Unbridled.

• Author: Hay, William Anthony
• Position: Men on Horseback: The Power of Charisma in the Age of Revolution

David A. Bell, Men on Horseback: The Power of Charisma in the Age of Revolution (New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux). 352 pp., $30.00.

What makes leadership charismatic? That question has loomed large since the eighteenth century with transformations wrought by revolution and mass politics. Political hero worship has ties with authoritarian temptations, but it also has a place in the electoral politics of constitutional democracies with their demand for persuasion. Charisma inspires more effectively than rational argument, let alone the currently diminished claims of technical expertise or standing within bureaucratic hierarchies.

In Men on Horseback: The Power of Charisma in the Age of Revolution, David A. Bell gallops through the eighteenth century to trace the modern emergence of charismatic leadership when romanticism met revolutionary politics. Heroic figures captured popular imagination not only through impressive exploits but a sense among their admirers that they expressed the spirit of the age. Indeed, George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Simon Bolivar, along with Pasquale Paoli and Toussaint Louverture, seemed to guide that spirit. Bell argues that bonds they had with their followers enhanced their ability to shape events and gained them a heroic status as founders of a new order, even if, in some cases, a transitory one. These men on horseback created a new image of leadership in the age of revolution that lasted beyond it. Bell, who is a historian at Princeton University, has written several important books, but this is by far his most ambitious. The result is a superb study.

Charisma originally meant a gift of divine favor that subordinated an individual or group to god's will. Like genius, which referred first to an inspiring spirit or temperament rather than the person who possessed it, the word's meaning changed. Max Weber secularized charisma during the 1920s as a powerconferring authority to describe a phenomenon he associated with the new demands of mass politics, though his usage captured a long-established dynamic. But conditions that made charismatic leadership a force predated the expanded suffrage, increased literacy, and growing popular media of the late nineteenth century. The parallel phenomenon of celebrity filled an eighteenthcentury lacuna left by waning religious enthusiasm. Rather than producing a disenchantment of the world as Weber theorized, Enlightenment secularism redirected the focus of devotion to extraordinary figures who captured the public imagination.

Print and visual culture, sometimes including cheap memorabilia, spread their fame. The process fostered a personal identification with heroes which became the hallmark of the charismatic leadership Bell describes as followers bound themselves to his cause.

Paoli made a compelling romantic hero, especially once the greatest biographer of the day popularized his exploits. Now largely forgotten, Paoli's story inspired more famous imitators who became the models others later followed. Leading Corsica's effort to secure independence from the Republic of Genoa, which had ruled the island for five centuries, Paoli combined the country's presidency with command of its army. Genoa, controlling only a few coastal fortresses, transferred its claims to France in a secret 1764 treaty. The French began their campaign to conquer Corsica four years later after declaring its annexation and liquidating the opposition Paoli directed in 1769.

The struggle captured European attention. Besides the geopolitical implication French control over Corsica had for the Mediterranean, popular resistance evoked memories of classical antiquity in a virtuous struggle for republican independence against massive odds. Paoli seemed, in William Pitt the Elder's description, "one of those men who are no longer to be found but in the Lives of Plutarch." Bell highlights James Boswell's role as his publicist which anticipated how the writer later turned a lexicographer, critic, and occasional writer of Anglican sermons into the heroic man of letters Samuel Johnson. Arriving in search of adventure, the credulous Boswell met Paoli who became a cultured and informative host after early suspicion. Their relationship played to the younger man's infatuation with the picturesque. Close observation enabled him to capture the intimacy of the Corsican leader's relationship with his followers. Paoli landed a promoter for more than his nation's cause.

Boswell's Account of Corsica quickly became a commercial success on its publication in 1768. Reigning monarchs like Frederick the Great and Peter the Great had drawn adulation for their exploits as rulers and generals, but presenting a republican insurgent this way marked an important change. The phrase "father of his country" generally...