History of Napoleon the Third by Samuel Smucker

Author:Samuel Smucker [Smucker, Samuel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Revolutionary
ISBN: 9781531281724
Google: 2LN4DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Ozymandias Press
Published: 2018-01-19T22:21:46+00:00

CHAPTER XV.

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THERE WAS A MAN IN France possessing remarkable qualities and great eminence, both as a soldier and as a statesman; who was the chief rival of Louis Napoleon in his ambitious pathway; who on several critical occasions stood between him and the possession of supreme power; and who was the rallying point and the hope of a large and influential party in France, who patiently await the hour which will bring about the downfall of the second empire. That man was Eugene Cavaignac.

Marshal Bugeaud said of him, about the period of the sortie of Tlemsen in Algiers, that he was an ardent, well-trained officer, capable of intense devotion, possessed of superior talents, adapted to great things; and that, if he lived, he would one day achieve distinction. This judgment of the Marshal respecting Cavaignac needed only one restriction to make it perfectly correct. He should have added: provided Cavaignac remained in the military profession, and did not venture into politics. For to govern a great and fickle people like the French, other qualities are requisite beside zeal, talent, ardor, knowledge, and decision; for these were all the mental gifts which Cavaignac possessed. Reaching the Dictatorship by means of a vast expenditure of blood, he perceived, when it was too late, that a man may be a bad statesman, though an excellent general of division. At least, he never understood the cause of his own inefficiency; and wasted in a barren and unprofitable struggle, which procured him no accession of glory, all the enthusiasm of the National Guards and all the resources of the Treasury. The laurel wreath which surrounded his brow as Dictator, was stained with the blood of a civil war.

There can be no doubt but that General Cavaignac would, at one time, have sacrificed unhesitatingly all his dreams of ambition for the good of the Republic. Not that he was a Republican more than anything else; for he was destitute of a fixed political faith; he was irresolute, vacillating, and better acquainted with Algiers than he was with France; he had no historical acquaintance with the past, and no talent for government; he simply felt a desire to possess the supreme power, and, aided by a variety of accidental circumstances, it was placed in his hands. But the moment he saw the sceptre in his grasp he felt incompetent to wield it, and was utterly ignorant how he should exercise his authority. He concluded to act violently in a country which needed conciliation above all things else, and to apply the laws and regulations of the barracks to a Legislative Assembly composed of talented, excited, and desperate adventurers. He acted while Dictator as if he believed that good order could not be maintained in France except by a system of rigor which debased human nature, and degraded the genius of a nation. Thus, whenever a man undertakes a task for which he is incompetent, he plunges into an abyss, and he drags with him into its fatal

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