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THE NAPOLEON MYTH

THE NAPOLEON MYTH

BV

HENRY RIDGELY EVANS

CONTAINING A REPRINT OF "THE GRAND ERRATUM," BY JEAN-BA1TISTE

PERES, AND AN INTRODUCTION BY DR. PAUL CARUS

MICROFORMED

JHT

PRESERVATION
DATE.

CHICAGO

THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY

LONDON AGENTS
KEGAN

I'.U

IKI-NCH. TKl HM-.R

IQO?

& CO,

LTD.

COPYRIGHT,
BY

1904

THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING

CHICAGO

CO.

CONTENTS.
PA<;K
l

INTRODUCTION

THE GRAND ERRATUM

THE MYTHICAL NAPOLEON
NAPOLEON'S COCKED HAT

INTRODUCTION.
k

It is

how much more our

remarkable

historical traditions are

with mythology than we are commonly aware of.

while at the same time legends, in spite of their fanciful dress,

saturated

contain

more of

historical criticism

actual fact than,

on a

superficial

inspection,

seems to warrant.

Traditions, be they ever so mythological, if they are genuine,

are much more conservative than they may appear at first sight.
Though the Trojan war may be a tangle of legends reflecting

primitive myths, the

Homeric narrative

is

after all based

on

Though William Tell never existed in Switzthere

must
have
existed many William Tells, not only
erland,
in Switzerland but all over the world.
Though the Biblical

actual occurrences.

account of Samson's deeds, like the twelve labors of Hercules,

is the echo of a Babylonian solar epic which glorifies the deeds

of Shamash in his migrations through the twelve signs of the

zodiac, there may have been a Hebrew hero whose deeds re-

Shamash, and so his adventures were

with such modifications as would naturally let the solar

minded the
told

Israelites of

legends cluster about his personality.

Biblical traditions have in one sense been fully verified by the
Babylonian excavations. They show that occurrences such as

them actually took place, but the statements in

the several books of the Old Testament are not simply narratives
are recorded in

of the facts but stories of events as they appeared to the children

when they were written. They are onesided

of Israel at the time

THE NAPOLEON MYTH.

and are not

historical in the strictest sense of the word; they

are historical only in so far as they are echoes of actual events,
the narrative being modified by the beliefs of their authors.
The word Homer means " arranger " or " compiler " and it is

obvious that the several songs of the Homeric epics are not written by the same hand.
They are two great compilations and

we must assume

that

the

ancient

rhapsodists

selected

with

preference themes more or less closely related to the Siege of

Troy and the adventures of Odysseus. They may have com-

posed other songs which are now lost, but when in the sixth
century they were redacted into two great epics, the Iliad and
the Odyssey, the most obvious discrepancies were removed, while
all those materials that did not fall in with the general plan were

doomed

to oblivion.

Troy was

situated in the northwestern corner of Asia

in a place favorable in the old times for the

Minor

development of a

It offered excellent opportunities for

large commercial city.
the exchange of goods that came from both the East and the

from the interior of Asia and from Europe. The coast

was hospitable for such ships as were built in those days, but the
advantages were counterbalanced by the 'disadvantages which
exposed the city to hostile attacks and so the place became unsafe
on account of its wealth, proving an attraction to pirates.
West,

Homer

us the history of the capture of Troy not as it really

happened, but as it lived in the memory of the Greek nation
between the ninth and fifth centuries B. C. It seems a hopeless
tells

task to extract from the Iliad the historical facts that underlie
the story which, in spite of

background, is a tangle
There can be no doubt about it that Helen
its

historical

of myth and legend.

is a humanised form of Selene, the moon
but for all that, some
mortal woman named Helen may have been the cause of a war
;

between Greece and Troy

Odysseus is the sun in his migrations,
who encounters innumerable adventures and descends into the
!

underworld, whence he returns unscathed to the domain of the

living; yet there

may have

lived

named Odysseus, who roamed

all

an adventurous chief of Ithaca,

over the world and came home

an absence of twenty years, an unknown beggar.

Now it is strange that the excavations of Schliemann seem

after

INTRODUCTION.

to verify the Homeric stories, for Schliemunn discovered ancient

ornaments and weapons such as are described in Homer, and
believers in the letter of Homer rejoiced at the fact and declared

triumphantly that, after

for

all,

Homer must

be believed

in

but.

Schliemann's excavations

these

enthusiasts,
unfortunately
prove too much, for he excavated not only one city of Troy, but
several cities which are built one upon the top of the other,

proving that the siege of Troy and the conquest and burning of
the city, had not taken place once but several times; and so we

must have repeated

and the mythology

may have suited all others
of the same kind.
If a myth embodies a general truth, the myth
will find verification in history whenever events of the same kind
see that history

itself,

that overlays the tradition of one tale

happen, not once but repeatedly, for the myth stands for the
type and the type is realised in every concrete instance.

As to Tell, we have to state that no family of that name can

be traced in Switzerland at or before the time of the Swiss
struggle for independence, and the story of Tell's famous shot
at the apple on the head of his child is mentioned for the first

time

in

a chronicle written in

after the alleged occurrence.*

tion in

Swiss history for the

1470,

i.

c.,

about two centuries

But while there

tale

of Tell,

we

is

no founda-

are familiar with

among the Norse, the Danes, and the Saxons.f

can scarcely doubt that the legend is a last reminiscence of
human sacrifices which, with the progress of civilisation, were
similar stories

We

gradually abolished, and one form in which the abolition of

human

sacrifices was effected consisted in a ritual according to

which the victim was consecrated to death but was given a
chance of escape.
* The Tell
legend appears first in the so-called Weissc Bitch of the
Archives of Obwalden, 1470; and again in the Chronik of Melchior Russ,
There is further a Tell ballad of unknown date, and Tschudi, who
1482.
wrote in the sixteenth century, incorporated it in his Chronicon Hclreticum.

Tschudi's account was utilized by Schiller, who, in his famous drama, gave
the story its final and classical form.
"

"

"

Egil
Toko," the Edda of
t Saxo Grammaticus tells the Tell story of
"
William of Cloudeslay." It would lead me
and an old English ballad of
too far to exhaust the subject, but a traveller's report even of distant Arabia
gives us information of a custom in which a person is offered as a sacrifice,
until a skilled

marksman

liberates the victim after the fashion of Toll's shot.

THE NAPOLEON MYTH.

While we positively know that Tell is not an ancient Swiss

name we may boldly say that the stories of Tell did not, but
might as well have happened as not, for wherever there is oppression there we meet with characters such as Tell, who oppose a
tyrant's violence.

Mankind

always interpret the facts of life in the light of

their convictions and beliefs.
Wherever a great personality rises

into

prominence

happened
is

will

stories

be told of him which

will

to characters of the

the reason

why

same type of bygone

same anecdotes are

the

may have
This

ages.

told of Caesar,

of

Charlemagne, of Frederick the Great, and of Grant, and they

will be told of great generals of the ages to come.

When

Napoleon rose into power his heroic dash and his quick
minds of his countrymen and he was naturally
now
to
Alexander
the Great, now to Caesar, or even
compared
to the Gods.
The fate of former conquerors became, as it were,
success dazzled the

a prophecy for his career.

his predecessors,

and

his

He

himself was induced to imitate

admirers did not hesitate to see him in

the light of mythical heroes.

Thus it was but an inevitable
result that many incidents were attributed to him simply because

they belong to the same type of heroes, mythical as well as historical, with whom he had been classified.

A little psychological
mind
to

insight into the constitution of the

human

will best explain the situation.

Every occurrence which we experience is at once co-related

and associated with former experiences and both are so fused

that an unsophisticated person can not easily separate the facts

from the opinions which we hold as to their nature. Thus myth

creeps into history and miracles are

believe in the miraculous.

common

events to those

who

In our religious literature we find the same mixture of fact

and fancy. There is more historical truth in the history of
Buddha, and of Jesus, and of Mohammed than may appear at
first sight, judging from the miraculous adornments of all re-

As ivy quickly covers an old tree, the mythaccretions

almost conceal the real facts of the lives of
ological
can be sure that Jesus, Gotamo Sidreligious leaders.
ligious tradition.

We

clhartha,

and

Mohammed

were

real

persons,

but the

people

INTRODUCTION.

who

look upon them in faith co-relate the acts related of them

with their highest religious ideals of the Buddha, the Christ

and of the Prophet. The Christian Gospels are not simply narratives of the life of Jesus but they are the story of Jesus as the
Christ,

embodying ancient

notion of a Messiah but

only of the Jewish

other kindred hopes. They echo

traditions not

many

the expectations of the people who were prepared for the coming
of a Saviour.
The Christ ideal existed before Jesus. The Jew-

Messiah conception had been modified and deepened by the

Persian doctrine of Mithra, the virgin-born viceroy of God's
kingdom on earth, the Babylonian Marduk, the Conqueror of
ish

Death and mediator between God the Father and men, and also
the world-resigning Buddha of India. When Jesus was accepted
by His disciples as the Messiah, the Christ, all the notions and

honors of previous kindred figures

in the

domain of both

and mythology were transferred and attributed to Him.

The picture of Jesus in the New Testament is not
historical,

but

it

contains historical

Jesus, the Nazarene, as interpreted

facts.

It

is

by those who

history

strictly

the story of
believed that

he was the Christ.

*

One of

the best satires ever written in the literature of the

"
Grand Erratum," which apworld is Jean Baptiste Peres's
Its shafts .are aimed at a book of M. Dupuis,
peared in 1827.
a scholar of great erudition, who believed that all religions, and
the story of Jesus of Nazareth as well, could be explained as
solar myths.

idea of M. Peres's pamphlet is perhaps not origIn the year 1819, eight years before the publihim.
inal with
"
Grand Erratum," Archbishop Whately had pubcation of the
"
Historic
lished anonymously a similar satire under the title

The leading

Doubts Relative to Napoleon Bonaparte," directed against the

logic of David Hume's scepticism, and it is not impossible that
M. Peres heard of this pamphlet and that thereby the main
argument of his plan was suggested to him. It is, however,
highly improbable that he ever saw or read Whately's elaborate
1

L'Origine de tous

Paris, 1796.

les Cultcs,

ou

la

Religion Universelle.

