The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, by Ida M. (Ida Minerva) Tarbell

Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

LIFE OF NAPOLEON

BONAPARTE AT TWENTY-TWO YEARS OF AGE

After a portrait by Greuze.

A LIFE of
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
With a Sketch of JOSEPHINE, Empress of the French. Illustrated from the collection of NAPOLEON Engravings made by the late Hon. G. G. Hubbard, and now owned by the Congressional Library, Washington, D. C., supplemented by Pictures from the best French Collections....

BY

IDA M. TARBELL

New York

McClure, Phillips & Co.

M. CM. V.

Copyright, 1894, by

S. S. McCLURE, Limited

Copyright, 1895, by

S. S. McCLURE, Limited

Copyright, 1896, by

THE S. S. McCLURE CO.

Copyright, 1901, by

McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.

First Impression February, 1901

Second Impression April, 1901

Third Impression May, 1903

Fourth Impression Sept., 1905.

CONTENTS

PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION

The chief source of illustration for this volume, as in the case of the Napoleon papers in McClure’s Magazine, is the great collection of engravings of Mr. Gardiner G. Hubbard, which has been generously placed at the service of the publishers. In order to make the illustration still more comprehensive, a representative of McClure’s Magazine and an authorized agent of Mr. Hubbard visited Paris, to seek there whatever it might be desirable to have in the way of additional pictures which were not within the scope of Mr. Hubbard’s splendid collection. They secured the assistance of M. Armand Dayot, Inspecteur des Beaux-Arts, who possessed rare qualifications for the task. His official position he owed to his familiarity with the great art collections, both public and private, of France, and his official duties made him especially familiar with the great paintings relating to French history. Besides, he was a specialist in Napoleonic iconography. On account of his qualifications and special knowledge, he had been selected by the great house of Hachette et Cie, to edit their book on Napoléon raconté par l’Image, which was the first attempt to bring together in one volume the most important pictures relating to the military, political, and private life of Napoleon. M. Dayot had just completed this task, and was fresh from his studies of Napoleonic pictures, when his aid was secured by the publishers of McClure’s Magazine, in supplementing the Hubbard collection.

The work was prosecuted with the one aim of omitting no important picture. When great paintings indispensable to a complete pictorial life of Napoleon were found, which had never been either etched or engraved, photographs were obtained, many of these photographs being made especially for our use.

A generous selection of pictures was made from the works of Raffet and Charlet. M. Dayot was able also to add a number of pictures—not less than a score—of unique value, through his personal relations with the owners of the great private Napoleonic collections. Thus were obtained hitherto unpublished pictures, of the highest value, from the collections of Monseigneur Due d’Aumale; of H. I. H., Prince Victor Napoleon; of Prince Roland; of Baron Larrey, the son of the chief surgeon of the army of Napoleon; of the Duke of Bassano, son of the minister and confidant of the emperor; of Monsieur Edmond Taigny, the friend and biographer of Isabey; of Monsieur Albert Christophle, Governor-General of the Crédit-Foncier of France; of Monsieur Paul le Roux, who has perhaps the richest of the Napoleonic collections; and of Monsieur le Marquis de Girardin, son-in-law of the Duc de Gaëte, the faithful Minister of Finance of Napoleon I. It will be easily understood that no doubt can be raised as to the authenticity of documents borrowed from such sources.

The following letter explains fully the plan on which Mr. Hubbard’s collection is arranged, and shows as well its admirable completeness. It gives, too, a classification of the pictures into periods, which will be useful to the reader.

Washington, October, 1894.

S. S. McClure, Esq.

Dear Sir:—It is about fourteen years since I became interested in engravings, and I have since that time made a considerable collection, including many portraits, generally painted and engraved during the life of the personage. I have from two hundred to three hundred prints relating to Napoleon, his family, and his generals. The earliest of these is a portrait of Napoleon painted in 1791, when he was twenty-two years old; the next in date was engraved in 1796. There are many in each subsequent year, and four prints of drawings made immediately after his death.

There are few men whose characters at different periods of life are so distinctly marked as Napoleon’s, as will appear by an examination of these prints. There are four of these periods: First Period, 1796–1797, Napoleon the General; Second Period, 1801–1804, Napoleon the Statesman and Lawgiver; Third Period, 1804–1812, Napoleon the Emperor; Fourth Period, the Decline and Fall of Napoleon, including Waterloo and St. Helena. Most of these prints are contemporaneous with the periods described. The portraits include copies of the portraits painted by the greatest painters and engraved by the best engravers of that age. There are four engravings of the paintings by Meissonier—“1807,” “Napoleon,” “Napoleon Reconnoitering,” and “1814.”

First Period, 1796–1797, Napoleon the General.—In these the Italian spelling of the name, “Buonaparte,” is generally adopted. At this period there were many French and other artists in Italy, and it would seem as if all were desirous of painting the young general. A French writer in a late number of the “Gazette des Beaux-Arts” is uncertain whether Gros, Appiani, or Cossia was the first to obtain a sitting from General Bonaparte. It does not matter to your readers, as portraits by each of these artists are included in this collection.

There must have been other portraits or busts of Bonaparte executed before 1796, besides the one by Greuze given in this collection. These may be found, but there are no others in my collection. Of the portraits of Napoleon belonging to this period eight were engraved before 1798, one in 1800. All have the long hair falling below the ears over the forehead and shoulders; while all portraits subsequent to Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt have short hair. The length of the hair affords an indication of the date of the portrait.

Second Period, 1801–1804, Napoleon the Statesman and Lawgiver.—During this period many English artists visited Paris, and painted or engraved portraits of Napoleon. In these the Italian spelling “Buonaparte” is adopted, while in the French engravings of this period he is called “Bonaparte” or “General Bonaparte.” Especially noteworthy among them is “The Review at the Tuileries,” regarded by Masson as the best likeness of Napoleon “when thirty years old and in his best estate.” The portrait painted by Gérard in 1803, and engraved by Richomme, is by others considered the best of this period. There is already a marked change from the long and thin face in earlier portraits to the round and full face of this period. In some of these prints the Code Napoléon is introduced as an accessory.

Third Period, 1804–1812, Napoleon the Emperor.—He is now styled “Napoléon,” “Napoléon le Grand,” or “L’Empereur.” His chief painters in this period are Léfevre, Gérard, Isabey, Lupton, and David (with Raphael-Morghen, Longhi, Desnoyers, engravers)—artists of greater merit than those of the earlier periods. The full-length portrait by David has been copied oftener and is better known than any other.

It has been said that we cannot in the portraits of this period, executed by Gérard, Isabey, and David, find a true likeness of Napoleon. His ministers thought “it was necessary that the sovereign should have a serene expression, with a beauty almost more than human, like the deified Cæsars or the gods of whom they were the image.” “Advise the painters,” Napoleon wrote to Duroc, September 15, 1807, “to make the countenance more gracious (plutôt gracieuses).” Again, “Advise the painters to seek less a perfect resemblance than to give the beau ideal in preserving certain features and in making the likeness more agreeable (plutôt agréable).”

Fourth Period, 1812–1815, Decline and Fall of Napoleon.—We have probably in the front and side face made by Girodet, and published in England, a true likeness of Napoleon. It was drawn by Girodet in the Chapel of the Tuileries, March 8, 1812, while Napoleon was attending mass. It is believed to be a more truthful likeness than that by David, made the same year; the change in his appearance to greater fulness than in the portraits of 1801–1804 is here more plainly marked. He has now become corpulent, and his face is round and full. Two portraits taken in 1815 show it even more clearly. One of these was taken immediately before the battle of Waterloo, and the other, by J. Eastlake, immediately after. Mr. Eastlake, then an art student, was staying at Plymouth when the “Bellerophon” put in. He watched Napoleon for several days, taking sketches from which he afterwards made a full-length portrait.

The collection concludes with three notable prints: the first of the mask made by Dr. Antommarchi the day of his death, and engraved by Calamatta in 1834; another of a drawing “made immediately after death by Captain Ibbetson, R. N.;” and the third of a drawing by Captain Crockatt, made fourteen hours after the death of Napoleon, and published in London July 18, 1821. These show in a remarkable manner the head of this wonderful man.

The larger part of these prints was purchased through Messrs. Wunderlich & Co., and Messrs. Keppel of New York, some at auctions in Berlin, London, Amsterdam, and Stuttgart; very few in Paris.

Gardiner G. Hubbard.

The historical and critical notes which accompany the illustrations in this volume have been furnished by Mr. Hubbard as a rule, though those signed A. D. come from the pen of M. Armand Dayot.

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION

The Life of Napoleon in this volume first appeared as a serial in Volumes III and IV of McClure’s Magazine. In 1895 on its completion in serial form it was published in book form, illustrated by a series of portraits from the Hubbard collection which had been used in the magazine and by numerous other pictures drawn from the principal French Napoleon collections. The illustrations in the present edition have been selected from those used in the first. The variety and extent of these illustrations are explained in the Preface to the First Edition here reproduced. The Life of Napoleon is supplemented in the present work by a sketch of Josephine. The absence of any Life of Josephine in English drawn from recent historical investigations is the reason for presenting this sketch. Until within a very few years the first Empress of the French People has been pictured to the world as her grandson Napoleon III desired that she appear—a fitting type for popular adoration—more of a saint and a martyr than of a woman. The present sketch is an attempt to tell a true story of her life as it is revealed by the recent diligent researches of Frederic Masson and by the numerous memoirs of the periods which have appeared, many of them since the passing of the Second Empire. If the story as told here is frank, it is hoped by the author that it will not be found unsympathetic.

CHARLES BONAPARTE, FATHER OF NAPOLEON. BORN 1746; DIED 1785.

PENCIL SKETCHES BY DAVID, REPRESENTING BONAPARTE AT BRIENNE, BONAPARTE GENERAL OF THE ARMY OF ITALY, BONAPARTE AS EMPEROR.

Life of Napoleon

CHAPTER I
NAPOLEON’S YOUTH AND EARLY SURROUNDINGS—HIS SCHOOL DAYS AT BRIENNE

“If I were not convinced that his family is as old and as good as my own,” said the Emperor of Austria when he married Marie Louise to Napoleon Bonaparte, “I would not give him my daughter.” The remark is sufficient recognition of the nobility of the father of Napoleon, Charles Marie de Bonaparte, a gentleman of Ajaccio, Corsica, whose family, of Tuscan origin, had settled there in the sixteenth century, and who, in 1765, had married a young girl of the island, Lætitia Ramolino.

Monsieur Bonaparte gave his wife a noble name, but little else. He was an indolent, pleasure-loving, chimerical man, who had inherited a lawsuit, and whose time was absorbed in the hopeless task of recovering an estate of which the Church had taken possession. Madame Bonaparte brought her husband no great name, but she did bring him health, beauty, and remarkable qualities. Tall and imposing, Mademoiselle Lætitia Ramolino had a superb carriage, which she never lost, and a face which attracted attention particularly by the accentuation and perfection of its features. She was reserved, but of ceaseless energy and will, and though but fifteen when married, she conducted her family affairs with such good sense and firmness that she was able to bring up decently the eight children spared her from the thirteen she bore. The habits of order and economy formed in her years of struggle became so firmly rooted in her character that later, when she became mater regum, the “Madame Mère” of an imperial court, she could not put them aside, but saved from the generous income at her disposal, “for those of my children who are not yet settled,” she said. Throughout her life she showed the truth of her son’s characterization: “A man’s head on a woman’s body.”

The first years after their marriage were stormy ones for the Bonapartes. The Corsicans, led by the patriot Pascal Paoli, were in revolt against the French, at that time masters of the island. Among Paoli’s followers was Charles Bonaparte. He shared the fortunes of his chief to the end of the struggle of 1769, and when, finally, Paoli was hopelessly defeated, took to the mountains. In all the dangers and miseries of this war and flight, Charles Bonaparte was accompanied by his wife, who, vigorous of body and brave of heart, suffered privations, dangers, and fatigue without complaint. When the Corsicans submitted, the Bonapartes went back to Ajaccio. Six weeks later Madame Bonaparte gave birth to her fourth child, Napoleon.

“I was born,” said Napoleon, “when my country was perishing. Thirty thousand Frenchmen were vomited upon our soil. Cries of the wounded, sighs of the oppressed, and tears of despair surrounded my cradle at my birth.”

Young Bonaparte learned to hate with the fierceness peculiar to Corsican blood the idea of oppression, to revere Paoli, and, with a boy’s contempt of necessity, even to despise his father’s submission. It was not strange. His mother had little time for her children’s training. His father gave them no attention; and Napoleon, “obstinate and curious,” domineering over his brothers and companions, fearing no one, ran wild on the beach with the sailors or over the mountains with the herdsmen, listening to their tales of the Corsican rebellion and of fights, on sea and land, imbibing their contempt for submission, their love for liberty.

