glory in Italy and regarded it as his own personal province; his 'Oriental
complex' meant that he was bound to intrigue in areas which sooner or
later would entail conflict with Austria; he was arrogant enough to think
that he could defeat both Britain and Austria provided he made Russia
and Prussia his allies; and, most importantly, making war was Napoleon's
raison d'etre.
It can thus be seen that it was Napoleon himself who was the real
barrier to a European peace. Sorel goes much too far in his famous
defence of Napoleon - that, situated as he was, with England as it was,
Austria as it was, the French revolution as it was, and even French
history as it was, that Napoleon could not be otherwise than he was. 'The
lovers of speculation,' Sorel wrote, 'who dispose of his genius so light
heartedly, require a manifestation of that genius more prodigious than all
he ever vouchsafed to the world; not only that he should transform
himself, but that he should modify the nature of things, that he should
become another man in another Europe.'
The idea of Napoleon as the creature of circumstances and the product
of historical inevitability works well in the context of the global struggle
with Britain for world supremacy. This was a conflict that had raged, with
brief intermissions, ever since I688. During Napoleon's fifteen years of
supremacy savage wars were fought between Britain and France in Ireland,
India, South America, West Africa, Mauritius, Malaysia, Ceylon, Malacca,
Haiti, the Cape of Good Hope, Indonesia and the Philippines. Sea battles
were fought in the Indian Ocean; armies of black slaves were confronted in
Haiti; a difficult see-saw relationship was maintained with the United
States throughout the period. This was a struggle that would probably
have gone on even if there had been no Napoleon. Thus far historical
inevitability. But the argument does not work in Europe, where
Napoleon's wars were of three main kinds: campaigns that had a high
degree of rationality, once granted Napoleon's initial premises, such as the
conflicts with Austria, Prussia and Russia from I8o5-I8o9; conflicts he
blundered into, as in Spain after I 8o8; and irrational wars fought because
of the 'oriental complex' or vague dreams of Oriental empire, such as
Egypt in I798-99 and possibly the 1812 campaign. Napoleon was neither
perfectly free nor perfectly constrained. In many areas he was the victim of
circumstance, but in many others he himself created the circumstances.
Further evidence for the 'oriental complex' arises if we accept the
notion of compensation. It is very significant that during the years of
peace from I 8o I -o3, when the dreams of a march on India with the
Russians had been so brutally stifled, Napoleon toyed momentarily with
the idea of an empire in the western hemisphere. The purchase of the
marcin
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