Par.

M. Dupuis.

THE NAPOLEON MYTH.

expositions, else he

would undoubtedly have made use of many

details.
is very ponderous and imitates the subof
his
criticism
to
such
an extent that one may read many
ject
and
whole
without
passages
pages
being able to detect the slight-

Archbishop Whately

est trace of the author's irony.

In

are not travesties at

literally true.

all,

but are

many

fact,

of his arguments
The life of Na-

popularly told not only in France but also in other

countries does contain mythical elements; and many ancient
stories told of mythical heroes were repeated of this latest and

poleon as

'

it is

most extraordinary representative of historical prodigies.

The difference between Whately's ponderous sarcasm and M.
Peres's sprightly wit is characteristic of the two nationalities of
the authors, and while appreciating the one, we need not detract
from the other.
Jean Baptiste Peres was Professor of Mathematics and LibraHe was noted in
rian of Agen, a small town of southern France.
the circle of his friends for his conservative tendencies in both

and

politics

upon

His literary fame, however, rests entirely

brochure on Napoleon in which he so successfully

religion.

this little

methods of rejecting historical evidences

His
solely because they contain some mythical ingredients.
"
"
Grand Erratum
appeared in several editions and has been
It was hailed by
translated into almost all European languages.
pilloried the superficial

conservatives of every stripe and color, and he was praised as the

David who with' a pretty pebble picked up from the bank of a

brooklet had killed the Goliath of Biblical Criticism.

The

attempts at Text as well as Higher

Criticism were of a purely negative character.
Every miracle and
indeed every remarkable fact was explained as a myth, and it is
truth

is

that the

first

only recently, within the last two or three decades, that our
Higher Critics have begun to appreciate the conservative character of

all

religious traditions.

We now know that both the Old

New

Testaments contain ingredients of unquestionably

historical reliability, and though they have frequently been re-

and the

and revised under the influence of later dogmatic tendencies, portions of them (e. g., in Genesis) are much older than
would suit the most rigorous conservatives of former years.
edited

The

sole

excuse for republishing

M.

Peres's

"

Grand Er-

INTRODUCTION.
"
i

atuni

is

the fact that

can be found

in

it is

out of print and forgotten.

No copy
Nor does it exist

any of the Chicago libraries.

in the Congressional Library at Washington, and we could only

with great difficulty through the courtesy of Messrs. Kegan Paul
& Co. get hold of a second-hand copy in England, which is a

made from

young lady who writes

and
is
Lily,"
accompanied with an introduction by Richard Garnet, LL. D., of the British Museum.
It
brars no date and is published by E. W. Allen, London.
translation

under the name

It will

the French by a

"

be very instructive to study the nature of myth formamyth accretion, not only in following the wake of

tion or rather

the higher criticism of the New Testament, but also in parallel

instances such as Napoleon's.
\Ve see here how rapidly folklore
tales attach themselves to a dramatic figure of history; and

Napoleon's case

is

is still

perhaps the better for a student, because his

within clear remembrance of the last but one

personality
generation and the legends have developed under the very eyes
of a civilized world, whose historians were in the habit of record-

ing facts with accuracy and whose writings are still within reach.
It is for this purpose that we publish here a summary of the case
"
The Mythical Napoleon," by Henry Ridgely Evans, who has
of
made a special study of the mythopoeic element in his career.

The

satire of

in the light

M. Peres, will be

better understood

when read

which Mr. Evans throws on the subject; and we may

is applicable to the life stories of almost

national and religious leaders of mankind.

add. the lesson

PAUL CARUS.

all

GRAND ERRATUM. THE NON-EXISTENCE

OF NAPOLEON PROVED.

HOMMAGE
A L'EMPEREUR

C.

MONNBT, DBS.

AUG. SAINT-AUBIN, PAINT.

Presented to His Imperial Majesty by M. Vivant- Denon, Director General of the

Muse'e Napoleon.

GRAND ERRATUM. THE NON-EXISTENCE OF

NAPOLEON PROVED.
BY JEAN-BAPTISTE

Xapoleon Bonaparte, of
written, never even existed.
ical

He

personage.

is

whom
He is

so

much

has been said and

nothing more than an

the personification of the sun

allegor-

and we can

prove our assertion by showing how everything related of Napoleon the Great has been borrowed from the great luminary.
Let us see briefly what we are told of this remarkable man.

\Ye are told

That he was

called Napoleon Bonaparte:

That he was born in an island in the Mediterranean sea
That his mother's name was Letitia-;
That he had three sisters and four brothers, three of whom
were kings;
That he had two wives, one of whom bore him a son
That he put an end to a great revolution;
That he had under him sixteen marshals of the empire, twelve
;

of

whom were in active service;

That he prevailed in the South, and was defeated

in the

North;

To

conclude, that after a reign of twelve years, begun upon

his arrival from the East, he departed, and disappeared in the

Western
It

seas.

remains for us to ascertain whether these various details are

THE NAPOLEON MYTH.

12

borrowed from the sun, and we hope that every reader of

disquisition will rise convinced that this

is

this

the case.

In the

first place, every one knows that the sun is called

the
Apollo by
Now, the difference between Apollo and
poets.
Napoleon is not a great one, and it will appear very much less
i.

we go back

meaning and origin of these names. It

word Apollo means Exterminator; and
it seems that this name was
given by the Greeks to the sun on
account of the injury it did them before Troy, where a part of
their army perished from the excessive heat, and from the
pestistill if

is

to the

unquestionable that the

lence that followed at the time of the outrage perpetrated

by
Agamemnon on Chryses, priest of the sun, as we read at the
"
"
Iliad
of Homer.
The brilliant imagination
beginning of the

of the Greek poets transformed the rays of the

luminary into
flaming arrows, hurled on all sides by the angry god, who would
soon have exterminated everything if his wrath had not been

appeased by the release of Chrysei's, daughter of Chryses, the

sacrificial priest.
is probably the reason
why the sun was called
But whatever the cause or circumstance which occa-

This, then,

Apollo.
sioned the giving of such a name to this luminary,
that the name means Exterminator.

it

certain

is

Now, Apollo is the same word as Apoleon. They are derived

from Apollyo (d7roAA.vw), or Apoleo (dTroAe'w), two Greek verbs
which are really the same, and which mean " destroy," " kill."

"

exterminate."

he would
the

the fictitious hero of our century were called Apoleon,

have the same name as the sun, and would besides fulfil

if

Thus,

meaning of the name

exterminator of

men who

for he

is pictured to us as the
greatest
ever existed.
But this personage is

Napoleon, and thus his name contains an initial letter

which we do not find in the name of the sun. Yes, there is an
extra letter, an extra syllable even for, according to the inscripcalled

tions cut in every part of the capital (Paris), the real

name

of

supposed hero was Neapoleon, or Neapolion. This is more

particularly to be seen on the column of the Place Vendome.

this

Now,
svllable,

this extra syllable

no doubt,

makes no

like the rest

difference whatever.

of the name,

is

Greek

The

and

in

THE GRAND KRK \ IIM

'

THE NAPOLEON MYTH.

Greek ne

vrj),

or nai

(vat.

), is

one of the strongest affirmations,

equivalent to our veritably, or yea. Whence it follows that Nait

Veritable Apollo
poleon means Veritable Exterminator,
;

means, in truth, the sun.

But what is to be said of his other name?

What

connection

can there be between the word Bonaparte and the star of the day?
At first it is not at all evident, but this at least can be understood
:

"

bona parte means good part," it has no doubt to do with

something consisting of two parts, a good and a bad, with something which in addition is connected with the sun, Napoleon.
that as

Now, nothing

is

more

directly connected with the sun than the

results of his diurnal revolution,

and these

day and
presence, and

results are

and darkness; the light produced by his

which prevails during his absence. This is an
borrowed
from the Persians. They have the reign of
allegory
Ormuzd and Ahriman, of light and darkness, of good and bad
And it is to these last, spirits of evil and darkness, that
spirits.
night, light

that darkness

people used formerly to devote their foes, using the following

If by mala parte was meant
imprecation Abi in malam partem.
darkness, no doubt bona parte meant light,
day as opposed to
There
can
then
be
no
doubt
that
this
name
is connected
night.
:

with the sun, especially 'when it is seen to be associated with

Napoleon, who is himself the sun, as has been already demonstrated.

According to Greek mythology. Apollo was born in an

island in the Mediterranean (the Isle of Delos) an island in the
Mediterranean has, therefore, been fabled as the birthplace of
2.

and the preference has been given to Corsica, because

the relative positions of Corsica and France, where he was to be
made to reign, correspond best to those of Greece and Delos.
where were situated the chief temples and oracles of Apollo.
Napoleon

Pausanias, it is true, calls Apollo an Egyptian divinity; but it

does not follow that an Egyptian divinity must be born in Egypt
it is enough that he should be there regarded as a god, and that is
:

what Pausanias meant.

He

designed to inform us that the Egyptians worshipped Apollo, and that establishes yet another connection between Napoleon and the sun; for Napoleon is said to have
been held

in

Egypt

to be invested

with supernatural qualities, to

TIIK (iRAND I.KKATl'M

15

have been regarded as the friend of Mahomet, and

to

homage partaking of the nature of adoration.

His mother is said t<> have been named Letitia.

have

re-

reived
3.

the

word

I^etitia

tender light

fills

(<>r
all

"joy") was meant

nature with joy.

UKNKRAL BONAPARTE.
poets,

It

the
is

But by

dawn whose

first

the dawn, say the

(After Guf.rin.)

which brings forth the sun, flinging wide for him the

portals of the Kast with her rosy-tipped fingers.

Again it is worthy of remark that, according to

Greek mythol-

But if the
ogy, the mother of Apollo was called Lcto (A^w).
our cenin
been
has
Romans made I^atona of Leto. it
preferred
/-//'/ w is the noun derived
tury to change it into Letitia. Uruu-e
"
t. inspire joy.
from /-/</ (obsolete form. /-/). which meanher
son.
1es<
than
no
belongs to
then, this Letitia.