At nine years of age he was a shy, proud, wilful child, unkempt and untrained, little, pale, and nervous, almost without instruction, and yet already enamored of a soldier’s life and conscious of a certain superiority over his comrades. Then it was that he was suddenly transplanted from his free life to an environment foreign in its language, artificial in its etiquette, and severe in its regulations.

It was as a dependent, a species of charity pupil, that he went into this new atmosphere. Charles Bonaparte had become, in the nine years since he had abandoned the cause of Paoli, a thorough parasite. Like all the poor nobility of the country to which he had attached himself, and even like many of the rich in that day, he begged favors of every description from the government in return for his support. To aid in securing them, he humbled himself before the French Governor-General of Corsica, the Count de Marbœuf, and made frequent trips, which he could ill afford, back and forth to Versailles. The free education of his children, a good office with its salary and honors, the maintenance of his claims against the Jesuits, were among the favors which he sought.

By dint of solicitation he had secured a place among the free pupils of the college at Autun for his son Joseph, the oldest of the family, and one for Napoleon at the military school at Brienne.

LÆTITIA RAMOLINO, NAPOLEON’S MOTHER. BORN 1750, DIED 1836.

To enter the school at Brienne, it was necessary to be able to read and write French, and to pass a preliminary examination in that language. This young Napoleon could not do; indeed, he could scarcely have done as much in his native Italian. A preparatory school was necessary, then, for a time. The place settled on was Autun, where Joseph was to enter college, and there in January, 1779, Charles Bonaparte arrived with the two boys.

Napoleon was nine and a half years old when he entered the school at Autun. He remained three months, and in that time made sufficient progress to fulfil the requirements at Brienne. The principal record of the boy’s conduct at Autun comes from Abbé Chardon, who was at the head of the primary department. He says of his pupil:

“Napoleon brought to Autun a sombre, thoughtful character. He was interested in no one, and found his amusements by himself. He rarely had a companion in his walks. He was quick to learn, and quick of apprehension in all ways. When I gave him a lesson, he fixed his eyes upon me with parted lips; but if I recapitulated anything I had said, his interest was gone, as he plainly showed by his manner. When reproved for this, he would answer coldly, I might almost say with an imperious air, ‘I know it already, sir.’”

When he went to Brienne, Napoleon left his brother Joseph behind at Autun. The boy had not now one familiar feature in his life. The school at Brienne was made up of about one hundred and twenty pupils, half of whom were supported by the government. They were sons of nobles, who, generally, had little but their great names, and whose rule for getting on in the world was the rule of the old régime—secure a powerful patron, and, by flattery and servile attentions, continue in his train. Young Bonaparte heard little but boasting, and saw little but vanity. His first lessons in French society were the doubtful ones of the parasite and courtier. The motto which he saw everywhere practised was, “The end justifies the means.” His teachers were not strong enough men to counteract this influence. The military schools of France were at this time in the hands of religious orders, and the Minim Brothers, who had charge of Brienne, were principally celebrated for their ignorance. They certainly could not change the arrogant and false notions of their aristocratic young pupils.

It was a dangerous experiment to place in such surroundings a boy like the young Napoleon, proud, ambitious, jealous; lacking any healthful moral training; possessing an Italian indifference to truth and the rights of others; already conscious that he had his own way to make in the world, and inspired by a determination to do it.

From the first the atmosphere at Brienne was hateful to the boy. His comrades were French, and it was the French who had subdued Corsica. They taunted him with it sometimes, and he told them that had there been but four to one, Corsica would never have been conquered, but that the French came ten to one. When they said: “But your father submitted,” he said bitterly: “I shall never forgive him for it.” As for Paoli, he told them, proudly, “He is a good man. I wish I could be like him.”

He had trouble with the new language. They jeered at him because of it. His name was strange; la paille au nez was the nickname they made from Napoleon.

He was poor; they were rich. The contemptuous treatment he received because of his poverty was such that he begged to be taken home.

“My father [he wrote], if you or my protectors cannot give me the means of sustaining myself more honorably in the house where I am, please let me return home as soon as possible. I am tired of poverty and of the jeers of insolent scholars who are superior to me only in their fortune, for there is not one among them who feels one hundredth part of the noble sentiment which animates me. Must your son, sir, continually be the butt of these boobies, who, vain of the luxuries which they enjoy, insult me by their laughter at the privations which I am forced to endure? No, father, no! If fortune refuses to smile upon me, take me from Brienne, and make me, if you will, a mechanic. From these words you may judge of my despair. This letter, sir, please believe, is not dictated by a vain desire to enjoy extravagant amusements. I have no such wish. I feel simply that it is necessary to show my companions that I can procure them as well as they, if I wish to do so.

“Your respectful and affectionate son,

“Bonaparte.”

Charles Bonaparte, always in pursuit of pleasure and his inheritance, could not help his son. Napoleon made other attempts to escape, even offering himself, it is said, to the British Admiralty as a sailor, and once, at least, begging Monsieur de Marbœuf, the Governor-General of Corsica, who had aided Charles Bonaparte in securing places for both boys, to withdraw his protection. The incident which led to this was characteristic of the school. The supercilious young nobles taunted him with his father’s position; it was nothing but that of a poor tipstaff, they said. Young Bonaparte, stung by what he thought an insult, attacked his tormentors, and, being caught in the act, was shut up. He immediately wrote to the Count de Marbœuf a letter of remarkable qualities in so young a boy and in such circumstances. After explaining the incident he said:

“Now, Monsieur le Comte, if I am guilty, if my liberty has been taken from me justly, have the goodness to add to the kindnesses which you have shown me one thing more—take me from Brienne and withdraw your protection: it would be robbery on my part to keep it any longer from one who deserves it more than I do. I shall never, sir, be worthier of it than I am now. I shall never cure myself of an impetuosity which is all the more dangerous because I believe its motive is sacred. Whatever idea of self-interest influences me, I shall never have control enough to see my father, an honorable man, dragged in the mud. I shall always, Monsieur le Comte, feel too deeply in these circumstances to limit myself to complaining to my superior. I shall always feel that a good son ought not to allow another to avenge such an outrage. As for the benefits which you have rained upon me, they will never be forgotten. I shall say I had gained an honorable protection, but Heaven denied me the virtues which were necessary in order to profit by it.”

BONAPARTE AT BRIENNE.

The original of this statue is in the gallery of Versailles. It dates from 1851, and is by Louis Rochet, one of the pupils of David d’Angers.

In the end Napoleon saw that there was no way for him but to remain at Brienne, galled by poverty and formalism.

It would be unreasonable to suppose that there was no relief to this sombre life. The boy won recognition more than once from his companions by his bravery and skill in defending his rights. He was not only valorous; he was generous, and, “preferred going to prison himself to denouncing his comrades who had done wrong.” Young Napoleon found, soon, that if there were things for which he was ridiculed, there were others for which he was applauded.

He made friends, particularly among his teachers; and to one of his comrades, Bourrienne, he remained attached for years. “You never laugh at me; you like me,” he said to his friend. Those who found him morose and surly, did not realize that beneath the reserved, sullen exterior of the little Corsican boy there was a proud and passionate heart aching for love and recognition; that it was sensitiveness rather than arrogance which drove him away from his mates.

At the end of five and one-half years Napoleon was promoted to the military school at Paris. The choice of pupils for this school was made by an inspector, at this time one Chevalier de Kéralio, an amiable old man, who was fond of mingling with the boys as well as examining them. He was particularly pleased with Napoleon, and named him for promotion in spite of his being strong in nothing but mathematics, and not yet being of the age required by the regulations. The teachers protested, but De Kéralio insisted.

“I know what I am doing,” he said. “If I put the rules aside in this case, it is not to do his family a favor—I do not know them. It is because of the child himself. I have seen a spark here which cannot be too carefully cultivated.”

De Kéralio died before the nominations were made, but his wishes in regard to young Bonaparte were carried out. The recommendation which sent him up is curious. The notes read:

“Monsieur de Bonaparte; height four feet, ten inches and ten lines; he has passed his fourth examination; good constitution, excellent health; submissive character, frank and grateful; regular in conduct; has distinguished himself by his application to mathematics; is passably well up in history and geography; is behindhand in his Latin. Will make an excellent sailor. Deserves to be sent to the school in Paris.”

CHAPTER II
NAPOLEON IN PARIS—LIEUTENANT OF ARTILLERY—LITERARY WORK—NAPOLEON AND THE REVOLUTION

It was in October, 1784, that Napoleon was placed in the Ecole Militaire at Paris, the same school which still faces the Champ de Mars. He was fifteen years old at the time, a thin-faced, awkward, countrified boy, who stared open-mouthed at the Paris street sights and seemed singularly out of place to those who saw him in the capital for the first time.

Napoleon found his new associates even more distasteful than those at Brienne had been. The pupils of the Ecole Militaire were sons of soldiers and provincial gentlemen, educated gratuitously, and rich young men who paid for their privileges. The practices of the school were luxurious. There was a large staff of servants, costly stables, several courses at meals. Those who were rich spent freely; most of those who were poor ran in debt. Napoleon could not pay his share in the lunches and gifts which his mates offered now and then to teachers and fellows. He saw his sister Eliza, who was at Madame de Maintenon’s school at St. Cyr, weep one day for the same reason. He would not borrow. “My mother has already too many expenses, and I have no business to increase them by extravagances which are simply imposed upon me by the stupid folly of my comrades.” But he did complain loudly to his friends. The Permons, a Corsican family living on the Quai Conti, who made Napoleon thoroughly at home, even holding a room at his disposal, frequently discussed these complaints. Was it vanity and envy, or a wounded pride and just indignation? The latter, said Monsieur Permon. This feeling was so profound with Napoleon, that, with his natural instinct for regulating whatever was displeasing to him, he prepared a memorial to the government, full of good, practical sense, on the useless luxury of the pupils.

A year in Paris finished Napoleon’s military education, and in October, 1785, when sixteen years old, he received his appointment as second lieutenant of the artillery in a regiment stationed at Valence. Out of the fifty-eight pupils entitled that year to the promotion of second lieutenant, but six went to the artillery; of these six Napoleon was one. His examiner said of him:

“Reserved and studious, he prefers study to any amusement, and enjoys reading the best authors; applies himself earnestly to the abstract sciences; cares little for anything else. He is silent and loves solitude. He is capricious, haughty, and excessively egotistical; talks little, but is quick and energetic in his replies, prompt and severe in his repartees; has great pride and ambitions, aspiring to anything. The young man is worthy of patronage.”

He left Paris at once, on money borrowed from a cloth merchant whom his father had patronized, not sorry, probably, that his school days were over, though it is certain that all of those who had been friendly to him in this period he never forgot in the future. Several of his old teachers at Brienne received pensions; one was made rector of the School of Fine Arts established at Compiègne, another librarian at Malmaison, where the porter was the former porter at Brienne. The professors of the Ecole Militaire were equally well taken care of, as well as many of his schoolmates. During the Consulate, learning that Madame de Montesson, wife of the Duke of Orleans, was still living, he sent for her to come to the Tuileries, and asked what he could do for her. “But, General,” protested Madame de Montesson, “I have no claim upon you.”

“You do not know, then,” replied the First Consul, “that I received my first crown from you. You went to Brienne with the Duke of Orleans to distribute the prizes, and in placing a laurel wreath on my head, you said: ‘May it bring you happiness.’ They say I am a fatalist, Madame, so it is quite plain that I could not forget what you no longer remember;” and the First Consul caused the sixty thousand francs of yearly income left Madame de Montesson by the Duke of Orleans, but confiscated in the Revolution, to be returned. Later, at her request, he raised one of her relatives to the rank of senator. In 1805, when emperor, Napoleon gave a life pension of six thousand francs to the son of his former protector, the Count de Marbœuf, and with it went his assurance of interest and good will in all the circumstances of the young man’s life. Generous, forbearing, even tender remembrance of all who had been associated with him in his early years, was one of Napoleon’s marked characteristics.

His new position at Valence was not brilliant. He had an annual income of two hundred and twenty-four dollars, and there was much hard work. It was independence, however, and life opened gayly to the young officer. He made many acquaintances, and for the first time saw something of society and women. Madame Colombier, whose salon was the leading one of the town, received him, introduced him to powerful friends, and, indeed, prophesied a great future for him.

