THE HISTORY
OF NAPOLEON
BUONAPARTE

BY

JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART

LONDON & TORONTO J.M. DENT & SONS LTD.
NEW YORK E.P. DUTTON & CO

First issue of this edition: February 1906
Reprinted: April 1906; May 1907;
July 1909; November 1910;
November 1912; March 1915

INTRODUCTION

[Lockhart, 1794-1854]

"Nations yet to come will look back upon his history as to some grand and supernatural romance. The fiery energy of his youthful career, and the magnificent progress of his irresistible ambition, have invested his character with the mysterious grandeur of some heavenly appearance; and when all the lesser tumults and lesser men of our age shall have passed away into the darkness of oblivion, history will still inscribe one mighty era with the majestic name of Napoleon."

These enthusiastic words, too, are Lockhart's, though they are not from this history, but from some "Remarks on the Periodical Criticism of England," which he published in Blackwood's Magazine. They serve, if they are taken in conjunction with his book, to mark his position in the long list of the historians, biographers and critics who have written in English, and from an English or a British point of view, upon "Napoleon the Great." Lockhart, that is to say, was neither of the idolaters, like Hazlitt, nor of the decriers and blasphemers.

One recalls at once what he said of "the lofty impartiality" with which Sir Walter Scott had written of Napoleon before him, and with which he appears to have faced his lesser task. As a biography, as a writing of history, as an example of historic style, Lockhart's comparatively modest essay must be called a better performance than Scott's. But "the real Napoleon" has not yet been painted.

Lord Rosebery, in his book on Napoleon: the Last Phase, asks if there will ever be an adequate portrait? The life is yet to be written that shall profit by all the new material that has come to light since Scott wrote his nine volumes in 1827, and Lockhart published his in 1829. But Lockhart's book has still the value of one written by a genuine man of letters, who was a born biographer, and one written while the world-commotion of Napoleon was a matter of personal report. It is tinged by some of the contemporary illusions, no doubt; but it is clearer in its record than Scott's, and while it is less picturesque, it is more direct.

His comparative brevity is a gain, since he has to tell how, in brief space, "the lean, hungry conqueror swells," as Lord Rosebery says, "into the sovereign, and then into the sovereign of sovereigns."

In view of the influence of the one book upon the other, and the one writer upon the other, it is worth note that Lockhart had a fit of enthusiasm over Scott's Napoleon when it first appeared, or rather when he first read the first six volumes of the work, before they were "out," in 1827. He thought Scott would make as great an effect by it as by any two of his novels. This proved a mistaken forecast, but Scott was paid an enormous price—some eighteen thousand pounds. When then John Murray, who had already co-opted Lockhart as his Quarterly editor, thought of inaugurating a "Family Library," and he proposed to his editor this other Napoleon book, it must have seemed in many ways a very attractive piece of work. But owing partly to Lockhart's relations with Scott, and partly to the need of avoiding any literary comparisons, these small, fat duodecimos appeared anonymously. That was, as it has been already mentioned, in 1829, two years after Scott's book.

To-day, it makes a capital starting-point for the long Napoleon adventure, whose end, so far as it is prolonged by fresh literary divigations, seems to be as remote as ever.

It is from the French side that one might chiefly draw those vivid and sometimes questionable glimpses at first-hand, that can best add to Lockhart's presentment. One must compare his retreat from Russia with Rapp's and other remembrancers' accounts, and be reminded by Rapp to go on to Jomini's Vie Militaire, and even turn for a single personal reminiscence to a flagrant hero-worshipper like Dumas, in his rapid and military biography.

"Only twice in his life," said Dumas, "had he who writes these lines seen Napoleon. The first time on the way to Ligny; the second, when he returned from Waterloo. The first time in the light of a lamp; the first time amid the acclamations of the multitude; the second, amid the silence of a populace. Each time Napoleon was seated in the same carriage, in the same seat, dressed in the same attire; each time, it was the same look, lost and vague; each time, the same head, calm and impassible, only his brow was a little more bent over his breast in returning than in going. Was it from weariness that he could not sleep, or from grief to have lost the world?"

This is the French postscript to many English books about the victor and loser of the world.

The following is a list of the works of John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854):—

Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk, by Peter Morris the Odontist (pseud.) 1819; Valerius, a Roman Story, 1821; Some Passages in the Life of Mr. Adam Blair, 1822; Reginald Dalton, a Story of English University Life, 1823; Ancient Spanish Ballads (trans.) 1823; Matthew Wald, a Novel, 1824; Life of Robert Burns, 1828; History of Napoleon Buonaparte, 1829; History of the late War, with Sketches of Nelson, Wellington and Napoleon, 1832; Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, 7 vols. 1836-8; Theodore Hook, a Sketch, 1852.

Lockhart was a Contributor to "Blackwood," and Editor of the "Quarterly Review" from 1825 to 1853.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIFE OF NAPOLEON BUONAPARTE

CHAPTER I

Birth and Parentage of Napoleon Buonaparte—His Education at Brienne and at Paris—His Character at this Period—His Political Predilections—He enters the Army as Second Lieutenant of Artillery—His First Military Service in Corsica in 1793.

Napoleon Buonaparte was born at Ajaccio on the 15th of August, 1769. The family had been of some distinction, during the middle ages, in Italy; whence his branch of it removed to Corsica, in the troubled times of the Guelphs and Gibellines. They were always considered as belonging to the gentry of the island. Charles, the father of Napoleon, an advocate of considerable reputation, married his mother, Letitia Ramolini, a young woman eminent for beauty and for strength of mind, during the civil war—when the Corsicans, under Paoli, were struggling to avoid the domination of the French. The advocate had espoused the popular side in that contest, and his lovely and high-spirited wife used to attend him through the toils and dangers of his mountain campaigns. Upon the termination of the war, he would have exiled himself along with Paoli; but his relations dissuaded him from this step, and he was afterwards reconciled to the conquering party, and protected and patronised by the French governor of Corsica, the Count de Marbœuff.

It is said that Letitia had attended mass on the morning of the 15th of August; and, being seized suddenly on her return, gave birth to the future hero of his age, on a temporary couch covered with tapestry, representing the heroes of the Iliad. He was her second child. Joseph, afterwards King of Spain, was older than he: he had three younger brothers, Lucien, Louis, and Jerome; and three sisters, Eliza, Caroline, and Pauline. These grew up. Five others must have died in infancy; for we are told that Letitia had given birth to thirteen children, when at the age of thirty she became a widow.

In after-days, when Napoleon had climbed to sovereign power, many flatterers were willing to give him a lofty pedigree. To the Emperor of Austria, who would fain have traced his unwelcome son-in-law to some petty princes of Treviso, he replied, "I am the Rodolph of my race,"[1] and silenced, on a similar occasion, a professional genealogist, with, "Friend, my patent dates from Monte Notte."[2]

Charles Buonaparte, by the French governor's kindness, received a legal appointment in Corsica—that of Procureur du Roi (answering nearly to Attorney-General); and scandal has often said that Marbœuff was his wife's lover. The story received no credence in Ajaccio.

Concerning the infancy of Napoleon we know nothing, except that he ever acknowledged with the warmest gratitude the obligations laid on him, at the threshold of life by the sagacity and wisdom of Letitia. He always avowed his belief that he owed his subsequent elevation principally to her early lessons; and indeed laid it down as a maxim that "the future good or bad conduct of a child depends entirely on the mother." Even of his boyish days few anecdotes have been preserved in Corsica. His chosen plaything, they say, was a small brass cannon; and, when at home in the school-vacations, his favourite retreat was a solitary summer-house among the rocks on the sea-shore, about a mile from Ajaccio, where his mother's brother (afterwards Cardinal Fesch) had a villa. The place is now in ruins, and overgrown with bushes, and the people call it "Napoleon's Grotto." He has himself said that he was remarkable only for obstinacy and curiosity: others add, that he was high-spirited, quarrelsome, imperious; fond of solitude; slovenly in his dress. Being detected stealing figs in an orchard, the proprietor threatened to tell his mother, and the boy pleaded for himself with so much eloquence, that the man suffered him to escape. His careless attire, and his partiality for a pretty little girl in the neighbourhood, were ridiculed together in a song which his playmates used to shout after him in the streets of Ajaccio:

"Napoleone di mezza calzetta
Fa l'amore a Giacominetta."[3]

His superiority of character was early felt. An aged relation, Lucien Buonaparte, Archdeacon of Ajaccio, called the young people about his death-bed to take farewell and bless them: "You, Joseph," said the expiring man, "are the eldest; but Napoleon is the head of his family. Take care to remember my words." Napoleon took excellent care that they should not be forgotten. He began with beating his elder brother into subjection.

From his earliest youth he chose arms for his profession. When he was about seven years old (1776) his father was, through Marbœuff's patronage, sent to France as one of a deputation from the Corsican noblesse to King Louis XVI.; and Napoleon, for whom the count had also procured admission into the military school of Brienne, accompanied him. After seeing part of Italy, and crossing France, they reached Paris; and the boy was soon established in his school, where at first everything delighted him, though, forty years afterwards, he said he should never forget the bitter parting with his mother ere he set out on his travels. He spoke only Italian when he reached Brienne; but soon mastered French. His progress in Latin, and in literature generally, attracted no great praise; but in every study likely to be of service to the future soldier, he distinguished himself above his contemporaries. Of the mathematical tutors accordingly he was a great favourite. One of the other teachers having condemned him for some offence or neglect to wear a course woollen dress on a particular day, and dine on his knees at the door of the refectory, the boy's haughty spirit swelling under this dishonour, brought on a sudden vomiting, and a strong fit of hysterics. The mathematical master passing by, said they did not understand what they were dealing with, and released him. He cared little for common pastimes; but his love for such as mimicked war was extreme; and the skill of his fortifications, reared of turf, or of snow, according to the season, and the address and pertinacity with which he conducted their defence, attracted the admiration of all observers. Napoleon was poor and all but a foreigner[4] among the French youth, and underwent many mortifications from both causes. His temper was reserved and proud; he had few friends—no bosom-companion; he lived by himself, and among his books and maps. M. Bourienne, whose friendship for him commenced thus early, says—"Buonaparte was noticeable at Brienne for his Italian complexion, the keenness of his look, and the tone of his conversation both with masters and comrades. There was almost always a dash of bitterness in what he said. He had very little of the disposition that leads to attachments; which I can only attribute to the misfortunes of his family every since his birth, and the impression which the conquest of his country had made on his early years." One day, at dinner, the principal of the school happened to say something slightingly of Paoli. "He was a great man," cried young Buonaparte, "he loved his country; and I shall never forgive my father, who had been his adjutant, for consenting to the union of Corsica with France. He ought to have followed the fortunes of Paoli."

There is reason to believe that the levity and haughtiness with which some of the young French gentlemen at this seminary conducted themselves towards this poor, solitary alien, had a strong effect on the first political feelings of the future Emperor of France. He particularly resented their jokes about his foreign name Napoleon. Bourienne says he often told him—"Hereafter I will do the French what harm I can; as for you, you never make me your jest—you love me."

From the beginning of the revolutionary struggle, boy and youth, he espoused and kept by the side of those who desired the total change of government. It is a strange enough fact, that Pichegru, afterwards so eminent and ultimately so unfortunate, was for some time his monitor in the school of Brienne. Being consulted many years later as to the chance of enlisting Buonaparte in the cause of the exiled Bourbons, this man is known to have answered: "It will be lost time to attempt that—I knew him in his youth—he has taken his side, and he will not change it."

In 1783 Buonaparte was, on the recommendation of his masters, sent from Brienne to the Royal Military School at Paris; this being an extraordinary compliment to the genius and proficiency of a boy of fifteen.[5] Here he spent nearly two years, devoted to his studies. That he laboured hard, both at Brienne and at Paris, we may judge; for his after-life left scanty room for book-work, and of the vast quantity of information which his strong memory ever placed at his disposal, the far greater proportion must have been accumulated now. He made himself a first-rate mathematician; he devoured history—his chosen authors being Plutarch and Tacitus; the former the most simple painter that antiquity has left us of heroic characters—the latter the profoundest master of political wisdom. The poems of Ossian were then new to Europe, and generally received as authentic remains of another age and style of heroism. The dark and lofty genius which they display, their indistinct but solemn pictures of heroic passions, love, battle, victory, and death, were appropriate food for Napoleon's young imagination; and, his taste being little scrupulous as to minor particulars, Ossian continued to be through life his favourite poet. While at Paris, he attracted much notice among those who had access to compare him with his fellows; his acquirements, among other advantages, introduced him to the familiar society of the celebrated Abbé Raynal. Napoleon, shortly after entering the school at Paris, drew up a memorial, which he in person presented to the superintendents of the establishment. He complained that the mode of life was too expensive and delicate for "poor gentlemen," and could not prepare them either for returning to their "modest homes," or for the hardships of the camp. He proposed that, instead of a regular dinner of two courses daily, the students should have ammunition bread, and soldiers' rations, and that they should be compelled to mend and clean their own stockings and shoes. This memorial is said to have done him no service at the military school.

He had just completed his sixteenth year when (in August, 1785,) after being examined by the great Laplace, he obtained his first commission as second lieutenant in the artillery regiment La Fere. His corps was at Valance when he joined it; and he mingled, more largely than might have been expected from his previous habits, in the cultivated society of the place. His personal advantages were considerable; the outline of the countenance classically beautiful; the eye deep-set and dazzlingly brilliant; the figure short, but slim, active, and perfectly knit. Courtly grace and refinement of manners he never attained, nor perhaps coveted; but he early learned the art, not difficult probably to any person possessed of such genius and such accomplishments, of rendering himself eminently agreeable wherever it suited his purpose or inclination to be so.

On the 27th February in this year his father died of a cancer in the stomach, aged forty-five; the same disease which was destined, at a somewhat later period of life, to prove fatal to himself.

While at Valance Buonaparte competed anonymously for a prize offered by the Academy of Lyons for the best answer to Raynal's Question: "What are the principles and institutions by the application of which mankind can be raised to the highest happiness?" He gained the prize: what were the contents of his Essay we know not. Talleyrand, long afterwards, obtained the manuscript, and, thinking to please his sovereign, brought it to him. He threw his eye over two or three pages, and tossed it into the fire. The treatise of the Lieutenant probably abounded in opinions which the Emperor had found it convenient to forget.

Even at Brienne his political feelings had been determined. At Valance he found the officers of his regiment divided, as all the world then was, into two parties; the lovers of the French Monarchy, and those who desired its overthrow. He sided openly with the latter. "Had I been a general," said Napoleon in the evening of his life, "I might have adhered to the king: being a subaltern, I joined the patriots."

In the beginning of 1792 he became captain of artillery (unattached;) and, happening to be in Paris, witnessed the lamentable scenes of the 20th of June, when the revolutionary mob stormed the Tuileries, and the king and his family, after undergoing innumerable insults and degradations, with the utmost difficulty preserved their lives. He followed the crowd into the garden before the palace; and when Louis XVI. appeared on a balcony with the red cap on his head, could no longer suppress his contempt and indignation. "Poor driveller!" said Napoleon, loud enough to be heard by those near him, "how could he suffer this rabble to enter? If he had swept away five or six hundred with his cannon, the rest would be running yet." He was also a witness of the still more terrible 10th of August, when, the palace being once more invested, the National Guard assigned for its defence took part with the assailants; the royal family were obliged to take refuge in the National Assembly, and the brave Swiss Guards were massacred almost to a man in the courts of the Tuileries. Buonaparte was a firm friend to the Assembly, to the charge of a party of which, at least, these excesses must be laid; but the spectacle disgusted him. The yells, screams, and pikes with bloody heads upon them, formed a scene which he afterwards described as "hideous and revolting." At this time Napoleon was without employment and very poor; and De Bourienne describes him as wandering idly about Paris, living, chiefly at his (M. de B.'s) expense, at restaurateurs' shops, and, among other wild-enough schemes, proposing that he and his schoolfellow should take some houses on lease, and endeavour to get a little money by subletting them in apartments. Such were the views and occupations of Buonaparte—at the moment when the national tragedy was darkening to its catastrophe. As yet he had been but a spectator of the Revolution, destined to pave his own path to sovereign power; it was not long before circumstances called on him to play a part.