Wnredly.

Greek mythology.

THE NAPOLEON MYTH.

4. According to tradition, this son of Letitia had three sisters,

and there can be no doubt that these three sisters are the three

Graces, who, with their companions the Muses, were the ornaments of their brother Apollo's court.

This modern Apollo is said to have had four brothers.

as we shall show, these four brothers are the four seasons
of the year.
Let us not be startled, at the outset, at seeing the
5.

Now,

seasons represented by

men

rather than

even to seem an innovation, since,

seasons, the autumn, is feminine

women.

It

ought not

French, only one of the four

and even with respect to that
But in Latin autumnus is no

in
;

our grammarians are disagreed.

more feminine than the other three seasons, so there is no diffiThe four brothers of Napoleon may very
culty on that point.
well represent the four seasons, and what follows proves that
they really do

so.

Of Napoleon's

four brothers, three, they tell us, were kings;

who reigns over the flowers; Sum-

these three kings are Spring,

mer,

who

the fruit.

reigns over the harvest; and Autumn, who reigns over

As these three seasons derive all their potent influence

from the sun, we are

told that Napoleon's three brothers held

and reigned only by his authority.

added that of Napoleon's four brothers one was
not a king, it is because one of the four seasons
Winter, reigns
over nothing. But if, to invalidate our parallel, it were alleged
that Winter was not without sway, and if it were wished to
ascribe to him the dismal principality of the frosts and snows
which whiten our land at this melancholy season, our answer
would be ready that, we should say, is what was designed to be
shown by the empty and ridiculous principality with which this
brother of Napoleon is said to have been invested after the fall
their sovereignty at his hands,

And when

it is

all his family.

This principality has been described as in connection with the village of Canino, in preference to any other,
because Canino comes from cani, which denotes the white hairs

of

and they

For, to the poet, the

forests crowning our hill-sides are locks of hair; and when
Winter covers them with his hoar frost, it is the white hairs of
of chill old age,

failing nature in the old

Cum

recall winter.

age of the year.

gelidus crescit canis in montibus humor.

THE GRAND ERRATUM.

the pretended Prince of Canino is nothing more than the

Winter begins when nothing more is
personification of winter.

Thus

left

of the three good seasons, and the sun

tance from our country, which

is

invaded

is at

1>\

his greatest dis-

the furious children

name for the winds: the winds come from

of the north, the poet's
a detested
northern climes, discolor our land, and cover it with
of the
account
fabulous
the
to
This has given rise
whiteness.

THE NAPOLEON MYTH.

invasion of the northern nations into France, where they are said
have done away with a parti-colored flag adorning it. and to

to

have substituted a white one which entirely covered it, after the
It would be idle to repeat that

exile of the fabulous Napoleon.

this is

merely emblematical of the rime that the winds from the

north produce in the winter, and which obliterates the charming

colors that the sun produced in our land, before he waned and
It is easy to see the analogy of all these
departed from us.
with
the
things
ingenious fables conceived in our century.
6.

According to these same

fables,

Napoleon had two wives;

These two

hence two wives have been attributed to the sun.

moon and

wives are the

the earth

the

moon according

to the

Greeks (Plutarch is our authority), and the earth according to

the Egyptians with this noteworthy difference, that by the moon
the sun had no issue, and by the earth he had a son, an only son.
;

This child was the

to say, of the sun

little

and the

of the Heavens," Vol.

tian allegory,

I.,

where the

Horus, son of Osiris and

earth, as
p.

may

61 and following.

little

Isis; that is

be seen in the
It is

"

History
an Egyp-

Horus, born from the earth im-

Even
pregnated by the sun, represents the fruits of agriculture.
so the birth of the supposed son of Napoleon has been fixed at the
2Oth of March, the period of the vernal equinox, because in the
spring agricultural produce undergoes
of development.

its

most important phase

Napoleon is said to have put an end to a devastating scourge

which terrorized ^11 France, and was called the Hydra of the
Revolution. Now, a hydra is a serpent, of what kind matters litThe. Python, an enortle, especially when the serpent is fabulous.
7.

mous serpent, was the cause of great terror in Greece; Apollo

slew the monster, and dissipated the fear of the people this was
his first exploit.
Hence we are told that Napoleon began his
;

reign by crushing the French Revolution, which

For revolution
a chimera as everything else.

is itself

is

as

much

obviously de-

from the Latin word rwolutus, which denotes a curled-up

The Revolution is the Python, neither more nor less.
serpent.
8. The celebrated warrior of the nineteenth century had under
him, we are told, twelve marshals at the head of his armies, and
rived

four

were not

in

active

service.

Now,

the

twelve

first

are

obviously the twelve signs of the zodiac, marching under the or-

THE GRAND ERRATUM.

ders of the sun Napoleon, each of them

commanding a division of
the innumerable army of the stars, which is called the celestial
host in the Bible, and is divided into twelve
parts,

corresponding

to the twelve signs of the zodiac.

who, according to

Such are the twelve marshals

our mythical chronicles, were actively em-

1NSTALLAT1ON OF THE COUNCIL OF STATE.

The four others, in all

ployed under the Emperor Napoleon.
are
four
the
cardinal
probability,
points, which, fixed amid universal motion, are very well symbolised by the inactivity of which

we have
Thus,

spoken.
all

these marshals, active and inactive, are purely sym-

bolical beings, with

no more

reality than their leader.

THE NAPOLEON MYTH.

20

We

9.

overran

are told that this leader of so

many

armies

brilliant

triumph the countries of the south, but that, having

penetrated too far north, he was there unable to maintain himself.
in

these details precisely apply to the sun's course.

The sun.
well known, rules supreme in the south, as is said of the

Now,
it

is

But

is most worthy of note that, after

makes for the northern regions, and
moves further away from the Equator. But when he has taken

Emperor Napoleon.

it

the vernal equinox, the sun

his course in this direction for three

months, he encounters the

North Tropic, which compels him to retreat and go back the way
he came to the south, following the sign Cancer, or Crab which
;

sign, according to Macrobius, derives its

name from

the retro-

grade course of the sun in this region of the globe. This, then,
is the material from which has been drawn Napoleon's
imaginary
northern expedition to Moscow, together with the humiliating
retreat by which it is said to have been followed.

Thus everything we have been told of the success or defeat

of this strange warrior is nothing more than a series of allusions
to the course of the sun.
10.

Finally,

and

needs no explanation, the sun rises in

this

the east and sets in the west, as

all

the world knows.

spectators at the extremities of the earth, the

from the eastern sea

ern sea at night.
rising

and

But

to the

sun seems to

rise

morning and to plunge into the westmoreover, thus that poets describe his

in the

It is,

setting.

That, then,

is all

we

are to understand

when we

are told that

Napoleon came by sea from the east (Egypt) to reign over

France, and that he disappeared in the western seas after a reign
of twelve years.
The twelve years are nothing more than the
twelve hours of the day during which the sun shines on the
horizon.
"

"
Les Nouvelles
reigned but a day," says the author of
Messeniennes," speaking of Napoleon and the way in which- he

He

describes his

rise, decline,

delightful poet saw

the sun.

And

his mother's
his

fall

shows

that, like ourselves, this

Napoleon nothing more than an image of

His name proves it
is nothing more.

in truth he

name proves

two wives,

It is

in

and

it

his three sisters, his four brothers,

his son, his marshals, his exploits.

all prove it.
his
the
moreover,
proved,
by
birthplace; by
regions whence

THE GRAND ERRATUM.

21

we

are told, he came before entering on his career of dominion;

the
time he employed in traversing those regions; by the counby
tries where he prevailed, by those where he succumbed; and by

the place where he vanished, pale and discroivned after his brilto quote the poet Casimir Delavigne.
liant course,
',

It has, then,

been proved that the supposed hero of our cen-

tury is nothing more than an allegorical personage, deriving his

attributes from the sun.
It follows that Napoleon Bonaparte,

of

whom

and

so

much has been

this fallacy,

arises

and written, never even existed

into which so many people have fallen headlong,
said

from the amusing blunder of mistaking the mythology of

the nineteenth century for history.

might further have appealed in support of our contention
to a great number of royal ordinances, whose indisputable dates

We

are evidently irreconcilable with the reign of the pretended Napoleon but we have had sound reasons for letting them alone.
;

THE MYTHICAL NAPOLEON.

THE SOLDIER'S DREAM.

(Detaille.)

THE MYTHICAL NAPOLEON.

AN OCCULT STUDY.
BY HENRY RIDGELY EVANS.
"The

real
is

century,

hero of modern legend, the legend that towers above tin- whole
Inter. Qitar:, Vol. VI., No. I.
Sept.-Dec., 1902.

Napoleon."

"After Marengo, you are the hero of Europe, the man of Providence,
anointed of the Lord; after Austerlitz, Napoleon the Great; after Waterloo,
the Corsican ogre." Victor Hugo: ll'i/liam S/iafosfifarf.

I.

It

has been the fate of the great historical personages

warwoven
about
and
reformers
to
have
kings

riors, priests, poets,

them a

tissue of

grown up about
roaster.

myths and

fables.

Miraculous stories have

Mohammed. Buddha. ZoAlexander the Great, Charlemagne and

the Christ, Moses,

Pythagoras.

Napoleon I entirely obscuring the true characters of these great

men. They remind one of the interminable bandages wrapt about
:

the Egyptian mummy. One has to unwind these cerement cloths

in order to get a view of the body
to see it in its staring nakedness.

these

It is,

then, the duty of the student of history to dissipate

myths and

fanciful stories, to treat

not as demi-gods.

men

as real beings, and

THE NAPOLEON MYTH.

26

Let us take Napoleon

I.

as an example.

There

is

a Napoleonic

legend that persists in spite of the iconoclastic efforts of modern

historians to destroy it.
Like Banquo's ghost it will not down.

The name of Napoleon

is still

one to conjure with.