The sixteen-year-old officer, in spite of his shabby clothes and big boots, became a favorite. He talked brilliantly and freely, began to find that he could please, and, for the first time, made love a little—to Mademoiselle Colombier—a frolicking boy-and-girl love, the object of whose stolen rendezvous was to eat cherries together. Mademoiselle Mion-Desplaces, a pretty Corsican girl in Valence, also received some attention from him. Encouraged by his good beginning, and ambitious for future success, he even began to take dancing lessons.

BONAPARTE AT VALENCE.

From a painting by François Flameng.

Had there been no one but himself to think of, everything would have gone easily, but the care of his family was upon him. His father had died a few months before, February, 1785, and left his affairs in a sad tangle. Joseph, now nearly eighteen years of age, who had gone to Autun in 1779 with Napoleon, had remained there until 1785. The intention was to make him a priest; suddenly he declared that he would not be anything but a soldier. It was to undo all that had been done for him; but his father made an effort to get him into a military school. Before the arrangements were complete Charles Bonaparte died, and Joseph was obliged to return to Corsica, where he was powerless to do anything for his mother and for the four young children at home: Louis, aged nine; Pauline, seven; Caroline, five; Jerome, three.

Lucien, now nearly eleven years old, was at Brienne, refusing to become a soldier, as his family desired, and giving his time to literature; but he was not a free pupil, and the six hundred francs a year needful for him was a heavy tax. Eliza alone was provided for. She had entered St. Cyr in 1784 as one of the two hundred and fifty pupils supported there by his Majesty, and to be a demoiselle de St. Cyr was to be fed, taught, and clothed from seven to twenty, and, on leaving, to receive a dowry of three thousand francs, a trousseau, and one hundred and fifty francs for travelling expenses home.

Napoleon regarded his family’s situation more seriously than did his brothers. Indeed, when at Brienne he had shown an interest, a sense of responsibility, and a good judgment about the future of his brothers and sisters, quite amazing in so young a boy. When he was fifteen years old, he wrote a letter to his uncle, which, for its keen analysis, would do credit to the father of a family. The subject was his brother Joseph’s desire to abandon the Church and go into the king’s service. Napoleon is summing up the pros and cons:

“First. As father says, he has not the courage to face the perils of an action; his health is feeble, and will not allow him to support the fatigues of a campaign; and my brother looks on the military profession only from a garrison point of view. He would make a good garrison officer. He is well made, light-minded, knows how to pay compliments, and with these talents he will always get on well in society.

“Second. He has received an ecclesiastical education, and it is very late to undo that. Monseignor the Bishop of Autun would have given him a fat living, and he would have been sure to become a bishop. What an advantage for the family! Monseignor of Autun has done all he could to encourage him to persevere, promising that he should never repent. Should he persist, in wishing to be a soldier, I must praise him, provided he has a decided taste for his profession, the finest of all, and the great motive power of human affairs.... He wishes to be a military man. That is all very well; but in what corps? Is it the marine? First: He knows nothing of mathematics; it would take him two years to learn. Second: His health is incompatible with the sea. Is it the engineers? He would require four or five years to learn what is necessary, and at the end of that time he would be only a cadet. Besides, working all day long would not suit him. The same reasons which apply to the engineers apply to the artillery, with this exception: that he would have to work eighteen months to become a cadet, and eighteen months more to become an officer.... No doubt he wishes to join the infantry.... And what is the slender infantry officer? Three-fourths of the time a scapegrace.... A last effort will be made to persuade him to enter the Church, in default of which, father will take him to Corsica, where he will be under his eye.”

It was not strange that Charles Bonaparte considered the advice of a son who could write so clear-headed a letter as the one just quoted, or that the boy’s uncle Lucien said, before dying: “Remember, that if Joseph is the older, Napoleon is the real head of the house.”

Now that young Bonaparte was in an independent position, he felt still more keenly his responsibility, and it was for this reason, as well as because of ill health, that he left his regiment in February, 1787, on a leave which he extended to nearly fifteen months, and which he spent in energetic efforts to better his family’s situation, working to reëstablish salt works and a mulberry plantation in which they were concerned, to secure the nomination of Lucien to the college at Aix, and to place Louis at a French military school.

When he went back to his regiment, now stationed at Auxonne, he denied himself to send money home, and spent his leisure in desperate work, sleeping but six hours, eating but one meal a day, dressing once in the week. Like all the young men of the country who had been animated by the philosophers and encyclopedists, he had attempted literature, and at this moment was finishing a history of Corsica, a portion of which he had written at Valence and submitted to the Abbé Raynal, who had encouraged him to go on. The manuscript was completed and ready for publication in 1788, and the author made heroic efforts to find some one who would accept a dedication, as well as some one who would publish it. Before he had succeeded, events had crowded the work out of sight, and other ambitions occupied his forces. Napoleon had many literary projects on hand at this time. He had been a prodigious reader, and was never so happy as when he could save a few cents with which to buy second-hand books. From everything he read he made long extracts, and kept a book of “thoughts.” Most curious are some of these fragments, reflections on the beginning of society, on love, on nature. They show that he was passionately absorbed in forming ideas on the great questions of life and its relations.

Besides his history of Corsica, he had already written several fragments, among them an historical drama called the “Count of Essex,” and a story, the “Masque Prophète.” He undertook, too, to write a sentimental journey in the style of Sterne, describing a trip from Valence to Mont Cenis. Later he competed for a prize offered by the Academy of Lyons on the subject: “To determine what truths and feelings should be inculcated in men for their happiness.” He failed in the contest; indeed, the essay was severely criticised for its incoherency and poor style.

The Revolution of 1789 turned Napoleon’s mind to an ambition greater than that of writing the history of Corsica—he would free Corsica. The National Assembly had lifted the island from its inferior relation and made it a department of France, but sentiment was much divided, and the ferment was similar to that which agitated the mainland. Napoleon, deeply interested in the progress of the new liberal ideas, and seeing, too, the opportunity for a soldier and an agitator among his countrymen, hastened home, where he spent some twenty-five months out of the next two and a half years. That the young officer spent five-sixths of his time in Corsica, instead of in service, and that he in more than one instance pleaded reasons for leaves of absence which one would have to be exceedingly unsophisticated not to see were trumped up for the occasion, cannot be attributed merely to duplicity of character and contempt for authority. He was doing only what he had learned to do at the military schools of Brienne and Paris, and what he saw practised about him in the army. Indeed, the whole French army at that period made a business of shirking duty. Every minister of war in the period complains of the incessant desertions among the common soldiers. Among the officers it was no better. True, they did not desert; they held their places and—did nothing. “Those who were rich and well born had no need to work,” says the Marshal Duc de Broglie. “They were promoted by favoritism. Those who were poor and from the provinces had no need to work either. It did them no good if they did, for, not having patronage, they could not advance.” The Comte de Saint-Germain said in regard to the officers: “There is not one who is in active service; they one and all amuse themselves and look out for their own affairs.”

Napoleon, tormented by the desire to help his family, goaded by his ambition and by an imperative inborn need of action and achievement, still divided in his allegiance between France and Corsica, could not have been expected, in his environment, to take nothing more than the leaves allowed by law.

Revolutionary agitation did not absorb all the time he was in Corsica. Never did he work harder for his family. The portion of this two and a half years which he spent in France, he was accompanied by Louis, whose tutor he had become, and he suffered every deprivation to help him. Napoleon’s income at that time was sixty-five cents a day. This meant that he must live in wretched rooms, prepare himself the broth on which he and his brother dined, never go to a café, brush his own clothes, give Louis lessons. He did it bravely. “I breakfasted off dry bread, but I bolted my door on my poverty,” he said once to a young officer complaining of the economies he must make on two hundred dollars a month.

BONAPARTE AT THE TUILERIES, AUGUST 10, 1792.

After a lithograph by Charlet. Lieutenant Bonaparte on the terrace of the Tuileries, watching the crowd of rioters who were hastening to the massacre of the Swiss Guards.

Economy and privation were always more supportable to him than borrowing. He detested irregularities in financial matters. “Your finances are deplorably conducted, apparently on metaphysical principles. Believe me, money is a very physical thing,” he once said to Joseph, when the latter, as King of Naples, could not make both ends meet. He put Jerome to sea largely to stop his reckless expenditures. (At fifteen that young man paid three thousand two hundred dollars for a shaving case “containing everything except the beard to enable its owner to use it.”) Some of the most furious scenes which occurred between Napoleon and Josephine were because she was continually in debt. After the divorce he frequently cautioned her to be watchful of her money. “Think what a bad opinion I should have of you if I knew you were in debt with an income of six hundred thousand dollars a year,” he wrote her in 1813.

The methodical habits of Marie Louise were a constant satisfaction to Napoleon. “She settles all her accounts once a week, deprives herself of new gowns if necessary, and imposes privations upon herself in order to keep out of debt,” he said proudly. A bill of sixty-two francs and thirty-two centimes was once sent to him for window blinds placed in the salon of the Princess Borghese. “As I did not order this expenditure, which ought not to be charged to my budget, the princess will pay it,” he wrote on the margin.

It was not parsimony. It was the man’s sense of order. No one was more generous in gifts, pensions, salaries; but it irritated him to see money wasted or managed carelessly.

Through his long absence in Corsica, and the complaints which the conservatives of the island had made to the French government of the way he had handled his battalion of National Guards in a riot at Ajaccio, Napoleon lost his place in the French army. He came to Paris in the spring of 1792, hoping to regain it. But in the confused condition of public affairs little attention was given to such cases, and he was obliged to wait.

Almost penniless, he dined on six-cent dishes in cheap restaurants, pawned his watch, and with Bourrienne devised schemes for making a fortune. One was to rent some new houses going up in the city and to sub-let them. While he waited he saw the famous days of the “Second Revolution”—the 20th of June, when the mob surrounded the Tuileries, overran the palace, put the bonnet rouge on Louis XVI.’s head, did everything but strike, as the agitators had intended. Napoleon and Bourrienne, loitering on the outskirts, saw the outrages, and he said, in disgust:

“Che coglione, why did they allow these brutes to come in? They ought to have shot down five or six hundred of them with cannon, and the rest would soon have run.”

He saw the 10th of August, when the king was deposed. He was still in Paris when the horrible September massacres began—those massacres in which, to “save the country,” the fanatical and terrified populace resolved to put “rivers of blood” between Paris and the émigrés. All these excesses filled him with disgust. He began to understand that the Revolution he admired so much needed a head.

In August Napoleon was restored to the army. The following June found him with his regiment in the south of France. In the interval spent in Corsica, he had abandoned Paoli and the cause of Corsican independence. His old hero had been dragged, in spite of himself, into a movement for separating the island from France. Napoleon had taken the position that the French government, whatever its excesses, was the only advocate in Europe of liberty and equality, and that Corsica would better remain with France rather than seek English aid, as it must if it revolted. But he and his party were defeated, and he with his family was obliged to flee.

The Corsican period of his life was over; the French had opened. He began it as a thorough republican. The evolution of his enthusiasm for the Revolution had been natural enough. He had been a devoted believer in Rousseau’s principles. The year 1789 had struck down the abuses which galled him in French society and government. After the flight of the king in 1791 he had taken the oath:

“I swear to employ the arms placed in my hands for the defence of the country, and to maintain against all her enemies, both from within and from without, the Constitution as declared by the National Assembly; to die rather than to suffer the invasion of the French territory by foreign troops, and to obey orders given in accordance with the decree of the National Assembly.”

“The nation is now the paramount object,” he wrote; “my natural inclinations are now in harmony with my duties.”

The efforts of the court and the émigrés to overthrow the new government had increased his devotion to France. “My southern blood leaps in my veins with the rapidity of the Rhone,” he said, when the question of the preservation of the Constitution was brought up. The months spent at Paris in 1792 had only intensified his radical notions. Now that he had abandoned his country, rather than assist it to fight the Revolution, he was better prepared than ever to become a Frenchman. It seemed the only way to repair his and his family’s fortune.

The condition of the Bonapartes on arriving in France after their expulsion from Corsica was abject. Their property “pillaged, sacked, and burned,” they had escaped penniless—were, in fact, refugees dependent upon French bounty. They wandered from place to place, but at last found a good friend in Monsieur Clary of Marseilles, a soapboiler, with two pretty daughters, Julie and Désirée, and Joseph and Napoleon became inmates of his house.

It was not as a soldier but as a writer that Napoleon first distinguished himself in this new period of his life. An insurrection against the government had arisen in Marseilles. In an imaginary conversation called le souper de Beaucaire, Napoleon discussed the situation so clearly and justly that Salicetti, Gasparin, and Robespierre the younger, the deputies who were looking after the South, ordered the paper published at public expense, and distributed it as a campaign document. More, they promised to favor the author when they had an opportunity.

