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The Man of Destiny By: Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) |
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BERNARD SHAW 1898 The twelfth of May, 1796, in north Italy, at Tavazzano, on the road
from Lodi to Milan. The afternoon sun is blazing serenely over the
plains of Lombardy, treating the Alps with respect and the anthills
with indulgence, not incommoded by the basking of the swine and oxen in
the villages nor hurt by its cool reception in the churches, but
fiercely disdainful of two hordes of mischievous insects which are the
French and Austrian armies. Two days before, at Lodi, the Austrians
tried to prevent the French from crossing the river by the narrow
bridge there; but the French, commanded by a general aged 27, Napoleon
Bonaparte, who does not understand the art of war, rushed the fireswept
bridge, supported by a tremendous cannonade in which the young general
assisted with his own hands. Cannonading is his technical specialty; he
has been trained in the artillery under the old regime, and made
perfect in the military arts of shirking his duties, swindling the
paymaster over travelling expenses, and dignifying war with the noise
and smoke of cannon, as depicted in all military portraits. He is,
however, an original observer, and has perceived, for the first time
since the invention of gunpowder, that a cannon ball, if it strikes a
man, will kill him. To a thorough grasp of this remarkable discovery,
he adds a highly evolved faculty for physical geography and for the
calculation of times and distances. He has prodigious powers of work,
and a clear, realistic knowledge of human nature in public affairs,
having seen it exhaustively tested in that department during the French
Revolution. He is imaginative without illusions, and creative without
religion, loyalty, patriotism or any of the common ideals. Not that he
is incapable of these ideals: on the contrary, he has swallowed them
all in his boyhood, and now, having a keen dramatic faculty, is
extremely clever at playing upon them by the arts of the actor and
stage manager. Withal, he is no spoiled child. Poverty, ill luck, the
shifts of impecunious shabby gentility, repeated failure as a would be
author, humiliation as a rebuffed time server, reproof and punishment
as an incompetent and dishonest officer, an escape from dismissal from
the service so narrow that if the emigration of the nobles had not
raised the value of even the most rascally lieutenant to the famine
price of a general he would have been swept contemptuously from the
army: these trials have ground the conceit out of him, and forced him
to be self sufficient and to understand that to such men as he is the
world will give nothing that he cannot take from it by force. In this
the world is not free from cowardice and folly; for Napoleon, as a
merciless cannonader of political rubbish, is making himself useful.
indeed, it is even now impossible to live in England without sometimes
feeling how much that country lost in not being conquered by him as
well as by Julius Caesar. However, on this May afternoon in 1796, it is early days with him. He
is only 26, and has but recently become a general, partly by using his
wife to seduce the Directory (then governing France) partly by the
scarcity of officers caused by the emigration as aforesaid; partly by
his faculty of knowing a country, with all its roads, rivers, hills and
valleys, as he knows the palm of his hand; and largely by that new
faith of his in the efficacy of firing cannons at people. His army is,
as to discipline, in a state which has so greatly shocked some modern
writers before whom the following story has been enacted, that they,
impressed with the later glory of "L'Empereur," have altogether refused
to credit it. But Napoleon is not "L'Empereur" yet: he has only just
been dubbed "Le Petit Caporal," and is in the stage of gaining
influence over his men by displays of pluck. He is not in a position to
force his will on them, in orthodox military fashion, by the cat o'
nine tails. The French Revolution, which has escaped suppression solely
through the monarchy's habit of being at least four years in arrear
with its soldiers in the matter of pay, has substituted for that habit,
as far as possible, the habit of not paying at all, except in promises
and patriotic flatteries which are not compatible with martial law of
the Prussian type... Continue reading book >>
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