General Paoli, who had lived in England ever since the termination of that civil war in which Charles Buonaparte served under his banner, was cheered, when the great French Revolution first broke out, with the hope that liberty was about to be restored to Corsica. He came to Paris, was received with applause as a tried friend of freedom, and appointed governor of his native island, which for some time he ruled wisely and happily. But as the revolution advanced, Paoli, like most other wise men, became satisfied that license was more likely to be established by its leaders, than law and rational liberty; and avowing his aversion to the growing principles of Jacobinism, and the scenes of tumult and bloodshed to which they gave rise, he was denounced in the National Assembly as the enemy of France. An expedition was sent to deprive him of his government, under the command of La Combe, Michel, and Salicetti, one of the Corsican deputies to the Convention; and Paoli called on his countrymen to take arms in his and their own defence.

Buonaparte happened at that time (1793) to have leave of absence from his regiment, and to be in Corsica on a visit to his mother. He had fitted up a little reading-room at the top of the house as the quietest part of it, and was spending his mornings in study, and his evenings among his family and old acquaintance, when the arrival of the expedition threw the island into convulsion. Paoli, who knew him well, did all he could to enlist him in his cause; he used, among other flatteries, to clap him on the back, and tell him he was "one of Plutarch's men." But Napoleon had satisfied himself that Corsica was too small a country to maintain independence,—that she must fall under the rule either of France or England; and that her interests would be best served by adhering to the former. He therefore resisted all Paoli's offers, and tendered his sword to the service of Salicetti. He was appointed provisionally to the command of a battalion of National Guards; and the first military service on which he was employed was the reduction of a small fortress, called the Torre di Capitello, near Ajaccio. He took it, but was soon besieged in it, and he and his garrison, after a gallant defence, and living for some time on horseflesh, were glad to evacuate the tower, and escape to the sea. The English government now began to reinforce Paoli, and the cause of the French party seemed for the moment to be desperate. The Buonapartes were banished from Corsica, and their mother and sisters took refuge first at Nice, and afterwards at Marseilles, where for some time they suffered all the inconveniences of exile and poverty. Napoleon rejoined his regiment. He had chosen France for his country; and seems, in truth, to have preserved little or no affection for his native soil.

After arriving at supreme power, he bestowed one small fountain on Ajaccio; and succeeded, by the death of a relation, to a petty olive garden near that town. In the sequel of his history the name of Corsica will scarcely recur.

CHAPTER II

Buonaparte commands the Artillery at Toulon—Fall of Toulon—The Representatives of the People—Junot.

Buonaparte's first military service occurred, as we have seen, in the summer of 1793. The king of France had been put to death on the 21st of January in that year; and in less than a month afterwards the convention had declared war against England. The murder of the king, alike imprudent as atrocious, had in fact united the princes of Europe against the revolutionary cause; and within France itself a strong reaction took place. The people of Toulon, the great port and arsenal of France on the Mediterranean, partook these sentiments, and invited the English and Spanish fleets off their coast to come to their assistance, and garrison their city. The allied admirals took possession accordingly of Toulon, and a motley force of English, Spaniards, and Neapolitans, prepared to defend the place. In the harbour and roads there were twenty-five ships of the line, and the city contained immense naval and military stores of every description, so that the defection of Toulon was regarded as a calamity of the first order by the revolutionary government.

This event occurred in the midst of that period which has received the name of the reign of terror. The streets of Paris were streaming with innocent blood; Robespierre was glutting himself with murder; fear and rage were the passions that divided mankind, and their struggles produced on either side the likeness of some epidemic frenzy. Whatever else the government wanted, vigour to repel aggressions from without was displayed in abundance. Two armies immediately marched upon Toulon; and after a series of actions, in which the passes in the hills behind the town were forced, the place was at last invested, and a memorable siege commenced.

It was conducted with little skill, first by Cartaux, a vain coxcomb who had been a painter, and then by Doppet, an ex-physician, and a coward. To watch and report on the proceedings of these chiefs, there were present in the camp several Representatives of the People, as they were called—persons holding no military character or rank, but acting as honourable spies for the government at Paris. The interference of these personages on this, as on many other occasions, was productive of delays, blunders, and misfortunes; but the terror which their ready access to the despotic government inspired was often, on the other hand, useful in stimulating the exertions of the military. The younger Robespierre was one of the deputies at Toulon, and his name was enough to make his presence formidable.

Cartaux had not yet been superseded, when Napoleon Buonaparte made his appearance at headquarters, with a commission to assume the command of the artillery. It has been said that he owed his appointment to the private regard of Salicetti; but the high testimonials he had received from the Military Academy were more likely to have served him; nor is it possible to suppose that he had been so long in the regiment of La Fere without being appreciated by some of his superiors. He had, besides, shortly before this time, excited attention by a pamphlet, called the Supper of Beaucaire, in which the politics of the Jacobin party were spiritedly supported; and of which he was afterwards so ashamed, that he took great pains to suppress it. However this may have been, he was received almost with insolence by Cartaux, who, strutting about in an uniform covered with gold lace, told him his assistance was not wanted, but he was welcome to partake in his glory.

The commandant of the artillery, on examining the state of affairs, found much to complain of. They were still disputing which extremity of the town should be the chief object of attack; though at the one there were two strong and regular fortifications, and at the other only a small and imperfect fort called Malbosquet. On inspecting their batteries, he found that the guns were placed about two gunshots from the walls; and that it was the custom to heat the shot at a distance from the place where they were to be discharged; in other words, to heat them to no purpose. Choosing officers of his own acquaintance to act under him, and exerting himself to collect guns from all quarters, Buonaparte soon remedied these disorders, and found himself master of an efficient train of 200 pieces; and he then urged the general to adopt a wholly new plan of operations in the future conduct of the siege.

The plan of Buonaparte appears now the simplest and most obvious that could have been suggested; yet it was not without great difficulty that he could obtain the approbation of the doctor, who had by this time superseded the painter. "Your object," said he, "is to make the English evacuate Toulon. Instead of attacking them in the town, which must involve a long series of operations, endeavour to establish batteries so as to sweep the harbour and roadstead. If you can do this—the English ships must take their departure, and the English troops will certainly not remain behind them." He pointed out a promontory nearly opposite the town, by getting the command of which he was sure the desired effect must be accomplished. "Gain La Grasse" said he, "and in two days Toulon falls." His reasoning at length forced conviction, and he was permitted to follow his own plan.

A month before nothing could have been more easy; but within that time the enemy had perceived the importance of the promontory, which commands the narrow passage between the port and the Mediterranean, and fortified it so strongly, that it passed by the name of the Little Gibraltar. It was necessary, therefore, to form extensive batteries in the rear of La Grasse, before there could be a prospect of seizing it. Buonaparte laboured hard all day, and slept every night in his cloak by the guns, until his works approached perfection. He also formed a large battery behind Malbosquet; but this he carefully concealed from the enemy. It was covered by a plantation of olives, and he designed to distract their attention by opening its fire for the first time when he should be about to make his great effort against Little Gibraltar. But the Representatives of the People had nearly spoiled everything. These gentlemen, walking their rounds, discovered the battery behind the olives, and inquiring how long it had been ready, were told for eight days. Not guessing with what views so many guns had been kept so long idle, they ordered an immediate cannonade. The English made a vigorous sally, and spiked the guns before Buonaparte could reach the spot. On his arrival at the eminence behind, he perceived a long deep ditch, fringed with brambles and willows, which he thought might be turned to advantage. He ordered a regiment of foot to creep along the ditch, which they did without being discovered until they were close upon the enemy. General O'Hara, the English commander, mistook them for some of his own allies, and, rushing out to give them some direction, was wounded and made prisoner. The English were dispirited when they lost their general; they retreated, and the French were at liberty to set about the repair of their battery. In this affair much blood was shed. Napoleon himself received a bayonet-thrust in his thigh, and fell into the arms of Muiron, who carried him off the field. Such was the commencement of their brotherly friendship. His wound, however, did not prevent him from continuing his labours behind Little Gibraltar.

That fort had very nearly been seized, by a sort of accident, some time before his preparations were completed; a casual insult excited a sudden quarrel between the men in Buonaparte's trenches and the Spaniards in Little Gibraltar. The French soldiers, without waiting for orders, seized their arms, and rushed to the assault with fury. Napoleon coming up, perceived that the moment was favourable, and persuaded Doppet to support the troops with more regiments; but the doctor, marching at the head of his column, was seized with a panic, on seeing a man killed by his side, and ordered a retreat, before anything could be effected.

A few days after, this poltroon was in his turn superseded by a brave veteran, General Dugommier, and Napoleon could at last count on having his efforts backed. But, for the second time, the Representatives did their best to ruin his undertaking. The siege had now lasted four months, provisions were scarce in the camp, and these civilians, never being able to comprehend what was meant by bestowing all this care on a place so far below the city as Little Gibraltar, wrote to Paris that they saw no chance of success, and hoped the government would agree with them that the siege ought to be abandoned. Two days before this letter reached Paris, Toulon had fallen, and the Representatives gave out that the despatch was a forgery.

The moment had at last come when Buonaparte judged it right to make his grand attempt. During the night of the 17th of December he threw 8000 bombs and shells into Little Gibraltar, and the works being thus shattered, at daybreak Dugommier commanded the assault. The French, headed by the brave Muiron, rushed with impetuous valour through the embrasures, and put the whole garrison to the sword. The day was spent in arranging the batteries, so as to command the shipping; and next morning—so true had been Buonaparte's prophecy—when the French stood to their posts, the English fleet was discovered to be already under weigh.

Then followed a fearful scene. The English would not quit Toulon without destroying the French ships and arsenals that had fallen into their possession; nor could they refuse to carry with them the Antijacobin inhabitants, who knew that their lives would be instantly sacrificed if they should fall into the hands of the victorious Republicans, and who now flocked to the beach to the number of 14,000, praying for the means of escape. The burning of ships, the explosion of magazines, the roar of artillery, and the cries of these fugitives, filled up many hours. At last the men-of-war were followed by a flotilla bearing those miserable exiles; the walls were abandoned; and Dugommier took possession of the place.

The Republicans found that all persons of condition, who had taken part against them, had escaped; and their rage was to be contented with meaner victims. A day or two having been suffered to pass in quiet, a proclamation, apparently friendly, exhorted the workmen, who had been employed on the batteries of the besieged town, to muster at headquarters. One hundred and fifty poor men, who expected to be employed again in repairing the same fortifications obeyed this summons—were instantly marched into a field—and shot in cold blood; not less than a thousand persons were massacred under circumstances equally atrocious. Buonaparte himself repelled with indignation the charge of having had a hand in this butchery. Even if he had, he was not the chief in command, and durst not have disobeyed orders but at the sacrifice of his own life. It is on all sides admitted that a family of royalists, being shipwrecked on the coast near Toulon a few days after, were rescued from the hands of the ferocious Republicans, solely by his interference and address. Putting himself at the head of some of his gunners, he obtained possession of the unhappy prisoners; quieted the mob by assuring them that they should all be publicly executed the next morning; and meanwhile sent them off during the night in artillery waggons supposed to be conveying stores.

The recovery of Toulon was a service of the first importance to the government. It suppressed all insurrectionary spirit in the south of France; and placed a whole army at their disposal elsewhere. But he, to whose genius the success was due, did not at first obtain the credit of his important achievement at Paris. The Representatives of the People never made their appearance on the eventful morning at Little Gibraltar, until three hours after the troops were in possession of the best part of the fortifications. Then, indeed, they were seen sword in hand in the trenches, blustering and swaggering in safety. Yet these men did not blush to represent themselves as having headed the assault, while, in their account of the conflict, even the name of Buonaparte did not find a place. The truth could not, however, be concealed effectually; and he was appointed to survey and arrange the whole line of fortifications on the Mediterranean coast of France.

It was during the siege of Toulon that Napoleon, while constructing a battery under the enemy's fire, had occasion to prepare a despatch, and called out for some one who could use a pen. A young sergeant, named Junot, leapt out, and, leaning on the breastwork, wrote as he dictated. As he finished, a shot struck the ground by his side, scattering dust in abundance over him and everything near him. "Good," said the soldier, laughing, "this time we shall spare our sand." The cool gaiety of this pleased Buonaparte; he kept his eye on the man; and Junot came in the sequel to be Marshal of France and Duke of Abrantes.

CHAPTER III

Buonaparte Chief of Battalion at Nice—Fall of Robespierre—He is superseded—Buonaparte at Paris in 1795—The day of the Sections—Commands the Army of the Interior—Marries Josephine de Beauharnois—Appointed to the command of the Army of Italy.

From this time Napoleon advanced by rapid strides to greatness. His admirable skill was still further displayed in his survey of the fortifications above mentioned; and having completed this service, he was appointed to join the army of Italy, then stationed at Nice, with the rank of Chief of Battalion.

Here his advice suggested a plan by which the Sardinians were driven from the Col di Tende on the 7th March, 1794; Saorgio, with all its stores, surrendered; and the French obtained possession of the maritime Alps, so that the difficulties of advancing into Italy were greatly diminished. Of these movements, however, his superior officers reaped as yet the honour. He was even superseded (Aug. 6, 1794) very shortly after their success. But this, which at the moment seemed a heavy misfortune, was, in truth, one of the luckiest circumstances that ever befell him.

It is not true that he was put under arrest in consequence of the downfall of Robespierre; although there is no doubt that he was supposed to belong to the party which that monster had made the instrument of his crimes, and known to have lived on terms of friendship with his younger brother. He incurred the suspicion of Laporte and the other "Representatives" attached to "the army of Italy," in consequence of a journey to the Gulf of Genoa, which he performed in obedience to secret orders from Paris; and, so soon as his absence from headquarters was thus explained, he regained his freedom. The officer, who came to release him, was surprised to find him busy in his dungeon over the map of Lombardy. The "Representatives," however, had certainly taken up a general prejudice against him; for he did not reassume his functions at Nice; and seems to have spent some time in obscurity with his own family, who were then in very distressed circumstances, at Marseilles. It was here that he fell in love with Mademoiselle Clery, whom, but for some accident, it appears he would have married. Her sister was shortly afterwards united to his brother Joseph, and she herself became in the sequel the wife of Bernadotte, now King of Sweden. It is supposed that Buonaparte found himself too poor to marry at this time; and circumstances interfered to prevent any renewal of his proposals.

