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TITLE: THE ORIGINS OF CONTEMPORARY FRANCE V5
AUTHOR: HIPPOLYTE A. TAINE
EBOOK: E00018 (O'Briens Book Cellar)

The Modern Regime, Volume 1   [Napoleon] 
^M                                            
The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 
^M                                            
by Hippolyte A. Taine^M 
 
Contents: 
 
PREFACE 
 
BOOK FIRST.  Napoleon Bonaparte. 
 
    Chapter I.   Historical Importance of his Character and Genius. 
 
    Chapter II.  His Ideas, Passions and Intelligence. 
 
BOOK SECOND. Formation and Character of the New State. 
 
    Chapter I.   The Institution of Government. 
 
    Chapter II.  Use and Abuse of Government Services. 
 
    Chapter III. The New Government Organization. 
 
BOOK THIRD.  Object and Merits of the System. 
 
    Chapter I.   Recovery of Social Order. 
 
    Chapter II.  Taxation and Conscription. 
 
    Chapter III. Ambition and Self-esteem. 
 
BOOK FOURTH. Defect and Effects of the System. 
 
    Chapter I.   Local Society. 
 
    Chapter II.  Local society since 1830. 
 
___________________________________________________________________ 
 
PREFACE 
 
The following third and last part of the Origins of Contemporary 
France is to consist of two volumes.  After the present volume, the 
second is to treat of the Church, the School and the Family, describe 
the modern milieu and note the facilities and obstacles which a 
society like our own encounters in this new milieu: here, the past and 
the present meet, and the work already done is continued by the work 
which is going on under our eyes.  - -The undertaking is hazardous and 
more difficult than with the two preceding parts.  For the Ancient 
Régime and the Revolution are henceforth complete and finished 
periods; we have seen the end of both and are thus able to comprehend 
their entire course.  On the contrary, the end of the ulterior period 
is still wanting ; the great institutions which date from the 
Consulate and the Empire, either consolidation or dissolution, have 
not yet reached their historic term: since 1800, the social order of 
things, notwithstanding eight changes of political form, has remained 
almost intact.  Our children or grandchildren will know whether it 
will finally succeed or miscarry; witnesses of the denouement, they 
will have fuller light by which to judge of the entire drama.  Thus 
far four acts only have been played; of the fifth act, we have simply 
a presentiment.  - On the other hand, by dint of living under this 
social system, we have become accustomed to it; it no longer excites 
our wonder; however artificial it may be it seems to us natural.  We 
can scarcely conceive of another that is healthier; and what is much 
worse, it is repugnant to us to do so.  For, such a conception would 
soon lead to comparisons and hence to a judgment and, on many points, 
to an unfavorable judgment, one which would be a censure, not only of 
our institutions but of ourselves.  The machine of the year VIII,[1] 
applied to us for three generations, has permanently shaped and fixed 
us as we are, for better or for worse.  If, for a century, it sustains 
us, it represses us for a century.  We have contracted the infirmities 
it imports - stoppage of development, instability of internal balance, 
disorders of the intellect and of the will, fixed ideas and ideas that 
are false.  These ideas are ours; therefore we hold on to them, or, 
rather, they have taken hold of us.  To get rid of them, to impose the 
necessary recoil on our mind, to transport us to a distance and place 
us at a critical point of view, where we can study ourselves, our 
ideas and our institutions as scientific objects, requires a great 
effort on our part, many precautions, and long reflection.  - Hence, 
the delays of this study; the reader will pardon them on considering 
that an ordinary opinion, caught on the wing, on such a subject, does 
not suffice.  In any event, when one presents an opinion on such a 
subject one is bound to believe it.  I can believe in my own only when 
it has become precise and seems to me proven. 
 
Menthon Saint-Bernard, September, 1890. 
 
_____________________________________________________________________ 
 
BOOK FIRST.  NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. 
 
CHAPTER I.  Historical Importance of his Character and Genius. 
 
If you want to comprehend a building, you have to imagine the 
circumstances, I mean the difficulties and the means, the kind and 
quality of its available materials, the moment, the opportunity, and 
the urgency of the demand for it.  But, still more important, we must 
consider the genius and taste of the architect, especially whether he 
is the proprietor, whether he built it to live in himself, and, once 
installed in it, whether he took pains to adapt it to how own way of 
living, to his own necessities, to his own use.  - Such is the social 
edifice erected by Napoleon Bonaparte, its architect, proprietor, and 
principal occupant from 1799 to 1814.  It is he who has made modern 
France; never was an individual character so profoundly stamped on any 
collective work, so that, to comprehend the work, we must first study 
the character of the Man.[2] 
 
I.  Napoleon's Past and Personality. 
 
He is of another race and another century.  - Origin of his paternal 
family.  - Transplanted to Corsica.  - His maternal family.  - 
Laetitia Ramolino.  - Persistence of Corsican souvenirs in Napoleon's 
mind.  - His youthful sentiments regarding Corsica and France.  - 
Indications found in his early compositions and in his style.  - 
Current monarchical or democratic ideas have no hold on him. - His 
impressions of the 20th of June and 10th of August after the 31st of 
May.  - His associations with Robespierre and Barras without 
committing himself.  - His sentiments and the side he takes Vendémiaire 
13th.  - The great Condottière.  - His character and conduct in Italy. 
- Description of him morally and physically in 1798.  - The early and 
sudden ascendancy which he exerts.  Analogous in spirit and character 
to his Italian ancestors of the XVth century. 
 
