By: Erez Lebanon
This lecture attempts to trace the structure of the presentation of various ideologies throughout history and offers a formal model of an ideological triangle whose roots date back to the beginning of civilization, all while focusing on the Napoleonic ideological triangle. In order to understand the theory of the ideological triangle model, it is recommended to watch the video that includes a presentation with dozens of examples alongside the explanation.
About thirty-five years ago I joined Napoleon's army. The young man, the sharp-eyed, who had risen from a remote place – from the island of Corsica – to the top of the world. The young man, who stood like solid steel against all the rulers of Europe and could do anything to them – fired my imagination. The sound of the trumpets, the beating of the drums, the thunder of the cannons, the colorful uniforms, the cavalry charging forward fearlessly – all of these stirred the child in me, who refused to grow up.
Since then, almost every day, I have reflected on Napoleon's actions, on that day – two hundred years earlier.
Initially, in 1782 – I sat next to him on the school bench at the boarding school in Bryan – and he was thirteen years old.
Ten years later – I saw him fleeing by the skin of his teeth from Corsica to France, pursued to the neck by Pauli's men.
Not a few months passed before I saw his star shine in the sky of the city of Toulon when he conducted a “school” for the commanders of the revolutionary army who were unsuccessfully besieging the city of Viseu to capture it. The young Captain Bonaparte taught them a lesson in ingenious artillery warfare and was promoted to the rank of general of brigade, the junior of the two general ranks.
And again the vicissitudes of fate. Only a few months passed and I sat with him in the prison cell in the citadel. Antibes, into which he was thrown when Robespierre fell in July 1974 – the month that the revolutionaries named “Thermidor,” because he was suspected of being among the Jacobins loyal to the decapitated leader – a suspicion that certainly had a basis.
Less than a year later, I accompanied him on his journey from Marseille to Paris, where he arrived – a wretch with a tattered uniform, tattered shoes, and suicidal thoughts.
And I saw his star rise again a few months later, when he took it upon himself to defend the Directory, the darling of the masses. I was terrified when he fired cannons into the mob, royalist and anarchist, that stormed the Tuileries Palace, killed dozens, some say hundreds, saved the Directory, was appointed military governor of Paris, and won a woman six years older than him named Josephine.
I read with excitement the love letters he wrote to Josephine, and I was offended by his insult in the face of her infidelities, which he was the last to know about.
I was there, in a tent in Italy, in the wee hours of the night, when he leaned over the maps and prepared the brilliant operations that ended in the conquest of all of northern Italy and the expulsion of the Austrians from there.
I sailed with him to Egypt, and my heart sank before the walls of Acre.
I admired his great civic achievements as First Consul.
I sat in Notre-Dame Cathedral next to Jacques-Louis David during his coronation as emperor.
I marched on the bloody battlefields of Austerlitz, Bina, Bailau, Friedland.
Until I reached a raft placed in the ford of the Neman River, by a small town called Tilsit, and I stood behind it as it made a fraternal alliance with the Tsar, Alexander I.
I was filled with worry when he entered Spain a year later.
And my heart foretold bad things when he fell from his horse on June 22, 1812 – the eve of the Grand Armee's entry into the endless and all-consuming expanses of Russia.
I was humiliated by his humiliation when he was exiled to Elba and my spirit was lifted when he returned to France and conquered it without shedding a single drop of blood, only to be crushed a hundred days later, and this time definitively.
I was wallowing in the mud of Waterloo, sleepwalking and disbelieving like Julien Sorel from Stendhal's "The Red and the Black."
And I almost got to visit him in his place of captivity at the end of the world, on the island of St. Helen, where Napoleon is currently staying – two hundred years ago – if it weren't for the strong winds, which prevent planes from landing at the new airport, the construction of which was recently completed, at a cost of over three hundred pounds, and which is located there – on the tiny island for the time being, like a white dwarf.
I learned from Napoleon's flesh the helplessness of man – no matter how great he may be – in the face of deceptive fate.
And all those years I asked myself: Why? Why? What is it about him, this man, that took over your soul?
And lo and behold, the more I delved into Napoleon, the more the enigma of the man intensified.
This reminded me of what the writer John Bailey, known as “Stendhal,” said:
“You can invest a lifetime in Napoleon and he will remain an enigma”
I was also reminded of the words of one of the greatest Napoleonic scholars, Frederic Masson, who was a librarian at the Biblioteque National in Paris at the beginning of the last century:
“It’s unbelievable that after spending thirty years studying this man, I understand him less.”