PORTRAIT OF BONAPARTE, DONE IN CRAYON BY ONE OF HIS SCHOOLFELLOWS.

This sketch, which used to figure in the Musée des Souverains, became afterwards the property of Monsieur de Beaudicourt, who lately presented it to the Louvre. It possesses an exceptional interest. Executed at Brienne by one of the schoolfellows of the future Cæsar, it may be considered as the first portrait of Bonaparte taken from life. Under it are these words written in pencil:
“Mio caro amico Buonaparte. Pontormini del Tournone. 1785.”

It soon came. Toulon had opened its doors to the English and joined Marseilles in a counter-revolution. Napoleon was in the force sent against the town, and he was soon promoted to the command of the Second Regiment of artillery. His energy and skill won him favorable attention. He saw at once that the important point was not besieging the town, as the general in command was doing and the Convention had ordered, but in forcing the allied fleet from the harbor, when the town must fall of itself. But the commander-in-chief was slow, and it was not until the command was changed and an officer of experience and wisdom put in charge that Napoleon’s plans were listened to. The new general saw at once their value, and hastened to carry them out. The result was the withdrawal of the allies in December, 1793, and the fall of Toulon. Bonaparte was mentioned by the general-in-chief as “one of those who have most distinguished themselves in aiding me,” and in February, 1794, was made general of brigade.

It is interesting to note that it was at Toulon that Napoleon first came in contact with the English. Here he made the acquaintance of Junot, Marmont, and Duroc. Barras, too, had his attention drawn to him at the same time.

The circumstances which brought Junot and Napoleon together at Toulon were especially heroic. Some one was needed to carry an order to an exposed point. Napoleon asked for an under officer, audacious and intelligent. Junot, then a sergeant, was sent. “Take off your uniform and carry this order there,” said Napoleon, indicating the point.

Junot blushed and his eyes flashed. “I am not a spy,” he answered; “find some one beside me to execute such an order.”

“You refuse to obey?” said Napoleon.

“I am ready to obey,” answered Junot, “but I will go in my uniform or not go at all. It is honor enough then for these——Englishmen.”

The officer smiled and let him go, but he took pains to find out his name.

A few days later Napoleon called for some one in the ranks who wrote a good hand to come to him. Junot offered himself, and sat down close to the battery to write the letter. He had scarcely finished when a bomb thrown by the English burst near by and covered him and his letter with earth.

“Good,” said Junot, laughing, “I shall not need any sand to dry the ink.”

Bonaparte looked at the young man, who had not even trembled at the danger. From that time the young sergeant remained with the commander of artillery.

CHAPTER III
NAPOLEON AND ROBESPIERRE—OUT OF WORK—GENERAL-IN-CHIEF OF THE ARMY OF THE INTERIOR

The favors granted Napoleon for his services at Toulon were extended to his family. Madame Bonaparte was helped by the municipality of Marseilles. Joseph was made commissioner of war. Lucien was joined to the Army of Italy, and in the town where he was stationed became famous as a popular orator—“little Robespierre,” they called him. He began, too, here to make love to his landlord’s daughter, Christine Boyer, afterwards his wife.

The outlook for the refugees seemed very good, and it was made still brighter by the very particular friendship of the younger Robespierre for Napoleon. This friendship was soon increased by the part Napoleon played in a campaign of a month with the Army of Italy, when, largely by his genius, the seaboard from Nice to Genoa was put into French power. If this victory was much for the army and for Robespierre, it was more for Napoleon. He looked from the Tende, and saw for the first time that in Italy there was “a land for a conqueror.” Robespierre wrote to his brother, the real head of the government at the moment, that Napoleon possessed “transcendent merit.” He engaged him to draw up a plan for a campaign against Piedmont, and sent him on a secret mission to Genoa. The relations between the two young men were, in fact, very close, and, considering the position of Robespierre the elder, the outlook for Bonaparte was good.

That Bonaparte admired the powers of the elder Robespierre, is unquestionable. He was sure that if he had “remained in power, he would have reëstablished order and law; the result would have been attained without any shocks, because it would have come through the quiet exercise of power.” Nevertheless, it is certain that the young general was unwilling to come into close contact with the Terrorist leader, as his refusal of an offer to go to Paris to take the command of the garrison of the city shows. No doubt his refusal was partly due to his ambition—he thought the opening better where he was—and partly due, too, to his dislike of the excesses which the government was practising. That he never favored the policy of the Terrorists, all those who knew him testify, and there are many stories of his efforts at this time to save émigrés and suspects from the violence of the rabid patriots; even to save the English imprisoned at Toulon. He always remembered Robespierre the younger with kindness, and when he was in power gave Charlotte Robespierre a pension.

Things had begun to go well for Bonaparte. His poverty passed. If his plan for an Italian campaign succeeded, he might even aspire to the command of the army. His brothers received good positions. Joseph was betrothed to Julie Clary, and life went gayly at Nice and Marseilles, where Napoleon had about him many of his friends—Robespierre and his sister; his own two pretty sisters; Marmont, and Junot, who was deeply in love with Pauline. Suddenly all this hope and happiness were shattered. On the 9th Thermidor Robespierre fell, and all who had favored him were suspected, Napoleon among the rest. His secret mission to Genoa gave a pretext for his arrest, and for thirteen days, in August, 1794, he was a prisoner, but through his friends was liberated. Soon after his release, came an appointment to join an expedition against Corsica. He set out, but the undertaking was a failure, and the spring found him again without a place.

In April, 1795, Napoleon received orders to join the Army of the West. When he reached Paris he found that it was the infantry to which he was assigned. Such a change was considered a disgrace in the army. He refused to go. “A great many officers could command a brigade better than I could,” he wrote a friend, “but few could command the artillery so well. I retire, satisfied that the injustice done to the service will be sufficiently felt by those who know how to appreciate matters.” But though he might call himself “satisfied,” his retirement was a most serious affair for him. It was the collapse of what seemed to be a career, the shutting of the gate he had worked so fiercely to open.

He must begin again, and he did not see how. A sort of despair settled over him. “He declaimed against fate,” says the Duchess d’Abrantès. “I was idle and discontented,” he says of himself. He went to the theatre and sat sullen and inattentive through the gayest of plays. “He had moments of fierce hilarity,” says Bourrienne.

A pathetic distaste of effort came over him at times; he wanted to settle. “If I could have that house,” he said one day to Bourrienne, pointing to an empty house near by, “with my friends and a cabriolet, I should be the happiest of men.” He clung to his friends with a sort of desperation, and his letters to Joseph are touching in the extreme.

NAPOLEON IN PRISON.

After a lithograph by Motte. Bonaparte, master of Toulon, had already attained fame when the events of Thermidor imposed a sudden check on his career. His relations with the younger Robespierre laid him open to suspicion; he was suspended from his functions and put under arrest by the deputies of the Convention.

Love as well as failure caused his melancholy. All about him, indeed, turned thoughts to marriage. Joseph was now married, and his happiness made him envious. “What a lucky rascal Joseph is!” he said. Junot, madly in love with Pauline, was with him. The two young men wandered through the alleys of the Jardin des Plantes and discussed Junot’s passion. In listening to his friend, Napoleon thought of himself. He had been attracted by Désirée Clary, Joseph’s sister-in-law. Why not try to win her? And he began to demand news of her from Joseph. Désirée had asked for his portrait, and he wrote: “I shall have it taken for her; you must give it to her, if she still wants it; if not, keep it yourself.” He was melancholy when he did not have news of her, accused Joseph of purposely omitting her name from his letters, and Désirée herself of forgetting him. At last he consulted Joseph: “If I remain here, it is just possible that I might feel inclined to commit the folly of marrying. I should be glad of a line from you on the subject. You might perhaps speak to Eugénie’s [Désirée’s] brother, and let me know what he says, and then it will be settled.” He waited the answer to his overtures “with impatience”; urged his brother to arrange things so that nothing “may prevent that which I long for.” But Désirée was obdurate. Later she married Bernadotte and became Queen of Sweden.

Yet in these varying moods he was never idle. As three years before, he and Bourrienne indulged in financial speculations; he tried to persuade Joseph to invest his wife’s dot in the property of the émigrés. He prepared memorials on the political disorders of the times and on military questions, and he pushed his brothers as if he had no personal ambition. He did not neglect to make friends either. The most important of those whom he cultivated was Paul Barras, revolutionist, conventionalist, member of the Directory, and one of the most influential men in Paris at that moment. He had known Napoleon at Toulon, and showed himself disposed to be friendly. “I attached myself to Barras,” said Napoleon later, “because I knew no one else. Robespierre was dead; Barras was playing a rôle: I had to attach myself to somebody and something.” One of his plans for himself was to go to Turkey. For two or three years, in fact, Napoleon had thought of the Orient as a possible field for his genius, and his mother had often worried lest he should go. Just now it happened that the Sultan of Turkey asked the French for aid in reorganizing his artillery and perfecting the defences of his forts, and Napoleon asked to be allowed to undertake the work. While pushing all his plans with extraordinary enthusiasm, even writing Joseph almost daily letters about what he would do for him when he was settled in the Orient, he was called to do a piece of work which was to be of importance in his future.

The war committee needed plans for an Italian campaign; the head of the committee was in great perplexity. Nobody knew anything about the condition of things in the South. By chance, one day, one of Napoleon’s acquaintances heard of the difficulties and recommended the young general. The memorial he prepared was so excellent that he was invited into the topographical bureau of the Committee of Public Safety. His knowledge, sense, energy, fire, were so remarkable that he made strong friends and became an important personage.

Such was the impression he made, that when in October, 1795, the government was threatened by the revolting sections, Barras, the nominal head of the defence, asked Napoleon to command the forces which protected the Tuileries, where the Convention had gone into permanent session. He hesitated for a moment. He had much sympathy for the sections. His sagacity conquered. The Convention stood for the republic; an overthrow now meant another proscription, more of the Terror, perhaps a royalist succession, an English invasion.

“I accept,” he said to Barras; “but I warn you that once my sword is out of the scabbard I shall not replace it till I have established order.”

It was on the night of 12th Vendémiaire that Napoleon was appointed. With incredible rapidity he massed the men and cannon he could secure at the openings into the palace and at the points of approach. He armed even the members of the Convention as a reserve. When the sections marched their men into the streets and upon the bridges leading to the Tuileries, they were met by a fire which scattered them at once. That night Paris was quiet. The next day Napoleon was made general of division. On October 26th he was appointed general-in-chief of the Army of the Interior.

At last the opportunity he had sought so long and so eagerly had come. It was a proud position for a young man of twenty-six, and one may well stop and ask how he had obtained it. The answer is not difficult for one who, dismissing the prejudices and superstitions which have long enveloped his name, studies his story as he would that of an unknown individual. He had won his place as any poor and ambitious boy in any country and in any age must win his—by hard work, by grasping at every opportunity, by constant self-denial, by courage in every failure, by springing to his feet after every fall.

He succeeded because he knew every detail of his business (“There is nothing I cannot do for myself. If there is no one to make powder for the cannon I can do it”); because neither ridicule nor coldness nor even the black discouragement which made him write once to Joseph, “If this state of things continues I shall end by not turning out of my path when a carriage passes,” could stop him; because he had profound faith in himself. “Do these people imagine that I want their help to rise? They will be too glad some day to accept mine. My sword is at my side, and I will go far with it.” That he had misrepresented conditions more than once to secure favor, is true; but in doing this he had done simply what he saw done all about him, what he had learned from his father, what the oblique morality of the day justified. That he had shifted opinions and allegiance, is equally true; but he who in the French Revolution did not shift opinion was he who regarded “not what is, but what might be.” Certainly in no respect had he been worse than his environment, and in many respects he had been far above it. He had struggled for place, not that he might have ease, but that he might have an opportunity for action; not that he might amuse himself, but that he might achieve glory. Nor did he seek honors merely for himself; it was that he might share them with others.

PEN PORTRAIT OF BONAPARTE IN PROFILE.

By Gros. This drawing, which I discovered among the portfolios of the Louvre, is one of the most precious documents of Napoleonic portraiture. It was the gift of Monsieur Delestre, the pupil and biographer of Gros. In this clear profile we see already all that characteristic expression sought for by Gros above everything, and superbly rendered by him soon after in the portrait of Bonaparte at Arcola. I imagine that this pen sketch was preparatory to a finished portrait.—A. D.