Before the end of the year he came to Paris to solicit employment; but at first he met with nothing but repulses. The President of the Military Committee, Aubry, objected to his youth. "Presence in the field of battle," said Buonaparte, "might be reckoned in place of years." The President, who had not seen much actual service, thought he was insulted, and treated Napoleon very coldly. After a little while, however, he was asked to go to La Vendée, as commandant of a brigade of infantry. This he declined, alleging, that nothing could reconcile him to leave the artillery, but really, if we are to follow De Bourienne, considering the Vendean warfare as unworthy of him. His refusal was followed by the erasure of his name from the list of general officers in employment; and for a time his fortunes seemed to be in a desperate condition. He thought of settling in some way in Paris; and said to Bourienne, that, if he could afford to have a small house in the street where his school-fellow lived, and to keep a cabriolet, he would be contented. His elder brother had about this time married Mademoiselle Clery, whose father, the merchant of Marseilles, gave her a handsome dowry. "How fortunate," Napoleon would often exclaim, "is that fool Joseph!"[6]

Talma, the celebrated tragedian, was one of his chief associates at this time, and even then talked with confidence of the future fortunes of "little Buonaparte." This player's kindness and Aubry's opposition were both remembered. The Emperor always patronised Talma; and Aubry died in exile.

Napoleon, despairing of employment at home, now drew up a memorial to the government, requesting to be sent with a few other officers of artillery into Turkey, for the purpose of placing that branch of the Grand Seignior's service in a condition more suitable to the circumstances of the times—in which it seemed highly probable that the Porte might find itself in alliance with France, and assaulted by the combined armies of Russia and Austria. No answer was returned to this memorial, over which he dreamt for some weeks in great enthusiasm. "How strange," he said to his friends, "would it be if a little Corsican soldier should become King of Jerusalem!" Go where he might, he already contemplated greatness.

At length Napoleon was nominated to the command of a brigade of artillery in Holland. The long-deferred appointment was, no doubt, very welcome; but in the meantime his services were called for on a nearer and a more important field.

The French nation were now heartily tired of the National Convention: it had lost most of its distinguished members in the tumults and persecutions of the times; and above all it had lost respect by remaining for two years the slave and the tool of the Terrorists. The downfall of Robespierre, when it did take place, showed how easily the same blessed deliverance might have been effected long before, had this body possessed any sense of firmness or of dignity. Even the restoration of the members banished by the tyrant did not serve to replace the Convention in the confidence of the public. They themselves saw clearly that a new remodelling of the government was called for and must be; and their anxiety was to devise the means of securing for themselves as large a share as possible of substantial power, under some arrangement sufficiently novel in appearance to throw dust in the eyes of the people.

A great part of the nation, there is no doubt, were at this time anxious to see the royal family restored, and the government settled on the model of 1791. Among the more respectable citizens of Paris in particular such feelings were very prevalent. But many causes conspired to surround the adoption of this measure with difficulties, which none of the actually influential leaders had the courage, or perhaps the means, to encounter. The soldiery of the Republican armies had been accustomed to fight against the exiled princes and nobility, considered them as the worst enemies of France, and hated them personally. The estates of the church, the nobles, and the crown, had been divided and sold; and the purchasers foresaw that, were the monarchy restored at this period, the resumption of the forfeited property would be pressed with all the powers of government. And, lastly, the men who had earned for themselves most distinction and influence in public affairs, had excellent reasons for believing that the Bourbons and nobility, if restored, would visit on their own heads the atrocities of the Revolution, and above all the murder of the King.

The Conventionalists themselves, however, had learned by this time that neither peace nor security could be expected, unless some form of government were adopted, in which the legislative and the executive functions should at least appear to be separated; and they were also at length inclined to admit the excellence of that part of the British constitution, which, dividing the legislatorial power between two assemblies of senators, thus acquires the advantage of a constant revision of counsels, and regulates the political machine by a system of mutual checks and balances. They were desirous, therefore, of proposing some system which might, in a certain degree, satisfy those who had been endeavouring to bring about the restoration of the monarchy; and the new constitution of the year three of the Republic (1795) presented the following features. I. The executive power was to be lodged in Five Directors, chosen from time to time, who were to have no share in the legislation. II. There was to be a Council of Five Hundred, answering generally to our House of Commons: and III. A smaller assembly, called the Council of Ancients, intended to fulfil in some measure the purposes of a House of Peers.

The outline of this scheme might perhaps have been approved of; but the leading members of the Convention, from views personal to themselves, appended to it certain conditions which excited new disgust. They decreed, first, that the electoral bodies of France, in choosing representatives to the two new Councils, must elect at least two-thirds of the present members of Convention; and, secondly, that if full two-thirds were not returned, the Convention should have the right to supply the deficiency out of their own body. It was obvious that this machinery had no object but the continuance of the present legislators in power; and the nation, and especially the superior classes in Paris, were indignant at conduct which they considered as alike selfish and arbitrary. The royalist party gladly lent themselves to the diffusion of any discontents; and a formidable opposition to the measures of the existing government was organised.

The Convention meantime continued their sittings, and exerting all their skill and influence, procured from many districts of the country reports accepting of the New Constitution, with all its conditions. The Parisians, being nearer and sharper observers, and having abundance of speakers and writers to inform and animate them, assembled in the several sections of the city, and proclaimed their hostility to the Convention and its designs. The National Guard, consisting of armed citizens, almost unanimously sided with the enemies of the Convention; and it was openly proposed to march to the Tuileries, and compel a change of measures by force of arms.

The Convention, perceiving their unpopularity and danger, began to look about them anxiously for the means of defence. There were in and near Paris 5000 regular troops, on whom they thought they might rely, and who of course contemned the National Guard as only half-soldiers. They had besides some hundreds of artillerymen; and they now organized what they called "the Sacred Band," a body of 1500 ruffians, the most part of them old and tried instruments of Robespierre. With these means they prepared to arrange a plan of defence; and it was obvious that they did not want materials, provided they could find a skilful and determined head.

The Insurgent Sections placed themselves under the command of Danican, an old general of no great skill or reputation. The Convention opposed to him Menou; and he marched at the head of a column into the section Le Pelletier to disarm the National Guard of that district—one of the wealthiest of the capital. The National Guard were found drawn up in readiness to receive him at the end of the Rue Vivienne; and Menou, becoming alarmed, and hampered by the presence of some of the "Representatives of the People," entered into a parley, and retired without having struck a blow.

The Convention judged that Menou was not master of nerves for such a crisis; and consulted eagerly about a successor to his command. Barras, one of their number, had happened to be present at Toulon, and to have appreciated the character of Buonaparte. He had, probably, been applied to by Napoleon in his recent pursuit of employment. Deliberating with Tallien and Carnot, his colleagues, he suddenly said, "I have the man whom you want; it is a little Corsican officer, who will not stand upon ceremony."

These words decided the fate of Napoleon and of France. Buonaparte had been in the Odéon Theatre when the affair of Le Pelletier occurred, had run out, and witnessed the result. He now happened to be in the gallery, and heard the discussion concerning the conduct of Menou. He was presently sent for, and asked his opinion as to that officer's retreat. He explained what had happened, and how the evil might have been avoided, in a manner which gave satisfaction. He was desired to assume the command, and arrange his plan of defence as well as the circumstances might permit; for it was already late at night, and the decisive assault on the Tuileries was expected to take place next morning. Buonaparte stated that the failure of the march of Menou had been chiefly owing to the presence of the "Representatives of the People," and refused to accept the command unless he received it free from all such interference. They yielded: Barras was named Commander-in-Chief; and Buonaparte second, with the virtual control. His first care was to dispatch Murat, then a major of Chasseurs, to Sablons, five miles off, where fifty great guns were posted. The Sectionaries sent a stronger detachment for these cannon immediately afterwards; and Murat, who passed them in the dark, would have gone in vain had he received his orders but a few minutes later.

On the 4th of October (called in the revolutionary almanack the 13th Vendemaire) the affray accordingly occurred. Thirty thousand National Guards advanced, about two p.m., by different streets, to the siege of the palace: but its defence was now in far other hands than those of Louis XVI.

Buonaparte, having planted artillery on all the bridges, had effectually secured the command of the river, and the safety of the Tuileries on one side. He had placed cannon also at all the crossings of the streets by which the National Guard could advance towards the other front; and having posted his battalions in the garden of the Tuileries and Place du Carousel, he awaited the attack.

The insurgents had no cannon; and they came along the narrow streets of Paris in close and heavy columns. When one party reached the church of St. Roche, in the Rue St. Honoré, they found a body of Buonaparte's troops drawn up there, with two cannons. It is disputed on which side the firing began; but in an instant the artillery swept the streets and lanes, scattering grape-shot among the National Guards, and producing such confusion that they were compelled to give way. The first shot was a signal for all the batteries which Buonaparte had established; the quays of the Seine, opposite to the Tuileries, were commanded by his guns below the Palace and on the bridges. In less than an hour the action was over. The insurgents fled in all directions, leaving the streets covered with dead and wounded: the troops of the Convention marched into the various sections, disarmed the terrified inhabitants, and before nightfall everything was quiet.

This eminent service secured the triumph of the Conventionalists, who now, assuming new names, continued in effect to discharge their old functions. Barras took his place at the head of the Directory, having Sieyes, Carnot, and other less celebrated persons, for his colleagues; and the First Director took care to reward the hand to which he owed his elevation. Within five days from the day of the Sections Buonaparte was named second in command of the army of the interior; and shortly afterwards, Barras, finding his duties as Director sufficient to occupy his time, gave up the command-in-chief of the same army to his "little Corsican officer."

He had no lack of duties to perform in this new character. The National Guard was to be re-organised; a separate guard for the representative body to be formed; the ordnance and military stores were all in a dilapidated condition. The want of bread, too, was continually producing popular riots, which could rarely be suppressed but by force of arms. On one of these last occasions, a huge sturdy fishwife exhorted the mob to keep to their places, when Buonaparte had almost persuaded them to disperse. "These coxcombs with their epaulettes and gorgets," said she, "care nothing for us; provided they feed well and fatten, we may starve." "Good woman," cried the general of the interior, who at this time was about the leanest of his race, "only look at me,—and decide yourself which of the two is the fatter." The woman could not help laughing: the joke pleased the multitude, and harmony was restored.

Buonaparte, holding the chief military command in the capital, and daily rising in importance from the zeal and firmness of his conduct in this high post, had now passed into the order of marked and distinguished men. He continued, nevertheless, to lead in private a quiet and modest life, studying as hard as ever, and but little seen in the circles of gaiety. An accident which occurred one morning at his military levee, gave at once a new turn to his mode of life, and a fresh impetus to the advance of his fortunes.

A fine boy, of ten or twelve years of age, presented himself; stated to the general that his name was Eugene Beauharnois, son of Viscount Beauharnois, who had served as a general officer in the Republican armies on the Rhine, and been murdered by Robespierre; and said his errand was to recover the sword of his father. Buonaparte caused the request to be complied with; and the tears of the boy, as he received and kissed the relic, excited his interest. He treated Eugene so kindly, that next day his mother, Josephine de Beauharnois, came to thank him; and her beauty and singular gracefulness of address made a strong impression.

This charming lady, the daughter of a planter, by name Tascher de la Pagerie, was born in the island of Martinico, 24th June, 1763. While yet an infant, according to a story which she afterwards repeated, a negro sorceress had prophesied that "she should one day be greater than a queen, and yet outlive her dignity."[7]

The widow of Beauharnois had been herself imprisoned until the downfall of Robespierre. In that confinement she had formed a strict friendship with another lady who was now married to Tallien, one of the most eminent of the leaders of the Convention. Madame Tallien had introduced Josephine to her husband's friends; and Barras, the First Director, having now begun to hold a sort of court at the Luxembourg, these two beautiful women were the chief ornaments of its society. It was commonly said—indeed it was universally believed—that Josephine, whose character was in some respects indifferent, possessed more than legitimate influence over the First Director. Buonaparte, however, offered her his hand; she, after some hesitation, accepted it; and the young general by this marriage (9th March, 1796) cemented his connection with the society of the Luxembourg, and in particular with Barras and Tallien, at that moment the most powerful men in France.

Napoleon had a strong tendency to the superstition of fatalism, and he always believed that his fortunes were bound up in some mysterious manner with those of this graceful woman. She loved him warmly, and served him well. Her influence over him was great, and it was always exerted on the side of humanity. She, and she alone, could overrule, by gentleness, the excesses of passion to which he was liable; and her subsequent fate will always form one of the darkest pages in the history of her lord.

Tranquillity was now restored in Paris; and the Directory had leisure to turn their attention to the affairs of the army of Italy, which were in a most confused and unsatisfactory condition. They determined to give it a new general; and Buonaparte was appointed to the splendid command. It is acknowledged, in one of Josephine's letters, that the First Director had promised to procure it for him before their marriage took place. "Advance this man," said Barras to his colleagues, "or he will advance himself without you."

Buonaparte quitted his wife ten days after their marriage; paid a short visit to his mother at Marseilles; and arrived, after a rapid journey, at the headquarters at Nice. From that moment opened the most brilliant scene of his existence; yet, during the months of victory and glory that composed it, his letters, full of love and home-sickness, attest the reluctance with which he had so soon abandoned his bride.

CHAPTER IV

The Army of Italy—Tactics of Buonaparte—Battle of Monte Notte—Battle of Millesimo—Battle of Mondovi—Armistice of Cherasco—Close of the Campaign of Piedmont—Peace granted to Sardinia.

Buonaparte at the age of twenty-six assumed the command of the army of Italy; exulting in the knowledge that, if he should conquer, the honour would be all his own. He had worked for others at Toulon, at the Col di Tende, at Saorgio: even in the affair of the Sections the first command had been nominally in the hands of Barras. Henceforth he was to have no rivals within the camp. "In three months," said he, "I shall be either at Milan or at Paris." He had already expressed the same feeling in a still nobler form. "You are too young," said one of the Directors, hesitating about his appointment as general. "In a year," answered Napoleon, "I shall be either old or dead."

He found the army in numbers about 50,000; but wretchedly deficient in cavalry, in stores of every kind,[8] in clothing and even in food; and watched by an enemy greatly more numerous. It was under such circumstances that he at once avowed the daring scheme of forcing a passage to Italy, and converting the richest territory of the enemy himself into the theatre of the war. "Soldiers," said he, "you are hungry and naked; the Republic owes you much, but she has not the means to pay her debts. I am come to lead you into the most fertile plains that the sun beholds. Rich provinces, opulent towns, all shall be at your disposal. Soldiers! with such a prospect before you, can you fail in courage and constancy?" This was his first address to his army. The sinking hearts of the men beat high with hope and confidence when they heard the voice of the young and fearless leader; and Augereau, Massena, Serrurier, Joubert, Lannes—distinguished officers might themselves have aspired to the chief command—felt, from the moment they began to understand his character and system, that the true road to glory would be to follow the star of Napoleon.

He perceived that the time was come for turning a new leaf in the history of war. With such numbers of troops as the infant Republic could afford him, he saw that no considerable advantages could be obtained against the vast and highly-disciplined armies of Austria and her allies, unless the established rules and etiquettes of strategy were abandoned. It was only by such rapidity of motion as should utterly transcend the suspicion of his adversaries, that he could hope to concentrate the whole pith and energy of a small force upon some one point of a much greater force opposed to it, and thus rob them (according to his own favourite phrase) of the victory. To effect such rapid marches, it was necessary that the soldiery should make up their minds to consider tents and baggage as idle luxuries; and that, instead of a long and complicated chain of reserves and stores, they should dare to rely wholly for the means of subsistence on the resources of the countries into which their leader might conduct them. They must be contented to conquer at whatever hazard; to consider no sacrifices or hardships as worthy of a thought. The risk of destroying the character and discipline of the men, by accustoming them to pillage, was obvious. Buonaparte trusted to victory, the high natural spirit of the nation, and the influence of his own genius, for the means of avoiding this danger; and many years, it must be admitted, elapsed, before he found much reason personally to repent of the system which he adopted. Against the enemies of the Republic its success was splendid, even beyond his hopes.

