Napoleon and Goethe: touchstone of genius

At a time when Europe was blessed with an extraordinary efflorescence of giant personalities — Metternich and Talleyrand in politics, Beethoven and Schiller in the arts, Nelson and Wellington in warfare — Napoleon Bonaparte, the supreme warrior, and Goethe, the pinnacle of European culture,  met face to face. In fact, they did so twice in 1808, in Erfurt and in the tiny principality of Weimar, where Goethe — Europe’s greatest writer and polymath of the day — held many of the important offices of state. Napoleon claimed to have read Goethe’s blazing bestseller, Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (“The Sorrows of Young Werther”) no fewer than seven times, and even taken it with him on campaign, thus emulating his own ideal warrior, Alexander the Great, who kept Homer’s Iliad by his side, on his invasion of the Persian Empire.

Napoleon admired Goethe and even tried to persuade the literary colossus to relocate to Paris, in order to ignite a cultural Renaissance, spearheaded naturally by France. Goethe diplomatically shunted this suggestion into the herbe longue, doubtless sensing both the immense power, but also the acute fragility of the Napoleonic imperium.

What did they have in common, these two titans of history? Goethe’s most celebrated and most profound work is his Faust, the tale, his life’s work, in fact, of the academic who challenged the devil to satisfy his vast ambitions. There is something of Napoleon in Goethe’s characterisation of Faust, and something of Faust’s perpetual striving in Napoleon. Both craved military glory , both sought territorial expansion, both implemented social reform, both sought an heir with a beautiful paramour and both were insatiable in the extent of their aims.

In matters of the mind, both loved chess. Only a man who had fallen under the spell of chess could describe it, as Goethe did in his Götz von Berlichingen mit der eisernen Hand, as “the touchstone of the intellect”, the most flattering remark about the game ever written, outstripping even the pronouncement of Leibniz that chess was the gymnasium of the mind. Faust has even been seen, especially by artists, as a cosmic game of chess between the rejuvenated academic and the wryly humorous Mephistopheles.

As for Napoleon, he truly loved the game, owning a portable chess set, challenging both his own officers and the mechanical Turk of Baron von Kempelen, and being portrayed in biopics, such as the tripartite eponymous epic by Abel Gance, as a demon aficionado. Sadly, none of Goethe’s games has survived, while those of Napoleon are doubtless flattering fabrications.

“Champagne: In Victory I deserve it. In defeat I need it.”

Faust has its humour, though the Devil has the best jokes, but so did the quick-witted Napoleon. Napoleon’s government minister, Savary, his man in charge of censorship, once reported to the Emperor on new publications. He mentioned a three-volume work on Germany written by Madame de Staël, adding that he had read it and found nothing objectionable – the Emperor’s name was not even mentioned. Napoleon retorted: “A three-volume work in which I am not mentioned. It must be banned immediately!” Strong evidence of a sense of humour by the great Emperor of the French who, at the time, was probably the most powerful person ever seen in the history of the world. (Napoleon wasn’t entirely joking, however: De l’Allemagne was indeed banned in France and De Staël remained in exile until his fall.)

Goethe described Napoleon’s particular kind of Genius as das Dämonische (“the demoniac”). Goethe wrote: “The demoniac is to be seen in its most terrible form when it is overwhelmingly manifested in some one individual. A titanic force emanates from him and he exercises incredible power over every creature, and even over the elements, and who can say how far his influence will extend?  As more forces are combined against him, his opponents are still powerless. It is in vain for the more enlightened section of humanity to brand him as deceived or deceiver. The masses will be attracted by him. Rarely if ever, do his equals exist at the same time and nothing can overcome him, except the very universe against which he declared battle.” Words which might also apply to Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, both self-avowed role models for Napoleon.

“God is on the side of the big battalions.” A further feature that unites Napoleon with Alexander the Great and Caesar was the fact that promotion within their armies was based on merit – one secret of their success.

“Every soldier has a Field Marshal’s baton in his knapsack.”

As a young man, Napoleon was snubbed at college. Rejected at school, he hurled himself into his personal studies and at one time he even tried to write novels. He had immense energy and an extraordinary eye for details. Napoleon was an early speed reader, who used to shock his civil servants by thoroughly perusing documents of staggering size, with thousands of minute details, in a very short time and pointing out to the bureaucrats discrepancies of which even they had been unaware.

“Power is my mistress. I have worked too hard at her conquest, to allow anyone to take her away from me.”

Napoleon’s first revolutionary contribution to the art of war was to recognize the devastating force of the technical advantages in artillery that occurred towards the end of the 18^th century. He also recognized the power of independent columns, moving as separate army corps of 40,000 men each and able to converge flexibly on any enemy. Napoleon exploited this stratagem on many occasions to crush unwitting victims.

The Code Napoleon 

Like Julius Caesar for the incipient Roman Empire, Napoleon was also a law-giver, creating the Code Napoléon to standardise and modernise the French legal system. Until it was replaced by modern laws on 1 March 1994 (!), the Code was essentially still in force two centuries later.

As a military commander, Napoleon was pre-eminent. In the space of just ten years, he smashed the empires of Austria, Prussia and Russia. He was the French Revolution incarnate, winning victories which have gone down in history: Marengo, Austerlitz, Wagram, Jena and Ulm.

“Impossible is a word only to be found in the dictionary of fools.”

It has been said that Napoleon’s greatest assets were his mathematical mind, phenomenal memory, boundless energy and prolific imagination. He sought immortality through conquest, saying: “Space we can recover, time never”.

Napoleon has heroes as his mastermind group. As he said: “Peruse again and again, the campaigns of Hannibal, Caesar and Alexander. This is the only means of becoming a great captain and acquiring the secret art of war.” Like Caesar, he valued speed and mobility, and drove his officers to their physical limits. Napoleon also ensured the loyalty of his troops by being seen among them – sharing their deprivation, marching with them and even, at time, appearing in threadbare clothes while his own marshals were dressed in finery.

“Never interrupt your enemy, when he is making a mistake. There is no such thing as accident. It is Fate misnamed.”

He projected a careful mix of the grand and the common, utilising every means of propaganda, press, war bulletins, pageantry and the charisma of his own legend. His eventual downfall was occasioned by his decision in 1812 to invade Russia – biting off more than he could chew. As one critic said: “It was amazing: Although Napoleon’s common sense amounted to genius, he never quite knew where the possible left off.”

Julius Caesar hoped to take control by radiating power from the nerve centre of Rome; the first Chin Emperor of China built his boundaries and patrolled them ceaselessly without going beyond them; while Alexander the Great wished to conquer forever. In trying to emulate Alexander and the Alexandrian mode of conquest, Napoleon, in the final analysis took one step too far. Even Napoleon’s setbacks came on an epic scale!

“You must not fight too often with one enemy or you will teach HIM your art of war.“

And somewhere between the fiction of Goethe and the reality of Napoleon, we have the afore-mentioned collection of apocryphal games.

Madame de Remusat vs. Napoleon Bonaparte (1802)

Napoleon Bonaparte vs, Madame de Ramusat (1804)

Napoleon Bonaparte vs. The Turk (Automaton) (1809)

Napoleon Bonaparte vs. Henri Gatien Bertrand (1820)

Grandmaster Raymond Keene’s 206th book, “Chess in the Year of the King”, with a foreword by TheArticle contributor Patrick Heren, and written in collaboration with former Reuters chess correspondent, Adam Black, has just appeared and is also available from the same source or from Amazon

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