Germaine de Staël: Considerations on the Principal Events of the French Revolution

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

De Staël’s presentation of the character of Napoléon portrays him not as the representative of a particular political position but as a man utterly focused on his own political ambition, to the point where other people did not really exist for him. Although she had admired Napoléon to some extent early in his career, she moved to opposition following his 1799 takeover in the coup of 18 Brumaire (November 9). She viewed Napoléon's seizure of power as the final assassination of liberty during the revolution and a betrayal of the revolution's promise. De Staël was also concerned to disabuse the French people of the idea that Napoléon was a patriotic Frenchman or a champion of French culture.

In the excerpted passages, De Staël depicts Napoléon at the time when he was a famous general but before he had seized power as dictator. She wanted to show that he had the same character before and after taking power and that the only real difference between the two phases of his career was that before taking power he had a greater need to be agreeable. She claims that the Treaty of Campo Formio, signed between France and Austria in 1797, at the end of Napoléon's campaigns in Italy, marked a turning point when the Republican tradition was betrayed both by Napoléon, then the French commander in Italy, and the Directory, which was at that time the government of France. The treaty gave Venice to Austria as compensation for the loss of her northern Italian possessions. Venice was a thousand-year-old republic, and French Republicans viewed Austria as a repressive monarchy. This shameful act revealed Napoléon's true ruthlessness and unscrupulousness as well as the weakness of the Directory.

De Staël draws on personal experience as well as historical analysis. As an intellectual woman, she represented a category Napoléon detested—a point she emphasizes. She discusses the history of her personal relations with Napoléon to bring out his inhumanity. However, she also tries to understand the roots of his appeal to the French. De Staël credits Napoléon with eloquence and good political instincts. She also points out that he was the right man at the right time, as the country was weary of its supposedly Republican rulers, the Directory, but was not sympathetic to the Royalists, who wished to restore the French monarchy. In this situation, Napoléon attracted the hopes of all.

The note De Staël consistently sounds in her description of Napoléon is one of inhumanity. His emotional impact on her has no parallel either among good men or bad; “his character could not be defined in the words we commonly use.” His manner is equally chilling, as he possessed an ability to remove “all expression from his eyes.” No cause outside his struggle against the human race moved him. De Staël also uses her—and the reader's—knowledge of Napoléon's future to heighten the ironies of his ascent. She wonders how many of the young men cheering Napoléon on his presentation to the Directory survived his wars, and she recounts that the president of the Directory, Paul Nicolas, vicomte de Barras, charged Napoléon with the conquest of England. The anglophile De Staël remarks that that task was “rather difficult,” and, of course, it was one that Napoléon was never to accomplish.