We

make

under the gilded dome of the Invalides,

and offer up our devotions to the ashes of the dead hero. By
paying a small fee to a uniformed official, we may gaze upon his

pilgrimages to his tomb,

little

cocked hat

le

into a

metamorphosed
Every few years there

Chapeau de Marengo, which has been

symbol or fetish by a French painter.

is a tremendous revival of the Napoleonic

Witness the extraordinary enthusiasm over Rostand's
"
play
L'Aiglon," with its memories of the great soldier and

cult.

his ill-fated son, the

poor eaglet

who

beat his feeble wings in

vain against the golden bars of his cage.

"
The Napoleonic legend did not arise at once,
Says Debrit
:

and
is, while he was the all-powerful master of France,
while he was crushing Europe under his iron heel with an
that

amount of

free-and-easiness, and a contempt for the rights of

others that has been equaled or surpassed only by the great
Asiatic conquerors, Tamerlane and Ghenghis Khan.
At that

time he was admired and feared, but he had not yet become, as
he did become later, the ideal of grandeur and chivalric majesty.

His

epic

commenced

after his fall only

It

was

de<-

when

the vanquished despot

fallen
in
on
that
rock
of St. Helena, which,
appeared
majesty
fumed out, indeed, to be a magnificent pedestal for him."

veloped after Waterloo, especially

Napoleon's memoirs

are

crowded with misstatements and

garbled
They might be called his apocrapha. They
dwell almost exclusively upon the earlier period of his career
and on the Waterloo campaign. Says J. R. Seeley (Napoleon I.,
facts.

p.

230)

"

They reminded

the world that the Prometheus

now

agonizing on the lonely rock, who had lately fallen in defending a free
nation against a coalition of kings and emperors, was the same
who, in his youth, had been the champion of the First French

They consigned the long

Hence the Napoleonic legend, which has

Republic against the First Coalition.

interval to oblivion.

THK MYTHICAL XAPOLEc

-;

in the very midst of the nineteenth century, and wouldnever

have been seriously shaken but for the failure of
perhaps

grown up

the Second Empire."

Napoleon's career between the years 1803 and 1814,

was

"

shaped most freely by his

THli

own

"

will,

when

it

was an unparalleled

EIGHT EPOCHS OF THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON.

This original series of bats, presented in different significant positions, is from the pencil
of Steuben, one of the most fertile painters of the First Empire, and symbolizes the eight principal epochs in Napoleon's career : (i) Vende'miaire. (a) Consulate, (3) Empire, (4) Austerlitr.

(3)

Wagram,

(6)

Moscow,

Xapolson racontf par I'image.

(7)

Waterloo, (8) St. Helena.

Paris: Librairie Hachette

&

Cie.

(From Armand Dayot's

1895.)

despotism, during which a republic was crushed out of existence

and a hereditary monarchy set up in its place
a brummagem
all the trappings of royalty, but crowded with mili-'
whose manicrcs bourgeoises were the laughing
adventurers,
tary
You cannot make a silk
stock of the aristocracies of Europe.

Court, with

purse out of a sow's ear. though you may metamorphose an innA marshal may
keeper's apprentice into a Marshal of France.

THE NAPOLEON MYTH.

28

know how
and fork

to use his
at a

sword

to perfection, but to wield his knife

fashionable dinner party

ah,

that

is

another

matter entirely!

Napoleon during the above-mentioned period was the great

enemy and oppressor of nationalities. He ground a free press r
to powder beneath his iron heel and filled France with the spies J
of the arch-sycophant and hypocrite, Fouche.
Trusting no one.
no one trusted him, as witness the conduct of the ex-Bishop of
Auttin, Talleyrand, who sold his master a dozen times over,
and pocketed the proceeds, but unlike Judas, without remorse.
Europe was plundered of its art treasures to fill the galleries
and museums of France. It was a species of high\vay robbery
on a gigantic scale. This and other acts of Napoleon led the
historian Taine to characterise him as the Corsican Bandit.
The nationality movement, which began in Spain and Tyrol

and spread through North Germany, was a reaction against Na-

"In the year 1815," says Seeley, "he posed

poleon's tyranny.
as a champion and martyr of the nationality principle againsf
the

Holy

Alliance.

The

curtain

fell

upon

this pose.

It

brought

memory of that Bonaparte, who at the end of the

eighteenth century had seemed the antique republican hero
back the

dreamed by Rousseau, and men forgot once more how comBy looking only
pletely he had disappointed their expectations.
at the beginning and at the end of his career, and by disregarding all the intermediate period, an imaginary Napoleon has been

who is a republican, not a despot; a lover of liberty,

not an authoritarian; a champion of the Revolution, not the
destroyer of the Revolution a hero of independence, not a con*
queror; a friend of the people, not a contemner of the people;
obtained,

man

of heart and virtue, not a ruthless militarist, cynic, andThis illusion led to the restoration of the Na^
Machiavellian.

poleonic dynasty in 185 2.1'

Lord Wolseley says of Napoleon (" Cosmopolitan Magazine."

January, 1903)

"

His longing for praise was strong, but his determination to

It was not enough,
secure posthumous fame was still stronger.
that all
it did not satisfy his insatiable craving for renown,
nations should recognise

him

as the greatest of living

men

he

<$

THE MYTHICAL XAPOLEON

29

would have his name coupled forever with those of Alexander

and of Julius Oesar. and placed bc>ide theirs in the world's great
Valhalla.
Of all he wrote and dictated at St. Helena, this
Those who assisted him in the
a-piration was the keynote.
compilation of the hodgepodge of interesting untruths, concocted

HMl'HROR NAPOLEON.
there for publication, helped in this plot to conceal facts and
He would have had us forget the
deceive future generations.
heroes of other ages, and would have history filled with the story

He

placed on record in his beautiful island

prison, not what he had thought or said or done during the vicis-

of his fame alone.

THE NAPOLEON MYTH.

30

situdes of his unparalleled career, but

what he wished history

to

accept and repeat as facts forever.

/
/

'

There

is

no great

early life has been

historical character of

modern times whose

more variously recorded than his has been,

to this result more than he did himself.

and none contributed

The large amount of fiction with which his story abounds has
so long passed current as fact that legends have been created
[the italics are mine] on its foundations to further what I may
term the

'

Napoleonic ivorship.' These fables are still remany

of his most important biographies as facts beyond
"
As I take it, the aim of this great Corsican romandispute.

zvell

peated in
all

cer ivas to mystify posterity concerning the occurrences of his'

them not as they were but as he conceived*

been in the life of the Second C&sar
Afa-

early years by relating

they should ftave

poleon,

Emperor

of the French."

"

II.

then a legendary Napoleon and a real Napoleon. The

Napoleon is gradually coming to light, and the mythical

There
real

is

Modern historians are takfading into the background.

middle ground. "The great Emperor is neither a monster
of wickedness nor a hero-saint.
Of his genius as a sovereign

one

is

X ing

and as a

"

few equals, if any.

Seldom,"
"
has there appeared on this earth an intelligence
says Debrit,
better armed, or., in other words, better adapted to the work it
had to perform and to the time at which it was to manifest itself.
He found society in a state of complete decomposition, and his
strategist he has but

instinct for organisation enabled

structure,

own

made

in his

own

him

to create out of

image, moulded, as

it

it

were, on

new
his

frame.

"

There are some five or six men in history that may be coin
pared to him. and it will always be difficult to decide which of
them all was the greatest, that is. the strongest, the most despotic,
and the most feared. If he did not experience the enjoyment of
ordering vast executions of men such as those in which his
predecessors loved to contemplate their own grandeur and the
nothingness of mankind,

it

is

because he lived in Paris in the

THK MYTHICAL NAPOLEON.

;i

nineteenth century of the Christian era. and not in Nineveh

under the kings, the sons of Sargon.
But he caused blood t<.
flow in streams upon the hat tic-fields for motives that were
scarcely better, and he humblejd more rulers and destroyed more
states than

any Sennacherib or Asurbanipal.

hecatombs, and

He

also

had

his

he need envy no one."

As to Napoleon the man, a flood of contemporary witnesses
like De Remusat. Pasquier. Chaptal. etc.. bear witness to his

DIVIDING THE

in this respect

WORLD AMONG

HIS

BROTHERS COLLECTION HENNINS

He was

In him the
the giant egotist of the world.
"
the end justicold-blooded motto of the founder of the Jesuits.
"
and says Debrit, there was
fies the means," was fully realised
character.

but one inviolable right, the Emperor's will.

But violence bears
in itself the germ of weakness, and here is the unimpeachable

by the mouth of that servant of the

on
the
empire (Pasquier),
policy of excess and wil fulness that
believed in violence and conquest only, and was constantly
now France, now the Pope,
directed toward crushing some one.
and now Europe into the bargain.
verdict rendered

by

history,

THE NAPOLEON MYTH.

32
'

He

France

'

by being unable to secure to

and
he
handed us over almost defrontiers,
the spirit of ultramontanism, and the encroachments

ended,' says Pasquier,

former

its

fenseless to

of the papal power.'

'

France was hypnotised by Napoleon, and saw only glory and

conquest, instead of madness and ruin.
Caesar Lombroso, the great criminologist, has this to say
"Alexander the great [and] Napoleon I.
have the
:

...

[criminal] type complete, and only the prestige

coming from

their

great deeds (which always augments after death) makes us blind,

so that in them, physically and morally, we only see the traits of
It is certain that in the
genius and not those of the criminal.
busts and portraits of Napoleon I., after the Consulate, we find no
more the asymmetric face, stern eyes, the exaggeration of the jaw
bones, and the alveolar pragnathism which he really had, and, in

same way, few busts of Alexander the Great reveal his crimwith vertical wrinkles on the forehead, with the acroetc.
The same thing happens with us in judging their
cephaly,
the

inal type,

we go to the point of excusing common crimes (murder

Duke d'Enghein) and even as far as considering the butch-

actions;

of the

ery of the Borgias as works of genius, as did Machiavelli, and

admiring the most insensate enterprises, such as those of Napoleon in Spain and Russia, and those of Alexander in India, taking
them for profound conceptions as though errors and crimes, when
made on a large scale, change their nature. Not only do people
forgive, but they forget, the cynical indifference of Napoleon to
the thousands of deaths which he caused and at the sight of which

he did not

'

know what

to say except,
night of Paris will adjust
all this.' and they also forget the order to shoot en masse 300 innocent Calabrese, setting fire to their village, because some one had

shot at his soldiers,

the order of

murdered

and the

Alexander the Great only

firing of

an entire

city at

to please a courtesan,

who

his best friend."*

HI.
*

Napoleon's Egyptian campaign was productive of legends.

the hero of Lodi, after his splendid campaign in Italy,

When

* Inter.
Quar., Vol. VI..