And as Dmitry Merezhkovsky, one of Napoleon's best biographers, whose book “Napoleon” was translated into Hebrew in 1956 (an excellent book), said:
“Knowing the soul of another means valuing it, weighing it, weighing it in the scales of your own soul, but what soul could serve as a weight or measure for a burden as heavy as the burden of Napoleon’s soul?”
Indeed, the attitude towards Napoleon, over the generations, has ranged from divine admiration to feverish hatred. On the spectrum between these two extremes, there were varying degrees of attitude towards Napoleon, but one attitude is conspicuous by its absence – that of indifference. Indeed, it is impossible to be indifferent to a historical phenomenon called: Napoleon.
Admirers saw him as God's messenger, a martyr for humanity, the new Prometheus, the new Messiah.
Napoleon himself wrote to his Minister of the Navy, D.Nice Dakra: “You have to stop comparing me to God.
His enemies called him: the man-eater from Corsica, the Ashmadai from Hell, the outlawed robber, the Antichrist.
Never before have such intense feelings of love and hate been fought over the surroundings of a single character.
One of Napoleon's harshest critics was the famous psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud, who, in a letter he sent to his friend the writer, Arnold Zweig in 1933 (a letter published this year in the literary supplement of the newspaper "Haaretz"):
“I heard you wrote a play about this great ragamuffin – Napoleon – who was fixated on his adolescent fantasies. Fortune played into his hands outrageously. He had no inhibitions except for his commitment to his family. He wandered the world like a sleepwalker, only to crash in the end with megalomania. It is hard to think of another genius who was devoid of any trace of respectability. The perfect anti-gentleman. But, he had a huge personality.”
(As for Didi, I prefer the fantasies of adolescence to the Viennese respectability of the eve of World War II.)
On the other hand, one of Napoleon's admirers, one of the greatest intellectuals of the eighteenth century, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, who met Napoleon face to face in 1808 in Erfurt, wrote:
“Napoleon was a kind of essence of the world. His life was like the life of one of the demigods. It can be said of him that he was in a state of perpetual supreme enlightenment. Therefore, his fate was brilliant, to such an extent that the world had never seen the like of it before, and perhaps will never see the like of it again.”
The admiration for Napoleon took on a pseudo-religious character.
Some saw him as the Messiah, and his wars as the wars of Gog and Magog, heralding redemption. They found a hint of this in the words of the prophet Isaiah in chapter 65:
“Who is this that cometh from Edom, that is clothed with vinegar from Basra? This is the one that is adorned with his garments, that is a leper in his strength. Why is thy garment red, and thy garment thy garment in the winepress? I have trodden my path alone, and of the people there is no man with me. And I have trodden them in my nose, and trampled them in my anger. Ye have despised my garments, and I have redeemed my garments. For the time of vengeance is in mine heart, and the year of redemption is come.”
Victor Hugo Describing the Old Guard at Waterloo, he writes:
Apprenant q'ils allais mourir dans cette fete' ils saluerent leur Dieu dans la tempete"
“Knowing that they were going to die at this celebration, they bowed down to their god out of the storm.”
The brilliant German-Jewish poet, Heinrich Heine, an admirer of Napoleon, who saw him as a child riding a horse in 1811 in his city, Düsseldorf, also adopts the religious-pagan world of imagery, in describing this situation:
“The sun’s rays trembled with curious awe through the green clouds. On the azure sky above floated a clearly visible golden star. The emperor wore a simple green uniform, and on his head was his little historical hat. He was mounted on a small white horse, which walked proudly, calmly, and wonderfully confident. The complexion of his face also had the same hue that we find in the marble complexions of the Greeks and Romans. The lines of his face were also beautifully defined, like those of the ancients, and on this face was written: “You shall have no other gods before me.” The eye also smiled. It was an eye as clear as the sky. An eye that knew how to read a person’s heart. An eye that saw all the things in the world at once, while we, the rest of us, can only see them one by one.”
And elsewhere he will write:
“But there is a day, and Britain is no more. Westminster cemeteries are ruined. The dust of their kings is forgotten from the heart. And St. Helen is the holy sepulchre to which the peoples of East and West flock in their ships with all the colors of their flags, and embrace in their hearts the memory of the exploits of the secular Redeemer, who suffered under the hand of Hudson Lowe, as written in the Gospels of: La Casse, Omra and Anton Marqui.”
One of the pinnacles of admiration for Napoleon is found in the monumental film by French director Abel Ganz, a silent film from 1927, “Napoleon” – a masterpiece that disappeared into oblivion shortly after its release, because that very year the first talking film was released and motion pictures were supplanted by cinema.
