SULTAN KEBIR "
THE DAY BOOKS OF
By E. L. WOODWARD
IT is not easy to calculate now much money has been spent in the last thirty years upon teaching English children to read or speak French, but the large market which appears to exist for translations of French historical works is a curious commentary on the value received in return for this expenditure.
Of the three latest translations for those who cannot read a French book, M. Charles-Roux's account of Napoleon in Egypt is the most interesting. The book reads well, and has a number of remarkable illustrations. M. Charles-Roux concentrates upon the political and scientific aspects of the Egyptian expedition. It has been said with muck truth that the modern study of Egyptology begins with Napoleon's shipload of savants. They drew, measured, recorded ; they did their work with such vigour that at Luxor their stock of lead pencils was exhausted, and the learned men were reduced to making pencils out of lead bullets which they melted and poured into reeds. Their achievements, including the dis- covery of the Rosetta stone, were more lasting than the political results of the expedition. Bonaparte was in Egypt for less than thirteen months. During this time his grasp af detail, his quick perception of circumstance, his high intellectual powers and manifold interests were seen to full advantage, but the enterprise, about which Bonaparte lied magnificently to Frenchmen, was a failure.
M. Charles-Roux is inclined to look at this aspect of the affair too kindly. The " conquest " of Egypt ended with the evacuation of the French troops ; or rather, of the men who were still alive, that is to say one-half of the 54,000 soldiers and civilians who had left Toulon. Napoleon's administration was as ruthless as his battles. He put to death nearly 3,000 Albanian prisoners at Jaffa after French officers had given them a promise of safety. He was very severe upon the population of Cairo ; M. Charles-Roux tones down this severity, though he admits Napoleon's extortion of money by force, and his assent to an order that prostitutes found in the French barracks should be drowned in the Nile. Moreover, it is possible to exaggerate Napoleon's adaptiveness. For all his, talk he did not understand Moslems, and failed to win their support— possibly because, as M. Dard remarks in another context, he "lacked tradition." His march to Syria was a mistake ; even if he had taken Acre he could hardly have gone beyond Damascus. Napoleon spoke at large in later years about the things he might have done in the East. It is doubtful whether he would have been more than a splendid condottiere, holding down by force all who were near his reach.
M. Dard's book (which is well translated) shows Napoleon in an even less favourable light. His subject is the contrast between Napoleon and Talleyrand. Talleyrand, "whose head was as courageous as other men's hearts," who never made an error in taste and never deserted either his own personal interests or his intellectual consistency ; Napoleon, fundamentally as noble as Talleyrand was base, a man who adopted Tallekrand's country, saved it from ruin, only to bring it again, when his sense of limits deserted him, to the verge of destruction.
Bonaparte, Governor of Egypt. By F. Charles-Roux. Trans- 'ated by E. W. Dickes. (Methuen. itSs.)- -Napoleon and Talleyrand. By Emile Dard. Translated by Christopher R. Turner. (Philip Allan. 2 ts.)—St. Helena. By Octave Aubry. Translated by Arthur Livingston. (Gollanea 8s.)
Napoleon in one furious outburst of anger described Talleyrand in unprintable terms, and, by forcing him to marry his mistress, "nailed his wife to him hie a signboard." There could be no neater gesture of contempt. Talleyrand summed up Napoleon's later career in the words : "What a -pity it is that he is not lazy." Each man was right. M. Dard thus has a superb theme ; he has treated it well. He does not boast of his scholarship, but his book could not have been written without very wide reading and investi- gation. One or two chapters are a little overloaded with detail, and a reader unfamiliar with the intrigues and counter- intrigues of the period may not find the story easy to &now. M. Dard's judgement is generally very fair ; there is a half- seen background of allusion to the political problems of today, but this fact does not lead to serious distortion, and to some extent reference to the period before and after -the Napoleonic age is necessary to show that Talleyrand's policy was much more in the French tradition than was Napoleon's magnificent shadow-hunting.
The third of the three books is hardly on a level with the other two, though once again the theme is among the most dramatic in modern history : Napoleon at St. Helena. Unfor- tunately M. Aubry cannot distinguish between tragedy and melodrama, and his translator makes matters worse by using the language of old-fashioned dictionaries or of modem slang. On the other hand, the worst faults of the book are on the surface. The treatment of character and incident is con- sistent, and, in the main, accurate. M. Aubry never faces the central problem : What Were the Allies to do with Napoleon after Waterloo ? They could not allow him his freedom; they would not intern him in Europe. They could not risk another Hundred Days. It is useless to say that the choice of St. Helena was "a capital mistake . . . in defiance of those unwritten laws that obligate towards the vanquished." Napoleon was the last man who could appeal to "unwritten laws" of this kind. It is even more absurd for a Frenchman to describe Castlereagh as" spiteful" and to-assert that "the English oligarchs of 1815 . . . had neither far-sightedness nor lofty courage. They had only vanity, jealousy, hatred, a brutal selfishness."
M. Aubry's ignorance—there is no lesser word—in these matters fortunately does not affect his judgement to the same extent when he is dealing with lesser people like Sir Hudson Lowe. It is not easy for a Frenchman to be just to Lowe, or to admit even that he did the right things in the wrong way, but M. Aubry is much less unfair than many writers. He quotes Gourgaud's remark that "if the Governor of St. Helena were an angel, Napoleon's entourage Would still complain of him." He knows that the chi:flat of St. Helena was not that of a tropical swamp ; that Napoleon, for deliberate political effect, refused to take reasonable care about his health ; that Napoleon's hougehold was ridiculously extravagant, and that demands for economy were not harsh or unreasonable. Above all, he shows the miserable, petty grumblings and quarrels which came from boredom, and the change in Napoleon himself as hopes of return grew less. One may speak of a caged eagle ; yet an eagle is a bird of prey. In the last analysis, Napoleon died of accidie ; but, if he bad been free, how many lives might not have- been saciffieed to cure one' man of his disease ?
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