The Man of Destiny
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George Bernard Shaw >> The Man of Destiny
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THE MAN OF DESTINY
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. Napoleon has therefore approached the Alps in
command of men without money, in rags, and consequently
indisposed to stand much discipline, especially from upstart
generals. This circumstance, which would have embarrassed an
idealist soldier, has been worth a thousand cannon to Napoleon.
He has said to his army, "You have patriotism and courage; but
you have no money, no clothes, and deplorably indifferent food.
In Italy there are all these things, and glory as well, to be
gained by a devoted army led by a general who regards loot as the
natural right of the soldier. I am such a general. En avant, mes
enfants!" The result has entirely justified him. The army
conquers Italy as the locusts conquered Cyprus. They fight all
day and march all night, covering impossible distances and
appearing in incredible places, not because every soldier carries
a field marshal's baton in his knapsack, but because he hopes to
carry at least half a dozen silver forks there next day.
It must be understood, by the way, that the French army does not
make war on the Italians. It is there to rescue them from the
tyranny of their Austrian conquerors, and confer republican
institutions on them; so that in incidentally looting them, it
merely makes free with the property of its friends, who ought to
be grateful to it, and perhaps would be if ingratitude were not
the proverbial failing of their country. The Austrians, whom it
fights, are a thoroughly respectable regular army, well
disciplined, commanded by gentlemen trained and versed in the art
of war: at the head of them Beaulieu, practising the classic art
of war under orders from Vienna, and getting horribly beaten by
Napoleon, who acts on his own responsibility in defiance of
professional precedents or orders from Paris. Even when the
Austrians win a battle, all that is necessary is to wait until
their routine obliges them to return to their quarters for
afternoon tea, so to speak, and win it back again from them: a
course pursued later on with brilliant success at Marengo. On the
whole, with his foe handicapped by Austrian statesmanship,
classic generalship, and the exigencies of the aristocratic
social structure of Viennese society, Napoleon finds it possible
to be irresistible without working heroic miracles. The world,
however, likes miracles and heroes, and is quite incapable of
conceiving the action of such forces as academic militarism or
Viennese drawing-roomism. Hence it has already begun to
manufacture "L'Empereur," and thus to make it difficult for the
romanticists of a hundred years later to credit the little scene
now in question at Tavazzano as aforesaid.
The best quarters at Tavazzano are at a little inn, the first
house reached by travellers passing through the place from Milan
to Lodi. It stands in a vineyard; and its principal room, a
pleasant refuge from the summer heat, is open so widely at the
back to this vineyard that it is almost a large veranda. The
bolder children, much excited by the alarums and excursions of
the past few days, and by an irruption of French troops at six
o'clock, know that the French commander has quartered himself in
this room, and are divided between a craving to peep in at the
front windows and a mortal terror of the sentinel, a young
gentleman-soldier, who, having no natural moustache, has had a
most ferocious one painted on his face with boot blacking by his
sergeant. As his heavy uniform, like all the uniforms of that
day, is designed for parade without the least reference to his
health or comfort, he perspires profusely in the sun; and his
painted moustache has run in little streaks down his chin and
round his neck except where it has dried in stiff japanned
flakes, and had its sweeping outline chipped off in grotesque
little bays and headlands, making him unspeakably ridiculous in
the eye of History a hundred years later, but monstrous and
horrible to the contemporary north Italian infant, to whom
nothing would seem more natural than that he should relieve the
monotony of his guard by pitchforking a stray child up on his
bayonet, and eating it uncooked. Nevertheless one girl of bad
character, in whom an instinct of privilege with soldiers is
already dawning, does peep in at the safest window for a moment,
before a glance and a clink from the sentinel sends her flying.
Most of what she sees she has seen before: the vineyard at the
back, with the old winepress and a cart among the vines; the door
close down on her right leading to the inn entry; the landlord's
best sideboard, now in full action for dinner, further back on
the same side; the fireplace on the other side, with a couch near
it, and another door, leading to the inner rooms, between it and
the vineyard; and the table in the middle with its repast of
Milanese risotto, cheese, grapes, bread, olives, and a big
wickered flask of red wine.
The landlord, Giuseppe Grandi, is also no novelty. He is a
swarthy, vivacious, shrewdly cheerful, black-curled, bullet
headed, grinning little man of 40. Naturally an excellent host,
he is in quite special spirits this evening at his good fortune
in having the French commander as his guest to protect him
against the license of the troops, and actually sports a pair of
gold earrings which he would otherwise have hidden carefully
under the winepress with his little equipment of silver plate.