In the segment we watch, we see the young Napoleon in Corsica. The place: an inn full of people arguing among themselves about which country can be trusted? England, Genoa? And suddenly Napoleon appears. The people try to attack him, but suddenly they fall silent when they see his face. As if they are witnessing a divine revelation. Gans spices it up with hints from the Gospel.
I do not pretend to understand Napoleon’s soul. In this respect, I identify with what Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher who lived at the beginning of the sixth century BC, said: “You can go all the way to the depths of the soul without reaching its bottom – it is so deep.” But I have embarked on a journey to follow Napoleon’s vision and have come a long way in it, and I want to share my journey with you.
Our journey begins with a painting, a painting that I found in a book by Andre' Maurois, one of the best writers of history and biography in the first half of the last century. The book's title: "Napoleon - A Biography in Pictures." The painting was originally a stencil, one of thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, that were distributed during Napoleon's time and served as a substitute for photography, television, and the Internet of today.
At the bottom of the painting it says: “A Paris chez Basset Md d'Estampes et Fabriquant de Papiers peints – Rue st. Jaques au coin de celle des Mathurin No. 64; (Paris, at Basset's, seller of stamps and colored postcards. Rue Saint-Jacques, corner of Mathurin No. 64).
Basset is named after Paul Andre' Basset, the owner of a prosperous printing house that operated for several generations from the late eighteenth century to the second half of the nineteenth century. To this day, you can find paintings from Basset's printing press in museums and auction houses.
In a two-part painting –Lyon and lower. In the upper part, the young Bonaparte is seen bare-headed, against a background of two pyramids, above which two winged goddesses hover, like angels. The one on the left is blowing a trumpet, which she holds in her right hand, and in her left hand she holds, together with the other angel, a wreath that they are placing on Bonaparte’s head. Above them is an inscription: “Bonaparte crowned by (?) and by “Victory.” The motif is taken from the Greek world, from the winged figure crowning the goddess Athena, found in the center of the pediment on the facade of the Parthenon on the Acropolis in Athens.
Bonaparte's gaze turns to the right towards two figures in oriental clothing who bow before him. One of them holds a shield with a key on it. Behind them is a camel laden with gifts, apparently for Bonaparte. On the other side of him, another oriental figure kneels in a posture of submission, with behind it a symbol, which appears to be the symbol of the Ottoman Empire, or the symbol of the Ottoman Sultan – a symbol called a “tower.”
In the lower part of the picture, Bonaparte is seen, wearing a hat, and in front of him are eight figures – representing most religions. On the far left stands a Jewish rabbi (Rabin Minisre Juif) leaning on two tablets of the Ten Commandments. Second on the left stands a Quaker, who in French is called a Trembleur. Third on the left is a dervish, or a Turkish cleric. Fourth on the left is called: “Bonze”, which is a nickname for a Buddhist cleric in Japan, or a Chinese cleric. Idolatre de l'Indeustan. On the right are three figures. The one closest to Napoleon is a Roman Catholic bishop (Eveque). Behind him is a Greek Orthodox bishop, and the figure on the far right is a Protestant cleric.
Bonaparte's right hand holds a scroll bearing the inscription: "Freedom of Worship" (Liberte' de cultes) and his right hand points to a luminous triangle, in the form of the sun.
The painting probably dates from the beginning of the Consulate period – late 1799. It can be concluded that it was painted shortly after Napoleon's return from Egypt. This can be learned from the pyramids in the background, from the fact that Napoleon's hair was still long, reaching his shoulders at that time, and from the fact that the brim of his hat is decorated with a gold-colored ribbon, characteristic of a general's hat. We know that after being appointed First Consul, Napoleon cut his long hair and began wearing his famous and unique hat, devoid of a ribbon, which he wore differently, across rather than lengthwise.
While wandering around, I found similar paintings, probably by the same artist. There are variations in the placement of the figures, but what they all have in common is the shining triangular sun. One of them even has the name written explicitly on the shining triangle.
The message the painting seeks to convey is seemingly simple. Napoleon, the great victor, conqueror of Egypt, subjugator of the Ottomans, grants freedom of worship to all.
But I was intrigued by the shining triangular sun. Why a triangle? Why not a circle, like the sun's natural shape?
I began to delve into the subject and to my amazement, I discovered a new world. I discovered that the triangle is the gateway to the metaphysical world of ideas – ideas that have driven and continue to drive the wheels of history.
