THE RISE OF LOUIS NAPOLEON.*
Ern Grand Ificonnu was the title given by M. Guetary to a study of Napoleon III. which appeared in France not long ago. It goes without saying that this was a partisan study ; an apology for the Emperor's misdoings, sometimes a strange ignoring of them—for instance, M. Guetary touched very lightly on the details of the coup d'etat, treating it and other tyrannies as means to an end, and that end the glory of France and the strengthening of a necessary Executive—and a special dwelling on such personal merits as the Emperor undoubtedly possessed. For though it may be too much to say that be was " misunderstood" by his contemporaries, the truth seems to be that he was very little understood at all. Neither the innocent, patriotic chief of his party whose portrait has been painted by more than one of the loyal friends who shared his agony, nor the heartless, cruel, ambitious adventurer who has been gibbeted by so many historians, Louis Napoleon will in the future come to be regarded as one of the most puzzling and interesting characters of the nineteenth century. His statesmanship, so independent and often so difficult to explain, becomes clearer when we realise that he was at the same time both an adventurer and an idealist, a selfish politician and a man of romantically generous ideas led by aspirations generally inconsistent.
Mr. Simpson's valuable book gives the clearest account we have met with of the early life of this singular Prince. Even French historians and biographers, as Mr. Simpson points out, have mostly neglected or touched but very lightly on the years which led up to the Second Empire. The public knows the son of Queen Hortense as the question- able hero of various attempts, foolish on the face of them, and of imprisonments that almost seemed unnecessary. There was more in his history than this. The Second Empire was not a mushroom, grown apparently from nothing ; its twenty years were not made in a night. The man who became first President of the Republic, then Emperor, at one time the most influential, perhaps, of the Monarchs of Europe, was anything but a shallow, dashing fool. He bad won his way by steady work and long purpose. "The ideal Pretender," as his biographer describes him—and more than proves the truth of the description—he is set apart by his success, the reward of persevering, unresting courage and patience, from other Pretenders in circumstances hardly less romantic. It also justifies the fear and suspicion of the July Monarchy.
Mr. Simpson has the mind and touch of a real historian. His account of Louis Napoleon's early days is extremely picturesque and interesting; it is also an example of clear reasoning from facts, a real grip on a subject which develops with a quick certainty along logical lines, until the Prince President is left in "his unfurnished palace already on the footsteps of a throne." The moving force of the success- ful Pretender's whole career np to this point was faith ; faith in his own future and in the destiny foreshadowed by his name. " Among much that is unattractive," Mr. Simpson writes, " and not a little that is actually repellent, there remains in this early career of Louis Napoleon one of the most striking examples of the mountain-moving force of faith that history can afford." The biographer proves his point, not always readily accepted by those who see in Louis Napoleon little beyond a master of pose. The Prince's own letters to his friends, with other unpublished documents, throw much light on a strangely elusive character.
On the whole, the study of this excellent historical portrait leaves us with a clear impression of its subject as "a Prince among Pretenders," if in his later, better-known career the description of "a Pretender among Princes" appears only too just.
Previous page