The objects of the approaching expedition were three: first, to compel the King of Sardinia, who had already lost Savoy and Nice, but still maintained a powerful army on the frontiers of Piedmont, to abandon the alliance of Austria: secondly, to compel the Emperor, by a bold invasion of Lombardy, to make such exertions in that quarter as might weaken those armies which had so long hovered on the Rhine; and, if possible, to stir up the Italian subjects of that crown to adopt the revolutionary system and emancipate themselves for ever from its yoke. The third object, though more distant, was not less important. The influence of the Romish Church was considered by the Directory as the chief, though secret, support of the cause of royalism within their own territory; and to reduce the Vatican into insignificance, or at least force it to submission and quiescence, appeared indispensable to the internal tranquillity of France. The Revolutionary Government, besides this general cause of hatred and suspicion, had a distinct injury to avenge. Their agent, Basseville, had three years before been assassinated in a popular tumult at Rome: the Papal troops had not interfered to protect him, nor the Pope to punish his murderers; and the haughty Republic considered this as an insult which could only be washed out with a sea of blood.

Napoleon's plan for gaining access to the fair regions of Italy differed from that of all former conquerors: they had uniformly penetrated the Alps at some point or other of that mighty range of mountains: he judged that the same end might be accomplished more easily by advancing along the narrow strip of comparatively level country which intervenes between those enormous barriers and the Mediterranean Sea, and forcing a passage at the point where the last of the Alps melt, as it were, into the first and lowest of the Apennine range. No sooner did he begin to concentrate his troops towards this region, than the Austrian general, Beaulieu, took measures for protecting Genoa, and the entrance of Italy. He himself took post with one column of his army at Voltri, a town within ten miles of Genoa: he placed D'Argenteau with another Austrian column at Monte Notte, a strong height further to the westward; and the Sardinians, under Colli, occupied Ceva—which thus formed the extreme right of the whole line of the allied army. The French could not advance towards Genoa but by confronting some one of the three armies thus strongly posted, and sufficiently, as Beaulieu supposed, in communication with each other.

It was now that Buonaparte made his first effort to baffle the science of those who fancied there was nothing new to be done in warfare. On the 10th of April, D'Argenteau came down upon Monte Notte, and attacked some French redoubts, in front of that mountain and the villages which bear its name, at Montelegino. At the same time General Cervoni and the French van were attacked by Beaulieu near Voltri, and compelled to retreat. The determined valour of Colonel Rampon, who commanded at Montelegino, held D'Argenteau at bay during the 10th and 11th: and Buonaparte, contenting himself with watching Beaulieu, determined to strike his effectual blow at the centre of the enemy's line. During the night of the 11th various columns were marched upon Montelegino, that of Cervoni and that of Laharpe from the van of the French line, those of Augereau and Massena from its rear. On the morning of the 12th, D'Argenteau, preparing to renew his attack on the redoubts of Montelegino, found he had no longer Rampon only and his brave band to deal with; that French columns were in his rear, on his flank, and drawn up also behind the works at Montelegino; in a word, that he was surrounded. He was compelled to retreat among the mountains; he left his colours and cannon behind him, 1000 killed, and 2000 prisoners. The centre of the allied army had been utterly routed, before either the Commander-in-Chief at the left, or General Colli at the right of the line, had any notion that a battle was going on.

Such was the battle of Monte Notte, the first of Napoleon's fields. Beaulieu, in order that he might re-establish his communication with Colli (much endangered by the defeat of D'Argenteau) was obliged to retreat upon Dego; the Sardinian, with the same purpose in view, fell back also, and took post at Millesimo; while D'Argenteau was striving to re-organise his dispirited troops in the difficult country between. It was their object to keep fast in these positions until succours could come up from Lombardy; but Napoleon had no mind to give them such respite.

The very next day after this victory he commanded a general assault on the Austrian line. Augereau, with a fresh division, marched at the left upon Millesimo; Massena led the centre towards Dego; and Laharpe, with the French right wing, manœuvred to turn the left flank of Beaulieu.

Augereau rushed upon the outposts of Millesimo, seized and retained the gorge which defends that place, and cut off Provera with two thousand Austrians, who occupied an eminence called Cossaria, from the main body of Colli's army. Next morning Buonaparte himself arrived at that scene of the operations. He forced Colli to accept battle, utterly broke and scattered him, and Provera, thus abandoned, was obliged to yield at discretion.

Meanwhile Massena on the same day had assaulted the heights of Biastro, and carrying them at the point of the bayonet, cut off Beaulieu's communication with Colli; then Laparpe came in front and in flank also upon the village of Dego, and after a most desperate conflict, drove the Austrian commander-in-chief from his post. From this moment Colli and Beaulieu were entirely separated. After the affairs of Dego and Millesimo, the former retreated in disorder upon Ceva; the latter, hotly pursued, upon Aqui; Colli, of course, being eager to cover Turin, while the Austrian had his anxious thoughts already upon Milan. Colli was again defeated at Mondovi in his disastrous retreat; he there lost his cannon, his baggage, and the best part of his troops. The Sardinian army might be said to be annihilated. The conqueror took possession of Cherasco, within 10 miles of Turin, and there dictated the terms on which the King of Sardinia was to be permitted to retain any shadow of sovereign power.

Thus, in less than a month, did Napoleon lay the gates of Italy open before him. He had defeated in three battles forces much superior to his own; inflicted on them in killed, wounded and prisoners, a loss of 25,000 men; taken eighty guns and twenty-one standards; reduced the Austrians to inaction; utterly destroyed the Sardinian king's army; and lastly, wrested from his hands Coni and Tortona, the two great fortresses called "the keys of the Alps,"—and indeed, except Turin itself, every place of any consequence in his dominions. This unfortunate prince did not long survive such humiliation. He was father-in-law to both of the brothers of Louis XVI., and, considering their cause and his own dignity as equally at an end, died of a broken heart, within a few days after he had signed the treaty of Cherasco.

Buonaparte meanwhile had paused for a moment to consolidate his columns on the heights, from which the vast plain of Lombardy, rich and cultivated like a garden, and watered with innumerable fertilising streams, lay at length within the full view of his victorious soldiery. "Hannibal forced the Alps," said he gaily, as he now looked back on those stupendous barriers, "and we have turned them."

"Hitherto" (he thus addressed his troops) "you have been fighting for barren rocks, memorable for your valour, but useless to your country; but now your exploits equal those of the armies of Holland and the Rhine. You were utterly destitute, and you have supplied all your wants. You have gained battles without cannon, passed rivers without bridges, performed forced marches without shoes, bivouacked without strong liquors, and often without bread. None but republican phalanxes, soldiers of liberty, could have endured such things. Thanks for your perseverance! But, soldiers, you have done nothing—for there remains much to do. Milan is not yet ours. The ashes of the conquerors of Tarquin are still trampled by the assassins of Basseville."

The consummate genius of this brief campaign could not be disputed; and the modest language of the young general's despatches to the Directory, lent additional grace to his fame. At this time the name of Buonaparte was spotless: and the eyes of all Europe were fixed in admiration on his career.

CHAPTER V

The French cross the Po at Placenza—The Battle of Fombio—The Bridge of Lodi—Napoleon occupies Milan—Resigns, and resumes his command—Insurrection of Pavia—Military Executions—The French pass the Mincio at Borghetto—Beaulieu retreats behind the Adige—Mantua besieged—Peace with the King of the Two Sicilies—The Pope buys a Respite.

Piedmont being now in the hands of Buonaparte, the Austrian general concentrated his army behind the Po, with the purpose of preventing the invader from passing that great river and making his way to the capital of Lombardy.

Napoleon employed every device to make Beaulieu believe that he designed to attempt the passage of the Po at Valenza; and the Austrian, a man of routine, who had himself crossed the river at that point, was easily persuaded that these demonstrations were sincere. Meanwhile his crafty antagonist executed a march of incredible celerity upon Placenza, fifty miles lower down the river; and appeared there on the 7th of May, to the utter consternation of a couple of Austrian squadrons, who happened to be reconnoitring in that quarter. He had to convey his men across that great stream in the common ferry boats, and could never have succeeded had there been anything like an army to oppose him. Andreossi (afterwards so celebrated) was commander of the advanced guard; Lannes (who became in the sequel Marshal Duke of Montebello) was the first to throw himself ashore at the head of some grenadiers. The German hussars were driven rapidly from their position. Buonaparte himself has said that no operation in war is more critical than the passage of a great river; on this occasion the skill of his arrangements enabled him to pass one of the greatest in the world without the loss of a single man.

Beaulieu, as soon as he ascertained how he had been outwitted, advanced upon Placenza, in the hope of making the invader accept battle with the Po in his rear, and therefore under circumstances which must render any check in the highest degree disastrous. Buonaparte, in the meantime, had no intention to await the Austrian on ground so dangerous, and was marching rapidly towards Fomboi, where he knew he should have room to manœuvre. The advanced divisions of the hostile armies met at that village on the 8th of May. The Imperialists occupied the steeples and houses, and hoped to hold out until Beaulieu could bring up his main body. But the French charged so impetuously with the bayonet, that the Austrian, after seeing one-third of his men fall, was obliged to retreat, in great confusion, leaving all his cannon behind him, across the Adda; a large river which, descending from the Tyrolese mountains, joins the Po at Pizzighitone—and thus forms the immediate defence of the better part of the Milanese against any enemy advancing from Piedmont. Behind this river Beaulieu now concentrated his army, establishing strong guards at every ford and bridge, and especially at Lodi, where as he guessed (for once rightly) the French general designed to force his passage.

The wooden bridge of Lodi formed the scene of one of the most celebrated actions of the war; and will ever be peculiarly mixed up with the name of Buonaparte himself. It was a great neglect in Beaulieu to leave it standing when he removed his headquarters to the east bank of the Adda: his outposts were driven rapidly through the old struggling town of Lodi on the 10th; and the French sheltering themselves behind the walls and houses, lay ready to attempt the passage of the bridge. Beaulieu had placed a battery of thirty cannon so as to sweep it completely; and the enterprise of storming it in the face of this artillery, and the whole army drawn up behind, is one of the most daring on record.

Buonaparte's first care was to place as many guns as he could get in order in direct opposition to this Austrian battery. A furious cannonade on his side of the river also now commenced. The General himself appeared in the midst of the fire, pointing with his own hand two guns in such a manner as to cut off the Austrians from the only path by which they could have advanced to undermine the bridge; and it was on this occasion that the soldiery, delighted with his dauntless exposure of his person, conferred on him his honorary nickname of The Little Corporal. In the meantime he had sent General Beaumont and the cavalry to attempt the passage of the river by a distant ford (which they had much difficulty in effecting), and awaited with anxiety the moment when they should appear on the enemy's flank. When that took place, Beaulieu's line, of course, showed some confusion, and Napoleon instantly gave the word. A column of grenadiers, whom he had kept ready drawn up close to the bridge, but under shelter of the houses, were in a moment wheeled to the left, and their leading files placed upon the bridge. They rushed on, shouting Vive la Republique! but the storm of grape-shot for a moment checked them. Buonaparte, Lannes, Berthier, and Lallemagne, hurried to the front, and rallied and cheered the men. The column dashed across the bridge in despite of the tempest of fire that thinned them. The brave Lannes was the first who reached the other side, Napoleon himself the second. The Austrian artillerymen were bayoneted at their guns, before the other troops, whom Beaulieu had removed too far back, in his anxiety to avoid the French battery, could come to their assistance. Beaumont pressing gallantly with his horse upon the flank, and Napoleon's infantry forming rapidly as they passed the bridge, and charging on the instant, the Austrian line became involved in inextricable confusion, broke up, and fled. The slaughter on their side was great; on the French there fell only 200 men. With such rapidity, and consequently with so little loss, did Buonaparte execute this dazzling adventure—"the terrible passage," as he himself called it, "of the bridge of Lodi."

It was indeed, terrible to the enemy. It deprived them of another excellent line of defence, and blew up the enthusiasm of the French soldiery to a pitch of irresistible daring. Beaulieu, nevertheless, contrived to withdraw his troops in much better style than Buonaparte had anticipated. He gathered the scattered fragments of his force together, and soon threw the line of the Mincio, another tributary of the Po, between himself and his enemy. The great object, however, had been attained: the Austrian general escaped, and might yet defend Mantua, but no obstacle remained between the victorious invader and the rich and noble capital of Lombardy. The garrison of Pizzighitone, seeing themselves effectually cut off from the Austrian army, capitulated. The French cavalry pursued Beaulieu as far as Cremona, which town they seized; and Napoleon himself prepared to march at once upon Milan.

It was after one of these affairs that an old Hungarian officer was brought prisoner to Buonaparte, who entered into conversation with him, and among other matters questioned him "what he thought of the state of the war?" "Nothing," replied the old gentleman, who did not know he was addressing the general-in-chief,—"nothing can be worse. Here is a young man who knows absolutely nothing of the rules of war; to-day he is in our rear, to-morrow on our flank, next day again in our front. Such violations of the principles of the art of war are intolerable!"

The Archduke, who governed in Lombardy for the Emperor, had made many a long prayer and procession; but the saints appeared to take no compassion on him, and he now withdrew from the capital. A revolutionary party had always existed there, as indeed in every part of the Austrian dominions beyond the Alps; and the tricolor cockade, the emblem of France, was now mounted by multitudes of the inhabitants. The municipality hastened to invite the conqueror to appear among them as their friend and protector; and on the 14th of May, four days after Lodi, Napoleon accordingly entered, in all the splendour of a military triumph, the venerable and opulent city of the old Lombard kings.

He was not, however, to be flattered into the conduct, as to serious matters, of a friendly general. He levied immediately a heavy contribution (eight hundred thousand pounds sterling) at Milan,—taking possession, besides, of twenty of the finest pictures in the Ambrosian gallery.

The conqueror now paused to look about and behind him; and proceeded still farther to replenish his chest by exactions, for which no justification can be adduced from the ordinary rules of international law. With Sardinia he had already reckoned; of the Austrian capital in Italy he had possession; there was only one more of the Italian governments (Naples) with which the French Republic was actually at war; although, indeed, he had never concealed his intention of revenging the fate of Basseville on the court of Rome. The other powers of Italy were, at worst, neutrals; with Tuscany and Venice, France had friendly relations. But Napoleon knew or believed, that all the Italian governments, without exception, considered the French invasion of Italy as a common calamity; the personal wishes of most of the minor princes (nearly connected as these were, by blood or alliance, with the imperial house of Austria) he, not unreasonably, concluded were strongly against his own success in this great enterprise. Such were his pretences—more or less feasible; the temptation was, in fact, great; and he resolved to consider and treat whatever had not been with him as if it had been against him. The weak but wealthy princes of Parma and Modena, and others of the same order, were forthwith compelled to purchase his clemency not less dearly than if they had been in arms. Besides money, of which he made them disburse large sums, he demanded from each a tribute of pictures and statues, to be selected at the discretion of Citizen Monge and other French connoisseurs, who now attended his march for such purposes.