I discovered that the triangle has served and continues to serve as a container for ideas, just as a jug serves as a container for liquids.
The world of triangles
Here, with your permission, we will take a brief trip into the metaphysical world of triangles before returning to our acquaintance Napoleon.
Straight lines exist in nature in the form of the sun's rays, a circle exists in nature in the form of the sun and the celestial bodies, a triangle does not exist in nature except in a form hidden from the eye - for example, in extremely common molecular structures, called tetrahedrons, in the movement of atomic particles called neutrons, in an abstract way in the structure of the atom, and it exists in human consciousness.
In the military, it is customary to joke that everything is divided into three parts. However, this is no joke and the same is true outside the military. Humans experience the physical space in which we live as a three-dimensional space. Humans experience time as three-dimensional – past, present and future, humans experience the human body in which their soul resides as divided into three main parts (head, torso and limbs), and there is something in the structure of human consciousness that attracts ideas based on three principles that are inextricably linked.
Since the dawn of civilization, great ideologies, mainly religious, but not only, have used the triangular structure to spread their message – a message that has the structure of an ideological triangle.
At the beginning of the third millennium BC, enormous triangular structures – pyramids – were built in Egypt.
In all ancient myths, and not just the ancient ones, there is a virtual triangle – three idols bound together in an indissoluble bond.
Among the ancient Egyptians appear: “Osiris (god of death), Isis (goddess of medicine) and their son Horus (god of healing, protection, possessor of the eye symbolizing infinite vision).
When King Akhenaten established the monotheistic faith in ancient Egypt - faith in the sun god, he did not abolish the triangular structure but replaced it with another triangle: Aten (the sun god in the form of King Akhenaten), Nefertiti (Akhenaten's wife), and their son Pharaoh (he was Tuth-An-Amun).
In the Far East we find the trinity: Brahma (creator of the universe), Shiva (destroyer of the universe), and Vishnu (protector of the universe).
In the mythology of the Scandinavian and Germanic tribes, the god Odin appears. Odin's symbol is three triangles connected to each other in a Roman connection, the characteristic of which is that if one of them is severed, no matter which one, the connection between the other two will be severed.
The Christian world adopted the Holy Trinity: “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as determined at the Council of Nicaea in the fourth century AD. A triangle that has plurality and unity at the same time.
As surprising as it may seem, Judaism also has a Holy Trinity. The explicit name “Yahweh” is a trinity of three tenses – was, is present, and will be. The phrase: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord,” which is intended for “the unique name, the holy name,” contains within itself a triangle whose vertices are: “Hear, O Israel,” “Lord our God” (God in the plural), “Lord one” (God in the singular). Israel is the factor that unites God into one God.
At the end of the Age of Enlightenment, a belief was widespread about a secret society whose members pulled the strings in the world. A society called the Illuminati, whose factual basis is identical to that of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Illuminati is attributed with the symbol of the triangle and within it - the Eye of Horus - the Eye that sees to infinity, or the Eye of Supreme Providence.
The Illuminati, who are the fruit of the conspiratorial imagination, mainly feed off the fertile imaginations of authors of chilling historical adventure books such as “The Da Vinci Code.”
However, the Illuminati symbol – the triangle – is also the symbol of orders, some of which are secret, pseudo-religious:
Masonic Order
The Rosicrucian Order.
The Theosophical sect or faith
The Scientology sect or religion.
We will find the triangle with the all-seeing eye on the US dollar.
We will find the triangle in the principle of separation of powers in democratic regimes.
We find it in the world of philosophy. In Hegel's dialectic, it is based on a triangle whose vertices are: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.
The triangle is found on the flags of almost all European nations, and not just Europe.
We find it in the “themes” that nations have inscribed on their flags, such as the famous theme of France: “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,” which only received constitutional validity in 1946, perhaps as a counterweight to the infamous theme of the “Vichy” regime:
“Work, family, homeland.”
We also find the triangle in the German anthem (the third verse – which replaced the first verse that served Germany during the darkest period in the history of civilization):
“Unity, justice, freedom for the German homeland, to which we will all strive in brotherhood, in heart and deed”
I could keep drawing triangles until dawn.
But why a triangle?
What is the secret of the triangle?
Why have great religious ideologies, and not only religious ones, from the dawn of history to the present day, adopted the shape of the triangle?
The secret of the triangle is obvious on its face, and can be defined in one word – harmony!
An equilateral triangle is a symmetrical structure.
Symmetry is the main component of harmony. The word “harmony” comes from Greek, and means “union.” The Greeks gave this name to the goddess, who was born from the mating of “Ares,” the god of war, doom, and fear, with Aphrodite, the goddess of love, grace, and peace.
