IF Louis XVI* had been inspired enough to perpetrate one witticism, he might possibly have saved his kingdom. With one bon mot, might he not perhaps have escaped the guillotine?
Napoleon I scattered around him by handfuls the sayings that were suited to the hearts of his soldiers.*
Napoleon III* extinguished with one brief phrase all the future indignation of the French nation in that first promise: “The Empire is peace.” The Empire is peace! Superb declaration, magnificent lie! After having said that, he might declare war against the whole of Europe without having anything to fear from his people. He had found a simple, neat, and striking formula, capable of appealing to all minds, and against which facts would be no argument. He made war against China, Mexico, Russia, Austria, against all the world. What did it matter? There are people yet who speak with sincere conviction of the eighteen years of tranquillity he gave to France: “The Empire is peace.”
abridged
* Louis XVI was King of France from 1774 to 1792, when he was executed by guillotine on the orders of the new French revolutionary government. His contemporary in England was George III (r. 1760-1820). The best-known soundbite of his reign comes from the Confessions (1769) of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). A ‘great princess’, he says, was told that the peasants of France had no bread, and replied ‘Then let them eat brioche’ (usually condensed to ‘Let them eat cake’). The saying is conventionally attributed to Marie Antoinette (1755-1793), but in 1769 she was just fourteen and still living at home in Vienna. She married the Dauphin Louis a year later and became Queen of France on his accession in 1774.
* Many pearls of wisdom have been attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France from 1804 to 1815, such as: “There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous”; “I have very rarely met with two o’clock in the morning courage: I mean instantaneous courage”; and “An army marches on its stomach”. See also A Nation of Shopkeepers.
* Charles-Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, President of France 1848 to 1852 and Emperor of the French from 1852 to 1870. This bon mot is taken from a speech delivered in Bordeaux on October 9th, 1852, at the start of his Imperial reign. He was a contemporary of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom (r. 1837-1901). See also The Crimean War.