In modern warfare the works of art had hitherto been considered as a species of property entitled in all cases to be held sacred; and Buonaparte's violent and rapacious infraction of this rule now excited a mighty clamour throughout Europe. Whether the new system originated with himself, or in the commands of the Directory, is doubtful. But from this time the formation of a great national gallery of pictures and statues at Paris was considered as an object of the first importance; and every victorious general was expected to bring trophies of this kind in his train. Whether the fine arts themselves are likely to be improved in consequence of the accumulation in any one place of such vast treasures as the Louvre were long exhibited, there has been, and will no doubt continue to be, much controversy. It is certain that the arts of France derived no solid advantage from Napoleon's museum. The collection was a mighty heap of incense for the benefit of the national vanity; and the hand which brought it together was preparing the means of inflicting on that vanity one of the most intolerable of wounds, in its ultimate dispersion.

The Duke of Modena would fain have redeemed the famous St. Jerome, of Correggio, at the price of £80,000; and Buonaparte's lieutenants urged him to accept the money. "No," said he, "the duke's two millions of francs would soon be spent; but his Correggio will remain for ages to adorn Paris, and inspire the arts of France." The prophecy was not inspired. Of one thing there can be no doubt; namely, that the abstraction of these precious monuments of art from the Italian collections was deeply and permanently resented by the Italian people. This sacrilege, as those enthusiastic and intelligent lovers of all the elegant arts considered it, turned back many a half-made convert from the principles of the French Revolution.

Buonaparte remained but five days in Milan; the citadel of that place still held out against him; but he left a detachment to blockade it, and proceeded himself in pursuit of Beaulieu. The Austrian had now planted the remains of his army behind the Mincio, having his left on the great and strong city of Mantua, which has been termed "the citadel of Italy," and his right at Peschiera a Venetian fortress, of which he took possession in spite of the remonstrances of the Doge. Peschiera stands where the Mincio flows out of "its parent lake," the Lago di Guarda. That great body of waters, stretching many miles backwards towards the Tyrolese Alps, at once extended the line of defence, and kept the communication open with Vienna. The Austrian veteran occupied one of the strongest positions that it is possible to imagine. The invader hastened once more to dislodge him.

The French Directory, meanwhile, had begun to entertain certain not unnatural suspicions as to the ultimate designs of their young general, whose success and fame had already reached so astonishing a height. They determined to check, if they could, the career of an ambition which they apprehended might outgrow their control. Buonaparte was ordered to take half his army, and lead it against the Pope and the King of Naples, and leave the other half to terminate the contest with Beaulieu, under the orders of Kellerman. But he acted on this occasion with the decision which these Directors in vain desired to emulate. He answered by resigning his command. "One half of the army of Italy," said he, "cannot suffice to finish the matter with the Austrian. It is only by keeping my force entire that I have been able to gain so many battles and to be now in Milan. You had better have one bad general than two good ones." The Directory durst not persist in displacing the chief whose name was considered as the pledge of victory. Napoleon resumed the undivided command, to which now, for the last time, his right had been questioned.

Another unlooked-for occurrence delayed, for a few days longer, the march upon Mantua. The heavy exactions of the French, and even more perhaps the wanton contempt with which they treated the churches and the clergy, had produced or fostered the indignation of a large part of the population throughout Lombardy. Reports of new Austrian levies being poured down the passes of the Tyrol were spread and believed. Popular insurrections against the conqueror took place in various districts: at least 30,000 were in arms. At Pavia the insurgents were entirely triumphant; they had seized the town, and compelled the French garrison to surrender.

This flame, had it been suffered to spread, threatened immeasurable evil to the French cause. Lannes instantly marched to Benasco, stormed the place, plundered and burnt it, and put the inhabitants to the sword without mercy. The general in person appeared before Pavia; blew the gates open; easily scattered the townspeople; and caused the leaders to be executed, as if they had committed a crime in endeavouring to rescue their country from the arm of a foreign invader. Everywhere the same ferocious system was acted on. The insurgent commanders were tried by courts-martial, and shot without ceremony. At Lugo, where a French squadron of horse had been gallantly and disastrously defeated, the whole of the male inhabitants were massacred. These bloody examples quelled the insurrections; but they fixed the first dark and indelible stain on the name of Napoleon Buonaparte.

The spirit of the Austrian and Catholic parties in Lombardy thus crushed, the French advanced on the Mincio. The general made such disposition of his troops, that Beaulieu doubted not he meant to pass that river, if he could, at Peschiera. Meantime he had been preparing to repeat the scene of Placenza;—and actually, on the 30th of May, forced the passage of the Mincio, not at Peschiera, but further down at Borghetto. The Austrian garrison at Borghetto in vain destroyed one arch of the bridge. Buonaparte supplied the breach with planks; and his men, flushed with so many victories, charged with a fury not to be resisted. Beaulieu was obliged to abandon the Mincio, as he had before the Adda and the Po, and to take up the new line of the Adige.

Meanwhile an occurrence, which may be called accidental, had nearly done more than repay the Austrians for all their reverses. The left of their line, stationed still further down the Mincio,—at Puzzuolo, no sooner learned from the cannonade that the French were at Borghetto, than they hastened to ascend the stream, with the view of assisting the defence of their friends. They came too late for this; the commander at Borghetto had retreated before they arrived. They, however, came unexpectedly; and, such was the chance, reached Valleggio after the French army had pursued the Austrians through it and onwards—and, at the moment when Buonaparte and a few friends, considering the work of the day to be over, and this village as altogether in the rear of both armies, were about to sit down to dinner in security. Sebetendorff, who commanded the Puzzuolo division, came rapidly, little guessing what a prize was near him, into the village. The French general's attendants had barely time to shut the gates of the inn, and alarm their chief by the cry "To arms." Buonaparte threw himself on horseback, and galloping out by a back passage, effected the narrowest of escapes from the most urgent of dangers. Sebetendorff was soon assaulted by a French column, and retreated, after Beaulieu's example, on the line of the Adige. Buonaparte, profiting by the perilous adventure of Valleggio, instituted a small corps of picked men, called Guides, to watch continually over his personal safety. Such was the germ from which sprung the famous Imperial Guard of Napoleon.

The Austrian had, in effect, abandoned for the time the open country of Italy. He now lay on the frontier, between the vast tract of rich provinces which Napoleon had conquered, and the Tyrol. The citadel of Milan, indeed, still held out; but the force there was not great, and, cooped up on every side, could not be expected to resist much longer. Mantua, which possessed prodigious natural advantages, and into which the retreating general had flung a garrison of full 15,000 men, was, in truth, the last and only Italian possession of the imperial crown, which, as it seemed, there might still be a possibility of saving. Beaulieu anxiously waited the approach of new troops from Germany, to attempt the relief of this great city; and his antagonist, eager to anticipate the efforts of the imperial government, sat down immediately before it.

Mantua lies on an island, being cut off on all sides from the main land by the branches of the Mincio, and approachable only by five narrow causeways, of which three were defended by strong and regular fortresses or entrenched camps, the other two by gates, drawbridges, and batteries. Situated amidst stagnant waters and morasses, its air is pestilential, especially to strangers. The garrison were prepared to maintain the position with their usual bravery; and it remained to be seen whether the French general possessed any new system of attack, capable of abridging the usual operations of the siege, as effectually as he had already done by those of the march and the battle. His commencement was alarming: of the five causeways, by sudden and overwhelming assaults, he obtained four; and the garrison were cut off from the main land, except only at the fifth causeway, the strongest of them all, named, from a palace near it, La Favorita. It seemed necessary, however, in order that this blockade might be complete, that the Venetian territory, lying immediately beyond Mantua, should be occupied by the French. The power of this ancient government was no longer such as to inspire much respect, and Buonaparte resolved that the claim of neutrality should form no obstacle to his measures. The French Directory had already most ungenerously trampled on the dignity of Venice, by demanding that she should no longer afford a retreat to the illustrious exile, the Count of Provence, eldest surviving brother of Louis XVI.[9] That unfortunate prince had, accordingly, though most reluctantly, been desired to quit the Venetian states, and had already passed to the Rhine, where his gallant cousin, the Prince of Condé, had long been at the head of a small and devoted army composed of the expatriated gentry of France. Buonaparte, however, chose to treat the reluctance with which Venice had been driven to this violation of her hospitality, as a new injury to his government: he argued that a power who had harboured in friendship, and unwillingly expelled, the Pretender to the French monarchy, had lost all title to forbearance on the part of the Revolutionary forces. This was a gross and ungenerous insult, and it was a gratuitous one; for he had a far better argument behind. The imperial general had, as we have seen, neglected the reclamations of the Doge, when it suited his purpose to occupy Peschiera. "You are too weak," said Buonaparte, when the Venetian envoy reached his headquarters, "to enforce neutrality on hostile nations such as France and Austria. Beaulieu did not respect your territory when his interest bade him violate it; nor shall I hesitate to occupy whatever falls within the line of the Adige." In effect, garrisons were placed forthwith in Verona, and all the strong places of that domain. The tricolor flag now waved at the mouth of the Tyrolese passes; and Napoleon, leaving Serrurier to blockade Mantua, returned to Milan, where he had important business to arrange.

The King of Naples, utterly confounded by the successes of the French, was now anxious to procure peace, almost on whatever terms, with the apparently irresistible Republic. Nor did it, for the moment, suit Buonaparte's views to contemn his advances. A peace with this prince would withdraw some valuable divisions from the army of Beaulieu; and the distance of the Neapolitan territory was such, that the French had no means of carrying the war thither with advantage, so long as Austria retained the power of sending new forces into Italy by the way of the Tyrol. He concluded an armistice accordingly, which was soon followed by a formal peace, with the King of the Two Sicilies; and the Neapolitan troops, who had recently behaved with eminent gallantry, abandoning the Austrian general, began their march to the south of Italy.

This transaction placed another of Napoleon's destined victims entirely within his grasp. With no friend behind him, the Pope saw himself at the mercy of the invader; and in terror prepared to submit. Buonaparte occupied immediately his legations of Bologna and Ferrara, making prisoners in the latter of these towns four hundred of the papal troops, and a cardinal, under whose orders they were. The churchman militant was dismissed on parole; but, being recalled to headquarters, answered that his master, the Pope, had given him a dispensation to break his promise. This exercise of the old dispensing power excited the merriment of the conquerors. The Vatican, meanwhile, perceived that no time was to be lost. The Spanish resident at the Roman court was despatched to Milan; and the terms on which the holy father was to obtain a brief respite were at length arranged. Buonaparte demanded and obtained a million sterling, a hundred of the finest pictures and statues in the papal gallery, a large supply of military stores, and the cession of Ancona, Ferrara, and Bologna, with their respective domains.

He next turned his attention to the grand duke of Tuscany,—a prince who had not only not taken any part in the war against the Republic, but had been the very first of the European rulers to recognise its establishment, and had kept on terms of friendship with all its successive authorities. Buonaparte, however, in pursuance of his system, resolved that the brother of the emperor should pay for his presumed inclinations. For the present, the Florentine museum and the grand duke's treasury were spared; but Leghorn, the seaport of Tuscany and great feeder of its wealth, was seized without ceremony; the English goods in that town were confiscated to the ruin of the merchants; and a great number of English vessels in the harbour made a narrow escape. The grand duke, in place of resenting these injuries, was obliged to receive Buonaparte with all the appearances of cordiality at Florence; and the spoiler repaid his courtesy by telling him, rubbing his hands with glee, during the princely entertainment provided for him, "I have just received letters from Milan; the citadel has fallen;—your brother has no longer a foot of land in Lombardy." "It is a sad case," said Napoleon himself long afterwards—speaking of these scenes of exaction and insolence,—"it is a sad case when the dwarf comes into the embrace of the giant; he is like enough to be suffocated—but 'tis the giant's nature to squeeze hard."

In the meantime the general did not neglect the great and darling plan of the French government, of thoroughly revolutionising the North of Italy, and establishing there a group of Republics modelled after their own likeness, and prepared to act as subservient allies in their mighty contest with the European monarchies. The peculiar circumstances of Northern Italy, as a land of ancient fame and high spirit, long split into fragments, and ruled, for the most part, by governors of German origin, presented many facilities for the realisation of this design; and Buonaparte was urged constantly by his government at Paris, and by a powerful party in Lombardy, to hasten its execution. He, however, had by this time learned to think of many idols of the Directory with about as little reverence as they bestowed on the shrines of Catholicism; in his opinion more was to be gained by temporising with both the governments and the people of Italy, than by any hasty measures of the kind recommended. He saw well the deep disgust which his exactions had excited. "You cannot," said he, "at one and the same moment rob people and persuade them you are their friends." He fancied, moreover, that the Pope and other nerveless rulers of the land might be converted into at least as convenient ministers of French exaction, as any new establishments he could raise in their room. Finally he perceived that whenever the Directory were to arrange seriously the terms of a settlement with the great monarchy of Austria, their best method would be to restore Lombardy, and thereby purchase the continued possession of the more conveniently situated territories of Belgium and the Luxembourg. The general, therefore, temporised; content, in the meantime, with draining the exchequers of the governments, and cajoling from day to day the population. The Directory were with difficulty persuaded to let him follow his own course; but he now despised their remonstrances, and they had been taught effectually to dread his strength.

Napoleon, it is clear enough, had no intention to grant these Italian governments anything but a respite; nor is it to be doubted that their disposition to take part with Austria remained as it had been before they entered into these treaties with France. That the purpose of deceit was mutual, affords, however, no plea of justification—least of all to the stronger party. "It will be well," says Sir Walter Scott, "with the world, when falsehood and finesse are as thoroughly exploded in international communication as they are among individuals in civilised countries."

CHAPTER VI

Wurmser supersedes Beaulieu—Jourdan and Moreau march into Germany, and are forced to retreat again—The Austrians advance from the Tyrol—Battle of Lonato—Escape of Napoleon—Battle near Castiglione—Wurmser retreats on Trent, and is recruited—Battle of Roveredo—Battle of Primolano—Battle of Bassano—Battle of St. George—Wurmser shut up in Mantua.

The general was now recalled to the war. The cabinet of Vienna, apt to be slow, but sure to be persevering, had at last resolved upon sending efficient aid to the Italian frontier. Beulieu had been too often unfortunate to be trusted longer: Wurmser, who enjoyed a reputation of the highest class, was sent to replace him: 300,000 men were drafted from the armies on the Rhine to accompany the new general; and he carried orders to strengthen himself further, on his march, by whatever recruits he could raise among the warlike and loyal population of the Tyrol.

The consequences of thus weakening the Austrian force on the Rhine were, for the moment, on that scene of the contest, inauspicious. The French, in two separate bodies, forced the passage of the Rhine—under Jourdan and Moreau; before whom the imperial generals, Wartensleben and the Archduke Charles, were compelled to retire. But the skill of the Archduke ere long enabled him to effect a junction with the columns of Wartensleben; and thus to fall upon Jourdan with a great superiority of numbers, and give him a signal defeat. The loss of the French in the field was great, and the bitter hostility of the German peasantry made their retreat a bloody one. Moreau, on the other hand, learning how Jourdan was discomfited, found himself compelled to give up the plan of pursuing his march further into Germany, and executed that famous retreat through the Black Forest which has made his name as splendid as any victory in the field could have done. But this reverse, however alleviated by the honours of Moreau's achievement, was attended with appearances of the most perilous kind. The genius of Carnot had devised a great scheme of operations, of which one half was thus at once cut short. He had meant Moreau and Jourdan, coalescing beyond the Rhine, to march upon the Tyrol; while Buonaparte should advance from the scene of his Italian conquests, join his brother generals on that frontier, and then march in union with them to dictate a peace before the gates of Vienna. All hope of this junction of forces was now at an end for this campaign. The French saw themselves compelled to resume the defensive on the western frontier of Germany; and the army of Italy had to await the overwhelming war which seemed ready to pour down upon Lombardy from the passes of the Tyrol.