The term harmony dates back to the beginning of the sixth century BC. The same Heraclitus, whom we have already mentioned, said that the unity of the world consists of opposites that exist simultaneously side by side. Nothing can be perceived except in relation to its opposite. For example, good cannot exist in the absence of evil, health is incomprehensible without illness, satiety is incomprehensible without hunger.
This idea of a cosmic struggle of opposites also exists in Zoroastrianism (the religion of Zarathustra), a struggle between light and darkness, between day and night, and also in Isaiah, chapter 45, it is said: “I form light and create darkness, I make peace and create evil, I am the Lord who does all these things.”
The order that emerges from the tension created by contrast is called by Heraclitus: harmony. According to him, multiplicity, partiality, and incompatibility create unity. In his words: “The one will unite while at odds with itself.” And in Latin translation: Pluribus Unum E.
And pay attention to what is printed on the American dollar! Next to the pyramid on the left is the Great Seal of the United States, and on the eagle's wings is the inscription that can only be seen with a magnifying glass: E Pluribus Unum.
Two hundred and fifty years after Heraclitus, Aristotle appears on the stage of history and completes the picture. He accepts Heraclitus' teaching that the opposite exists in the very essence of unity, but he says that there is another factor that mediates between the two extremes, and here you have a harmonious triangle.
To clarify matters, I will give an example of a harmonious triangle from the world of morality, an example from the ancestral chapters, which are steeped in harmonious triangles:
“Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel used to say: The world stands on three things: on law, on truth, and on peace.” Every intelligent person knows that often there is tension between law – the law and the truth – these two alone will lead to a struggle as each seeks primacy, and therefore only establishing peace between these two will create harmony that will neutralize the tension so that it does not explode like an atom that has lost its equilibrium.
And another example:
“Akavia ben Mahalalel used to say: Look at three things and you will not fall into transgression. Know where you came from and where you are going and before whom you stand to give an account. You came from a filthy place and you are going to a place of dirt, maggots and worms and stand to give an account before the King of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He.”
Humans tend to seek harmony that gives a sense of aesthetic beauty. Humans seek harmony not only in the physical world, not only in the world of music, where harmony is also defined as a triad chord, but also in the world of ideas.
An ideology based on a harmonious conceptual triangle is an ideology with strong validity, just as the atom, which includes two opposite charges - a positive proton and a negative electron - and a neutral neutron, is a structure that is difficult to separate.
And what is the triangle that Napoleon points to?
Napoleon was a gifted mathematician. He was particularly interested in geometry. He was a member of the French Academy of Sciences and associated with the famous mathematicians of his time: Fourier, Monge, Laplace, Lagrange, Berthollet. Three of them even accompanied him on a trip to Egypt. Monge also headed the expedition.
And while they were aboard the flagship L'Orient, the remains of which can be found at the bottom of Abu Qir Bay, Napoleon proved to them that in every triangle, no matter which one, there is an equilateral triangle hidden – a harmonious triangle. The surprised mathematicians said: “General, we would expect anything from you except a geometry lesson.” The proof would later be called Napoleon’s Theorem.
According to this theorem – in any triangle, if we connect the centers of the right-sided triangles built on each of the sides of the triangle, we will always get – an equilateral triangle, that is, every triangle has hidden harmony. By the way, if we apply the theorem to an equilateral triangle, we will get the perfect symmetrical harmonious structure: the Star of David.
But Napoleon was not only a gifted mathematician, not only a military genius. He was also a statesman well versed in history, who examined history and politics through the prism of mathematics. He said: “The progress and perfection of mathematics are intimately connected with the prosperity of the state.”
Napoleon saw with his sharp eye, an eye of which Heinrich Heine said: “An eye that sees all things in the world at once, while we, the rest, can only see them one by one.” The ideological triangles that emerged in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
He saw the triangle of absolutism, formulated by Bishop “Bignon Bossuet,” who was Louis XIV’s tutor: “One king, one religion, one law.” At that time, people would swear: “In the name of the king, in the name of God, in the name of the nation” (by the way, during my visit to Jordan, I came across signs on the side of the roads: King – God – Fatherland, and you will also find such signs in Morocco).
He saw the triangle of human rights formulated in 1776 by the Founding Fathers of the United States: “The right to life, the right to liberty, and the right to the pursuit of happiness.”