Xo.

2.

Dec. 1902

March

1903, p. 239.

TIN-:

MYIHICAI. NAI'OI

33

Kgypt. to the Directory, as the scene of future conflict

and glory for the French arms, the legislative figureheads of
-Vance were not slow in taking the hint.
They felt themselves
I

insecure in their imitation curule chairs as long as the idol

the people and the army remained inactive at home.
The excuse
\

for the expedition

the Kast. and cut

was
them

was an extravagant

To strike a blow at the English

from communication with India.

this:

in

off

It

idea altogether, this sending a French

army

CARICATURE OF GEORGE III. AND HIS COUNCIL RECEIVING THE

NEWS OF NAPOLEON'S CAPTURE OF MADRID.
into the Orient, to die

by the sword and the plague amid the

burning sands of the desert.

But the Directory wanted to get

the future Csesar. and consented

rid of

Napoleon

to his plans.

they feared

What

splendid

dreams of conquest and glory moved the ambitious soul of BonaWho could fathom the burning and mysparte at this time?
Did this lion heart aim at
terious thoughts of that mighty soul?

Who

can tell?
the conquering of the world?
natives
were theatrical in the
the
to
conciliate
efforts
Xapoleon's
extreme.

His knowledge of men was profound, but he

utterly

THE NAPOLEON MYTH.

34
failed

to

comprehend the Moslem mind and character

that

grave, drowsy, Oriental soul, so deeply indifferent to Western

ideas and progress.
When Cairo fell into the hands of the

French, one of Napoleon's first efforts was to call an assemblage

of Arab chieftains and form them into a Divan, or Senatorial
body, to assist in governing Egypt, under the guiding hand of

Then he

France.

issued the following remarkable proclamation,

which was translated into Arabic

"

We

(the French army) also are true Mussulmans. Is it not

we who have destroyed the Knights of Malta, because these mad-

men

it was God's will that

they should make war on
Thrice happy those who shall be with us. They
shall prosper in their fortune and in their rank.
Happy those
who shall be neutral they will have time to know us, and they will

believed that

Mussulmans?

range themselves on our

up arms in favor of the
shall

side.
But woe to those who shall take
Mameluke and fight against us. There

be no hope for them they shall

The
ceived

all

perish."

soldiers only laughed at this bulletin

it

with disdain.

General

(July

2,

1798.)

and the Arabs

re-

Menou embraced Mahometanism,

"

but his example, says Lanfrey, the French historian,

only excited ridicule, and he found very few imitators but if the soldiers
;

had no religious convictions, they had a proud feeling of their

moral superiority. This obstacle made Bonaparte regret that he
had not lived in ancient times when conquerors had no such scruples, and, speaking of Alexander the Great, he said he envied him

power of proclaiming himself the son of Jupiter Ammon,

in his subjugation of Egypt
than twenty battles gained.
He adopted the sententious and imaginative language of the East, and never spoke to the Sheiks or
Muftis without quoting on every occasion verses of the Koran,
and continually boasted to them of having destroyed the Pope
and overthrown the Cross.' He tried hard to strike the fatalist
his

which had been worth more to him

'

imagination by asserting that human efforts could not prevail

against him, and by attributing to himself a kind of Divine com1

mission to complete the work of Mahomet."

Napoleon's invasion of Syria was the sequel of one of those vasT

dreams of conquest in which he was wont to indulge. I quote

"
At one time he studied the map of the
again from Lanfrey
deserts which separated Syria from Persia, fought over again the
:

THK MYTHICAL NAPOLEON.

IS

Campaigns of Alexander, and wrote to Tippoo-Saib that he was

preparing t<> deliver him from the iron yoke of Kngland.' At
another time, he pictured himself as raising an insurrection of the
'

Druses and Greek Christians against the Turks, and marching

NAPOLEON AND HIS

SON.

(Painting by Steubeu.)

with this immense army upon Constantinople, and then, to use

own expression, taking Europe in the rear.' and overthrowing
'

his

way. and finally making the most

marvelous triumphal entry into France recorded in the history of

the Austrian

monarchy on

his

man."

During Napoleon's expedition

to

Syria two rebellions took

THE NAPOLEON MYTH.

36

One was that of an obscure fanatic,

place in Egypt.
himself to be the Angel El'mody, promised in the

who

declared

Koran

to the

"

His only
faithful in the time of persecution.
Says Lanfrey
food was milk, in which he merely dipped his ringers and passed
them over his lips; and his only weapon was a handful of dust,
which he threw in the air, assuring his followers that this alone
:

Several thousand natives were con-

would disperse our army."

cerned in this insurrection.

who

It

was quelled by General Lanusse,

them to the sword.

put fifteen hundred

"
bite the dust
expected to make his enemies
of

"

The angel who

was

slain.

His

weapon proved a failure.

One of Napoleon's adventures at this period was his visit to
the Greek monastery on Mt. Sinai, where, it is said, he inscribed

that of Mahomet in the register kept by the

discredits the story.
Bourrienne
but
monks,
History tells us that the soldiers who went on the Egyptian expedition had their hopes buoyed up with promises of wealth and
his

name under

new Golconda. In this respect

of Cortez and Pizarro.
followers
they were like the swarthy
Where were these great treasures to be found? In despoiling
For we know that it was the
the poor fellaheen? Hardly so.
rare treasures to be obtained in the

Napoleon to propitiate the natives in every manner

Where, then,
possible, and to win them over to French interests.
were to be found these fabled treasures? Perchance deep down
intention of

hidden there by the olden

the bowels of the pyramids
Pharaohs centuries ago. This belief antedated the time of Napo-

in

Caliph Al Mamoun, Moslem conqueror of Egypt, and son

of that Haroun Al Raschid who figures so frequently in the
"
Arabian Nights," entertained the idea of precious treasures
stowed away in the Great Pyramid, and ordered his army to
leon.

quarry out an opening into the monument

the

Arab workmen

chest,

hidden away

but nothing rewarded

for their gigantic task save a solitary stone
an open, lidless,
in the King's Chamber

despoiled sarcophagus.

The

soldiers

were incensed, but Al Ma-

moun
by the perpetration of a pious fraud.
He directed the malcontents to delve to a certain spot, indicated
"
by him, and they soon came upon a sum of gold, exactly equal
to the wages claimed for their work, which gold he had himself
quieted their anger

secretly deposited at the place."

THE MYTHICAL NAPOLEON.

;;

Napoleon took with him, as is well known, a number of learned

and brilliant savants, whose knowledge of Egyptian antiquities,
These archaeologists
hieroglyphics, and the like was profound.
went for the ostensible purpose of studying the monuments and
of the land, in order to report upon the same for the benefit

relics

THE KING OF ROME

of science,

(After Lawrence.)

and bring back with them a magnificent collection of

museums of France. Their presence with the

curios for the

army, though a matter of ridicule

among

the soldiers seemed to

give color to the firm-rooted belief that treasure-hunting uas the

aim and ambition of the Little Corporal. When a square was
formed by a regiment to resist the onslaughts of a fanatical
"
Mameluke cavalry, the order was usually Savants and asses in
the centre."

The

savants, as the reader will recall to mind, rode

THE NAPOLEON MYTH.

.5$

The
donkeys, like the regulation Egyptian tourists of to-day.
T reader will find much curious and interesting data concerning the
/
rumors current during the French occupation of Egypt as to
Napoleon's acquisition of immense secret treasures discovered
V.

somewhere by him

in the

pyramids, in the gossipy memoirs of

Madame

Junot, wife of the General-in-Chief's favorite

"Bonaparte," says Bourrienne (Memoirs, Vol. I.),

officer.

"on

the

He intended
I4th of July, 1799, left Cairo for the pyramids.
spending three or four months in examining the ruins of the
ancient necropolis of
alter his plan.

Memphis; but he was suddenly obliged

Now

the fact

is,

to

that Bonaparte never

even entered the Great Pyramid.

He never had any thought of
I
it.
should
have
accompanied him had he
entering
certainly

done

never quitted his side for a single moment in the

caused some persons to enter into the ancient tomb,

so, for I

He

desert.

while he remained outside, and received from them, on their reIn other words, they
turn, an account of what they had seen.
informed him there was nothing to be seen." This event gave

Napoleon entered the Great Pyramid and

"
and ulemas cried out,
Glory to
is
his
and
Mahomet
God,
prophet."

rise to a silly story that

in the presence of the muftis

Allah!

God

only is
History tells us that Napoleon departed hurriedly for Europe,
after learning from some old newspapers sent him by his enemy,

Sir Sidney Smith, that the French arms on the Continent were
suffering reverses, and that the Directory was rotten to the core

with

its

own

The time had come

imbecility.

for the overthrow

loved Napoleon as his God, was heartJunot,

broken when his general deserted him. He applied to Kleber,
It was
the second in command, for leave to follow Bonaparte.

of this body.

who

granted, and the gallant soldier prepared to set out for France
The story went like wild-fire
in the wake of his beloved leader.

through the army that Junot would carry with him an immense
the treasure of the pyramids, which Napoleon in his
treasure
unable
to take with him, and in consequence of the fact
haste was

had

left his

factotum to transport, as part of his baggage.

the Duchesse d'Abrantes

"

away

Says

report was circulated in the army that Junot was carrying

the treasures found in the pyramids by the General-in-Chief.

THE MYTHICAL NAPOLEON.

The matter was

carried so far that several subalterns and soldiers

went on board the merproceeded to the shore, and some of them

chantman which was

rummaged

to sail with Junot the

about, but found nothing;

same evening. They

came to a

at length they

THE NAPOLEON MYTH.

40

men

could not move, between decks.