Wurmser, when he fixed his headquarters at Trent, mustered in all 80,000; while Buonaparte had but 30,000, to hold a wide country, in which abhorrence of the French cause was now prevalent, to keep up the blockade of Mantua, and to oppose this fearful odds of numbers in the field. He was now, moreover, to act on the defensive, while his adversary assumed the more inspiriting character of invader. He awaited the result with calmness.

Wurmser might have learned from the successes of Buonaparte the advantages of compact movement; yet he was unwise enough to divide his great force into three separate columns, and to place one of these upon a line of march which entirely separated it from the support of the others. He himself, with his centre, came down on the left bank of the Lago di Guarda, with Mantua before him as his mark: his left wing, under Melas, was to descend the Adige, and drive the French from Verona; while the right wing, under Quasdonowich, were ordered to keep down the valley of the Chiese, in the direction of Brescia, and so to cut off the retreat of Buonaparte upon the Milanese;—in other words, to interpose the waters of the Lago di Guarda between themselves and the march of their friends—a blunder not likely to escape the eagle eye of Napoleon.

He immediately determined to march against Quasdonowich, and fight him where he could not be supported by the other two columns. This could not be done without abandoning for the time the blockade of Mantua; but it was not for Buonaparte to hesitate about purchasing a great ultimate advantage by a present sacrifice, however disagreeable. The guns were buried in the trenches during the night of the 31st July, and the French quitted the place with a precipitation which the advancing Austrians considered as the result of terror.

Napoleon meanwhile rushed against Quasdonowich, who had already come near the bottom of the Lake of Guarda. At Salo, close by the lake, and, further from it, at Lonato, two divisions of the Austrian column were attacked and overwhelmed. Augereau and Massena, leaving merely rear-guards at Borghetto and Peschiera, now marched also upon Brescia. The whole force of Quasdonowich must inevitably have been ruined by these combinations, had he stood his ground; but by this time the celerity of Napoleon had overawed him, and he was already in full retreat upon his old quarters in the Tyrol. Augereau and Massena, therefore, countermarched their columns, and returned towards the Mincio. They found that Wurmser had forced their rear-guards from their posts: that of Massena, under Pigeon, had retired in good order to Lonato; that of Augereau, under Vallette, had retreated in confusion, abandoning Castiglione to the Austrians.

Flushed with these successes, old Wurmser now resolved to throw his whole force upon the French, and resume at the point of the bayonet his communication with the scattered column of Quasdonowich. He was so fortunate as to defeat the gallant Pigeon at Lonato, and to occupy that town. But this great new success was fatal to him. In the exultation of victory he extended his line too much towards the right; and this over-anxiety to open the communication with Quasdonowich had the effect of so weakening his centre, that Massena, boldly and skilfully seizing the opportunity, poured two strong columns on Lonato, and regained the position; whereon the Austrian, perceiving that his army was cut in two, was thrown into utter confusion. Some of his troops, marching to the right, were met by those of the French, who had already defeated Quasdonowich in that quarter, and obliged to surrender: the most retreated in great disorder. At Castiglione alone a brave stand was made. But Augereau, burning to wipe out the disgrace of Vallette,[10] forced the position, though at a severe loss. Such was the battle of Lonato. Thenceforth nothing could surpass the discomfiture and disarray of the Austrians. They fled in all directions upon the Mincio, where Wurmser himself, meanwhile, had been employed in revictualling Mantua.

A mere accident had once more almost saved the Imperialist. One of the many defeated divisions of the army, wandering about in anxiety to find some means of reaching the Mincio, came suddenly on Lonato, the scene of the late battle, at a moment when Napoleon was there with only his staff and guards about him. He knew not that any considerable body of the enemy remained together in the neighbourhood; and, but for his presence of mind, must have been their prisoner. The Austrian had not the skill to profit by what fortune threw in his way; the other was able to turn even a blunder into an advantage. The officer sent to demand the surrender of the town was brought blindfolded, as is the custom, to his headquarters; Buonaparte, by a secret sign, caused his whole staff to draw up around him, and when the bandage was removed from the messenger's eyes, saluted him thus: "What means this insolence? Do you beard the French general in the middle of his army?" The German recognised the person of Napoleon, and retreated stammering and blushing. He assured his commander that Lonato was occupied by the French in numbers that made resistance impossible. Four thousand men laid down their arms; and then discovered that, if they had used them, nothing could have prevented Napoleon from being their prize.

Wurmser collected together the whole of his remaining force, and advanced to meet the conqueror. He, meanwhile, had himself determined on the assault, and was hastening to the encounter. They met between Lonato and Castiglione. Wurmser was totally defeated, and narrowly escaped being a prisoner; nor did he without great difficulty regain Trent and Roveredo, those frontier positions from which his noble army had so recently descended with all the confidence of conquerors. In this disastrous campaign the Austrians lost 40,000: Buonaparte probably understated his own loss at 7000. During the seven days which the campaign occupied he never took off his boots, nor slept except by starts. The exertions which so rapidly achieved this signal triumph were such as to demand some repose; yet Napoleon did not pause until he saw Mantua once more completely invested. The reinforcement and revictualling of that garrison were all that Wurmser could show, in requital of his lost artillery, stores, and 40,000 men.

During this brief campaign the aversion with which the ecclesiastics of Italy regarded the French manifested itself in various quarters. At Pavia, Ferrara, and elsewhere, insurrections had broken out, and the spirit was spreading rapidly at the moment when the report of Napoleon's new victory came to re-awaken terror and paralyse revolt. The conqueror judged it best to accept for the present the resubmission, however forced, of a party too powerful to be put down by examples. The Cardinal Mattei, Archbishop of Ferrara, being brought into his presence, uttered the single word peccavi: the victor was contented with ordering him a penance of seven days' fasting and prayer in a monastery: but he had no intention to forget these occurrences whenever another day of reckoning with the Pope should come.

While he was occupied with restoring quiet in the country, Austria, ever constant in adversity, hastened to place 20,000 fresh troops under the orders of Wurmser; and the brave veteran, whose heart nothing could chill, prepared himself to make one effort more to relieve Mantua, and drive the French out of Lombardy. His army was now, as before, greatly the superior in numbers; and though the bearing of his troops was more modest, their gallantry remained unimpaired. Once more the old general divided his army; and once more he was destined to see it shattered in detail.

He marched from Trent towards Mantua, through the defiles of the Brenta, at the head of 30,000; leaving 20,000 under Davidowich at Roveredo, to cover the Tyrol. Buonaparte instantly detected the error of his opponent. He suffered him to advance unmolested as far as Bassano, and the moment he was there, and consequently completely separated from Davidowich and his rear, drew together a strong force, and darted on Roveredo, by marches such as seemed credible only after they had been accomplished.

The battle of Roveredo (Sept. 4) is one of Napoleon's most illustrious days. The enemy had a strongly entrenched camp in front of the town; and behind it, in case of misfortune, Calliano, with its castle seated on a precipice over the Adige, where that river flows between enormous rocks and mountains, appeared to offer an impregnable retreat. Nothing could withstand the ardour of the French. The Austrians, though they defended the entrenched camp with their usual obstinacy, were forced to give way by the impetuosity of Dubois and his hussars. Dubois fell, mortally wounded, in the moment of his glory: he waved his sabre, cheering his men onwards with his last breath. "I die," said he, "for the Republic;—only let me hear, ere life leaves me, that the victory is ours." The French horse, thus animated, pursued the Germans, who were driven, unable to rally, through and beyond the town. Even the gigantic defences of Calliano proved of no avail. Height after height was carried at the point of the bayonet; 7000 prisoners and fifteen cannon remained with the conquerors. The Austrians fled to Levisa, which guards one of the chief defiles of the Tyrolese Alps, and were there beaten again. Vaubois occupied this important position with the gallant division who had forced it. Massena fixed himself in Wurmser's late headquarters at Trent; and Napoleon, having thus totally cut off the field-marshal's communication with Germany, proceeded to issue proclamations calling on the inhabitants of the Tyrol to receive the French as friends, and seize the opportunity of freeing themselves for ever from the dominion of Austria. He put forth an edict declaring that the sovereignty of the district was henceforth in the French Republic, and inviting the people themselves to arrange, according to their pleasure, its interior government.

The French general made a grievous mistake when he supposed that the Tyrolese were divided in their attachment to the Imperial government, because he had found the Italian subjects of that crown to be so. The Tyrol, one of the most ancient of the Austrian possessions, had also been one of the best governed; the people enjoyed all the liberty they wished under a paternal administration. They received with scornful coldness the flattering exhortations of one in whom they saw only a cunning and rapacious enemy; and Buonaparte was soon satisfied that it would cost more time than was then at his disposal to republicanise those gallant mountaineers. They, in truth, began to arm themselves, and waited but the signal to rise everywhere upon the invaders.

Wurmser heard with dismay the utter ruin of Davidowich; and doubted not that Napoleon would now march onwards into Germany, and joining Jourdan and Moreau, whose advance he had heard of, and misguessed to have been successful, endeavour to realise the great scheme of Carnot—that of attacking Vienna itself. The old general saw no chance of converting what remained to him of his army to good purpose, but by abiding in Lombardy, where he thought he might easily excite the people in his emperor's favour, overwhelm the slender garrisons left by Buonaparte, and so cut off, at all events, the French retreat through Italy, in case they should meet with any disaster in the Tyrol or in Germany. Napoleon had intelligence which Wurmser wanted. Wurmser himself was his mark; and he returned from Trent to Primolano where the Imperialist's vanguard lay, by a forced march of not less than sixty miles performed in two days. The surprise with which this descent was received may be imagined. The Austrian van was destroyed in a twinkling. The French, pushing everything before them, halted that night at Cismone—where Napoleon was glad to have half a private soldier's ration of bread for his supper. Next day he reached Bassano where the aged Marshal once more expected the fatal rencounter. The battle of Bassano (Sept. 8) was a fatal repetition of those that had gone before it. Six thousand men laid down their arms. Quasdonowich, with one division of 4000, escaped to Friuli; while Wurmser himself, retreating to Vicenza, there collected with difficulty a remnant of 16,000 beaten and discomfited soldiers. His situation was most unhappy; his communication with Austria wholly cut off—his artillery and baggage all lost—the flower of his army no more. Nothing seemed to remain but to throw himself into Mantua, and there hold out to the last extremity, in the hope, however remote, of some succours from Vienna; and such was the resolution of this often outwitted but never dispirited veteran.

In order to execute his purpose, it was necessary to force a passage somewhere on the Adige; and the Austrian, especially as he had lost all his pontoons, would have had great difficulty in doing so, but for a mistake on the part of the French commander at Legnago, who, conceiving the attempt was to be made at Verona, marched to reinforce the corps stationed there, and thus left his proper position unguarded. Wurmser, taking advantage of this, passed with his army at Legnago, and after a series of bloody skirmishes, in which fortune divided her favours pretty equally, was at length enabled to throw himself into Mantua. Napoleon made another narrow escape, in one of these skirmishes, at Arcola. He was surrounded for a moment, and had just galloped off, when Wurmser coming up and learning that the prize was so near, gave particular directions to bring him in alive!

Buonaparte, after making himself master of some scattered corps which had not been successful in keeping up with Wurmser, re-appeared once more before Mantua. The battle of St. George—so called from one of the suburbs of the city—was fought on the 13th of September, and after prodigious slaughter, the French remained in possession of all the causeways; so that the blockade of the city and fortress was henceforth complete. The garrison, when Wurmser shut himself up, amounted to 26,000. Before October was far advanced the pestilential air of the place, and the scarcity and badness of provisions, had filled his hospitals, and left him hardly half the number in fighting condition. The misery of the besieged town was extreme; and if Austria meant to rescue Wurmser, there was no time to be lost.

CHAPTER VII

Affairs of Corsica—Alvinzi assumes the Command of the Austrians on the Italian frontier—The three Battles of Arcola—Retreat of Alvinzi—Battle of Rivoli—Battle of La Favorita—Surrender of Mantua—Victor marches on Ancona—Despair of the Pope—Treaty of Tollentino.

The French party in Corsica had not contemplated without pride and exultation the triumphs of their countryman. His seizure of Leghorn, by cutting off the supplies from England, greatly distressed the opposite party in the island, and an expedition of Corsican exiles, which he now despatched from Tuscany, was successful in finally reconquering the country. To Napoleon this acquisition was due; nor were the Directory insensible to its value. He, meanwhile, had heavier business on his hands.

The Austrian council well knew that Mantua was in excellent keeping; and being now relieved on the Rhenish frontier, by the failure of Jourdan and Moreau's attempts, were able to form once more a powerful armament on that of Italy. The supreme command was given to Marshal Alvinzi, a veteran of high reputation. He, having made extensive levies in Illyria, appeared at Friuli; while Davidowich, with the remnant of Quasdonowich's army, amply recruited among the bold peasantry of the Tyrol, and with fresh drafts from the Rhine, took ground above Trent. The marshal had in all 60,000 men under his orders. Buonaparte had received only twelve new battalions, to replace all the losses of those terrible campaigns, in which three imperial armies had already been annihilated. The enemy's superiority of numbers was once more such, that nothing but the most masterly combinations on the part of the French general could have prevented them from sweeping everything before them in the plains of Lombardy.

Buonaparte heard in the beginning of October that Alvinzi's columns were in motion: he had placed Vaubois to guard Trent, and Massena at Bassano to check the march of the field-marshal: but neither of these generals was able to hold his ground. The troops of Vaubois were driven from that position of Calliano, the strength of which has been already mentioned, under circumstances which Napoleon considered disgraceful to the character of the French soldiery. Massena avoided battle; but such was the overwhelming superiority of Alvinzi, that he was forced to abandon the position of Bassano. Napoleon himself hurried forward to sustain Massena; and a severe rencontre, in which either side claimed the victory, took place at Vicenza. The French, however, retreated, and Buonaparte fixed his headquarters at Verona. The whole country between the Brenta and the Adige was in the enemy's hands; while the still strong and determined garrison of Mantua in Napoleon's rear, rendering it indispensable for him to divide his forces, made his position eminently critical.

His first care was to visit the discomfited troops of Vaubois. "You have displeased me," said he, "you have suffered yourselves to be driven from positions where a handful of determined men might have bid an army defiance. You are no longer French soldiers! You belong not to the army of Italy." At these words, tears streamed down the rugged cheeks of the grenadiers. "Place us but once more in the van," cried they, "and you shall judge whether we do not belong to the army of Italy." The general dropped his angry tone; and in the rest of the campaign no troops more distinguished themselves than these.

Having thus revived the ardour of his soldiery, Buonaparte concentrated his columns on the right of the Adige, while Alvinzi took up a very strong position on the heights of Caldiero, on the left bank, nearly opposite to Verona. In pursuance of the same system which had already so often proved fatal to his opponents, it was the object of Buonaparte to assault Alvinzi, and scatter his forces, ere they could be joined by Davidowich. He lost no time, therefore, in attacking the heights of Caldiero; but in spite of all that Massena, who headed the charge, could do, the Austrians, strong in numbers and in position, repelled the assailants with great carnage. A terrible tempest prevailed during the action, and Napoleon, in his despatches, endeavoured to shift the blame to the elements.

