The Apostle and the Wild Ducks/Rational History

There is a sort of phrase or joke about `whitewashing' the villains of history; but to be quite just there ought to be some phrase such as `blackwashing' also. For the truth is that such rehabilitations are of two very different kinds. One is a mere anarchist itch to upset a traditional and universal verdict. The other is a reasonable petition to appeal against a very hasty and sectarian verdict. In other words, we may appeal for whitewashing if we can prove that there has been blackwashing. There are men in history who may rationally be held to be better than they appear in history. And they are those who have been, for fairly obvious reasons, blackened immediately after their death. We have a right to doubt in every case where it was indispensable (to a new dynasty or regime) that a man who was dead should also be damned. Two very interesting cases of such rational rehabilitation have appeared of late. An American writer has written a romantic sketch of the sympathetic view of Richard III. A French writer has written a scholarly and historic study of the sympathetic view of Napoleon. In both cases there is the same real and intellectual reason for a reconsideration. We are right to remember that these victorious soldiers were at the mercy of their ultimate victors. It is common sense to ask ourselves what tales would most probably be set about by the enemies of one after Bosworth or of the other after Waterloo.

Shakespeare was a very English type of genius; but so was Gillray. And it may fairly be said that Shakespeare's version of Richard is pretty much like Gillray's version of Napoleon. He is a diabolic dwarf, far less temperately and sanely conceived than Quilp. But Richard of Gloucester was not a dwarf, either physically or morally. And Napoleon was not a devil, either in incredible crime or incredible capacity. He made many concessions--and many mistakes. It was his normality that succeeded not his abnormality. In so far as he conquered Europe, it was as Man not as Superman. The Rights of Man formed his only working and real droits de seigneur. He was popular with soldiers not only because he was a conqueror, but also because he was a soldier. He ruled France not because he had conquered it, but because he had conquered its enemies. A great French writer put the truth in its unfavourable form by saying that men of the world sympathise with Napoleon because he had no internal life. He did not think about himself; he was not a Higher Thinker, a Buddhist. He was a creator--that is, a Christian. He did not know his own portrait till he saw it in his own works.

The sins of the Superman are unpardonable. But the sins of man are as the hairs of his head. So long as we regard Napoleon as a Superman, we are bound to regard all his cruelties as cold-blooded, all his pride as blasphemous, all his diplomacy as `black causeless duplicity' (as Stevenson said of his own Master of Ballantrae), all his sins, in short, as sins against the Holy Ghost--and, above all, all his misfortunes as deserved. But if we regard him as Man, we pretty soon find that his sins were the sins of a selfish, simple, generous, crude Corsican officer of artillery. His few cruelties were of the half-constrained kind--the kind that twenty other officers of artillery would have committed if they had been in the same hole. His pride was pure vanity; as innocent and as active as the vanity of a schoolboy. His diplomacy was at once less secret and less bullying than nearly all the diplomacy before and after his time. Compared with Metternich or with Bismarck, he was a straightforward but persuasive person. Unlike these other diplomatists, he did appeal to the reason and conscience of other nations and other Kings. He did not merely try to conceal; he did not merely try to convict. He did not even merely try to conquer. He did really try to convert--that is, to convince. And as for his misfortunes, he may have deserved to be called the Corsican Ogre, but he never really deserved to be called the Man of Destiny. It was a slander of which his misfortunes should have purged him for ever.

Much of the same is true, as I have said, of the last stand of the remote Plantagenet at Bosworth: when Henry Tudor rode as best he could into battle, making up his pedigree as he went along. The real medieval king was the man who died calling out `Treason' and killing men on every side of him. Richard III was doing exactly what would have been expected of Richard I. But nothing was ever expected of the Tudors except the unexpected. They were the first English monarchs who were Sultans instead of Kings. They acted by a caprice, and not by a creed. It was owing to their brief and impatient despotism that England, ever since, has been capricious and creedless. One can almost see the lean, long face of the Welsh usurper, as he rode with the great nobles who had deserted to his standard; one can see his smile as he entered London; and one can guess what kind of tale he would tell of the fallen King.