Disproportionate in all things, but, stranger still, he is not only 
out of the common run, but there is no standard of measurement for 
him; through his temperament, instincts, faculties, imagination, 
passions, and moral constitution he seems cast in a special mould, 
composed of another metal than that which enters into the composition 
of his fellows and contemporaries.  Evidently he is not a Frenchman, 
nor a man of the eighteenth century; he belongs to another race and 
another epoch.[3] We detect in him, at the first glance, the 
foreigner, the Italian,[4] and something more, apart and beyond these, 
surpassing all similitude or analogy.-Italian he was through blood and 
lineage; first, through his paternal family, which is Tuscan,[5] and 
which we can follow down from the twelfth century, at Florence, then 
at San Miniato ; next at Sarzana, a small, backward, remote town in 
the state of Genoa, where, from father to son, it vegetates obscurely 
in provincial isolation, through a long line of notaries and municipal 
syndics.  "My origin," says Napoleon himself,[6] " has made all 
Italians regard me as a compatriot.  .  .  .  When the question of the 
marriage of my sister Pauline with Prince Borghése came up there was 
but one voice in Rome and in Tuscany, in that family, and with all its 
connections: 'It will do,' said all of them, 'it's amongst ourselves, 
it is one of our own families...'" When the Pope later hesitated about 
coming to Paris to crown Napoleon, "the Italian party in the Conclave 
prevailed against the Austrian party by supporting political arguments 
with the following slight tribute to national amour propre: 'After all 
we are imposing an Italian family on the barbarians, to govern them. 
We are revenging ourselves on the Gauls.'" Significant words, which 
will one day throw light upon the depths of the Italian nature, the 
eldest daughter of modern civilization, imbued with her right of 
primogeniture, persisting in her grudge against the transalpines, the 
rancorous inheritor of Roman pride and of antique patriotism.[7] 
 
From Sarzana, a Bonaparte emigrates to Corsica, where he establishes 
himself and lives after 1529.  The following year  Florence is taken 
and subjugated for good.  Henceforth, in Tuscany, under Alexander de 
Medici, then under Cosmo I.  and his successors, in all Italy under 
Spanish rule, municipal independence, private feuds, the great 
exploits of political adventures and successful usurpations, the 
system of ephemeral principalities, based on force and fraud, all give 
way to permanent repression, monarchical discipline, external order, 
and a certain species of public tranquility.  Thus, just at the time 
when the energy and ambition, the vigorous and free sap of the Middle 
Ages begins to run down and then dry up in the shriveled trunk,[8] a 
small detached branch takes root in an island, not less Italian but 
almost barbarous, amidst institutions, customs, and passions belonging 
to the primitive medieval epoch,[9] and in a social atmosphere 
sufficiently rude for the maintenance of all its vigor and harshness. 
- Grafted, moreover, by frequent marriages, on the wild stock of the 
island, Napoleon, on the maternal side, through his grandmother and 
mother, is wholly indigenous.  His grandmother, a Pietra-Santa, 
belonged to Sarténe,[10] a Corsican canton par excellence where, in 
1800, hereditary vendettas still maintained the system of the eleventh 
century; where the permanent strife of inimical families was suspended 
only by truces; where, in many villages, nobody stirred out of doors 
except in armed bodies, and where the houses were crenellated like 
fortresses.  His mother, Laetitia Ramolini, from whom, in character 
and in will, he derived much more than from his father,[11] is a 
primitive soul on which Civilization has taken no hold.  She is 
simple, all of a piece, unsuited to the refinements, charms, and 
graces of a worldly life; indifferent to comforts, without literary 
culture, as parsimonious as any peasant woman, but as energetic as the 
leader of a band.  She is powerful, physically and spiritually, 
accustomed to danger, ready in desperate resolutions.  She is, in 
short, a "rural Cornelia," who conceived and gave birth to her son 
amidst the risks of battle and of defeat, in the thickest of the 
French invasion, amidst mountain rides on horseback, nocturnal 
surprises, and volleys of musketry.[12] 
 
"Losses, privations, and fatigue," says Napoleon, "she endured all and 
braved all.  Hers was a man's head on a woman's shoulders." 
 
Thus fashioned and brought into the world, he felt that, from first to 
the last, he was of his people and country. 
 

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