《美国语文》章节试读

《美国语文》的笔记-Napoleon Bonaparte - Napoleon Bonaparte

He fought sixty battles. He had never enough. Each victory was a new weapon.“My power would fall, were I not to support it by new achievements. Conquest has made me what I am, and conquest must maintain me.” His vigor was guarded and tempered by the coldest prudence and punctuality. A thunderbolt in the attack, he was found invulnerable in his intrenchments. His every attack was never the inspiration of courage,but the result of calculation. His idea of the best defence consisted in being always the attacking party. “My ambition,” he said, “was great, but was of a cold nature.”

《美国语文》的笔记-Napoleon Bonaparte - Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon had been the first man of the world, if his ends had been purely public. As he is, he inspires confidence and vigor by the extraordinary unity of his action. He is firm,sure, self-denying, self-postponing, sacrificing everything to his aim,——money, troops, generals, and his own safety also; not misled, like common adventurers, by the splendor of his own means.“Incidents ought not to govern policy,” he said,“but policy incidents.”“To be hurried away by every event, is to have no political system at all.”

《美国语文》的笔记-Napoleon Bonaparte - Napoleon Bonaparte

Napoleon understood his business. Here was a man that in each moment and emergency knew what to do next. It is an immense comfort and refreshment to the spirits, not only of kings, but of citizens. Few men have any next; they live from hand to mouth, without plan, and are ever at the end of their line, and, after each action, wait for an impulse from abroad.

《美国语文》的笔记-Napoleon Bonaparte - Napoleon Bonaparte

“Sire, General Clarke cannot combine with General Junot for the dreadful fire of the Austrian battery.”“Let him carry the battery.”“Sire, every regiment that approaches the heavy artillery is sacrificed. Sire, what orders?”“Forward!Forward!” In the plenitude of his resources every obstacle seemed to vanish. “There shall be no Alps,”he said; and he built his perfect roads, climbing by graded galleries their steepest precipices, until Italy was as open to Paris as any town in France. Having decided what was to be done, he did that with might and main. He put out all his strength. He risked everything and spared nothing,——neither ammunition, nor money, nor troops, nor generals, nor himself. If fighting be the best mode of adjusting national differences, certainly Bonaparte was right in making it thorough.

《美国语文》的笔记-Napoleon Bonaparte - Napoleon Bonaparte

His victories were only so many doors, and he never for a moment lost sight of his way onward in the dazzle and uproar of the present circumstance. He knew what to do, and he flew to his mark. He would shorten a straight line to come at his object. Horrible anecdotes may, no doubt, be collected from his history, of the price at which he bought his successes, but he must not, therefore, be set down as cruel, but only as one who knew no impediment to his will: not blood-thirsty, not cruel; but woe to what thing or person stood in his way!