“Through his secret police, the emperor kept a cupped ear to mutterings in cafes, shops, and salons.”
By William Nester
NAPOLEON KNEW WELL the dilemmas facing a conqueror, particularly one who controlled an empire spanning a continent. If he was too harsh on the inhabitants of his newly won territories, it would spawn enemies. If he was too soft, subject populations would push for ever greater concessions. Either path could provoke revolt. The French emperor understood that a ruler must rely on “a mix of severity, justice, and kindness…to have a good effect.”
Like Niccolò Machiavelli, Napoleon believed that political stability depended more on being feared than loved, although striking a balance between both emotions were vital to success.
“The people need firm magistrates who know how to inspire esteem and fear,” he wrote.
A united, efficient, problem-solving government was a vital element of national security.
As for “the people,” Bonaparte, as shrewd a politician as he was a military commander, greatly respected the potential power of public opinion to work for or against him.
“Public opinion is an invisible, mysterious, overwhelming power. Nothing is more mobile, vague, or strong,” he wrote. “And however capricious it may be, it is…reasonable and just more often than one thinks.”
Through his secret police, the emperor kept a cupped ear to mutterings in cafes, shops, and salons. Despite establishing his own propaganda newspapers, Napoleon did not believe in a free press, at least for France and its empire.
“It is too stupid to have newspapers with all the disadvantages of liberty of the press without any advantages,” Napoleon wrote. “And that by malevolence or incompetence, spread rumors that alarm commerce and act on England’s behalf.”
The Moniteur became his government’s quasi-official newspaper by printing favorable stories along with his army bulletins and other messages. As it is today, controlling the narrative is a powerful method for shaping opinion and winning hearts and minds.
Propaganda, no matter how well it’s fashioned however, rings hollow with a population that is cold and hungry. Napoleon believed that good governance was ultimately about bettering the lives of most people, both their standard of living and quality of life. That was at once an end in itself and, more vitally, a means to enhance national power. A nation’s relative power was critically related to the prosperity or poverty of its people.
As with all other dimensions of power, he was an economic pragmatist rather than theorist. The key question was how to create and distribute more wealth and thus power for individuals and the state. For the French emperor, the answer was to establish a dynamic whereby economic wealth and personal autonomy was self-reinforcing and self-perpetuating. Determining just how to do that was the priceless challenge. Napoleon knew however that the state would be instrumental in the process. Indeed, states and markets were inseparable. The public and private sectors could both create or destroy wealth. Ideally, the two realms functioned in tandem to create wealth. Making money depended on spending it.
To this end, Napoleon grasped that a vital government duty was partnering with entrepreneurs to foster the most diverse, dynamic economy possible. He distinguished between investors and speculators, and tried to encourage the former who mostly made useful things, while stifling the latter who mostly played financial shell games and bilked the gullible. The key was enticing investments in infrastructure, industries, and inventions with subsidies, grants, low interest loans, and tax cuts.
Diplomacy was another pillar in Bonaparte’s masterful statecraft.
“Diplomacy is inseparable from war,” he wrote.
As in war, he devised grand diplomatic strategies only after immersing himself in the myriad of details. His tactical plans to his envoys, even masters like his top diplomat Talleyrand, were often as intricate as the orders he gave to his generals. He cunningly appreciated that diplomacy was a struggle to win over not just foreign governments and monarchs, but also the citizens they ruled.
Napoleon’s power as a statesman peaked at Tilsit in 1807. After his famous treaty with the Russian Tsar, he began squandering his hard-won political capital. His standing suffered a blow the following year with his attempts to subject Spain. It was much diminished in 1812 when he went to war with Russia to force the Tsar back into the Continental System in 1812.
Ultimately, Napoleon became trapped in a security dilemma of his own making: The more he enhanced French power, the more he threatened and enraged the other great states, which eventually succeeded in unifying and destroying him.
“Each new addition for France alarmed everyone else,” he observed. “They made loud cries and put aside peace.”
When Napoleon failed, he failed spectacularly. After his catastrophic forays into Spain and Russia, his fortunes began to unravel.
Napoleon’s empire might have endured for generations had he not embarked on his Peninsula and Russian campaigns. The chronic “Spanish ulcer” as he called it ate away at his prospects for six years, while the Russian campaign destroyed half a million of his troops within six months.
The art of power ultimately depends on results. One is powerful only so far as one gets what one wants. That becomes more challenging as one’s ambitions rise. As his power grew, Napoleon increasingly failed to practice what he preached. As a student of Machiavelli, he knew well that power was inseparable from matching appropriate ends with available means. Indeed, he brilliantly followed that principle during his first decade or so as a general and statesman. But those ever more soaring victories eventually warped him as his ambitions exceeded his abilities.
William Nester is the author of Napoleon and the Art of Leadership: How A Flawed Genius Changed the History of Europe and the World. A Professor at the Department of Government and Politics, St. John’s University, New York, he is the author of more than 40 books on history and politics.