He saw the triangle of principles of French Revolution: Liberty, equality and fraternity. The French revolutionaries did not adopt the American triangle because the United States was founded on virgin soil. The vision of the United States was a “New World Order” (Novus Ordo secularum), as written on that common document – the American dollar. While the French Revolution arose against the backdrop of a class-based and extremely unequal society. From this it is possible to understand why the two vertices of the triangle they created are: “Equality and Fraternity.”
But the French triangle was not created overnight. Initially, the revolution did not aspire to destroy an old world. All the revolutionaries wanted was to change the regime from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy. A king whose authority derives from the people and not from God. In the National Assembly, they still said at the beginning: “We are all brothers, the king is our father, France is our mother.”
On the night of August 1789-XNUMX, XNUMX, about three weeks after the storming of the Bastille, a constitutive night session was held in the National Assembly. The conservative revolutionaries spoke of a triangle that would unite the old regime with the new ideas of the Enlightenment. A triangle at its base: “history, experience” or “law and custom” and at its top: “reason.”
But the hand of the radicals prevailed. Triangles of new principles sprang up like mushrooms after the rain. Here are some of them. New principles appear as their vertices: unity, power, security, property, security, charity. One of the famous triangles was formulated by Abbe Ciaz, one of the leaders of the revolution, who wrote the well-known article: “What is the Third Estate?”: The triangle of the Enlightenment: “Justice, Verite', Raison” (Justice, Truth, Reason).
A committee was appointed to draft the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Man, headed by Lafayette, and some say that it was she who created the triangle: "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity" (Liberte', Egalite', Fraternite').
However, the triangle of three principles did not last long.
The king's foiled escape, the war declared by the powers against France, and the bloody conflicts between the revolutionaries, among themselves, turned the triangle into a square. As Napoleon would later say: "Fraternity is the synthesis of liberty and equality, but instead of fraternity the voice of the guillotine is heard, for it was said: liberty, equality, fraternity, or death."
Robespierre, whose power was based on the common people, understood with his political senses that the masses, even though they plundered the property of the Church, needed faith, needed God, and he came up with a new triangle – the religion of the Supreme Being. A triangle whose vertices were: “God, the people, the law.” He presented this new triangle in his speech to the Convention on March 1794, XNUMX, a speech that, as usual, lasted a long hour. I will bring you highlights from that famous speech:
“The world has changed and will change. Civilized peoples have replaced savage peoples wandering in the desert. A world has been discovered beyond the boundaries of the world. The entire physical order has changed. The political and moral order must also change. The only foundation of civil society is morality, just as Virtue (a concept understood then as the goodness expressed in the willingness of the individual to sacrifice his interests for the sake of the common good) is the foundation of the Republic. Truth is what is beneficial and effective for the world. The call to worship the Supreme Being means a death blow to fanaticism. All lies, all fictions will disappear in the face of truth, in the face of perfection, in the face of reason.”
Robespierre is not a theist. He is not an atheist either. He believes in God, but not the Christian God, not the Jewish God, not the Muslim God, but one universal God without the mediation of church institutions. Robespierre is a follower of Voltaire and Rousseau, who spoke of civil religion.
In early June 1794, Paris celebrates the first fruits of the religion of the Supreme Being. A high mound of earth is erected on the Champs de Mars and the symbols of the new triangle are placed on it – a completely illusory ceremony.
However, Robespierre has opponents, the atheists, the followers of Diderot and Heber, who speak of the “religion of reason,” a religion without God – the confrontation takes a bloody toll and the guillotine works overtime, until he himself, Robespierre, is executed on July 24, 1794, and with him the triangle of the Supreme Being dissolves and fades away.
France is left without a triangle to guide its path. Corruption is rising (somewhat reminiscent of the situation here). Social gaps are growing. Wild parties, orgies in Paris in the face of increasing hunger and poverty. The bourgeoisie takes control of the revolution.
Napoleon sees all this.
Napoleon knows that without vision, a people will perish.
Napoleon is also aware of the tremendous social energy released with the revolution, and he seeks to harness this energy for his own needs.
As the director, but Gans in his picturesque language, described it:
“The revolution is a raging mare, and suddenly a man comes, he looks at her face, understands her, leaps on her back, takes hold of her reins, and slowly pacifies her and turns her into the most wonderful instrument of glory.”
And Napoleon says:
“The cosmos feeds on chaos. Even the most magnificent cosmos is nothing but chaos into which order has been brought. Despite its horrors, the revolution was the only reason for our moral renewal.”
And Napoleon builds a new triangle.
Napoleon does not create a triangle out of thin air. He uses the triangles that came before him. He takes from them what he sees fit and discards the rest.