Napoleon, sitting facing her on the further side of the table,
and Napoleon's hat, sword and riding whip lying on the couch, she
sees for the first time. He is working hard, partly at his meal,
which he has discovered how to dispatch, by attacking all the
courses simultaneously, in ten minutes (this practice is the
beginning of his downfall), and partly at a map which he is
correcting from memory, occasionally marking the position of the
forces by taking a grapeskin from his mouth and planting it on
the map with his thumb like a wafer. He has a supply of writing
materials before him mixed up in disorder with the dishes and
cruets; and his long hair gets sometimes into the risotto gravy
and sometimes into the ink.
GIUSEPPE. Will your excellency--
NAPOLEON (intent on his map, but cramming himself mechanically
with his left hand). Don't talk. I'm busy.
GIUSEPPE (with perfect goodhumor). Excellency: I obey.
NAPOLEON. Some red ink.
GIUSEPPE. Alas! excellency, there is none.
NAPOLEON (with Corsican facetiousness). Kill something and bring
me its blood.
GIUSEPPE (grinning). There is nothing but your excellency's
horse, the sentinel, the lady upstairs, and my wife.
NAPOLEON. Kill your wife.
GIUSEPPE. Willingly, your excellency; but unhappily I am not
strong enough. She would kill me.
NAPOLEON. That will do equally well.
GIUSEPPE. Your excellency does me too much honor. (Stretching his
hand toward the flask.) Perhaps some wine will answer your
excellency's purpose.
NAPOLEON (hastily protecting the flask, and becoming quite
serious). Wine! No: that would be waste. You are all the same:
waste! waste! waste! (He marks the map with gravy, using his fork
as a pen.) Clear away. (He finishes his wine; pushes back his
chair; and uses his napkin, stretching his legs and leaning back,
but still frowning and thinking.)
GIUSEPPE (clearing the table and removing the things to a tray on
the sideboard). Every man to his trade, excellency. We innkeepers
have plenty of cheap wine: we think nothing of spilling it. You
great generals have plenty of cheap blood: you think nothing of
spilling it. Is it not so, excellency?
NAPOLEON. Blood costs nothing: wine costs money. (He rises and
goes to the fireplace. )
GIUSEPPE. They say you are careful of everything except human
life, excellency.
NAPOLEON. Human life, my friend, is the only thing that takes
care of itself. (He throws himself at his ease on the couch.)
GIUSEPPE (admiring him). Ah, excellency, what fools we all are
beside you! If I could only find out the secret of your success!
NAPOLEON. You would make yourself Emperor of Italy, eh?
GIUSEPPE. Too troublesome, excellency: I leave all that to you.
Besides, what would become of my inn if I were Emperor? See how
you enjoy looking on at me whilst I keep the inn for you and wait
on you! Well, I shall enjoy looking on at you whilst you become
Emperor of Europe, and govern the country for me. (Whilst he
chatters, he takes the cloth off without removing the map and
inkstand, and takes the corners in his hands and the middle of
the edge in his mouth, to fold it up.)
NAPOLEON. Emperor of Europe, eh? Why only Europe?
GIUSEPPE. Why, indeed? Emperor of the world, excellency! Why not?
(He folds and rolls up the cloth, emphasizing his phrases by the
steps of the process.) One man is like another (fold): one
country is like another (fold): one battle is like another. (At
the last fold, he slaps the cloth on the table and deftly rolls
it up, adding, by way of peroration) Conquer one: conquer all.
(He takes the cloth to the sideboard, and puts it in a drawer.)
NAPOLEON. And govern for all; fight for all; be everybody's
servant under cover of being everybody's master: Giuseppe.
GIUSEPPE (at the sideboard). Excellency.
NAPOLEON. I forbid you to talk to me about myself.
GIUSEPPE (coming to the foot of the couch). Pardon. Your
excellency is so unlike other great men. It is the subject they
like best.
NAPOLEON. Well, talk to me about the subject they like next best,
whatever that may be.
GIUSEPPE (unabashed). Willingly, your excellency. Has your
excellency by any chance caught a glimpse of the lady upstairs?
(Napoleon promptly sits up and looks at him with an interest
which entirely justifies the implied epigram.)
NAPOLEON. How old is she?
GIUSEPPE. The right age, excellency.
NAPOLEON. Do you mean seventeen or thirty?
GIUSEPPE. Thirty, excellency.
NAPOLEON. Goodlooking?
GIUSEPPE. I cannot see with your excellency's eyes: every man
must judge that for himself. In my opinion, excellency, a fine
figure of a lady. (Slyly.) Shall I lay the table for her
collation here?
NAPOLEON (brusquely, rising). No: lay nothing here until the
officer for whom I am waiting comes back. (He looks at his watch,
and takes to walking to and fro between the fireplace and the
vineyard.)
GIUSEPPE (with conviction). Excellency: believe me, he has been
captured by the accursed Austrians. He dare not keep you waiting
if he were at liberty.
