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By Root 2422 0

another, he sold his favours with the aim of spreading disquiet, and he believed that the best way of attaching men to his cause was to compromise their integrity and sometimes even to blacken their reputation. As for virtue, he only pardoned it when he was able to subject it to ridicule. One cannot even say that he truly loved glory, the fact being that he himself would not have hesitated to say that what mattered was success.24

These words of Claire de Rémusat are closely mirrored by Chaptal. For example:

Napoleon never experienced a generous feeling. Hence the dryness of his company; hence the fact that he never had a single friend. He regarded all men as . . . instruments that could be made use of to further his caprices and his ambition . . . Walking across the field of Eylau, surrounded by 29,000 corpses, he prodded a body with his foot and said to the generals who surrounded him, ‘This is so much small change.’ On his return from the battle of Leipzig he came across Monsieur Laplace. ‘It looks as if you’ve lost weight.’ ‘Sire, I have lost my daughter.’ ‘Well, that’s no reason. You are a geometrician: measure what’s happened with a ruler and you will find that it comes to precisely nothing.’ It is to this insensibility that one must attribute many of the actions of his rule . . . Napoleon had no attachment to his family. It was out of vanity alone that he raised it up rather than affection for any of its members or regard for their merits. He did not appear to care about the dissolution of his sisters . . . and often spoke with scorn of his brothers.25

This very negative picture of the French ruler is clearly open to discussion. Chaptal’s insistence that Napoleon felt no love for his family is particularly questionable, while it is also important to note that the First Consul was not a monster: political executions were extremely rare under his rule and even the number of political prisoners was not very great. Personally, too, he was capable of great charm and his generosity was notorious, although this naturally begs the question of whether these traits can be taken at face value. However, recent biographers of Napoleon have been inclined to agree that there were elements in his behaviour that suggest a man for whom a pacific foreign policy, with its corollaries of trust and self-restraint, would have been very difficult. One alarming feature was the personal violence of which the French ruler was capable: even in a good mood he was apt to pinch cheeks - a famous gesture - pull ears and tweak noses, while in a bad one he could become very wild indeed, kicking over tables and physically assaulting the object of his anger. Another characteristic was the febrile nature of his mind: as several observers have pointed out, he was constantly coming up with new plans, schemes and dreams, and these served as a spur to his ambition even if they were as often as not never taken up or set aside after a longer or shorter trial. To quote the painter Joseph Farington, ‘I noticed that he . . . had a feverish look, which indicated a mind unsettled.’26 Yet another is the evidence that even at this early stage Napoleon was under immense physical and mental strain: accustomed to a working routine that was frightening in its intensity, he did not just mutilate the furniture but also himself, constantly scratching at the patches of irritation that resulted from the unpleasant skin disorder - itself almost certainly the fruit of stress - that he had been suffering from as early as 1793. More positively, there was a dynamism that needed at all times to find an outlet. At times, indeed, he all but erupts from the page: ‘I have seen Bonaparte near where I could examine his countenance and observe its changes and expression,’ wrote Lady Elizabeth Foster. ‘I am not disappointed. I never saw a face it would be more impossible to overlook. I never saw one which bore a stronger stamp of thought, penetration and a daring mind.’27 And last but not least there were the linked traits of impatience and a refusal to brook failure: Napoleon grew bored