Александр Амфитеатров
Folk-Tales of Napoleon
Now there was a prediction among the Egyptians down there that Napoleon would come; and the name they had for him was Kebir Bonaberdis, which means, in their lingo, "The Sultan strikes fire." They were as much afraid of him as they were of the Devil; so the Grand Turk, Asia, and Africa resorted to magic, and sent against us a demon named Mody [the Mahdi], who was supposed to have come down from heaven on a white horse. This horse was incombustible to bullets, and so was the Mody, and the two of 'em lived on weather and air. There are people who have seen 'em; but I haven't any reason, myself, to say positively that the things told about 'em were true. Anyhow, they were the great powers in Arabia; and the Mamelukes wanted to make the Egyptian soldiers think that the Mody could keep them from being killed in battle, and that he was an angel sent down from heaven to fight Napoleon and get back Solomon's seal – a part of their equipment which they pretended to believe our general had stolen. But we made 'em laugh on the wrong side of their mouths, in spite of their Mody!
They thought Napoleon could command the genii, and that he had power to go from one place to another in an instant, like a bird; and, indeed, it's a fact that he was everywhere. But how did they know that he had an agreement with God? Was it natural that they should get such an idea as that?
It so happened, finally, that he carried off one of their queens – a woman beautiful as the sunshine. He tried, at first, to buy her, and offered to give for her all his treasure, and a lot of diamonds as big as pigeons' eggs; but although the Mameluke to whom she particularly belonged had several others, he wouldn't agree to the bargain; so Napoleon had to carry her off. Of course, when things came to such a pass as that, they couldn't be settled without a lot of fighting; and if there weren't blows enough to satisfy all, it wasn't anybody's fault. We formed in battle line at Alexandria, at Gizeh, and in front of the Pyramids. We marched in hot sunshine and through deep sand, where some got so bedazzled that they saw water which they couldn't drink, and shade that made them sweat; but we generally chewed up the Mamelukes, and all the rest gave in when they heard Napoleon's voice.
He took possession of Upper and Lower Egypt, Arabia, and the capitals of kingdoms that perished long ago, where there were thousands of statues of all the evil things in creation, especially lizards – a thundering big country, where one could get acres of land for as little as he pleased.
Well, while Napoleon was attending to his business inland, where he intended to do some splendid things, the English, who were always trying to make us trouble, burned his fleet at Aboukir. But our general, who had the respect of the East and the West, who had been called "my son" by the Pope, and "my dear father" by the cousin of Mahomet, resolved to punish England, and to capture the Indies, in payment for his lost fleet. He was just going to take us across the Red Sea into Asia – a country where there were lots of diamonds, plenty of gold with which to pay his soldiers, and palaces that could be used for etapes – when the Mody made an arrangement with the Plague, and sent it down to put an end to our victories. Then it was, Halt, all! And everybody marched off to that parade from which you don't come back on your feet. Dying soldiers couldn't take Saint Jean d'Acre, although they forced an entrance three times with noble and stubborn courage. The Plague was too strong for us; and it wasn't any use to say "Please don't!" to the Plague. Everybody was sick except Napoleon. He looked fresh as a rose, and the whole army saw him drinking in pestilence without being hurt a bit. How was that? Do you call that natural?
Well, the Mamelukes, who knew that we were all in ambulances, thought they'd bar our way; but they couldn't play that sort of game with Napoleon. He turned to his old fire-eaters – the fellows with the toughest hides – and said: "Go clear the road for me." Junot, who was his devoted friend and a number one soldier, took not more than a thousand men, and slashed right through the army of the pasha which had had the impudence to get in our way. Then we went back to Cairo, where we had our headquarters.
And now for another part of the story. While Napoleon was away France was letting herself be ruined by those government scalawags in Paris, who were keeping back the soldiers' pay, withholding their linen and their clothes, and even letting them starve. They wanted the soldiers to lay down the law to the universe, and that's all they cared for. They were just a lot of idiots jabbering for amusement instead of putting their own hands into the dough. So our armies were beaten and we couldn't defend, our frontiers. THE MAN was no longer there. I say "the man" because that's what they called him; but it was absurd to say that he was merely a man, when he had a star of his own with all its belongings. It was the rest of us who were merely men. At the battle of Aboukir, with a single division and with a loss of only three hundred men, he whipped the great army of the Turks, and hustled more than half of them into the sea – r-r-rah – like that! But it was his last thunderclap in Egypt; because when he heard, soon afterward, what was happening in France, he made up his mind to go back there. "I am the savior of France," he said, "and I must go to her aid." The army didn't know what he intended to do. If they had known, they would have kept him in Egypt by force and made him Emperor of the East.
When he had gone, we all felt very blue; because he had been the joy of our lives. He left the command to Kléber – a great lout of a fellow who soon afterward lost the number of his mess. An Egyptian assassinated him. They put the murderer to death by making him sit on a bayonet; that's their way, down there, of guillotining a man. But he suffered so much that one of our soldiers felt sorry for him and offered him his water-gourd. The criminal took a drink, and then gave up the ghost with the greatest pleasure.
But we didn't waste much time over trifles like that.
Napoleon sailed from Egypt in a cockle-shell of a boat called Fortune. He passed right under the noses of the English, who were blockading the coast with ships of the line, frigates, and every sort of craft that could carry sail, and in the twinkling of an eye he was in France; because he had the ability to cross the sea as if with a single stride. Was that natural? Bah! The very minute he reached Fréjus, he had his foot, so to speak, in Paris. There, of course, everybody worships him. But the first thing he does is to summon the government. "What have you been doing with my children the soldiers?" he said to the lawyers. "You are nothing but a lot of poll-parrots, who fool the people with your gabble, and feather your own nests at the expense of France. It is not right; and I speak in the name of all who are dissatisfied."