Here is the treasure,' cried the soldiers. 'Here is our pay that
has been kept from us above a year; where is the key?
Junot's

prodigious chest, which ten

'

'

an honest German, shouted

valet,

to

them

in vain,

with

all

his

'

Cheneral.'
They
might, that the chest did not belong to his
would not listen to him. Unluckily Junot, who was not to embark till evening, was not then on board. The mutineers seized a

hatchet and began to cut

away

which they would

at the chest,

have soon broken up had not the ship's carpenter come running,
quite out of breath.
'

Mad

is

fellows that

the key.'

He

'What

you are

opened

it

the devil are

stop

you at?' cried

don't destroy

immediately, and lo

my

chest

he.

here

the tools of the

master carpenter of the ship.

"
The odious calumny, the stupid invention, relative to the
,.
treasures of the Pharaohs, had meanwhile found believers else-

The English, for example, had

where, as well as in the army.
A ship was even
been simple enough to give credit to this story.
cruising off Alexandria, and the merchantman in which Junot
was obliged to bring to at the first summons of the
man-of-war.
Theseus,
Captain Steele, while Junot and his aid-decamp, Captain Lallemand. had not the power to make the least
resistance, how well disposed soever they might have been to do
had

sailed

'

so.

and

We

his

were waiting

-for you,'

said Captain Steele to Junot

companion."
IV.

Napoleon has been apotheosised

e whom

like

Alexander the Great,

many points of character. With his arms

crossed on his breast, and his little hat on his head, he seems, in all
his pictures, to be defying the universe like a demi-god, and imhe resembles in

posing his iron will upon the races of mankind.

Legend-makers

eighteen hundred years from now will perhaps characterise him

A as a ruthless vandal from a barbarous island called Corsica, who

swept over the

his train.

civilised

world carrying death and destruction in

him enthroned upon a huge trun-

Artists will picture

cated pyramid of

human

skulls, the spoils of his enemies.

Many

He will appear in the

express doubts that he ever existed.
of
This is not
Britain.
hero
like
Arthur
of
a
King
light
mythical
will

THE MYTHICAL NAPOLEON.

ALEXANDER THE GREAT.

(Mus<i

du Louvre. Paris

THE NAPOLEON MYTH.

42

improbable.
Archbishop Whately in his essay,
Doubts Concerning the Existence of Napoleon," and M. Jean"
Baotiste Peres's
Grand Erratum, the Non-Existence of Napo-

altogether
"

NAPOLEON ON THE BRIDGE OF ARCOLE.

(After the oil-painting of Baron Gros.)

Icon Proved," have given us curious examples of how this may be

brought about. Those who believe in the reincarnations of the

upon the earth, like the Theosophists, will perhaps endeavor

show that Napoleon was identical with Rameses II. (the Se-

soul
to

THE MYTHICAL NAPOLEON.

sostris of the Greeks), with

Charlemagne.

Alexander the Great, and also with

Let us see where

In the splendid

museum

43

this bizarre fancy will lead us.

of Turin, Italy,

among

the ancient

a statue of Rameses, the face of which strongly

resembles that of Napoleon, especially when seen in profile.

Egyptian

relics, is

Georg Ebers, the learned Egyptologist and

tion to this strange likeness in his novel

"

novelist, calls atten-

Uarda."

an interesting fact to note that Napoleon frequently

It is

re-

marked

to his friends that he

was

all

but certain of his identity

with the Gothic hero Charlemagne.

Victor Hugo says ( The Rhine, a Tour from Paris to Maycncc,
etc. )

"

when Bonaparte became known

In 1804,

JoseAix-la-Chapelle, the birthplace of Charlemagne.

him, had the caprice to seat herself upon

visited

phine,

who accompanied

the throne of

abbey]

as Napoleon, he

Charlemagne [one of the

relics to

be seen

in the old

but Napoleon, out of respect for the great Emperor, took

and remained for some time standing, and in silence.

off his hat

The following

fact

is

somewhat remarkable, and struck me

forci-

'

THE NAPOLEON MYTH.

44

In 814 Charlemagne died; a thousand years afterwards,

most presumably about the same hour, Napoleon fell
1814."
has
the
Great
to
Alexander
always posNapoleon's similarity
Both were possessed with dreams of
sessed a fascination for me.
world-conquest, with the same contempt for human life, the same

bly:

tireless capacity to labor,

and both had the same military

tactics

to perceive with an eagle's eye the vulnerable point in the foe's

army and to hurl with lightning rapidity upon that spot an over-

whelming phalanx of men.

Napoleon,

like

Alexander, conquers

Egypt, communes with the Sphinx, and dreams of becoming a

Compare the portraits

species of demi-god, or Oriental despot.
of Alexander, such as we find them upon gems, coins, etc., with
and the mind

that of Napoleon,

derful resemblance.

Of

course

is

at

once struck with the won-

it is all

fanciful

and

and

bizarre,

one might well say that Napoleon cultivated the Greek type and
the artists and sculptors who fixed his likeness upon canvas or in
stone flattered

him

to this extent.

The Russian campaign gave

In the famous
rise to legends.
coach
fitted up
in
a
luxurious
travelled
Napoleon
usually
"
of
the
German
as a sleeping-carriage.
Says Bigelow ( History
"
He only walked for the
Struggle for Liberty," Vol. II., p. 27)
retreat

sake of stirring his blood.

Of course he had a complete camp
and
an
outfit
of
kitchen
wine, and lived as well as it was possible

That he shared the struggles and sufferings of

to do.

his

men,

even to the extent of riding his horse in their midst, is the invention of patriotic painters and novelists.
Napoleon respected the
doctrine I'etat c'est moi, and

badly

retreat

that he

was serving the

he neglected his

the sacred city of

silks,

felt

own health." The

were burdened down with all sorts of

if

Moscow, money, jewelry,

Napoleon carried

icons, clocks, etc.

taken from

furs, costly laces

off with

him

and

as the

from
had con-

'piece de resistance of the plundering expedition, the cross

"

to prove that he

the top of the Kremlin

as though
quered the country by desecrating its capital. But it proved to
be nothing but base metal, gaudily gilded for the purpose of deNotwithstanding this, it was carried
ceiving those far away."

along in the strange procession to play its part in the anticipated

It is related
triumphal entry of the modern Caesar into Paris.

'

state

soldiers during the

articles

THK MYTHICAL NAPOLEON.

THE NAPOLEON MYTH.

46

that on the entry of the French forces into Moscow that an

eagle was seen entangled amid the chains of this cross, high up

on the bulbous-shaped tower of the Kremlin. By some this \\ adeclared to portend disaster to the French army.
It proved
true; the Imperial Eagle of France, Napoleon, was certainly
caught in the trap set for him by his enemy, Holy Russia,
Moscow proved Napoleon's
represented by the gilded cross.
Golgotha. His downfall and exile to Elba began there.
Victor Hugo, poet, novelist, and symbolist, has given us the
epic of Waterloo, in his powerful story,

"

Les Miserables," the

foremost work of fiction of the iQth century. He has done for'

literature what Raffet and Steuben have done for art.
Waterloo

Hugo's hands becomes the Supreme Enigma, the Twilight of

the Gods.
His conception of the subject is worthy of a Michael
The
It is a species of ApocAngelo.
figures become gigantic.
"
it
for
He
Was
Napoleon to win the
alypse.
says
possible
battle?
We answer in the negative. Why? On account of
Wellington; on account of Blucher? No; on account of God.
When the earth is suffering from an excessive burden,
there are mysterious groans from the shadow, which the abyss
hears.
Napoleon had been denounced in infinitude, and his fall
was decided. He had angered God. Waterloo is not a battle,
"
but a transformation of the Universe."
Did this vertigo, this
in

overthrow of the greatest bravery that ever astonished

take
No. The shadow of a
place without a cause?
history,
hand
is
cast over Waterloo it is the day of destiny,
mighty right

terror, this

and the force which

the terror, hence

all

is

man produced that

great souls laying down

above

those

day.

Hence

their swords.

Those who had conquered Europe, fell, crushed, having nothing

more to say or do, and feeling a terrible presence in the shadow.

On

Hoc

erat in fatis.

race

was changed, and Waterloo

that

day the perspective of the human

is

the

.hinge_

of the iQth cen-

tury."

When

Francis

I.

of Austria heard of the defeat of his son-in"

I always thought that man

law at Waterloo, he exclaimed
would end badly he wrote such a villainous hand." But to re:

turn to Hugo.

What

word-painting could be grander than

this

bit

from

THE MYTHICAL

X A !'

U.l

n\.
"

At a distance it
Hugo's description of the Cuirassier charge:
appeared as if two immense steel snakes were crawling toward
the crest of the plateau; they traversed the battlefield like a flash.

mon>ter.
It seemed as if this mass had become a
and had but one soul each squadron undulated, and swelled like
the rings of a polype.
This could be seen through a vast smoke
which was rent asunder at intervals it was a pell-mell of helmets,
.

THE NAPOLEON MYTH.

48

shouts and sabres, a stormy bounding of horses among cannon,

and a disciplined and terrible array while above it all flashed the
cuirasses like the scales of the hydra.
Such narratives seemed to
belong to another age; something like this vision was doubtless
;

traceable in the old

Orphean

epics describing the men-horses, the

ancient hippanthropists, those Titans with human faces and equeswhose gallop escaladed Olympus,
horrible, invul-

trian chests

gods and brutes.

nerable, sublime;

It

was

a curious numerical

coincidence that twenty-six battalions were preparing to receive

the charge of these twenty-six squadrons."

The

stand of the Old Guard is described with equal mag"

They are no longer men, but demi-gods hurling
In the disastrous retreat he speaks of Napoleon
thunderbolts."
"
as follows
At nightfall, Bernard and Bertrand seized by the
last

nificence.

near Genappe, a haggard, thoughtful,

gloomy man, who, carried so far by the current of the rout, had
just dismounted, passed the bridle over his arm, and was now,
skirt of his coat, in a field

with wandering eye, returning alone to Waterloo.

It was Napoof
the shattered dream, still
leon, the immense somnambulist
to

striving

advance.

does the Infinite care?

and then

this peace.