NAPOLEON (turning at the edge of the shadow of the veranda).
Giuseppe: if that turns out to be true, it will put me into such
a temper that nothing short of hanging you and your whole
household, including the lady upstairs, will satisfy me.
GIUSEPPE. We are all cheerfully at your excellency's disposal,
except the lady. I cannot answer for her; but no lady could
resist you, General.
NAPOLEON (sourly, resuming his march). Hm! You will never be
hanged. There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not
object to it.
GIUSEPPE (sympathetically). Not the least in the world,
excellency: is there? (Napoleon again looks at his watch,
evidently growing anxious.) Ah, one can see that you are a great
man, General: you know how to wait. If it were a corporal now, or
a sub-lieutenant, at the end of three minutes he would be
swearing, fuming, threatening, pulling the house about our ears.
NAPOLEON. Giuseppe: your flatteries are insufferable. Go and talk
outside. (He sits down again at the table, with his jaws in his
hands, and his elbows propped on the map, poring over it with a
troubled expression.)
GIUSEPPE. Willingly, your excellency. You shall not be disturbed.
(He takes up the tray and prepares to withdraw.)
NAPOLEON. The moment he comes back, send him to me.
GIUSEPPE. Instantaneously, your excellency.
A LADY'S VOICE (calling from some distant part of the inn).
Giusep-pe! (The voice is very musical, and the two final notes
make an ascending interval.)
NAPOLEON (startled). What's that? What's that?
GIUSEPPE (resting the end of his tray on the table and leaning
over to speak the more confidentially). The lady, excellency.
NAPOLEON (absently). Yes. What lady? Whose lady?
GIUSEPPE. The strange lady, excellency.
NAPOLEON. What strange lady?
GIUSEPPE (with a shrug). Who knows? She arrived here half an hour
before you in a hired carriage belonging to the Golden Eagle at
Borghetto. Actually by herself, excellency. No servants. A
dressing bag and a trunk: that is all. The postillion says she
left a horse--a charger, with military trappings, at the Golden
Eagle.
NAPOLEON. A woman with a charger! That's extraordinary.
THE LADY'S VOICE (the two final notes now making a peremptory
descending interval). Giuseppe!
NAPOLEON (rising to listen). That's an interesting voice.
GIUSEPPE. She is an interesting lady, excellency. (Calling.)
Coming, lady, coming. (He makes for the inner door.)
NAPOLEON (arresting him with a strong hand on his shoulder).
Stop. Let her come.
VOICE. Giuseppe!! (Impatiently.)
GIUSEPPE (pleadingly). Let me go, excellency. It is my point of
honor as an innkeeper to come when I am called. I appeal to you
as a soldier.
A MAN's VOICE (outside, at the inn door, shouting). Here,
someone. Hello! Landlord. Where are you? (Somebody raps
vigorously with a whip handle on a bench in the passage.)
NAPOLEON (suddenly becoming the commanding officer again and
throwing Giuseppe off). There he is at last. (Pointing to the
inner door.) Go. Attend to your business: the lady is calling
you. (He goes to the fireplace and stands with his back to it
with a determined military air.)
GIUSEPPE (with bated breath, snatching up his tray). Certainly,
excellency. (He hurries out by the inner door.)
THE MAN's VOICE (impatiently). Are you all asleep here? (The door
opposite the fireplace is kicked rudely open; and a dusty
sub-lieutenant bursts into the room. He is a chuckle-headed young
man of 24, with the fair, delicate, clear skin of a man of rank,
and a self-assurance on that ground which the French Revolution
has failed to shake in the smallest degree. He has a thick silly
lip, an eager credulous eye, an obstinate nose, and a loud
confident voice. A young man without fear, without reverence,
without imagination, without sense, hopelessly insusceptible to
the Napoleonic or any other idea, stupendously egotistical,
eminently qualified to rush in where angels fear to tread, yet of
a vigorous babbling vitality which bustles him into the thick of
things. He is just now boiling with vexation, attributable by a
superficial observer to his impatience at not being promptly
attended to by the staff of the inn, but in which a more
discerning eye can perceive a certain moral depth, indicating a
more permanent and momentous grievance. On seeing Napoleon, he is
sufficiently taken aback to check himself and salute; but he does
not betray by his manner any of that prophetic consciousness of
Marengo and Austerlitz, Waterloo and St. Helena, or the
Napoleonic pictures of Delaroche and Meissonier, which modern
culture will instinctively expect from him.)
NAPOLEON (sharply). Well, sir, here you are at last. Your
instructions were that I should arrive here at six, and that I
was to find you waiting for me with my mail from Paris and with
despatches. It is now twenty minutes to eight. You were sent on
this service as a hard rider with the fastest horse in the camp.
You arrive a hundred minutes late, on foot. Where is your horse!