The first use Bonaparte made of his power after he was appointed general-in-chief of the Army of the Interior, was for his family and friends. Fifty or sixty thousand francs, assignats, and dresses go to his mother and sisters; Joseph is to have a consulship; “a roof, a table, and carriage” are at his disposal in Paris; Louis is made a lieutenant and his aide-de-camp; Lucien, commissioner of war; Junot and Marmont are put on his staff. He forgets nobody. The very day after the 13th Vendémiaire, when his cares and excitements were numerous and intense, he was at the Permons, where Monsieur Permon had just died. “He was like a son, a brother.” This relation he soon tried to change, seeking to marry the beautiful widow Permon. When she laughed merrily at the idea, for she was many years his senior, he replied that the age of his wife was a matter of indifference to him so long as she did not look over thirty.

The change in Bonaparte himself was great. Up to this time he had gone about Paris “in an awkward and ungainly manner, with a shabby round hat thrust down over his eyes, and with curls (known at that time as oreilles des chiens) badly powdered and badly combed, and falling over the collar of the iron-gray coat which has since become so celebrated; his hands, long, thin, and black, without gloves, because, he said, they were an unnecessary expense; wearing ill-made and ill-cleaned boots.” The majority of people saw in him only what Monsieur de Pontécoulant, who took him into the War Office, had seen at their first interview; “A young man with a wan and livid complexion, bowed shoulders, and a weak and sickly appearance.”

But now, installed in an elegant hôtel, driving his own carriage, careful of his person, received in every salon where he cared to go, the young general-in-chief is a changed man. Success has had much to do with this; love has perhaps had more.

CHAPTER IV
NAPOLEON’S COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE—HIS DEVOTION TO JOSEPHINE

In the five months spent in Paris before the 13th Vendémiaire, Bonaparte saw something of society. One interesting company which he often joined, was that gathered about Madame Permon at a hotel in the Rue des Filles Saint-Thomas. This Madame Permon was the same with whom he had taken refuge frequently in the days when he was in the military school of Paris, and whom he had visited later, in 1792, when lingering in town with hope of recovering his place in the army. On this latter occasion he had even exposed himself to aid her and her husband to escape the fury of the Terrorists and to fly from the city. Madame Permon had returned to Paris in the spring of 1795 for a few weeks, and numbers of her old friends had gathered about her as before the Terror, among them, Bonaparte.

Another house—and one of very different character—at which he was received, was that of Barras. The 9th Thermidor, as the fall of Robespierre is called, released Paris from a strain of terror so great that, in reaction, she plunged for a time into violent excess. In this period of decadence Barras was sovereign. Epicurean by nature, possessing the tastes, culture, and vices of the old régime, he was better fitted than any man in the government to create and direct a dissolute and luxurious society. Into this set Napoleon was introduced, and more than once he expressed his astonishment to Joseph at the turn things had taken in Paris.

“The pleasure-seekers have reappeared, and forget, or, rather, remember only as a dream, that they ever ceased to shine. Libraries are open, and lectures on history, chemistry, astronomy, etc., succeed each other. Everything is done to amuse and make life agreeable. One has no time to think; and how can one be gloomy in this busy whirlwind? Women are everywhere—at the theatres, on the promenades, in the libraries. In the study of the savant you meet some that are charming. Here alone, of all places in the world, they deserve to hold the helm. The men are mad over them, think only of them, live only by and for them. A woman need not stay more than six months in Paris to learn what is due her and what is her empire.... This great nation has given itself up to pleasure, dancing, and theatres, and women have become the principal occupation. Ease, luxury, and bon ton have recovered their throne; the Terror is remembered only as a dream.”

Bonaparte took his part in the gayeties of his new friends, and was soon on easy terms with most of the women who frequented the salon of Barras, even with the most influential of them all, the famous Madame Tallien, the great beauty of the Directory.

Among the women whom he met in the salon of Madame Tallien and at Barras’s own house, was the Viscountess de Beauharnais (née Tascher de la Pagerie), widow of the Marquis de Beauharnais, guillotined on the 5th Thermidor, 1794. At the time of the marquis’s death his wife was a prisoner. She was released soon after and had become a intimate friend of Madame Tallien. All Madame Tallien’s circle had, indeed, become attached to Josephine de Beauharnais, and with Barras she was on terms of intimacy which led to a great amount of gossip. Without fortune, having two children to support, still trembling at the memory of her imprisonment, indolent and vain, it is not remarkable that Josephine yielded to the pleasures of the society which had saved her from prison and which now opened its arms to her, nor that she accepted the protection of the powerful Director Barras. She was certainly one of the regular habitués of his house, and every week kept court for him at her little home at Croissy, a few miles from Paris. The Baron Pasquier, afterwards one of the members of Napoleon’s Council of State, was at that moment living in poverty at Croissy—and was a neighbor of Josephine. In his “Memoirs” he has left a paragraph on the gay little outings taken there by Barras and his friends.

“Her house was next to ours,” says Pasquier. “She did not come out often at that time, rarely more than once a week, to receive Barras and the troop which always followed him. From early in the morning we saw the hampers coming. Then mounted gendarmes began to circulate on the route from Nanterre to Croissy, for the young Director came usually on horseback.

“Madame de Beauharnais’s house had, as is often the case among creoles, an appearance of luxury; but, the superfluous aside, the most necessary things were lacking. Birds, game, rare fruits, were piled up in the kitchen (this was the time of our greatest famine), and there was such a want of stewing-pans, glasses, and plates, that they had to come and borrow from our poor stock.”

There was much about Josephine de Beauharnais to win the favor of such a man as Barras. A creole past the freshness of youth—Josephine was thirty-two years old in 1795—she had a grace, a sweetness, a charm, that made one forget that she was not beautiful, even when she was beside such brilliant women as Madame Tallien and Madame Récamier. It was never possible to surprise her in an attitude that was not graceful. She was never ruffled or irritable. By nature she was perfection of ease and repose. Artist enough to dress in clinging stuffs made simply, which harmonized perfectly with her style, and skilful enough to use the arts of the toilet to conceal defects which care and age had brought, the Viscountess de Beauharnais was altogether one of the most fascinating women in Madame Tallien’s circle.

BONAPARTE, GENERAL OF THE ARMY IN ITALY.

Profile in plaster. By David d’Angers. Collection of Monsieur Paul le Roux. This energetic profile presents considerable artistic and iconographic interest. It is the first rough cast of the face of Bonaparte on the pediment of the Pantheon at Paris. Some months ago, Baron Larrey told me an interesting anecdote regarding this statue. The Baron, son of the chief surgeon to Napoleon I., and himself ex-military surgeon to Napoleon III., happening to be with the emperor at the camp of Châlons conceived the noble idea of trying to save the pediment of the Pantheon, then about to be destroyed to satisfy the Archbishop of Paris, who regarded with lively displeasure the image of Voltaire figuring on the façade of a building newly consecrated to religion. At the emperor’s table, Baron H. Larrey adroitly turned the conversation to David, and informed the sovereign, to his surprise, that the proudest effigy of Napoleon was to be seen on this pediment. Bonaparte, in fact, is represented as seizing for himself the crowns distributed by the Fatherland, while the other personages receive them. On hearing this, Napoleon III. was silent; but the next day the order was given to respect the pediment. The plaster cast I reproduce here is signed J. David, and dates from 1836. The Pantheon pediment was inaugurated in 1837.—A. D.

The goodness of Josephine’s heart undoubtedly won her as many friends as her grace. Everybody who came to know her at all well, declared her gentle, sympathetic, and helpful. Everybody except, perhaps, the Bonaparte family, who never cared for her, and whom she never tried to win. Lucien, indeed, draws a picture of her in his “Memoirs” which, if it could be regarded as unprejudiced, would take much of her charm from her:

“Josephine was not disagreeable, or perhaps I better say, everybody declared that she was very good; but it was especially when goodness cost her no sacrifice.... She had very little wit, and no beauty at all; but there was a certain creole suppleness about her form. She had lost all natural freshness of complexion, but that the arts of the toilet remedied by candle-light.... In the brilliant companies of the Directory, to which Barras did me the honor of admitting me, she scarcely attracted my attention, so old did she seem to me, and so inferior to the other beauties which ordinarily formed the court of the voluptuous Directors, and among whom the beautiful Tallien was the true Calypso.”

But if Lucien was not attracted to Josephine, Napoleon was from the first; and when, one day, Madame de Beauharnais said some flattering things to him about his military talent, he was fairly intoxicated by her praise, followed her everywhere, and fell wildly in love with her; but by her station, her elegance, her influence, she seemed inaccessible to him, and then, too, he was looking elsewhere for a wife. When he first knew her, he was thinking of Désirée Clary; and he had known Josephine some time when he sought the hand of the widow Permon.

Though he dared not tell her his love, all his circle knew of it, and Barras at last said to him, “You should marry Madame de Beauharnais. You have a position and talents which will secure advancement; but you are isolated, without fortune and without relations. You ought to marry; it gives weight,” and he asked permission to negotiate the affair.

Josephine was distressed. Barras was her protector. She felt the wisdom of his advice, but Napoleon frightened and wearied her by the violence of his love. In spite of her doubts she yielded at last, and on the 9th of March, 1796, they were married. Shortly before, Napoleon had been appointed commander-in-chief of the Army of Italy, and two days later he left his wife for his post.

From every station on his route he wrote her passionate letters:

“Every moment takes me farther from you, and every moment I feel less able to be away from you. You are ever in my thoughts; my fancy tires itself in trying to imagine what you are doing. If I picture you sad, my heart is wrung and my grief is increased. If you are happy and merry with your friends, I blame you for so soon forgetting the painful three days separation; in that case you are frivolous and destitute of deep feeling. As you see, I am hard to please; but, my dear, it is very different when I fear your health is bad, or that you have any reasons for being sad; then I regret the speed with which I am being separated from my love. I am sure that you have no longer any kind feeling toward me, and I can only be satisfied when I have heard that all goes well with you. When any one asks me if I have slept well, I feel that I cannot answer until a messenger brings me word that you have rested well. The illnesses and anger of men affect me only so far as I think they may affect you. May my good genius, who has always protected me amid great perils, guard and protect you! I will gladly dispense with him. Ah! don’t be happy, but be a little melancholy, and, above all, keep sorrow from your mind and illness from your body. You remember what Ossian says about that. Write to me, my pet, and a good long letter, and accept a thousand and one kisses from your best and most loving friend.”

Arrived in Italy he wrote:

“I have received all your letters, but none has made such an impression on me as the last. How can you think, my dear love, of writing to me in such a way? Don’t you believe my position is already cruel enough, without adding to my regrets and tormenting my soul? What a style! What feelings are those you describe! It’s like fire; it burns my poor heart. My only Josephine, away from you there is no happiness; away from you, the world is a desert in which I stand alone, with no chance of tasting the delicious joy of pouring out my heart. You have robbed me of more than my soul; you are the sole thought of my life. If I am worn out by all the torments of events, and fear the issue, if men disgust me, if I am ready to curse life, I place my hand on my heart; your image is beating there. I look at it, and love is for me perfect happiness; and everything is smiling, except the time that I see myself absent from my love. By what art have you learned how to captivate all my faculties, to concentrate my whole being in yourself? To live for Josephine! That’s the story of my life. I do everything to get to you; I am dying to join you. Fool! Do I not see that I am only going farther from you? How many lands and countries separate us! How long before you will read these words which express but feebly the emotions of the heart over which you reign!...”

“Don’t be anxious; love me like your eyes—but that’s not enough—like yourself; more than yourself, than your thoughts, your mind, your life, your all. But forgive me, I’m raving. Nature is weak when one loves....”

“I have received a letter which you interrupt to go, you say, into the country; and afterwards you pretend to be jealous of me, who am so worn out by work and fatigue. Oh, my dear!... Of course, I am in the wrong. In the early spring the country is beautiful; and then the nineteen-year old lover was there, without a doubt. The idea of wasting another moment in writing to the man three hundred leagues away, who lives, moves, exists only in memory of you; who reads your letters as one devours one’s favorite dishes after hunting for six hours!”

JUNOT (1771–1813).

CHAPTER V
THE FIRST ITALIAN CAMPAIGN—NAPOLEON’S WAY OF MAKING WAR

But Napoleon had much to occupy him besides his separation from Josephine. Extraordinary difficulties surrounded his new post. Neither the generals nor the men knew anything of their new commander. “Who is this General Bonaparte? Where has he served? No one knows anything about him,” wrote Junot’s father when the latter at Toulon decided to follow his artillery commander.