Such

is

Waterloo;

what

but

All this tempest, all this cloud, this war,

All this shadow did not for a moment dis-

turb the flash of the mighty eye before which a grub,' leaping
from one blade of grass to another, equals the eagle flying from

tower to tower

"'Napoleon

at
is

Notre Dame."
dead,' said a passer-by to an invalid of
'

rengo and Waterloo.

He

dead

'
!

the soldier exclaimed

'
;

Mamuch

'

Imaginations deified this thrown man.

you know about him
Europe after Waterloo was dark, for some enormous gap was
long left unfilled after the disappearance of Napoleon
' "
With the fall of the Dictatorship an entire European system
ibrumbled away, and the Empire vanished in a shadow which
!

Resembled that of the expiring Roman world. Nations escaped

The
from the abyss as in the time of the Barbarians.
.

Empire, we confess, was lamented, and by heroic eyes, and its

glory consists in the sword-made sceptre; the Empire was glory

had spread over the whole earth all the light that
a dim light, we will say, an obscure light
tyranny can give,
itself.

It

THE MYTHICAL NAPOLEON.

49

THE NAPOLEON MYTH.

5<>

for

when compared with

real day,

is

it

night.

This disappear-

ance of the night produced the effect of an eclipse."

"
Those who triumphed were alarmed.
.

England had

him guarded by Hudson Lowe, and France had him watched

by Montcheme. His folded arms became the anxiety of thrones,
and Alexander called him his insomnia. This terror resulted
from the immense amount of revolution he had in him, and it is
which explains and excuses Bonapartistic liberalism. This
phantom caused the old world to tremble, and kings sat uneasily

this

on their thrones, with the rock of

St.

Helena on the horizon."

After the fiasco of Waterloo, when the allies were in possession of France, Paris was filled with old soldiers of the Empire.

They gnawed

their bristling

of the beloved tricolor

moustaches with chagrin at the sight

into the white flag of St. Louis.

made over

and picked quarrels with the English

and Germans. Many a blonde Anglo-Saxon and Teuton fell on
the duelling field by the swords and pistols of the partisans of the
When Napoleonic relics
great Emperor, who was their idol.
were forbidden to be sold by the government many of the soldiers

They frequented

the cafes

of the shattered grand army carried walking sticks with carved

heads that would cast a curious silhouette of the exiled Emperor,
a contrivance of an inventive carver-in-wood.

To

all

outward

appearance the canes were innocent looking enough, but bring

them near a lighted wall and lo
a shadowy likeness of Bona!

Marion, in his work on optics, gives

some interesting specimens of these canes. This is fetish worship carried to an extreme.
parte, cocked hat and

all

No

grander body of Pretorians ever existed than the Imperial

Guard of Napoleon. At Waterloo they seemed to disdain death,

and willingly bared

their breasts to the

cannon

balls.

They were

not routed, but retired slowly and sullenly before the English.
"
The Old Guard dies
Legend has been busy with these heroes.
"
it never surrenders
is the reputed reply of Cambronne to the
;

What

he really did say

but that is best told by Vic"

on
Les Miserables."
tor Hugo,
Cambronne. in
But, dear reader, you must get an unexpurgated edition of this
famous book. But what became of the Imperial Guard ? It was
The officers, who served in the camdisbanded by Louis XVIII.
English.

in his chapter

1111-

MYTHICAL NAPOLEON.

^i

paign of the Hundred hays. \\ITC "declared to be incapacitated

to receive any title or form any part of the new army about to be

The

nised.

superior officers were dragged before military

Xey. who led the last charge of the Guard, was

commissioners."
shot.

came

Many

of the officers fled to foreign lands.

and endeavored

to Texas,

JAMESTOWN,
without success.

They

Some

to

form a settlement

ST.

HELENA

drifted back to

New

of them

there, but

Orleans and were

lost sight of in the whirlpool of events.

V.

Napoleon was

At

St.

superstitious.

He

believed in the

"

evil eye."

Helena, referring to his first interview with his jailer. Sir

said to Dr. O'Meara. "I never saw such a

Hudson Lowe, he

horrid countenance.

on a

little

table

He

sat

on

a chair opposite to

between us there was a cup of

evil

coffee.

sofa,

and

His phys-

impression upon me that I

the
coffee, and I ordered Marhad
poisoned
eye

iognomy made such an unfavorable

thought his

my

THE NAPOLEON MYTH.

52

chand

to

lowed

it

throw

out of the window.

it

would not have swal-

for the world."

"

Napoleon constantly referred to his Star of Destiny."

In instituting his famous Legion of Honor, he substituted a
star for the cross of St. Louis.
The celebrated French mystic
and cabalist, Eliphas Levi, has this to say on the subject :*
*

De la Haute Magic, vol. II., pp. 55-62. "The pentagram," says Levi, "is
called in the Gnostic schools the Blazing Star, and is the sign of Intellectual
Omnipotence and Autocracy. It is the Star of the Magi it is the sign of the
Word made Flesh, and, according to the direction of its rays, this absolute
;

symbol represents Good or Evil, Order or Disorder, the blessed Lamb of

Ormuzd (Ahuro-Mazdao), and St. John, or the accursed Goat of Mendes."

FIGURE OF THE PENTAGRAM

(From

is

Levi's

work Dognie

et ritucl

de la haute magic.)

"The pentagram expresses the mind's domination over the elements and it
by this sign that we bind the demons of the air, the spirits of fire, the

spectres of water, and the ghosts of earth. If it be asked how a sign can
exercise that immense power over spirits which is claimed for the pentagram,

we inquire in turn why the Christian world bows before the sign of the cross.
The sign by itself is nothing, it derives its strength from the doctrine it symbolises,

and of which

it is

the Logos.

Now

a sign

which epitomises by

signifi-

cation all the occult forces of nature, and which has always manifested to
elementary and other spirits a power superior to their own. naturally strikes
them with fear and respect, and enforces their obedience by the empire of

The pentagram
knowledge and will over ignorance and weakness.
was traced by the old magicians on the threshold of the door, to prevent evil
spirits from entering, and good ones from going out."
.

THE MYTHICAL NAPOLEON.

"The

whole revolutionary

\\<>rk <>f

modern

tiim-- U;IN

symbol-

ically summed up by the Napoleonic substitution of the Star of

Honor for the Cross of St. Louis. It was the Pentagram substi-

Labarum, the reinstatement of the symbol of light.

Masonic resurrection of Adon-hiram. It is said that Napoleon believed in his star; and that if he could have been persuaded
to say what he understood by this star it would have been found
that it was his own genius and therefore he was in the right to
tuted for the

the

VIEW OF LONGWOOD,

ST.

HELENA.

adopt for his sign the Pentagram, that symbol of

human

sov-

ereignty by the intelligent initiative."

VI.

may, the Napoleonic legend will die hard. The

masses of the people, who are anything but critical, will still invest
the great Emperor with the halo of mystery, superstition, and ro-

Do what we

and novelists

will contribute in the fu-

mance.

Painters, poets,

ture, as

of the
they have done in the past, to this building up

mythos about him.

The famous

lithographic draughtsman. Raffet. years ago.

THE NAPOLEON MYTH.

54

gan the symbolical and mystical treatment of the Napoleonic

"

Retreat of the Sacred Battalion

Take, for example, his
"
at Waterloo,"
Waterloo, June 18, 1815," La Revue Xoctnrnc.

cycle.

etc.

Could there be finer examples of idealisation in art than the

Nocturne? It is the bizarre apotheosis of the imperial drama; a
weird and fantastic bit of impressionism. It is midnight in the

Champs

Elysees.

cold

wind blows the moon

;

LONGWOOD FROM A

leon holds a review of spectres

"

partly hidden

DISTANCE.

Suddenly appears a phantom army.

by clouds.

is

The dead Napo-

aroused for one night from

by the sound of the trumpet. An army of horsemen pass by like a whirlwind, and salute with their swords the
miodern Caesar on his white charger."
eternal slumber

^ The German

verse

Raffet, in black

up, like a

Bones.
diers

poet, Zedlitz, celebrates the scene in

modern

and white, makes

real for us,

conjuring

Ezekiel, a second vision of the Valley of

They come, they come, from

from

it

some splendid

Dry

parts of the world, solthe burning sands of Egypt, the snowy steppes of
all

Till.

MVIMK-AI. NAl'ol.l.oN

l\uia. the vim-yard dotted lieNN of

55

Italy, to participate

in the

review, only to melt away into the land of shadow* at the

hlush of the dawn in the eastern sky.

Kverything connected with Napoleon

tion, his death, his

second funeral.

is

first

theatrical, his corona^

While he was dying, a

thunderstorm was raging at St. Helena. It seems as

ture had conspired to make the death of the Caesar heroic.
rific

REVEILLE OF THE DEAD.

if

ter-

na-

Amid

(After Raffet.)

the crash of thunder, like the sound of artillery, Napoleon cried

"
Tctc d' armed"
out.
(Head of the army.) He doubtless

imagined himself again

or Waterloo.

at Ansterlitz,

sojourn at St. Helena, the

Kmperor's
hinted at French plots to rescue him.
hers of the

During

the'

English newspapers often

It is

actually said that

Old Guard contemplated an attempt

to take

mem-^J

Napoleon \

to the
rocky prison, but that it proved abortive, owing
The
extreme vigilance of the English authorities.
lynx-eyed Sir

from

his

"J

_\

THE NAPOLEON MYTH.

56

Hudson Lowe watched

his

wretched captive too

dim future, legend-makers

delivered from his enemies.
He
in the

will

Some day
Napoleon was

well.

will declare that

be made to

sail

away

in a

mythical Arthur, surrounded not by weeping women,

but by the remnant of his Old Guard, those bronzed and battlescarred heroes, and disappear forever from the knowledge of
mankind. The great sarcophagus of black marble, beneath the
ship like the

dome

of the Invalides will then have crumbled into dust, and be

no longer a mute witness to the truth.

Napoleon's second funeral created a tremendous furore

jf

France, and did much

to perpetuate the legends.

It

in \

was a great^

On the Esplanade des Invalides, the giant funeral car

passed between an avenue of thirty-two statues of famous kings
and heroes, among whom were Charles Martel, Charlemagne.