The country behind Caldiero lying open to Davidowich, it became necessary to resort to other means of assault, or permit the dreaded junction to occur. The genius of Buonaparte suggested to him on this occasion a movement altogether unexpected. During the night, leaving 1,500 men under Kilmaine to guard Verona, he marched for some space rearwards, as if he had meant to retreat on Mantua, which the failure of his recent assault rendered not unlikely. But his columns were ere long wheeled again towards the Adige: and finding a bridge ready prepared, were at once placed on the same side of the river with the enemy,—but in the rear altogether of his position, amidst those wide-spreading morasses which cover the country about Arcola. This daring movement was devised to place Napoleon between Alvinzi and Davidowich; but the unsafe nature of the ground, and the narrowness of the dykes, by which alone he could advance on Arcola, rendered victory difficult, and reverse most hazardous. He divided his men into three columns, and charged at daybreak (Nov. 15) by the three dykes which conduct to Arcola. The Austrian, not suspecting that the main body of the French had evacuated Verona, treated this at first as an affair of light troops; but as day advanced the truth became apparent, and these narrow passages were defended with the most determined gallantry. Augereau headed the first column that reached the bridge of Arcola, and was there, after a desperate effort, driven back with great loss. Buonaparte, perceiving the necessity of carrying the point ere Alvinzi could arrive, now threw himself on the bridge, and seizing a standard, urged his grenadiers once more to the charge.

The fire was tremendous: once more the French gave way. Napoleon himself, lost in the tumult, was borne backwards, forced over the dyke, and had nearly been smothered in the morass, while some of the advancing Austrians were already between him and his baffled column. His imminent danger was observed: the soldiers caught the alarm, and rushing forwards, with the cry, "Save the general," overthrew the Germans with irresistible violence, plucked Napoleon from the bog, and carried the bridge. This was the first battle of Arcola.

This movement revived in the Austrian lines their terror for the name of Buonaparte; and Alvinzi saw that no time was to be lost if he meant to preserve his communication with Davidowich. He abandoned Caldiero, and gaining the open country behind Arcola, robbed his enemy for the moment of the advantage which his skill had gained. Napoleon, perceiving that Arcola was no longer in the rear of his enemy but in his front, and fearful lest Vaubois might be overwhelmed by Davidowich, while Alvinzi remained thus between him and the Brenta, evacuated Arcola, and retreated to Ronco.

Next morning, having ascertained that Davidowich had not been engaged with Vaubois, Napoleon once more advanced upon Arcola. The place was once more defended bravely, and once more it was carried. But this second battle of Arcola proved no more decisive than the first; for Alvinzi still contrived to maintain his main force unbroken in the difficult country behind; and Buonaparte again retreated to Ronco.

The third day was decisive. On this occasion also he carried Arcola; and, by two stratagems, was enabled to make his victory effectual. An ambuscade, planted among some willows, suddenly opened fire on a column of Croats, threw them into confusion, and, rushing from the concealment, crushed them down into the opposite bog, where most of them died. Napoleon was anxious to follow up this success by charging the Austrian main body on the firm ground behind the marshes. But it was no easy matter to reach them there. He had, in various quarters, portable bridges ready for crossing the ditches and canals; but the enemy stood in good order, and three days' hard fighting had nearly exhausted his own men. In one of his conversations at St. Helena, he thus told the sequel. "At Arcola I gained the battle with twenty-five horsemen. I perceived the critical moment of lassitude in either army—when the oldest and bravest would have been glad to be in their tents. All my men had been engaged. Three times I had been obliged to re-establish the battle. There remained to me but some twenty-five Guides. I sent them round on the flank of the enemy with three trumpets, bidding them blow loud and charge furiously. Here is the French cavalry, was the cry; and they took to flight."... The Austrians doubted not that Murat and all the horse had forced a way through the bogs; and at that moment Buonaparte commanding a general assault in front, the confusion became hopeless. Alvinzi retreated finally, though in decent order, upon Montebello.

It was at Arcola that Muiron, who ever since the storming of Little Gibraltar had lived on terms of brotherlike intimacy with Napoleon, seeing a bomb about to explode threw himself between it and his general, and thus saved his life at the cost of his own. Napoleon, to the end of his life, remembered and regretted this heroic friend.

In these three days Buonaparte lost 8000 men: the slaughter among his opponents must have been terrible. Davidowich, in never coming up to join Alvinzi after his success over Vaubois, and Wurmser, in remaining quiet at Mantua, when by advancing with his garrison he might have incommoded the French rear, were guilty of grievous misjudgment or indecision. Once more the rapid combinations of Napoleon had rendered all the efforts of the Austrian cabinet abortive. For two months after the last day of Arcola, he remained the undisturbed master of Lombardy. All that his enemy could show, in set-off for the slaughter and discomfiture of Alvinzi's campaign, was that they retained possession of Bassano and Trent, thus interrupting Buonaparte's access to the Tyrol and Germany. This advantage was not trivial; but it had been dearly bought.

A fourth army had been baffled; but the resolution of the Imperial Court was indomitable, and new levies were diligently forwarded to reinforce Alvinzi. Once more (January 7, 1797) the Marshal found himself at the head of 60,000: once more his superiority over Napoleon's muster-roll was enormous; and once more he descended from the mountains with the hope of relieving Wurmser and reconquering Lombardy. The fifth act of the tragedy was yet to be performed.

We may here pause to notice some civil events of importance which occurred ere Alvinzi made his final descent. The success of the French naturally gave new vigour to the Italian party, who, chiefly in the large towns, were hostile to Austria, and desirous to settle their own government on the republican model. Napoleon had by this time come to be anything but a Jacobin in his political sentiments: his habits of command; his experience of the narrow and ignorant management of the Directory; his personal intercourse with the ministers of sovereign powers; his sense daily strengthened by events, that whatever good was done in Italy proceeded from his own skill and the devotion of his army,—all these circumstances conspired to make him respect himself and contemn the government, almost in despite of which he had conquered kingdoms for France. He therefore regarded now with little sympathy the aspirations after republican organisation which he had himself originally stimulated among the northern Italians. He knew, however, that the Directory had, by absurd and extravagant demands, provoked the Pope to break off the treaty of Bologna, and to raise his army to the number of 40,000,—that Naples had every disposition to back his Holiness with 30,000 soldiers, provided any reverse should befall the French in Lombardy,—and, finally, that Alvinzi was rapidly preparing for another march, with numbers infinitely superior to what he could himself extort from the government of Paris;[11] and considering these circumstances, he felt himself compelled to seek strength by gratifying his Italian friends. Two Republics accordingly were organised; the Cispadane and the Transpadane—handmaids rather than sisters of the great French democracy. These events took place during the period of military inaction which followed the victories of Arcola. The new Republics hastened to repay Napoleon's favour by raising troops, and placed at his disposal a force which he considered as sufficient to keep the Papal army in check during the expected renewal of Alvinzi's efforts.

Buonaparte at this period practised every art to make himself popular with the Italians; nor was it of little moment that they in fact regarded him more as their own countryman than a Frenchman; that their beautiful language was his mother tongue; that he knew their manners and their literature, and even in his conquering rapacity displayed his esteem for their arts. He was wise enough too, on farther familiarity with the state of the country, to drop that tone of hostility which he had at first adopted towards the priesthood; and to cultivate the most influential members of that powerful order by attentions which the Directory heard of with wonder, and would have heard of, had he been any other than Napoleon, with scorn and contempt.[12] Wherever he could have personal intercourse with the priesthood, he seems to have considerably softened their spleen. Meanwhile the clergy beyond the Apennines, and the nobility of Romagna, were combining all their efforts to rouse the population against him; and the Pope, pushed, as we have seen, to despair by the French Directory, had no reason to complain that his secular vassals heard such appeals with indifference.

Alvinzi's preparations were in the meantime rapidly advancing. The enthusiasm of the Austrian gentry was effectually stirred by the apprehension of seeing the conqueror of Italy under the walls of Vienna, and volunteer corps were formed everywhere and marched upon the frontier. The gallant peasantry of the Tyrol had already displayed their zeal; nor did the previous reverses of Alvinzi prevent them from once more crowding to his standard. Napoleon proclaimed that every Tyrolese caught in arms should be shot as a brigand. Alvinzi replied, that for every murdered peasant he would hang a French prisoner of war: Buonaparte rejoined, that the first execution of this threat would be instantly followed by the gibbeting of Alvinzi's own nephew, who was in his hands. These ferocious threats were laid aside, when time had been given for reflection; and either general prepared to carry on the war according to the old rules, which are at least sufficiently severe.

Alvinzi sent a peasant across the country to find his way if possible into the beleaguered city of Mantua, and give Wurmser notice that he was once more ready to attempt his relief. The veteran was commanded to make what diversion he could in favour of the approaching army; and if things came to the worst, to fight his way out of Mantua, retire on Romagna, and put himself at the head of the Papal forces. The spy who carried these tidings was intercepted, and dragged into the presence of Napoleon. The terrified man confessed that he had swallowed the ball of wax in which the despatch was wrapped. His stomach was compelled to surrender its contents; and Buonaparte prepared to meet his enemy. Leaving Serrurier to keep up the blockade of Mantua, he hastened to resume his central position at Verona, from which he could, according to circumstances, march with convenience on whatever line the Austrian main body might choose for their advance.

The Imperialists, as if determined to profit by no lesson, once more descended from the Tyrol upon two different lines of march; Alvinzi himself choosing that of the Upper Adige; while Provera headed a second army, with orders to follow the Brenta, and then, striking across to the Lower Adige, join the marshal before the walls of Mantua. Could they have combined their forces there, and delivered Wurmser, there was hardly a doubt that the French must retreat before so vast an army as would then have faced them. But Napoleon was destined once more to dissipate all these victorious dreams. He had posted Joubert at Rivoli, to dispute that important position, should the campaign open with an attempt to force it by Alvinzi; while Augereau's division was to watch the march of Provera. He remained himself at Verona until he could learn with certainty by which of these generals the first grand assault was to be made. On the evening of the 13th of January, tidings were brought him that Joubert had all that day been maintaining his ground with difficulty; and he instantly hastened to what now appeared to be the proper scene of action for himself.

Arriving about two in the morning (by another of his almost incredible forced marches) on the heights of Rivoli, he, the moonlight being clear, could distinguish five separate encampments, with innumerable watch-fires, in the valley below. His lieutenant, confounded by the display of this gigantic force, was in the very act of abandoning the position. Napoleon instantly checked this movement; and bringing up more battalions, forced the Croats from an eminence which they had already seized on the first symptoms of the French retreat. Napoleon's keen eye, surveying the position of the five encampments below, penetrated the secret of Alvinzi; namely, that his artillery had not yet arrived, otherwise he would not have occupied ground so distant from the object of attack. He concluded that the Austrian did not mean to make his grand assault very early in the morning, and resolved to force him to anticipate that movement. For this purpose, he took all possible pains to conceal his own arrival; and prolonged, by a series of petty manœuvres, the enemy's belief that he had to do with a mere outpost of the French. Alvinzi swallowed the deceit; and, instead of advancing on some great and well-arranged system, suffered his several columns to endeavour to force the heights by insulated movements, which the real strength of Napoleon easily enabled him to baffle. It is true that at one moment the bravery of the Germans had nearly overthrown the French on a point of pre-eminent importance; but Napoleon himself galloping to the spot, roused by his voice and action the division of Massena, who, having marched all night, had lain down to rest in the extreme of weariness, and seconded by them and their gallant general,[13] swept everything before him. The French artillery was in position: the Austrian (according to Napoleon's shrewd guess) had not yet come up, and this circumstance decided the fortune of the day. The cannonade from the heights, backed by successive charges of horse and foot, rendered every attempt to storm the summit abortive; and the main body of the Imperialists was already in confusion, and, indeed, in flight, before one of their divisions, which had been sent round to outflank Buonaparte, and take higher ground in his rear, was able to execute its errand. When, accordingly, this division (that of Lusignan) at length achieved its destined object—it did so, not to complete the misery of a routed, but to swell the prey of a victorious enemy. Instead of cutting off the retreat of Joubert, Lusignan found himself insulated from Alvinzi, and forced to lay down his arms to Buonaparte. "Here was a good plan," said Napoleon, "but these Austrians are not apt to calculate the value of minutes." Had Lusignan gained the rear of the French an hour earlier, while the contest was still hot in front of the heights of Rivoli, he might have made the 14th of January one of the darkest, instead of one of the brightest days, in the military chronicles of Napoleon.

He, who in the course of this trying day had three horses shot under him, hardly waited to see Lusignan surrender, and to entrust his friends, Massena, Murat, and Joubert, with the task of pursuing the flying columns of Alvinzi. He had heard during the battle, that Provera had forced his way to the Lago di Guarda, and was already, by means of boats, in communication with Mantua. The force of Augereau having proved insufficient to oppose the march of the Imperialists' second column, it was high time that Napoleon himself should hurry with reinforcements to the Lower Adige, and prevent Wurmser from either housing Provera, or joining him in the open field, and so effecting the escape of his own still formidable garrison whether to the Tyrol or the Romagna.

Having marched all night and all next day, Napoleon reached the vicinity of Mantua late on the 15th. He found the enemy strongly posted, and Serrurier's situation highly critical. A regiment of Provera's hussars had but a few hours before nearly established themselves in the suburb of St. George. This Austrian corps had been clothed in white cloaks, resembling those of a well-known French regiment; and advancing towards the gate, would certainly have been admitted as friends—but for the sagacity of one sergeant, who could not help fancying that the white cloaks had too much of the gloss of novelty about them, to have stood the tear and wear of three Buonapartean campaigns. This danger had been avoided, but the utmost vigilance was necessary. The French general himself passed the night in walking about the outposts, so great was his anxiety.

At one of these he found a grenadier asleep by the root of a tree; and taking his gun, without wakening him, performed a sentinel's duty in his place for about half an hour; when the man, starting from his slumbers, perceived with terror and despair the countenance and occupation of his general. He fell on his knees before him. "My friend," said Napoleon, "here is your musket. You had fought hard, and marched long, and your sleep is excusable; but a moment's inattention might at present ruin the army. I happened to be awake, and have held your post for you. You will be more careful another time."

It is needless to say how the devotion of his men was nourished by such anecdotes as these flying ever and anon from column to column. Next morning there ensued a hot skirmish, recorded as the battle of St. George. Provera was compelled to retreat, and Wurmser, who had sallied out and seized the causeway and citadel of La Favorita, was fain to retreat within its old walls, in consequence of a desperate assault headed by Napoleon in person.

Provera now found himself entirely cut off from Alvinzi, and surrounded with the French. He and 5000 men laid down their arms on the 16th of January. Various bodies of the Austrian force, scattered over the country between the Adige and the Brenta, followed the example;[14] and the brave Wurmser, whose provisions were by this time exhausted, found himself at length under the necessity of sending an offer of capitulation.

General Serrurier, as commander of the blockade, received Klenau, the bearer of Wurmser's message, and heard him state, with the pardonable artifice usual on such occasions, that his master was still in a condition to hold out considerably longer, unless honourable terms were granted. Napoleon had hitherto been seated in a corner of the tent wrapped in his cloak; he now advanced to the Austrian, who had no suspicion in whose presence he had been speaking, and taking his pen, wrote down the conditions which he was willing to grant. "These," said he, "are the terms to which your general's bravery entitles him. He may have them to-day; a week, a month hence, he shall have no worse. Meantime, tell him that General Buonaparte is about to set out for Rome." The envoy now recognised Napoleon; and on reading the paper perceived that the proposed terms were more liberal than he had dared to hope for. The capitulation was forthwith signed.