Napoleon admires Robespierre. As a young officer, he held Jacobin views. He was also a friend of Robespierre's brother Augustin, who committed suicide after beheading his older brother. However, he does not accept the principle of the rule of the people, which is one of the vertices of the triangle of the Supreme Being. Napoleon is a brave man - there is no doubt about it - but when it comes to the rule of the people - he has a phobia. Giving too much power to the people will eventually lead to anarchy and terror. For him, the rule of the people is the rule of the masses, and "the masses are the most abhorrent of tyrants", as Heinrich Heine put it. "The Rat King"
However, it adopts, with modifications of course, the other two vertices: religion/God and the law.
At the Battle of Lodi on May 10, 1796, Napoleon experienced his first epiphany. He wrote to his brother Joseph: “I felt that my feet were detached from the ground and my head was floating in the air.” He felt for the first time that he was destined for greatness and that he had the power to implement the great ideas that until then had been considered fantastical in his eyes.
But only after the victory at the Battle of Marengo, on June 14.06.1800, XNUMX, when he was already First Consul, did the way open for him to realize his plans. And he did two things: One – he sent an envoy to Paris with an order to immediately convene a committee of the four best jurists in France and to submit to it within four months a draft of the “Code Civil” (Civil Law), which would later become the first part of the “Napoleonic Code.”
At the same time, he sends an envoy to the Pope in Rome with instructions to immediately begin negotiations for the return of the Catholic Church to France, but on his own terms. He tells the envoy: “You must treat the Pope as someone who has an army of 150,000 men behind him.”
These actions demonstrate Napoleon's way of thinking. In order to rule, the people must be given two things: just law and God.
And what is the third vertex – the vertex that will govern harmony in the new triangle – that will govern order in the tension that arises from the contradictions between the different beliefs and the uniform law for all?
Napoleon looks at the triangle of principles of the revolution. From this triangle, one vertex has already fallen: “fraternity,” which has faded away rapidly. At the beginning of official letters from the army from the late 1790s, we find only the words: “liberty” and “equality.” For example, in the letters currently on display at the National Library in Jerusalem – rare documents of the Republican army in Egypt.
Napoleon chooses “equality,” but with a new meaning, and he says:
“It is better to harm freedom than equality, because equality is the creation of this century, and I want to be of this century. My first principle is the freedom of talent without regard to origin or property. Because of this system of equality, I hate oligarchy. Freedom is a need of the chosen ones. Only it can be reduced without sin, but equality is what the majority desires. Freedom and equality are two expressions that emanate from the same source, like light and heat emanating from the sun. Full and true equality cannot exist without freedom, but a pinch of freedom is enough because men cannot digest too much freedom. Freedom of talent is a spark of freedom, but this spark is enough to grant full and true equality.”
The third vertex is not equality in the strict sense, but “freedom of talent” and, in modern terminology: “meritocracy.”
The freedom of talent means giving control to the most talented, and who is the most talented of all if not Napoleon himself. The leader in the form of Napoleon symbolizes the freedom of talent, and is the third vertex – the vertex that creates harmony between all
It seems that the wheel is turning backwards – to the triangle of absolutism – the triangle of Bishop Bossuet – from the days of the absolutist regime: “One religion, one law, one king.” But there is a fundamental difference between the triangles.
The absolutist triangle came to perpetuate the values of the old regime: feudal law that maintained the separation of classes, a single Catholic religion, and a king by the grace of God.
The Napoleonic Triangle is a gateway to the new world: equal law for all, freedom of worship for members of all religions, and a leader who, although a dictator, derives his authority from the will of the people.
There is also a semantic difference – the word “one” or “one” does not appear in the Napoleonic triangle. Triangles that use the word “one” arouse my suspicion because they remind me of triangles that underpinned the darkest periods in history. They remind me of a triangle whose vertices were: one people, or one nation, one blood, or one race, and one leader.
Recently, in the last few months, they have been given triangles with warning signs. Anyone who listened to Trump's inauguration speech must have noticed the triangle he spoke of: "One heart, one home, and one shared destiny."
"We share one heart, one home, and one glorious destiny"
Or to distinguish a local triangle that grew in our garden.
But this triangle is not Napoleon's great vision. This triangle is only a tool - a means, which will allow the truly great vision to be implemented.
And what is this vision?