I/" spectacle.

"
and the Chevalier Bayard. Says Tarbell
Oddly
enough, this hedge of statues ended in one of Napoleon himself:
Clovis,

the

Tiens,' cried

one urchin, 'voila

a lui meme.'
/
/

of the arrangement struck even the gamins.

incongruity

'

(Hello, see there

comme I'empcreur fait la queue

how the Emperor brings up his

own procession.)"
The funeral ceremonies at the Invalides was a great dramatic
Amid the glare of countless wax lights, the coffin was
spectacle.

^carried up the

aisle,

on the shoulders of soldiers and

sailors.

Louis Philippe stood at the catafalque to receive the remains.

The Prince de Joinville, who headed the procession, said to him
The
"Sire, I bring .you the body of the Emperor Napoleon."
:

"

name of France." Then (to

language of Thackeray, who was present, an interested

king replied:
use the

receive

it

in the

"
Bertrand put on the body the
perfide Albion}
most glorious victorious sword that ever has been forged since
the apt descendants of the first murderer learner! how <o hammer

spectator

from

la

steel."

All this honor, all this sham magnificence, the colossal statues
of papier mache, the gilded eagles, the tall braziers burning alcohol flames, the chanting of priests, the clouds of incense, the
all this, thrown
music, rolling drums, and thundering cannon
mute
in
its
narrow
the
ensconced
house of lead.
figure
away upon

Pitv that Dante had not lived in the Nineteenth Centurv to de-

THE MYTHICAL NAPOLEON

scribe for us, in his lava-like verse, the

S7

punishment of the modern

the Infernal Regions.

Would it have been very different from a certain scene shown by Virgil to the poet?
Imagine
Napoleon, torn with remorse and horror, surrounded by the disir in

membered bodies of those slain during his wars of aggrandi/cment.

The bloody arms with clenched hands rise up to menace
him the ghastly heads vomit curses upon him; the bodies exhibit
their gaping wounds to him.
Can we not hear these gory heads
;

FUNERAL CORTEGE
December

15, 1840.

IX

THE CHAMPS-ELYSEES.

After the design of Ferogio and Giraid.

crying out to the Emperor:

"Why

didst thou desert us after

"

And
Traitor, False Friend. Coward!
"
one still more horrible-looking
Ah, why didst thou not die
"
Ah.
with us at Waterloo, amid the wreck of the Old Guard
Moscow,

after Leipzig!

why

not?

Because the great Gambler was

like a needle to the lodestone

rock

irresistibly

drawn

to the rock of St. Helena,

shadow of which doubtless darkened the cradle of his baby

He who had insulted
St. Helena was necessary fur him.
days.
a Hudson
kings had to chafe and fume under the petty insults of
the

I. <>\ve,

and

eat his heart out with chagrin, deserted

by

his

Au<-

THE XAPOLEOX MYTH.

58

who took comfort in the arms of a Von Neipperg.

The bones of the wretched Josephine, rotting away at Mahnaitrian wife,

were indeed avenged.

The body of Napoleon was finally laid away in a massive
sarcophagus of the black marble of Egypt. It lies beneath the
great gilded dome of the Invalides, which has been compared by
son,

Hugo

to a giant helmet,

fit

covering for the First Captain of the

Age.

TOMB AT

ST.

HELENA. SILHOUETTE OF NAPOLEON

AMONG THE TREES.

(Historical snuffbox in collection of

M. Maze.)

NAPOLEON'S COCKED HAT.

APPENDIX.

NAPOLEON'S COCKED HAT.

HISTORY OF THE FAMOUS BLACK FELT

(From N. Y. Tribune,

WORN AT WATERLOO.

Oct. 30, 1904.)

Paris, October

The famous cocked

1 1

worn by Napoleon at Waterloo was

the subject of sharp discussion last Thursday at the Institute of
France.
The late painter, J. L. Gerome, had bequeathed the
historic relic to the Institute to be preserved in the Conde Museum at Chantilly. This legacy excited the indignation of several members of the Institute, including Messrs. Mezieres, Gruyer
hat

Lisle, who petitioned that august body to refuse

the bequest, alleging that, as the Chantilly Museum was a monu-

and Leopold de

ment commemorating
highly unbecoming to

the glory of the great Conde. it

place- in it the head-dress of the

would be

man who

1804 had ordered the Due d'Enghien, great-grandson of the

Prince of Conde. victor of Rocroy, to be shot.
The question of
the cocked hat became a burning issue, and. in accordance with
in

the petition, an extraordinary plenary session

61

was

held,

and after

THE NAPOLEON MYTH.

62

a vigorous debate among the members of the five academies it

was decided by a vote of forty-two to twenty-eight to accept the
legacy.
Consequently, the black felt Napoleonic hat will shortly
be placed at Chantilly in a glass case beside the flag of Rocroy.
This exciting historical discussion has elicited interesting revelations,

concerning Napoleon's hats and uniforms.

hundred and

that of the one

fifty

there are only seven

Emperor

It

appears

hats belonging to the great

now known

to be in existence.

By his will, dated April 15, 1821, Napoleon left to his son,
Due de Reichstadt, all his wearing apparel and equipments,
cluding jewels,

hats,

camp

etc.

"

bedsteads,

the
in-

swords, saddles, uniforms, boots, spurs,

"
In the lot marked by the Emperor
C"

Marchand will keep and

- were two cocked hats. After
my
Napoleon's
death the faithful Marchand sought in vain to be allowed to see
"
"
the sequestered Due de Reichstadt
and to hand
1'Aiglon
over to him the objects that had belonged to his father.
The
inventory of

Due de
to him.

my

son

deliver to

personal effects that

"

Reichstadt died without ever seeing the relics bequeathed

The objects were then divided among the Emperor's

surviving brothers and

at

sisters.

Waterloo was among the

line,

wife of Murat,

worn by

the

Emperor

assigned to the ex-Queen Carosubsequently gave it to her secretary,

lot

"

ago sold
L. Gerome.

thirty years
painter, J.

hat

a reward for long and faithful services."

left the hat in his will to his eldest son, who some

F. B. de Mercey,

De Mercey

who

The

it

The

in a glass case in his dining

martre, which

was

sum

of 17,000 francs to the

historic hat was placed by Gerome

for the

room, adjoining his studio, at MontMoulin Rouge

situated nearly opposite to the

Shortly before the Due d'Aumale's death Gerome

was lunching at the Chateau de Chantilly. While sipping coffee
"
Do you know, monseigneur, that a parathe painter remarked
"
in
will
concerns you?"
Indeed," exclaimed the Due
my
graph
"
"
I have left to the Conde
d'Aumale.
Yes," replied Gerome,

Music Hall.

Museum

worn by Napoleon at Waterloo." The Due

some astonishment, and asked Gerome
"
"
came into his possession.
to tell him how the
interesting relic
No further mention was made of the hat until Gerome's will was
probated, when the matter was eagerly discussed, and it has
the hat

d'Aumale manifested

NAPOLEON'S COCKED HAT.

been decided t> plan- tin- fanxius black
the central room of the mu>eum beside the llas^
at last

OLD SOLDIER'S PRAYER ON THE S TH OF MAY.

felt
i

head-dress in
I\>croy.

(After a Litho. by de Charlet.)

seven authentic Napoleonic hats now in existence are all

Prince Victor Napoleon. Prince Louis
of different dimensions.
Napoleon and the Kmpress Eugenie each have one. A fourth is

The

THE NAPOLEON MYTH.

64

owned by Armand Dumarescq, a

figures in Mme. Tussaud's museum
tine

which served

The

sixth hat of

Parisian painter.
Another
in London beside the guillo-

Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette.

was
once the property of Meissonier,
Napoleon
to decapitate

the military painter, and, after having served as the model in

all of that artist's pictures of the Emperor, was given by Charles
Meissonier, the painter's son, to the Museum of the Army at
the Invalides, where Napoleon was buried.
The seventh hat of
is
that
which
he
wore
and which is now
at
Waterloo,
Napoleon

going to the Conde Museum at Chantilly, the magnificent castle

and domain left by the late Due d'Aumale, lineal descendant of
Conde, to the Institute of France as a national monument to com-

memorate

his illustrious ancestor.

It is interesting to
still

note that the legend of the

Frenchmen always

exists.

as

"

Napoleon
by Bonaparte

the

little

hat."

"

"
petit

chapeau

refer to the headgear of the First

This

because the hats worn

is

at Toulon, at Lodi, in Egypt, during the famous

and at Marengo were all quite small. When
Brumaire,
eighteenth
the Emperor became stouter he ordered his hatter to widen the

As he grew
became bigger and bigger, his hats became
broader and broader. The hat of Waterloo is considerably
These facts are recorded in
larger than the hat of Austerlitz.
brims of his head-dress so as to be more becoming.
stout

and as

his face

Poupard et Cie., who

and
which were recently
Courts,
Nadiscovered by M. Germain Bapst, the Parisian antiquarian.
poleon, although careful of his personal appearance, had a terrible

the inventories of the Emperor's hatters,

had

their

shop near the

Law

habit of soiling his waistcoat with snuff, which he carried loose

in the left-hand pocket, thereby doing away with the inconvenIt appears that the Emperor had
ience of carrying a snuffbox.

wiping the ink from his fingers on his

The hats, however, were free from such accidents,
breeches.
and he prided himself on the graceful way in which he wore
also a slovenly trick of

them.

writer in the

"

interesting to discover some

variably refused to remove

"

suggests that it would be

of the hats which Napoleon in-

Gaulois

from

his

head when he received

He
kings and sovereign princes under the rank of Emperor.
uncovered his head only in the presence of the Emperors of

NAPOLEON'S COCKED HAT.

Russia and of Austria.

One day Napoleon

of Bavaria and of Saxony at Saint-Cloud.

removed

their hats the

65

received the Kings

As

Emperor acknowledged

the

two kings

their salutations

by merely touching the brim of his cocked hat with his foreC. Inman Barnard. Paris Correspondent.
finger.

"

-_f^

.-^
.

-"

WUV

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