In the Army of Italy they were asking the same questions, and the Directory could only answer as Junot had done: “As far as I can judge, he is one of those men of whom nature is avaricious, and that she permits upon the earth only from age to age.”

He was to replace a commander-in-chief who had sneered at his plans for an Italian campaign and who might be expected to put obstacles in his way. He was to take an army which was in the last stages of poverty and discouragement. Their garments were in rags. Even the officers were so nearly shoeless that when they reached Milan and one of them was invited to dine at the palace of a marquise, he was obliged to go in shoes without soles and tied on by cords carefully blacked. They had provisions for only a month, and half rations at that. The Piedmontese called them the “rag heroes.”

Worse than their poverty was their inactivity. “For three years they had fired off their guns in Italy only because war was going on, and not for any especial object—only to satisfy their consciences.” Discontent was such that counter-revolution gained ground daily. One company had even taken the name of “Dauphin,” and royalist songs were heard in camp.

Napoleon saw at a glance all these difficulties, and set himself to conquer them. With his generals he was reserved and severe. “It was necessary,” he explained afterward, “in order to command men so much older than myself.” His look and bearing quelled insubordination, restrained familiarity, even inspired fear. “From his arrival,” says Marmont, “his attitude was that of a man born for power. It was plain to the least clairvoyant eyes that he knew how to compel obedience, and scarcely was he in authority before the line of a celebrated poet might have been applied to him:

“‘Des egaux? dès longtemps Mahomet n’en a plus.’”

General Decrès, who had known Napoleon well at Paris, hearing that he was going to pass through Toulon, where he was stationed, offered to present his comrades. “I run,” he says, “full of eagerness and joy; the salon opens; I am about to spring forward, when the attitude, the look, the sound of his voice are sufficient to stop me. There was nothing rude about him, but it was enough. From that time I was never tempted to pass the line which had been drawn for me.”

Lavalette says of his first interview with him: “He looked weak, but his regard was so firm and so fixed that I felt myself turning pale when he spoke to me.” Augereau goes to see him at Albenga, full of contempt for this favorite of Barras who has never known an action, determined on insubordination. Bonaparte comes out, little, thin, round-shouldered, and gives Augereau, a giant among the generals, his orders. The big man backs out in a kind of terror. “He frightened me,” he tells Masséna. “His first glance crushed me.”

He quelled insubordination in the ranks by quick, severe punishment, but it was not long that he had insubordination. The army asked nothing but to act, and immediately they saw that they were to move. He had reached his post on March 22d; nineteen days later operations began.

The theatre of action was along that portion of the maritime Alps which runs parallel with the sea. Bonaparte held the coast and the mountains; and north, in the foot-hills, stretched from the Tende to Genoa, were the Austrians and their Sardinian allies. If the French were fully ten thousand inferior in number, their position was the stronger, for the enemy was scattered in a hilly country where it was difficult to unite their divisions.

As Bonaparte faced his enemy, it was with a youthful zest and anticipation which explains much of what follows. “The two armies are in motion,” he wrote Josephine, “each trying to outwit the other. The more skilful will succeed. I am much pleased with Beaulieu. He manœuvres very well, and is superior to his predecessor. I shall beat him, I hope, out of his boots.”

The first step in the campaign was a skilful stratagem. He spread rumors which made Beaulieu suspect that he intended marching on Genoa, and he threw out his lines in that direction. The Austrian took the feint as a genuine movement, and marched his left to the sea to cut off the French advance. But Bonaparte was not marching to Genoa, and, rapidly collecting his forces, he fell on the Austrian army at Montenotte on April 12th, and defeated it. The right and left of the allies were divided, and the centre broken.

By a series of clever feints, Bonaparte prevented the various divisions of the enemy from reënforcing each other, and forced them separately to battle. At Millesimo, on the 14th, he defeated one section; on the same day, at Dego, another; the next morning, near Dego, another. The Austrians were now driven back, but their Sardinian allies were still at Ceva. To them Bonaparte now turned, and, driving them from their camp, defeated them at Mondovi on the 22d.

It was phenomenal in Italy. In ten days the “rag heroes,” at whom they had been mocking for three years, had defeated two well-fed armies ten thousand stronger than themselves, and might at any moment march on Turin. The Sardinians sued for peace.

The victory was as bewildering to the French as it was terrifying to the enemy, and Napoleon used it to stir his army to new conquests.

“Soldiers!” he said, “in fifteen days you have gained six victories, taken twenty-one stands of colors, fifty-five pieces of cannon, and several fortresses, and conquered the richest part of Piedmont. You have made fifteen hundred prisoners, and killed or wounded ten thousand men.

“Hitherto, however, you have been fighting for barren rocks, made memorable by your valor, but useless to the nation. Your exploits now equal those of the conquering armies of Holland and the Rhine. You were utterly destitute, and have supplied all your wants. You have gained battles without cannons, passed rivers without bridges, performed forced marches without shoes, bivouacked without brandy, and often without bread. None but republican phalanxes—soldiers of liberty—could have borne what you have endured. For this you have the thanks of your country.

“The two armies which lately attacked you in full confidence, now fly before you in consternation.... But, soldiers, it must not be concealed that you have done nothing, since there remains aught to do. Neither Turin nor Milan is ours.... The greatest difficulties are no doubt surmounted; but you have still battles to fight, towns to take, rivers to cross....”

Not less clever in diplomacy than in battle, Bonaparte, on his own responsibility, concluded an armistice with the Sardinians, which left him only the Austrians to fight, and at once set out to follow Beaulieu, who had fled beyond the Po.

As adroitly as he had made Beaulieu believe, three weeks before, that he was going to march on Genoa, he now deceives him as to the point where he proposes to cross the Po, leading him to believe it is at Valenza. When certain that Beaulieu had his eye on that point, Bonaparte marched rapidly down the river, and crossed at Placentia. If an unforeseen delay had not occurred in the passage, he would have been on the Austrian rear. As it was, Beaulieu took alarm, and withdrew the body of his army, after a slight resistance to the French advance, across the Adda, leaving but twelve thousand men at Lodi.

Bonaparte was jubilant. “We have crossed the Po,” he wrote the directory. “The second campaign has commenced. Beaulieu is disconcerted; he miscalculates, and continually falls into the snares I set for him. Perhaps he wishes to give battle, for he has both audacity and energy, but not genius.... Another victory, and we shall be masters of Italy.”

Determined to leave no enemies behind him, Bonaparte now marched against the twelve thousand men at Lodi. The town, lying on the right bank of the Adda, was guarded by a small force of Austrians; but the mass of the enemy was on the left bank, at the end of a bridge some three hundred and fifty feet in length, and commanded by a score or more of cannon.

Rushing into the town on May 10th the French drove out the guarding force, and arrived at the bridge before the Austrians had time to destroy it. The French grenadiers pressed forward in a solid mass, but, when half way over, the cannon at the opposite end poured such a storm of shot at them that the column wavered and fell back. Several generals in the ranks, Bonaparte at their head, rushed to the front of the force. The presence of the officers was enough to inspire the soldiers, and they swept across the bridge with such impetuosity that the Austrian line on the opposite bank allowed its batteries to be taken, and in a few moments was in retreat. “Of all the actions in which the soldiers under my command have been engaged,” wrote Bonaparte to the Directory, “none has equalled the tremendous passage of the bridge at Lodi. If we have lost but few soldiers, it was merely owing to the promptitude of our attacks and the effect produced on the enemy by the formidable fire from our invincible army. Were I to name all the officers who distinguished themselves in this affair, I should be obliged to enumerate every carabinier of the advanced guard, and almost every officer belonging to the staff.”

The Austrians now withdrew beyond the Mincio, and on the 15th of May the French entered Milan. The populace greeted their conquerors as liberators, and for several days the army rejoiced in comforts which it had not known for years. While it was being fêted, Bonaparte was instituting the Lombard Republic, and trying to conciliate or outwit, as the case demanded, the nobles and clergy outraged at the introduction of French ideas. It was not until the end of May that Lombardy was in a situation to permit Bonaparte to follow the Austrians.

After Lodi, Beaulieu had led his army to the Mincio. As usual, his force was divided, the right being near Lake Garda, the left at Mantua, the centre about halfway between, at Valeggio. It was at this latter point that Bonaparte decided to attack them. Feigning to march on their right, he waited until his opponent had fallen into his trap, and then sprang on the weakened centre, broke it to pieces, and drove all but twelve thousand men, escaped to Mantua, into the Tyrol. In fifty days he had swept all but a remnant of the Austrians away from Italy. Two weeks later, having taken a strong position on the Adige, he began the siege of Mantua.

The French were victorious, but their position was precarious. Austria was preparing a new army. Between the victors and France lay a number of feeble Italian governments whose friendship could not be depended upon. The populace of these states favored the French, for they brought promises of liberal government, of equality and fraternity. The nobles and clergy hated them for the same reason. It was evident that a victory of the Austrians would set all these petty princes on Bonaparte’s heels. The Papal States to the south were plotting. Naples was an ally of Austria. Venice was neutral, but she could not be trusted. The English were off the coast, and might, at any moment, make an alliance which would place a formidable enemy on the French rear.

While waiting for the arrival of the new Austrian army, Bonaparte set himself to lessening these dangers. He concluded a peace with Naples. Two divisions of the army were sent south, one to Bologna, the other into Tuscany. The people received the French with such joy that Rome was glad to purchase peace. Leghorn was taken. The malcontents in Milan were silenced. By the time a fresh Austrian army of sixty thousand men, under a new general, Wurmser, was ready to fight, Italy had been effectually quieted.

The Austrians advanced against the French in three columns, one to the west of Lake Garda, under Quasdanovich, one on each side of the Adige, east of the lake, under Wurmser. Their plan was to attack the French outposts on each side of the lake simultaneously, and then envelop the army. The first movements were successful. The French on each side of the lake were driven back. Bonaparte’s army was inferior to the one coming against him, but the skill with which he handled his forces and used the blunders of the enemy more than compensated for lack of numbers. Raising the siege of Mantua, he concentrated his forces at the south of the lake in such a way as to prevent the reunion of the Austrians. Then, with unparalleled swiftness, he fell on the enemy piecemeal. Wherever he could engage a division he did so, providing his own force was superior to that of the Austrians at the moment of the battle. Thus, on July 31st, at Lonato, he defeated Quasdanovich, though not so decisively but that the Austrian collected his division and returned towards the same place, hoping to unite there with Wurmser, who had foolishly divided his divisions, sending one to Lonato and another to Castiglione, while he himself went off to Mantua to relieve the garrison there. Bonaparte engaged the forces at Lonato and at Castiglione on the same day (August 3d), defeating them both, and then turned his whole army against the body of Austrians under Wurmser, who, by his time, had returned from his relief expedition at Mantua. On August 5th, at Castiglione, Wurmser was beaten, driven over the Mincio and into the Tyrol. In six days the campaign has been finished. “The Austrian army has vanished like a dream,” Bonaparte wrote home.

It had vanished, true, but only for a day. Reënforcements were soon sent, and a new campaign started early in September. Leaving Davidovich in the Tyrol with twenty thousand men, Wurmser started down the Brenta with twenty-six thousand men, intending to fall on Bonaparte’s rear, cut him to pieces, and relieve Mantua. But Bonaparte had a plan of his own this time, and, without waiting to find out where Wurmser was going, he started up the Adige, intending to attack the Austrians in the Tyrol, and join the army of the Rhine, then on the upper Danube. As it happened, Wurmser’s plan was a happy one for Bonaparte. The French found less than half the Austrian army opposing them, and, after they had beaten it, discovered that they were actually on the rear of the other half. Of course Bonaparte did not lose the opportunity. He sped down the Brenta behind Wurmser, overtook him at Bassano on the 8th of September, and of course defeated him. The Austrians fled in terrible demoralization. Wurmser succeeded in reaching Mantua, where he united with the garrison. The sturdy old Austrian had the courage, in spite of his losses, to come out of Mantua and meet Bonaparte on the 15th, but he was defeated again, and obliged to take refuge in the fortress. If the Austrians had been beaten repeatedly, they had no idea of yielding, and, in fact, there was apparently every reason to continue the struggle. The French army was in a most desperate condition. Its number was reduced to barely forty thousand, and this number was poorly supplied, and many of them were ill. Though living in the richest of countries, the rapacity and dishonesty of the army contractors were such that food reached the men half spoiled and in insufficient quantities, while the clothing supplied was pure shoddy. Many officers were laid up by wounds or fatigue; those who remained at their posts were discouraged, and threatening to resign. The Directory had tampered with Bonaparte’s armistices and treaties until Naples and Rome were ready to spring upon the French; and Venice, if not openly hostile, was irritating the army in many ways.

