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Year by year the great man's relatives and marshals were appointed to kingdoms and principalities* all over the Continent—but always as mouthpieces of the supreme "N." "Your letters," Napoleon tells his brother Louis, King of Holland, "are always talking of obedience and of respect; but [these] consist in not going so fast in such important matters without my advice." Marshal Soult, Duke of Dalmatia, is asked: "How could a man of your ability have supposed that I should ever allow you to exercise any authority not derived from me? Your action shows . . . a failure to realize my character."
Son of All Faiths. For those not in his power whom he hoped to win as allies, Napoleon had more honeyed words. He was an atheist who hoped, he wrote, to "suppress all monks indiscriminately" and use religion chiefly as a means of teaching docility to growing girls ("There is nothing I dislike so much as a meddlesome woman"). But he readily became "Your Holiness' devoted son" when he needed papal aid—and an ardent Moslem when he invaded Egypt ("There is no other god but God, and Mahomet is his prophet!"). French Jews, he ordered, must be convinced that with his help they would find the "New Jerusalem" in France—despite his convictions, expressed in another letter, that they were "the most despicable race in the world." The same "practical" approach appeared in his fondness for fabricated "accidents," e.g., the destruction of an enemy strongpoint during a ceasefire period. "You can say if you like," he told the marshal who was to do the dirty work, "that a magazine blew up, or that the explosion was due to powder stored in the cellars."
But in matters that required an imperious technique, Napoleon dropped duplicity overboard and went straight to the point. At a ball in Warsaw he saw his future mistress, Marie Walewska, for the first time, and brusquely gave her the imperial works: "I saw no one but you, I admired no one but you, I want no one but you. Answer me at once, and assuage the impatient passion of 'N.' " Only with his wife Josephine, whom he wooed and married before his own greatness was assured, did he show any trace of human frailty. "Had I a heart so base as to love without return, I would tear it to pieces with my teeth. Joséphine! Joséphine! . . . My heart, utterly engrossed with you, has fears that make me miserable . . ."
Monarch of All Moods. Napoleon took proud delight in acts of clemency. When a German traitor's wife burst into tears on being shown an incriminating letter written by her husband, Napoleon smugly informed Josephine that he had said to the weeping woman: "Madam, you can throw that letter into the fire: I shall never be strong enough to punish your husband." But clemency never interfered with policy. "You must make the skipper speak," he orders, of a sea captain suspected of spying for the English. "You can . . . squeeze his thumbs under the hammer of a musket."