence, in certain domains. But in matters of genius it makes more sense to speak of continuity and evolution, as opposed to rupture or a parting of ways. Gradually deepening, expanding, and extending positions that had been worked out over the course of the eighteenth century, the Romantic generation embraced
and exaggerated notions of original genius developed by their predecessors. Certainly, they innovated in important ways, bringing to the genius a style and a flair all their own, introducing new accents and associations while pushing eighteenth-century conceptions to their extreme. Yet the figure was a recognizable type. The Romantic genius was a direct heir to the genius of the Enlightenment, and Napoleon a critical figure in effecting the bequest.

This is not to say that Napoleon’s contemporaries beheld only a genius as the eighteenth century understood the term. They could not help but view him through the prism of a number of other established archetypes and forms. Before all else, Napoleon was a soldier, a general and conqueror of “greatness” and “glory,”
grandeur et gloire
. Those ancient epithets, so admired in the eighteenth century, called to mind a host of virtues incarnate in the famed commanders and statesmen who people the pages of Plutarch’s
Lives
: courage and self-possession, fortitude and self-sacrifice, magnanimity and love of the fatherland. Anyone with an education in Napoleon’s time knew that venerable work, and so they “knew” that the Corsican was also a great-souled man, whose many virtues and the stunning victories that confirmed them bestowed
grandeur
and
gloire
in quantities that no other modern possessed. In the eyes of his contemporaries, Napoleon became Hannibal crossing the Alps, striking fear into enemy legions. He was Caesar, the emperor who rescued the republic from itself, his destiny similarly guided by a comet and a star. He was Alexander, pacifier of Egypt, conqueror of the world. He was Augustus, founder of a great empire. And finally, he was Charlemagne, who would reunite Europe and make the empire anew. Napoleon assumed each one of these forms, and others besides. But if his contemporaries thus viewed him—as he frequently viewed himself—in parallel with ancient lives, his image blurred quickly into that of another form, which was considerably less distinct. Napoleon resembled, in this view, not only the generals and statesmen of the ancient world, but also the legendary heroes and demigods of myth. Already in life, if far more so in death, Napoleon the man of action became Hercules, laboring to fulfill the dictates of the gods. He was Prometheus, who challenged the heavens in deliverance of the people, who saved and redeemed. And he was Solon, legendary lawgiver of Athens, a founder and father of renown.

In all these ways, Napoleon appeared to be an “epiphany of the ancients,” an incarnation of the classical heroes they so revered and for whom they so clearly longed. Yet at the same time he was undeniably modern. Like Michelangelo in the celebrated description of Vasari, Napoleon not only rivaled the ancients, but surpassed them, and he did
so in large part by breaking out of the mold of all previous forms. That was genius. At a time when individuality and uniqueness were coming to be valued as qualities in themselves, Napoleon was the consummate individual, who broke precedents and shattered norms. As a general, a statesman, a leader, a
grand homme
, Napoleon was a man of immense attractive force. He was a man of charisma, and charisma of a particularly modern type.
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The word itself is ancient, from the Greek
kharis
, meaning divine favor or grace. Homer used the term to connote a “gift of the gods,” and Saint Paul did the same, writing in his epistles of
kharisma
as a sacred bestowal or heavenly gift. A long line of theologians developed the concept thereafter, but in modern parlance, the word immediately calls to mind the work of its most famous analyst and interpreter, the sociologist Max Weber, who made charisma a key notion in his description of religious and political authority. Charisma, Weber explained, is a “certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is considered extraordinary and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities.” These powers “are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary,” and it was on their basis that charismatic leaders throughout history—whether prophets, shamans, warlords, or some other type—had drawn their legitimacy. Infused with a strong religious or magical quality, charismatic leadership was “a revolutionary force” that repudiated the past and assailed the status quo, whether this be the time-bound inertia of “traditional authority,” on the one hand, or the impersonal legalism of modern “bureaucratic authority,” on the other.
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Although Weber regarded charismatic leadership as an “ideal type,” a tool of sociological analysis applicable across cultures and time, he was not insensitive to its historical development, a point that scholars have emphasized more recently, showing how charisma was constructed in late eighteenth-and nineteenth-century Europe in creative tension with the kindred notions of celebrity and fame. It is significant in this connection that Weber singled out Napoleon as a new form of charismatic leader, referring specifically to his “rule of genius.” The reference is fleeting, though suggestive, for in fact there are close parallels between the mysterious force of genius and that of charisma. Both were conceived as gifts that, as Weber said of charisma, could be “‘awakened’ and ‘tested’” but never “‘learned’ or ‘taught.’” Both assailed tradition and rules, creating originally, revolutionarily, in new forms. And both bathed their possessors in an aura of magic, mystery, and fate that somehow connected them to the world beyond. As Goethe said of the rising Napoleon, he
seems to have been “in a state of continued illumination[;] . . . indeed we see at his side divine protection and a constant fortune,” the certainty of his “star.” He was, Goethe concluded, the very model of the “daemonic man.”
¹¹

In Napoleon, then, charisma and genius were one. Viewing him simultaneously through the category of genius as this had evolved in the eighteenth century, as a hero—a soldier of glory—and a
grand homme
, his contemporaries endowed his genius with charisma, and his charisma with genius. It was an unprecedented combination, as the visionary and social theorist Henri de Saint-Simon observed in contemplating the construction of a vast monument to the emperor Napoleon in 1807. History had “written in golden letters the names of five heroic geniuses and five scientific geniuses of the highest order,” Saint-Simon affirmed, singling out Alexander, Hannibal, Julius Caesar, the prophet Mohammed, and Charlemagne, on the one hand, and Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Bacon, and Descartes, on the other. But until the present moment, no man had succeeded in entering the Temple of Glory “by both doors.” Napoleon alone had accomplished this feat, combining heroic with scientific genius in a completely original and explosive combination.
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