THE LIEUTENANT (moodily pulling off his gloves and dashing them
with his cap and whip on the table). Ah! where indeed? That's
just what I should like to know, General. (With emotion.) You
don't know how fond I was of that horse.
NAPOLEON (angrily sarcastic). Indeed! (With sudden misgiving.)
Where are the letters and despatches?
THE LIEUTENANT (importantly, rather pleased than otherwise at
having some remarkable news). I don't know.
NAPOLEON (unable to believe his ears). You don't know!
LIEUTENANT. No more than you do, General. Now I suppose I shall
be court-martialled. Well, I don't mind being court-martialled;
but (with solemn determination) I tell you, General, if ever I
catch that innocent looking youth, I'll spoil his beauty, the
slimy little liar! I'll make a picture of him. I'll--
NAPOLEON (advancing from the hearth to the table). What innocent
looking youth? Pull yourself together, sir, will you; and give an
account of yourself.
LIEUTENANT (facing him at the opposite side of the table, leaning
on it with his fists). Oh, I'm all right, General: I'm perfectly
ready to give an account of myself. I shall make the
court-martial thoroughly understand that the fault was not mine.
Advantage has been taken of the better side of my nature; and I'm
not ashamed of it. But with all respect to you as my commanding
officer, General, I say again that if ever I set eyes on that son
of Satan, I'll--
NAPOLEON (angrily). So you said before.
LIEUTENANT (drawing himself upright). I say it again. just wait
until I catch him. Just wait: that's all. (He folds his arms
resolutely, and breathes hard, with compressed lips.)
NAPOLEON. I AM waiting, sir--for your explanation.
LIEUTENANT (confidently). You'll change your tone, General, when
you hear what has happened to me.
NAPOLEON. Nothing has happened to you, sir: you are alive and not
disabled. Where are the papers entrusted to you?
LIEUTENANT. Nothing! Nothing!! Oho! Well, we'll see. (Posing
himself to overwhelm Napoleon with his news.) He swore eternal
brotherhood with me. Was that nothing? He said my eyes reminded
him of his sister's eyes. Was that nothing? He cried--actually
cried--over the story of my separation from Angelica. Was that
nothing? He paid for both bottles of wine, though he only ate
bread and grapes himself. Perhaps you call that nothing! He gave
me his pistols and his horse and his despatches--most important
despatches--and let me go away with them. (Triumphantly, seeing
that he has reduced Napoleon to blank stupefaction.) Was THAT
nothing?
NAPOLEON (enfeebled by astonishment). What did he do that for?
LIEUTENANT (as if the reason were obvious). To show his
confidence in me. (Napoleon's jaw does not exactly drop; but its
hinges become nerveless. The Lieutenant proceeds with honest
indignation.) And I was worthy of his confidence: I brought them
all back honorably. But would you believe it?--when I trusted him
with MY pistols, and MY horse, and MY despatches--
NAPOLEON (enraged). What the devil did you do that for?
LIEUTENANT. Why, to show my confidence in him, of course. And he
betrayed it--abused it--never came back. The thief! the swindler!
the heartless, treacherous little blackguard! You call that
nothing, I suppose. But look here, General: (again resorting to
the table with his fist for greater emphasis) YOU may put up with
this outrage from the Austrians if you like; but speaking for
myself personally, I tell you that if ever I catch--
NAPOLEON (turning on his heel in disgust and irritably resuming
his march to and fro). Yes: you have said that more than once
already.
LIEUTENANT (excitedly). More than once! I'll say it fifty times;
and what's more, I'll do it. You'll see, General. I'll show my
confidence in him, so I will. I'll--
NAPOLEON. Yes, yes, sir: no doubt you will. What kind of man was
he?
LIEUTENANT. Well, I should think you ought to be able to tell
from his conduct the sort of man he was.
NAPOLEON. Psh! What was he like?
LIEUTENANT. Like! He's like--well, you ought to have just seen
the fellow: that will give you a notion of what he was like. He
won't be like it five minutes after I catch him; for I tell you
that if ever--
NAPOLEON (shouting furiously for the innkeeper). Giuseppe! (To
the Lieutenant, out of all patience.) Hold your tongue, sir, if
you can.
LIEUTENANT. I warn you it's no use to try to put the blame on me.
(Plaintively.) How was I to know the sort of fellow he was? (He
takes a chair from between the sideboard and the outer door;
places it near the table; and sits down.) If you only knew how
hungry and tired I am, you'd have more consideration.
GIUSEPPE (returning). What is it, excellency?
NAPOLEON (struggling with his temper). Take this--this officer.
Feed him; and put him to bed, if necessary. When he is in his
right mind again, find out what has happened to him and bring me
word. (To the Lieutenant.) Consider yourself under arrest, sir.