I arrived at this vision with the help of one of Napoleon's best interpreters. A literary genius of the nineteenth century. Fyodor Dostoevsky. Only a genius can delve into the heart of another genius. And this is what Dostoevsky said:
“The lust for power is a strong instinct, but not the strongest of all instincts. Of all human instincts, the most ardent, the one that boils and boils the soul is the instinct of thought, and of all ardent thoughts it was that thought that took hold of Napoleon, his insatiable aspiration – the idea of universality… The idea of universality was not an abstract concept for Napoleon, for he was the universal man – a man who appeared before his time, he was nothing but a creation of another creation, very old and very new, a man from before the flood and a man of the end of days”…. He was a man without a language, without a people, without a homeland – instead of France he had the world.”
A hint of this can be found in Napoleon’s words in 1807 when the Prussian Marshal Ludendorff stands beside him as the Imperial Guard passes before them. Ludendorff says: “How magnificent they are.” “Yes,” says Napoleon, “but I wish I could make them forget their homeland.”
Before Napoleon, there was a goal that went beyond the borders of France.
And so Napoleon says:
“I am not a pursuer of honor. If this pursuit is within me, it is so natural, existing in me from birth, to such an extent that it is like the blood that flows in my veins and the air that I breathe into my body. My lust for honor? Yes, perhaps it is the greatest and strongest of all that has ever existed, and its goal is to reestablish the kingdom of reason, the complete embodiment, the complete triumph of human forces. And this is only the beginning, and later on – the unification of all national bodies into one universal body – the Union of European Peoples. How wonderful it would be to come on such a triumphal march of nations to future generations. Only then, after this compromise, could the wonderful dream of civilization be realized – everywhere equality of laws, equality of moral principles, a general European law book, general European courts, one currency, one measure, one weight, one constitution. Free navigation on all rivers for all, at all times. General disarmament, an end to wars, world peace. "All of Europe is one family to such an extent that every European who passes through it and travels will see himself at home everywhere."
In the passage I quoted, the second peak of Napoleon's vision emerges – "world peace."
Napoleon and peace? It's an oxymoron – a word and its opposite. When people hear that I'm interested in Napoleon, they raise an eyebrow and say: "Napoleon?", "What do you have to do with this bloodsucker, this mass murderer?"
Indeed, this is the attitude of those who are not familiar with Napoleonic history. Anyone who will delve into the facts will find that it was not Napoleon who started the war. It was the leaders of the old regime of Europe, who trembled with fear at the ideas of revolution, who declared war on France. Seven coalitions rose up against France – seven coalitions, which England stood behind – six of which were against Napoleon personally, for he embodied in his great personality the achievements of the revolution, and he was the keeper of its embers.
And Napoleon? He responded and with his military genius knew how to take the initiative, choose the place, the time and the manner, and won the vast majority of the battles, fifty out of fifty-five battles.
And if he was destined to fight, he strove for an ultimate victory, the mother of all victories, which would bring England to its knees. A victory that would result in world peace, or at least peace similar to the pax Romana.
Napoleon himself detested war, but he understood that it was the decree of fate. He said: “Today war is the nature of man, but the day will come when peace will reign, and victories will be achieved not by cannons and bayonets.”
After one of the battles, when he saw the battlefield strewn with corpses, his mood was gloomy. His aides tried to cheer him up by saying: “The victory is ours, and the corpses, the corpses are mostly those of the enemy’s soldiers.” And Napoleon replied: “After the war, there are no soldiers of ours and soldiers of the enemy. After the war, they are all human beings.” He also said: “This terrible and horrible spectacle must have awakened in the hearts of the rulers a hatred of war and a love of peace.”
However, Napoleon was ultimately defeated and his vision of universal peace was never realized. At St. Helen he said:
"What I did was beyond measure, but what I had yet to do far exceeded that."
One hundred and fifty years have passed. One hundred and fifty years during which two terrible and bloody world wars took place, claiming far more victims than the Napoleonic Wars. One hundred and fifty years have passed before the Napoleonic vision was partially realized and the European Union was established.
But the Union was betrayed. Betrayed by Perfidious Albion, treacherous England – Napoleon's enemy in his lifetime and the enemy of his vision two hundred years after his death.
And I, I prefer fantasy – the fantasy of the man who was one of the most practical men in history, and at the same time one of the greatest dreamers. A man who was a man of war all his life and who believed that a day would come when peace and reason would prevail. He believed that a day would come when the words of the prophet would be fulfilled: “And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” And since I do not want to end with the word “war,” I will bless you with the “triple blessing.”
“May the Lord bless you and keep you,
The Lord will lift up his face to you and be gracious to you,
May the Lord make his face shine upon you and give us peace.”
Complete and perfect peace.