Bonaparte, in face of these difficulties, was in genuine despair:

“Everything is being spoiled in Italy,” he wrote the Directory. “The prestige of our forces is being lost. A policy which will give you friends among the princes as well as among the people, is necessary. Diminish your enemies. The influence of Rome is beyond calculation. It was a great mistake to quarrel with that power. Had I been consulted I should have delayed negotiations as I did with Genoa and Venice. Whenever your general in Italy is not the centre of everything, you will run great risks. This language is not that of ambition; I have only too many honors, and my health is so impaired that I think I shall be forced to demand a successor. I can no longer get on horseback. My courage alone remains, and that is not sufficient in a position like this.”

“BONAPARTE A LA BATAILLE D’ARCOLE, LE 27 BRUMAIRE, AN V.”

It was in such a situation that Bonaparte saw the Austrian force outside of Mantua, increased to fifty thousand men, and a new commander-in-chief, Alvinzi, put at its head. The Austrians advanced in two divisions, one down the Adige, the other by the Brenta. The French division which met the enemy at Trent and Bassano were driven back. In spite of his best efforts, Bonaparte was obliged to retire with his main army to Verona. Things looked serious. Alvinzi was pressing close to Verona, and the army on the Adige was slowly driving back the French division sent to hold it in check. If Davidovich and Alvinzi united, Bonaparte was lost.

“Perhaps we are on the point of losing Italy,” wrote Bonaparte to the Directory. “In a few days we shall make a last effort.” On November 14th this last effort was made. Alvinzi was close upon Verona, holding a position shut in by rivers and mountains on every side, and from which there was but one exit, a narrow pass at his rear. The French were in Verona.

On the night of the 14th of November Bonaparte went quietly into camp. Early in the evening he gave orders to leave Verona, and took the road westward. It looked like a retreat. The French army believed it to be so, and began to say sorrowfully among themselves that Italy was lost. When far enough from Verona to escape the attention of the enemy, Bonaparte wheeled to the southeast. On the morning of the 15th he crossed the Adige, intending, if possible, to reach the defile by which alone Alvinzi could escape from his position. The country into which his army marched was a morass crossed by two causeways. The points which it was necessary to take to command the defile were the town of Arcola and a bridge over the rapid stream on which the town lay. The Austrians discovered the plan, and hastened out to dispute Arcola and the bridge. All day long the two armies fought desperately, Bonaparte and his generals putting themselves at the head of their columns and doing the work of common soldiers. But at night Arcola was not taken, and the French retired to the right bank of the Adige, only to return on the 16th to reëngage Alvinzi, who, fearful lest his retreat be cut off, had withdrawn his army from near Verona, and had taken a position at Arcola. For two days the French struggled with the Austrians, wrenching the victory from them before the close of the 17th, and sending them flying towards Bassano. Bonaparte and his army returned to Verona, but this time it was by the gate which the Austrians, three days before, were pointing out as the place where they should enter.

It was a month and a half before the Austrians could collect a fifth army to send against the French. Bonaparte, tormented on every side by threatened uprisings in Italy; opposed by the Directory, who wanted to make peace; and distressed by the condition of his army, worked incessantly to strengthen his relations, quiet his enemies, and restore his army. When the Austrians, some forty-five thousand strong, advanced in January, 1797, against him, he had a force of about thirty-five thousand men ready to meet them. Some ten thousand of his army were watching Wurmser and twenty thousand Austrians shut up at Mantua.

Alvinzi had planned his attack skilfully. Advancing with twenty-eight thousand men by the Adige, he sent seventeen thousand under Provera to approach Verona from the east. The two divisions were to approach secretly, and to strike simultaneously.

At first Bonaparte was uncertain of the position of the main body of the enemy. Sending out feelers in every direction, he became convinced that it must be that it approached Rivoli. Leaving a force at Verona to hold back Provera, he concentrated his army in a single night on the plateau of Rivoli, and on the morning of January 14th advanced to the attack. The struggle at Rivoli lasted two days. Nothing but Bonaparte’s masterly tactics won it, for the odds were greatly against him. His victory, however, was complete. Of the twenty-eight thousand Austrians brought to the field, less than half escaped.

While his battle was waging, Bonaparte was also directing the fight with Provera, who was intent upon reaching Mantua and attacking the French besiegers on the rear, while Wurmser left the city and engaged them in front. The attack had begun, but Bonaparte had foreseen the move, and sent a division to the relief of his men. This battle, known as La Favorita, destroyed Provera’s division of the Austrian army, and so discouraged Wurmser, whose army was terribly reduced by sickness and starvation, that he surrendered on February 2d.

The Austrians were driven utterly from Italy, but Bonaparte had no time to rest. The Papal States and the various aristocratic parties of southern Italy were threatening to rise against the French. The spirit of independence and revolt which the invaders were bringing into the country could not but weaken clerical and monarchical institutions. An active enemy to the south would have been a serious hindrance to Napoleon, and he marched into the Papal States. A fortnight was sufficient to silence the threats of his enemies, and on February 19, 1797, he signed with the Pope the treaty of Tolentino. The peace was no sooner made than he started again against the Austrians.

When Mantua fell, and Austria saw herself driven from Italy, she had called her ablest general, the Archduke Charles, from the Rhine, and given him an army of over one hundred thousand men to lead against Bonaparte. The French had been reënforced to some seventy thousand, and though twenty thousand were necessary to keep Italy quiet, Bonaparte had a fine army, and he led it confidently to meet the main body of the enemy, which had been sent south to protect Trieste. Early in March he crossed the Tagliamento, and in a series of contests, in which he was uniformly successful, he drove his opponent back, step by step, until Vienna itself was in sight, and in April an armistice was signed. In May the French took possession of Venice, which had refused a French alliance, and which was playing a perfidious part, in Bonaparte’s judgment, and a republic on the French model was established.

Italy and Austria, worn out and discouraged by this “war of principle,” as Napoleon called it, at last compromised, and on October 17th, one year, seven months, and seven days after he left Paris, Napoleon signed the treaty of Campo Formio. By this treaty France gained the frontier of the Rhine and the Low Countries to the mouth of the Scheldt. Austria was given Venice, and a republic called the Cisalpine was formed from Reggio, Modena, Lombardy, and a part of the States of the Pope.

The military genius that this twenty-seven-year-old commander had shown in the campaign in Italy bewildered his enemies and thrilled his friends.

“Things go on very badly,” said an Austrian veteran taken at Lodi. “No one seems to know what he is about. The French general is a young blockhead who knows nothing of the regular rules of war. Sometimes he is on our right, at others on our left; now in front, and presently in our rear. This mode of warfare is contrary to all system, and utterly insufferable.”

It is certain that if Napoleon’s opponents never knew what he was going to do, if his generals themselves were frequently uncertain, it being his practice to hold his peace about his plans, he himself had definite rules of warfare. The most important of these were:

“Attacks should not be scattered, but should be concentrated.”

“Always be superior to the enemy at the point of attack.”

“Time is everything.”

To these formulated rules he joined marvelous fertility in stratagem. The feint by which, at the beginning of the campaign, he had enticed Beaulieu to march on Genoa, and that by which, a few days later, he had induced him to place his army near Valenza, were masterpieces in their way.

His quick-wittedness in emergency frequently saved him from disaster. Thus, on August 4th, in the midst of the excitement of the contest, Bonaparte went to Lonato to see what troops could be drawn from there. On entering he was greatly surprised to receive an Austrian parlementaire, who called on the commandant of Lonato to surrender, because the French were surrounded. Bonaparte saw at once that the Austrians could be nothing but a division which had been cut off and was seeking escape; but he was embarrassed, for there were only twelve hundred men at Lonato. Sending for the man, he had his eyes unbandaged, and told him that if his commander had the presumption to capture the general-in-chief of the army of Italy he might advance; that the Austrian division ought to have known that he was at Lonato with his whole army; and he added that if they did not lay down their arms in eight minutes he would not spare a man. This audacity saved Bonaparte, and won him four thousand prisoners with guns and cavalry.

“ITALIE.”

From a lithograph by Raffet.

His fertility in stratagem, his rapidity of action, his audacity in attack, bewildered and demoralized the enemy, but it raised the enthusiasm of his imaginative Southern troops to the highest pitch.

He insisted in this campaign on one other rule: “Unity of command is necessary to assure success.” After his defeat of the Piedmontese, the Directory ordered him, May 7, 1796, to divide his command with Kellermann. Napoleon answered:

“I believe it most impolitic to divide the army of Italy in two parts. It is quite as much against the interests of the republic to place two different generals over it....

“A single general is not only necessary, but also it is essential that nothing trouble him in his march and operations. I have conducted this campaign without consulting any one. I should have done nothing of value if I had been obliged to reconcile my plans with those of another. I have gained advantage over superior forces and when stripped of everything myself, because persuaded that your confidence was in me. My action has been as prompt as my thought.

“If you impose hindrances of all sorts upon me, if I must refer every step to government commissioners, if they have the right to change my movements, of taking from me or of sending me troops, expect no more of any value. If you enfeeble your means by dividing your forces, if you break the unity of military thought in Italy, I tell you sorrowfully you will lose the happiest opportunity of imposing laws on Italy.

“In the condition of the affairs of the republic in Italy, it is indispensable that you have a general that has your entire confidence. If it is not I, I am sorry for it, but I shall redouble my zeal to merit your esteem in the post you confide to me. Each one has his own way of carrying on war. General Kellermann has more experience and will do it better than I, but both together will do it very badly.

“I can only render the services essential to the country when invested entirely and absolutely with your confidence.”

He remained in charge, and throughout the rest of the campaign continued to act more and more independently of the Directory, even dictating terms of peace to please himself.

It was in this Italian campaign that the almost superstitious adoration which Napoleon’s soldiers and most of his generals felt for him began. Brilliant generalship was not the only reason for this. It was due largely to his personal courage, which they had discovered at Lodi. A charge had been ordered across a wooden bridge swept by thirty pieces of cannon, and beyond was the Austrian army. The men hesitated. Napoleon sprang to their head and led them into the thickest of the fire. From that day he was known among them as the “Little Corporal.” He had won them by the quality which appeals most deeply to a soldier in the ranks—contempt of death. Such was their devotion to him that they gladly exposed their lives if they saw him in danger. There were several such cases in the battle of Arcola. The first day, when Bonaparte was exposing himself in an advance, his aide-de-camp, Colonel Muiron, saw that he was in imminent danger. Throwing himself before Bonaparte, the colonel covered him with his body, receiving a wound which was destined for the general. The brave fellow’s blood spurted into Bonaparte’s face. He literally gave his life to save his commander’s. The same day, in a final effort to take Arcola, Bonaparte seized a flag, rushed on the bridge, and planted it there. His column reached the middle of the bridge, but there it was broken by the enemy’s flanking fire. The grenadiers at the head, finding themselves deserted by the rear, were compelled to retreat; but, critical as their position was, they refused to abandon their general. They seized him by his arms, by his clothes, and dragged him with them through shot and smoke. When one fell out wounded, another pressed to his place. Precipitated into the morass, Bonaparte sank. The enemy were surrounding him when the grenadiers perceived his danger. A cry was raised, “Forward, soldiers, to save the General!” and immediately they fell upon the Austrians with such fury that they drove them off, dragged out their hero, and bore him to a safe place.

His addresses never failed to stir them to action and enthusiasm. They were oratorical, prophetic, and abounded in phrases which the soldiers never forgot. Such was his address at Milan:

“Soldiers! you have precipitated yourselves like a torrent from the summit of the Apennines; you have driven back and dispersed all that opposed your march. Piedmont, liberated from Austrian tyranny, has yielded to her natural sentiments of peace and amity towards France. Milan is yours, and the Republican flag floats throughout Lombardy, while the Dukes of Modena and Parma owe their political existence solely to your generosity. The army which so haughtily menaced you, finds no barrier to secure it from your courage. The Po, the Ticino, and the Adda have been unable to arrest your courage for a single day. Those boasted ramparts of Italy proved insufficient. You have surmounted them as rapidly as you cleared the Apennines. So much success has diffused joy through the bosom of your country. Yes, soldiers, you have done well; but is there nothing more for you to accomplish? Shall it be said of us that we knew how to conquer, but knew not how to profit by victory? Shall posterity reproach us with having found a Capua in Lombardy? But I see you rush to arms; unmanly repose wearies you, and the days lost to glory are lost to happiness.