They thought, at first, that they could get rid of him by talking him to death; but it didn't work. He shut 'em up in the very barrack where they did their talking, and those who didn't jump out of the windows he enrolled in his suite, where they soon became mute as fish and pliable as a tobacco-pouch. This coup made him consul; and as he wasn't one to doubt the Supreme Being who had kept good faith with him, he hastened to fulfil his own promise by restoring the churches and reestablishing religion; whereupon the bells all rang out in his honor and in honor of the good God.
Everybody then was satisfied: first, the priests, because they were protected from persecution; second, the merchants, because they could do business without fearing the "we-grab-it-all" of the law; and finally the nobles, because the people were forbidden to put them to death, as they had formerly had the unfortunate habit of doing.
But Napoleon still had his enemies to clear away, and he was not a man to drop asleep over his porringer. His eye took in the whole world – as if it were no bigger than a soldier's head. The first thing he did was to turn up in Italy – as suddenly as if he had poked his head through a window; and one look from him was enough. The Austrians were swallowed up at Marengo as gudgeons are swallowed by a whale. Then the French VICTORY sang a song of triumph that all the world could hear, and it was enough. "We won't play any more!" declared the Germans.
"Nor we either," said the others.
Sum total: Europe is cowed; England knuckles down; and there is universal peace, with all the kings and people pretending to embrace one another.
It was then that Napoleon established the Legion of Honor; and a fine thing it was, too. In a speech that he made before the whole army at Boulogne he said: "In France everybody is brave; so the civilian who does a noble deed shall be the brother of the soldier, and they shall stand together under the flag of honor." Then we who had been down in Egypt came home and found everything changed. When Napoleon left us he was only a general; but in no time at all he had become Emperor. France had given herself to him as a pretty girl gives herself to a lancer.
Well, when everything had been settled to everybody's satisfaction, there was a religious ceremony such as had never before been seen under the canopy of heaven. The Pope and all his cardinals, in their robes of scarlet and gold, came across the Alps to anoint him with holy oil, and he was crowned Emperor, in the presence of the army and the people, with great applause and clapping of hands.
But there is one thing that it would not be fair not to tell you; and that is about the RED MAN. While Napoleon was still in Egypt, in a desert not far from Syria, the Red Man appeared to him on the mountain of Moses (Sinai), and said to him, "It's all right!" Then again, at Marengo, on the evening of the victory, the same Red Man appeared to him a second time, and said: "You shall see the world at your feet: you shall be Emperor of France; King of Italy; master of Holland; sovereign of Spain, Portugal, and the Illyrian provinces; protector of Germany; savior of Poland; first eagle of the Legion of Honor – everything!"
This Red Man, you see, was his own idea; and was a sort of messenger whom he used, many people said, as a means of communication with his star. I've never believed that, myself, but that there was a Red Man is a real fact. Napoleon himself spoke of him, and said that he lived up under the roof in the palace of the Tuileries, and that he often used to make his appearance in times of trouble. On the evening of his coronation Napoleon saw him for the third time, and they consulted together about a lot of things.
After that the Emperor went to Milan, where he was crowned King of Italy; and then began a regular triumph for us soldiers. Every man who knew how to read and write became an officer; it rained dukedoms; pensions were distributed with both hands; there were fortunes for the general staff which didn't cost France a penny; and even common soldiers received annuities with their crosses of the Legion of Honor – I get mine to this day. In short, the armies of France were taken care of in a way that had never before been seen.
But the Emperor, who knew that he was the emperor not only of the soldiers but of all, remembered the bourgeois, and built wonderful monuments for them, to suit their own taste, in places that had been as bare before as the palm of your hand. Suppose you were coming from Spain, for example, and going through France to Berlin. You would pass under sculptured triumphal arches on which you'd see the common soldiers carved just as beautifully as the generals.
In two or three years, and without taxing you people at all, Napoleon filled his vaults with gold; created bridges, palaces, roads, schools, festivals, laws, harbors, ships; and spent millions and millions of money – so much, in fact, that if he'd taken the notion, they say, he might have paved all France with five-franc pieces.
Finally, when he was comfortably seated on his throne, he was so thoroughly the master of everything that Europe waited for his permission before it even dared to sneeze. Then, as he had four brothers and three sisters, he said to us in familiar talk, as if in the order of the day: "Boys! Is it right that the relatives of your Emperor should have to beg their bread? No! I want them to shine, just as I do. A kingdom must be conquered, therefore, for every one of them; so that France may be master of all; so that the soldiers of the Guard may make the world tremble; so that France may spit wherever she likes; and so that all nations may say to her, – as it is written on my coins, – 'God protects you.'"
"All right!" says the army. "We'll fish up kingdoms for you with the bayonet."
We couldn't back out, you know; and if he had taken it into his head to conquer the moon, we should have had to get ready, pack our knapsacks, and climb up. Fortunately, he didn't have any such intention.
The kings, who were very comfortable on their thrones, naturally didn't want to get off to make room for his relatives; so they had to be dragged off by the ears. Forward! We marched and marched, and everything began to shake again. Ah, how he did wear out men and shoes in those days! He struck such tremendous blows with us that if we had been other than Frenchmen we should all have been used up. But Frenchmen are born philosophers, and they know that a little sooner or a little later they must die. So we used to die without a word, because we had the pleasure of seeing the Emperor do this with the geographies. [Here the old soldier nimbly drew a circle with his foot on the floor of the barn.]