June 26. 1831
Napier — Buonaparte — Southey
I have been exceedingly impressed with the evil precedent of Colonel Napier’s History of the Peninsular War. It is a specimen of the true French military school; not a thought for the justice of the war,—not a consideration of the damnable and damning iniquity of the French invasion. All is looked at as a mere game of exquisite skill, and the praise is regularly awarded to the most successful player. How perfectly ridiculous is the prostration of Napier’s mind, apparently a powerful one, before the name of Buonaparte! I declare I know no book more likely to undermine the national sense of right and wrong in matters of foreign interference than this work of Napier’s.
If A. has a hundred means of doing a certain thing, and B. has only one or two, is it very wonderful, or does it argue very transcendant superiority, if A. surpasses B.? Buonaparte was the child of circumstances, which he neither originated nor controlled. He had no chance of preserving his power but by continual warfare. No thought of a wise tranquillization of the shaken elements of France seems ever to have passed through his mind; and I believe that at no part of his reign could be have survived one year’s continued peace. He never had but one obstacle to contend with—physical force; commonly the least difficult enemy a general, subject to courts-martial and courts of conscience, has to overcome.
Southey’s History1 is on the right side, and starts from the right point; but he is personally fond of the Spaniards, and in bringing forward their nationality in the prominent manner it deserves, he does not, in my judgment, state with sufficient clearness the truth, that the nationality of the Spaniards was not founded on any just ground of good government or wise laws, but was, in fact, very little more than a rooted antipathy to all strangers as such.
In this sense every thing is national in Spain. Even their so called Catholic religion is exclusively national in a genuine Spaniard’s mind; he does not regard the religious professions of the Frenchman or Italian at all in the same light with his own.
Notes
1 Mr. Coleridge said that the conclusion of this great work was the finest specimen of historic eulogy he had ever read in English;—that it was more than a campaign to the duke’s fame.—ED.