“Let us set forward. We have still forced marches to perform, enemies to conquer, laurels to gather, and injuries to avenge. Let those tremble who have whetted the poniards of civil war in France; who have, like dastards, assassinated our ministers, and burned our ships in Toulon. The hour of vengeance is arrived, but let the people be tranquil. We are the friends of all nations, particularly the descendants of the Brutuses, the Scipios, and those illustrious persons we have chosen for our models. To restore the Capitol, replace with honor the statues of the heroes who rendered it renowned, and rouse the Roman people, become torpid by so many ages of slavery—shall, will, be the fruit of your victories. You will then return to your homes, and your fellow-citizens when pointing to you will say, ‘He was of the army of Italy.’”

Such was his address in March, before the final campaign against the Austrians:

BONAPARTE.

Engraved by Bartolozzi, R.A., an Italian engraver, resident of England, after the portrait of Appiani.

“You have been victorious in fourteen pitched battles and sixty-six combats; you have taken one hundred thousand prisoners, five hundred pieces of large cannon and two thousand pieces of smaller, four equipages for bridge pontoons. The country has nourished you, paid you during your campaign, and you have beside that sent thirty millions from the public treasury to Paris. You have enriched the Museum of Paris with three hundred chefs-d’oeuvre of ancient and modern Italy, which it has taken thirty ages to produce. You have conquered the most beautiful country of Europe. The French colors float for the first time upon the borders of the Adriatic. The kings of Sardinia and Naples, the Pope, the Duke of Parma have become allies. You have chased the English from Leghorn, Genoa, and Corsica. You have yet to march against the Emperor of Austria.”

His approval was their greatest joy. Let him speak a word of praise to a regiment, and they embroidered it on their banners. “I was at ease, the Thirty-second was there,” was on the flag of that regiment. Over the Fifty-seventh floated a name Napoleon had called them by, “The terrible Fifty-seventh.”

His displeasure was a greater spur than his approval. He said to a corps which had retreated in disorder: “Soldiers, you have displeased me. You have shown neither courage nor constancy, but have yielded positions where a handful of men might have defied an army. You are no longer French soldiers. Let it be written on their colors, ‘They no longer form part of the Army of Italy.’” A veteran pleaded that they be placed in the van, and during the rest of the campaign no regiment was more distinguished.

The effect of his genius was as great on his generals as on his troops. They were dazzled by his stratagems and manœuvres, inspired by his imagination. “There was so much of the future in him,” is Marmont’s expressive explanation. They could believe anything of him. A remarkable set of men they were to have as followers and friends—Augereau, Masséna, Berthier, Marmont, Junot.

The people and the government in Paris had begun to believe in him, as did the Army of Italy. He not only sent flags and reports of victory; he sent money and works of art. Impoverished as the Directory was, the sums which came from Italy were a reason for not interfering with the high hand the young general carried in his campaigns and treaties.

Never before had France received such letters from a general. Now he announces that he has sent “twenty first masters, from Correggio to Michael Angelo;” now, “a dozen millions of money;” now, two or three millions in jewels and diamonds to be sold in Paris. In return he asks only for men and officers “who have fire and a firm resolution not to make learned retreats.”

The entry into Paris of the first art acquisitions made a profound impression on the people:

“The procession of enormous cars, drawn by richly caparisoned horses, was divided into four sections. First came trunks filled with books, manuscripts, ... including the antiques of Josephus, on papyrus, with works in the handwriting of Galileo.... Then followed collections of mineral products.... For the occasion were added wagons laden with iron cages containing lions, tigers, panthers, over which waved enormous palm branches and all kinds of exotic shrubs. Afterwards rolled along chariots bearing pictures carefully packed, but with the names of the most important inscribed in large letters on the outside, as, The Transfiguration, by Raphael; The Christ, by Titian. The number was great, the value greater. When these trophies had passed, amid the applause of an excited crowd, a heavy rumbling announced the approach of massive carts bearing statues and marble groups: the Apollo Belvidere; the Nine Muses; the Laocoön.... The Venus de Medici was eventually added, decked with bouquets, crowns of flowers, flags taken from the enemy, and French, Italian, and Greek inscriptions. Detachments of cavalry and infantry, colors flying, drums beating, music playing, marched at intervals; the members of the newly established Institute fell into line; artists and savants; and the singers of the theatres made the air ring with national hymns. This procession marched through all Paris, and at the Champ de Mars defiled before the five members of the Directory, surrounded by their subordinate officers.”

The practice of sending home works of art, begun in the Italian campaign, Napoleon continued throughout his military career, and the art of France owes much to the education thus given the artists of the first part of this century. His agents ransacked Italy, Spain, Germany, and Flanders for chefs-d’oeuvre. When entering a country one of the first things he did was to collect information about its chief art objects, in order to demand them in case of victory, for it was by treaty that they were usually obtained. Among the works of art which Napoleon sent to Paris were twenty-five Raphaels, twenty-three Titians, fifty-three Rubenses, thirty-three Van Dykes, thirty-one Rembrandts.

In Italy rose Napoleon’s “star,” that mysterious guide which he followed from Lodi to Waterloo. Here was born that faith in him and his future, that belief that he “marched under the protection of the goddess of fortune and of war,” that confidence that he was endowed with a “good genius.”

He called Lodi the birthplace of his faith. “Vendémiaire and even Montenotte did not make me believe myself a superior man. It was only after Lodi that it came into my head that I could become a decisive actor on our political field. Then was born the first spark of high ambition.”

Trained in a religion full of mysticism, taught to believe in signs, guided by a “star,” there is a tinge of superstition throughout his active, practical, hardworking life. Marmont tells that one day while in Italy the glass over the portrait of his wife, which he always wore, was broken.

“He turned frightfully pale, and the impression upon him was most sorrowful. ‘Marmont,’ he said, ‘my wife is very ill or she is unfaithful.’” There are many similar anecdotes to show his dependence upon and confidence in omens.

In a campaign of such achievements as that in Italy there seems to be no time for love, and yet love was never more imperative, more absorbing, in Napoleon’s life than during this period.

“NAPOLEONE BUONAPARTE.”

“Engraved by Henry Richter from the celebrated bust by Ceracchi, lately brought from Paris and now in his possession. Published June 1, 1801, by H. Richter, No. 26 Newman Street, Oxford Street.” This bust was made in the Italian campaign by Ceracchi, a Corsican working in Rome. Ceracchi left Rome in 1799 to escape punishment for taking part in an insurrection in the city, and went to Paris, where he hoped to receive aid from the First Consul. He made the busts of several generals—Berthier, Masséna, and Bernadotte—but as orders did not multiply, and Napoleon did nothing for him, he became incensed against him, and took part in a plot to assassinate the First Consul at the opera, the 18th Brumaire, 1801. Arrested on his way to the loge in the opera, he was executed soon after.

“Oh, my adorable wife,” he wrote Josephine in April, “I do not know what fate awaits me, but if it keeps me longer from you, I shall not be able to endure it; my courage will not hold out to that point. There was a time when I was proud of my courage; and when I thought of the harm that men might do me, of the lot that my destiny might reserve for me, I looked at the most terrible misfortunes without a quiver, with no surprise. But now, the thought that my Josephine may be in trouble, that she may be ill, and, above all, the cruel, fatal thought that she may love me less, inflicts torture in my soul, stops the beating of my heart, makes me sad and dejected, robs me of even the courage of fury and despair. I often used to say, ‘Man can do no harm to one who is willing to die;’ but now, to die without being loved by you, to die without this certainty, is the torture of hell; it is the vivid and crushing image of total annihilation. It seems to me as if I were choking. My only companion, you who have been chosen by fate to make with me the painful journey of life, the day when I shall no longer possess your heart will be that when for me the world shall have lost all warmth and all its vegetation.... I will stop, my sweet pet; my soul is sad. I am very tired, my mind is worn out, I am sick of men. I have good reason for hating them. They separate me from my love.”

Josephine was indifferent to this strong passion. “How queer Bonaparte is!” she said coldly at the evidences of his affection which he poured upon her; and when, after a few weeks separation, he began to implore her to join him she hesitated, made excuses, tried in every possible way to evade his wish. It was not strange that a woman of her indolent nature, loving flattery, having no passion but for amusement, reckless expenditure, and her own ease, should prefer life in Paris. There she shared with Madame Tallien the adoration which the Parisian world is always bestowing on some fair woman. At opera and ball she was the centre of attraction; even in the street the people knew her. Notre Dame des Victoires was the name they gave her.

In desperation at her indifference, Napoleon finally wrote her, in June, from Tortona:

“My life is a perpetual nightmare. A black presentiment makes breathing difficult. I am no longer alive; I have lost more than life, more than happiness, more than peace; I am almost without hope. I am sending you a courier. He will stay only four hours in Paris, and then will bring me your answer. Write to me ten pages; that is the only thing that can console me in the least. You are ill; you love me; I have distressed you; you are with child; and I do not see you.... I have treated you so ill that I do not know how to set myself right in your eyes. I have been blaming you for staying in Paris, and you have been ill there. Forgive me, my dear; the love with which you have filled me has robbed me of my reason, and I shall never recover it. It is a malady from which there is no recovery. My forebodings are so gloomy that all I ask is to see you, to hold you in my arms for two hours, and that we may die together. Who is taking care of you? I suppose that you have sent for Hortense; I love the dear child a thousand times better since I think that she may console you a little. As for me, I am without consolation, rest, and hope until I see again the messenger whom I am sending to you, and until you explain to me in a long letter just what is the matter with you, and how serious it is. If there were any danger, I warn you that I should start at once for Paris.... You! you!—and the rest of the world will not exist for me any more than if it had been annihilated. I care for honor because you care for it; for victory, because it brings you pleasure; otherwise, I should abandon everything to throw myself at your feet.”

After this letter Josephine consented to go to Italy, but she left Paris weeping as if going to her execution. Once at Milan, where she held almost a court, she recovered her gaiety, and the two were very happy for a time. But it did not last. Napoleon, obliged to be on the march, would implore Josephine to come to him here and there, and once she narrowly escaped with her life when trying to get away from the army.

Wherever she was installed she had a circle of adorers about her, and as a result she neglected writing to her husband. Reproaches and entreaties filled his letters. He begged her for only a line, and he implored her that she be less cold.

“Your letters are as cold as fifty years of age; one would think they had been written after we had been married fifteen years. They are full of the friendliness and feelings of life’s winter,... What more can you do to distress me? Stop loving me? That you have already done. Hate me? Well, I wish you would; everything degrades me except hatred; but indifference, with a calm pulse, fixed eyes, monotonous walk!... A thousand kisses, tender, like my heart.”

It was not merely indolence and indifference that caused Josephine’s neglect. It was coquetry frequently, and Napoleon, informed by his couriers as to whom she received at Milan or Genoa, and of the pleasures she enjoyed, was jealous with all the force of his nature. More than one young officer who dared pay homage to Josephine in this campaign was banished “by order of the commander-in-chief.” Reaching Milan once, unexpectedly, he found her gone. His disappointment was bitter.

“I reached Milan, rushed to your rooms, having thrown up everything to see you, to press you to my heart—you were not there; you are traveling about from one town to another, amusing yourself with balls.... My unhappiness is inconceivable.... Don’t put yourself out; pursue your pleasure; happiness is made for you.”

It was between such extremes of triumphant love and black despair that Napoleon lived throughout the Italian campaign.

BONAPARTE AT MALMAISON.

The title on the engraving reads: “Bonaparte, dédié à Madame Bonaparte.” Engraved in 1803 by Godefroy, after Isabey.

CHAPTER VI
NAPOLEON’S RETURN TO PARIS—THE EGYPTIAN CAMPAIGN—THE 18th BRUMAIRE

In December, 1797, he returned to Paris. His whole family were collected there, forming a “Bonaparte colony,” as the Parisians called it. There were Joseph and his wife; Lucien, now married to Christine Boyer, his old landlord’s daughter, a marriage Napoleon never forgave; Eliza, now Madame Bacciochi; Pauline, now Madame Leclerc. Madame Letitia was in the city, with Caroline; Louis and Jerome were still in school. Josephine had her daughter Hortense, a girl of thirteen, with her. Her son Eugène, though but fifteen years old, was away on a mission for Napoleon, who, in spite of the boy’s youth, had already taken him into his confidence. According to Napoleon’s express desire, all the family lived in great simplicity.

The return to Paris of the commander-in-chief of the Army of Italy was the signal for a popular ovation. The Directory gave him every honor, changing the name of the street in which he lived to rue de la Victoire, and making him a member of the Institute; but, conscious of its feebleness, and inspired by that suspicion which since the Revolution began had caused the ruin of so many men, it planned to get rid of him.