On the 2nd of February, Wurmser and his garrison marched out of Mantua; but when the aged chief was to surrender his sword, he found only Serrurier ready to receive it. Napoleon's generosity, in avoiding being present personally to witness the humiliation of this distinguished veteran, forms one of the most pleasing traits in his story. The Directory had urged him to far different conduct. He treated their suggestions with scorn: "I have granted the Austrian," he wrote to them, "such terms as were, in my judgment, due to a brave and honourable enemy, and to the dignity of the French Republic."

The loss of the Austrians at Mantua amounted, first and last, to not less than 27,000 men. Besides innumerable military stores, upwards of 500 brass cannon fell into the hands of the conqueror; and Augereau was sent to Paris, to present the Directory with sixty stands of colours. He was received with tumults of exultation, such as might have been expected, on an occasion so glorious, from a people less vivacious than the French.

The surrender of Provera and Wurmser, following the total rout of Alvinzi, placed Lombardy wholly in the hands of Napoleon; and he now found leisure to avenge himself on the Pope for those hostile demonstrations which, as yet, he had been contented to hold in check. The terror with which the priestly court of the Vatican received the tidings of the utter destruction of the Austrian army, and of the irresistible conqueror's march southwards, did not prevent the Papal troops from making some efforts to defend the territories of the Holy See. General Victor, with 4000 French and as many Lombards, advanced upon the route of Imola. A Papal force, in numbers about equal, lay encamped on the river Senio in front of that town. Monks with crucifixes in their hands, ran through the lines, exciting them to fight bravely for their country and their Faith. The French general, by a rapid movement, threw his horse across the stream a league or two higher up, and then charged with his infantry through the Senio in their front. The resistance was brief. The Pope's army, composed mostly of new recruits, retreated in confusion. Faenza was carried by the bayonet. Colli and 3000 more laid down their arms; and the strong town of Ancona was occupied.[15] On the 10th of February the French entered Loretto, and rifled that celebrated seat of superstition of whatever treasures it still retained; the most valuable articles had already been packed up and sent to Rome for safety.[16]—Victor then turned westwards from Ancona, with the design to unite with another French column which had advanced into the papal dominion by Perugia.

The panic which the French advance had by this time spread was such, that the Pope had no hope but in submission. The peasants lately transformed into soldiers abandoned everywhere their arms, and fled in straggling groups to their native villages. The alarm in Rome itself recalled the days of Alaric.

The conduct of Buonaparte at this critical moment was worthy of that good sense which formed the original foundation of his successes, and of which the madness of pampered ambition could alone deprive him afterwards. He well knew that, of all the inhabitants of the Roman territories, the class who contemplated his approach with the deepest terror were the unfortunate French priests, whom the Revolution had made exiles from their native soil. One of these unhappy gentlemen came forth in his despair, and surrendering himself at the French headquarters, said he knew his fate was sealed, and that they might as well lead him at once to the gallows. Buonaparte dismissed this person with courtesy, and issued a proclamation that none of the class should be molested; on the contrary, allotting to each of them the means of existence in monasteries, wherever his arms were or should be predominant.

This conduct, taken together with other circumstances of recent occurrence, was well calculated to nourish in the breast of the Pope the hope that the victorious general of France had, by this time, discarded the ferocious hostility of the revolutionary government against the church of which he was head. He hastened, however, to open a negotiation, and Napoleon received his envoy not merely with civility, but with professions of the profoundest personal reverence for the holy father. The Treaty of Tollentino (Feb. 12, 1797) followed. By this the Pope conceded formally (for the first time), his ancient territory of Avignon. He resigned the legations of Ferrara, Bologna, and Romagna, and the port of Ancona; agreed to pay about a million and a half sterling, and to execute to the utmost the provisions of Bologna with respect to works of art. On these terms Pius was to remain nominal master of some shreds of the patrimony of St. Peter.

The French Directory heard with indignation that any semblance of sovereignty was still left to an enemy whose weakness had been made so manifest. But Buonaparte had now learned to act for himself. He knew that any formal dethronement of the Pope would invest his cause with tenfold strength wherever the Romish religion prevailed; that a new spirit of aversion would arise against France; and that Naples would infallibly profit by the first disturbances in the north of Italy, to declare war, and march her large army from the south. He believed also—and he ere long knew—that even yet Austria would make other efforts to recover Lombardy; and was satisfied, on the whole, that he should best secure his ultimate purposes by suffering the Vatican to prolong, for some time further, the shadow of that sovereignty which had in former ages trampled on kings and emperors.

CHAPTER VIII

Neutrality of Venice—The Archduke Charles—Battle of Tagliamento—Retreat of the Archduke—Treaty of Leoben—War with Venice—Venice conquered.

Napoleon was now master of all northern Italy, with the exception of the territories of Venice, which antique government, though no longer qualified to keep equal rank with the first princes of Europe, was still proud and haughty, and not likely to omit any favourable opportunity of aiding Austria in the great and common object of ridding Italy of the French. Buonaparte heard without surprise that the Doge had been raising new levies, and that the senate could command an army of 50,000, composed chiefly of fierce and semi-barbarous Sclavonian mercenaries. He demanded what these demonstrations meant, and was answered that Venice had no desire but to maintain a perfect neutrality. Meantime there was not wanting a strong party, throughout the Venetian territories of the mainland, who were anxious to emulate the revolutionary movements of the great cities of Lombardy, and to emancipate themselves from the yoke of the Venetian oligarchy, as their neighbours had done by that of the Austrian crown. Insurrections occurred at Bergamo, Brescia, and elsewhere; and Buonaparte, though little disposed to give the inhabitants of these places the boon they were in quest of, saw and profited by the opportunity of dividing, by their means, the resources, and shaking the confidence, of the senate. After some negotiation, he told the Venetian envoy that he granted the prayer of his masters. "Be neuter," said he, "but see that your neutrality be indeed sincere and perfect. If any insurrection occur in my rear, to cut off my communications in the event of my marching on Germany—if any movement whatever betray the disposition of your senate to aid the enemies of France, be sure that vengeance will follow—from that hour the independence of Venice has ceased to be."

More than a month had now elapsed since Alvinzi's defeat at Rivoli; in nine days the war with the Pope had reached its close; and, having left some garrisons in the towns on the Adige, to watch the neutrality of Venice, Napoleon hastened to carry the war into the hereditary dominions of the Emperor. Twenty thousand fresh troops had recently joined his victorious standard from France; and, at the head of perhaps a larger force than he had ever before mustered, he proceeded to the frontier of the Frioul, where, according to his information, the main army of Austria, recruited once more to its original strength, was preparing to open a sixth campaign—under the orders, not of Alvinzi, but of a general young like himself, and hitherto eminently successful—the same who had already by his combinations baffled two such masters in the art of war as Jourdan and Moreau—the Archduke Charles; a prince on whose high talents the last hopes of the empire seemed to repose.

To give the details of the sixth campaign, which now commenced, would be to repeat the story which has been already five times told. The Archduke, fettered by the Aulic Council of Vienna, saw himself compelled to execute a plan which he had discrimination enough to condemn. The Austrian army once more commenced operations on a double basis—one great division on the Tyrolese frontier, and a greater under the Archduke himself on the Friulese; and Napoleon—who had, even when acting on the defensive, been able, by the vivacity of his movements, to assume the superiority on whatever point he chose to select—was not likely to strike his blows with less skill and vigour, now that his numbers, and the acquiescence of Italy behind him, permitted him to assume the offensive.

Buonaparte found the Archduke posted behind the river Tagliamento, in front of the rugged Carinthian mountains, which guard the passage in that quarter from Italy to Germany. Detaching Massena to the Piave, where the Austrian division of Lusignan were in observation, he himself determined to charge the Archduke in front. Massena was successful in driving Lusignan before him as far as Belluno, (where a rear guard of 500 surrendered,) and thus turned the Austrian flank. Buonaparte then attempted and effected the passage of the Tagliamento. After a great and formal display of his forces, which was met by similar demonstrations on the Austrian side of the river, he suddenly broke up his line and retreated. The Archduke, knowing that the French had been marching all the night before, concluded that the general wished to defer the battle till another day; and in like manner withdrew to his camp. About two hours after Napoleon rushed with his whole army, who had merely lain down in ranks, upon the margin of the Tagliamento, no longer adequately guarded—and had forded the stream ere the Austrian line of battle could be formed. In the action which followed (March 12) the troops of the Archduke displayed much gallantry, but every effort to dislodge Napoleon failed; at length retreat was judged necessary. The French followed hard behind. They stormed Gradisca, where they made 5000 prisoners; and—the Archduke pursuing his retreat—occupied in the course of a few days Trieste, Fiume, and every stronghold in Carinthia. In the course of a campaign of twenty days, the Austrians fought Buonaparte ten times, but the overthrow on the Tagliamento was never recovered; and the Archduke, after defending Styria inch by inch as he had Carinthia, at length adopted the resolution of reaching Vienna by forced marches, there to gather round him whatever force the loyalty of his nation could muster, and make a last stand beneath the walls of the capital.

This plan, at first sight the mere dictate of despair, was in truth that of a wise and prudent general. The Archduke had received intelligence from two quarters of events highly unfavourable to the French. General Laudon, the Austrian commander on the Tyrol frontier, had descended thence with forces sufficient to overwhelm Buonaparte's lieutenants on the upper Adige, and was already in possession of the whole Tyrol, and of several of the Lombard towns. Meanwhile the Venetian Senate, on hearing of these Austrian successes, had plucked up courage to throw aside their flimsy neutrality, and not only declared war against France, but encouraged their partizans in Verona to open the contest with an inhuman massacre of the French wounded in the hospitals of that city. The vindictive Italians, wherever the French party was inferior in numbers, resorted to similar atrocities. The few troops left in Lombardy by Napoleon were obliged to shut themselves up in garrisons, which the insurgent inhabitants of the neighbouring districts invested. The Venetian army passed the frontier; and, in effect, Buonaparte's means of deriving supplies of any kind from his rear were for the time wholly cut off. It was not wonderful that the Archduke should, under such circumstances, anticipate great advantage from enticing the French army into the heart of Austria; where, divided by many wide provinces and mighty mountains and rivers from France, and with Italy once more in arms behind them, they should have to abide the encounter of an imperial army, animated by all the best motives that can lend vigour to the arm of man; fighting for their own hearths under the eyes of their own sovereign; seconded everywhere by the loyalty of the peasants; and well convinced that, if they could compel their enemy to a retreat, his total ruin must be the consequence.

The terror of the Aulic Council stepped in to prevent the Archduke from reaping either the credit or the disgrace of this movement. Vienna was panic-struck on hearing that Buonaparte had stormed the passes of the Julian Alps; the imperial family sent their treasure into Hungary; the middle ranks, whose interest is always peace, became clamorous for some termination to a war, which during six years had been so unfortunate; and the Archduke was ordered to avail himself of the first pretence which circumstances might afford for the opening of a negotiation.

That prince had already, acting on his own judgment and feelings, dismissed such an occasion with civility and with coldness. Napoleon had addressed a letter to his Imperial Highness from Clagenfurt, in which he called on him, as a brother soldier, to consider the certain miseries and the doubtful successes of war, and put an end to the campaign by a fair and equitable treaty. The Archduke replied, that he regarded with the highest esteem the personal character of his correspondent, but that the Austrian government had committed to his trust the guidance of a particular army, not the diplomatic business of the empire. The prince, on receiving these new instructions from Vienna, perceived, however reluctantly, that the line of his duty was altered; and the result was a series of negotiations—which ended in the provisional treaty of Leoben, signed April 18, 1797.

It was here, at Leoben, that Buonaparte's schoolfellow, De Bourienne, who had been summoned to act as secretary to the general, reached headquarters. He found his old comrade (whom he had not met with since the days of his envying small houses and cabriolets in Paris) in the midst of a splendid staff. "So thou art come at last," cried Napoleon, in the ancient tone of familiarity; but De Bourienne knew the world, and greeted the general of the army of Italy with profound and distant respect. When the company were gone, Buonaparte signified that he understood and approved this change of demeanour.

But to resume—no sooner was the negotiation in a fair train, than Napoleon, abandoning for the moment the details of its management to inferior diplomatists, hastened to retrace his steps, and pour the full storm of his wrath on the Venetians. The Doge and the Senate, whose only hopes had rested on the successes of Austria on the Adige, heard with utter despair that the Archduke had shared the fate of Beaulieu, of Wurmser, and of Alvinzi, and that the preliminaries of peace were actually signed. The rapidity of Buonaparte's return gave them no breathing-time. They hastened to send offers of submission, and their messengers were received with anger and contempt. "French blood has been treacherously shed," said Napoleon; "if you could offer me the treasures of Peru, if you could cover your whole dominion with gold—the atonement would be insufficient—the lion of St. Mark[17] must lick the dust." These tidings came like a sentence of death upon the devoted Senate. Their deliberations were unceasing; their schemes innumerable; their hearts divided and unnerved. Those secret chambers, from which that haughty oligarchy had for so many ages excluded every eye and every voice but their own, were invaded with impunity by strange-faced men, who boldly criticised their measures, and heaped new terrors on their heads, by announcing that the mass of the people had ceased to consider the endurance of their sway as synonymous with the prosperity of Venice. Popular tumults filled the streets and canals; universal confusion prevailed. The commanders of their troops and fleets received contradictory orders, and the city which

"—had held the gorgeous East in fee,"

seemed ready to yield everything to a ruthless and implacable enemy, without even striking a blow in defence.

Buonaparte appeared, while the confusion was at its height, on the opposite coast of the Lagoon. Some of his troops were already in the heart of the city, when (31st May) a hasty message reached him, announcing that the Senate submitted wholly. He exacted severe revenge. The leaders who had aided the Lombard insurgents were delivered to him. The oligarchy ceased to rule, and a democratical government was formed, provisionally, on the model of France. Venice consented to surrender to the victor large territories on the mainland of Italy; five ships of war; 3,000,000 francs in gold, and as many more in naval stores; twenty of the best pictures, and 500 manuscripts. Lastly, the troops of the conqueror were to occupy the capital until tranquillity was established. It will be seen in what that tranquillity was destined to consist.

Such was the humiliation of this once proud and energetic, but now worn-out and enfeebled, oligarchy: so incapable was that hoary polity of contending with the youthful vigour of Napoleon.

CHAPTER IX

Pichegru—The Directory appeal to Buonaparte—The 18th Fructidor—The Court of Montebello—Josephine—The Treaty of Campo-Formio—Buonaparte leaves Italy.

In their last agony the Venetian Senate made a vain effort to secure the personal protection of the general, by offering him a purse of seven millions of francs. He rejected this with scorn. He had already treated in the same style a bribe of four millions, tendered on the part of the Duke of Modena. The friend employed to conduct the business reminded him of the proverbial ingratitude of all popular governments, and of the little attention which the Directory had hitherto paid to his personal interests. "That is all true enough," said Napoleon, "but for four millions I will not place myself in the power of this duke." Austria herself, it is said, did not hesitate to tamper in the same manner, though far more magnificently, as became her resources, with his republican virtue. He was offered, if the story be true, an independent German principality for himself and his heirs. "I thank the emperor," he answered, "but if greatness is to be mine, it shall come from France."

The Venetian Senate were guilty, in their mortal struggle, of another and a more inexcusable piece of meanness. They seized the person of Count D'Entraigues, a French emigrant, who had been living in their city as agent for the exiled house of Bourbon; and surrendered him and all his papers to the victorious general. Buonaparte discovered among these documents ample evidence that Pichegru, the French general on the Rhine, and universally honoured as the conqueror of Holland, had some time before this hearkened to the proposals of the Bourbon princes, and, among other efforts in favour of the royal cause, not hesitated even to misconduct his military movements with a view to the downfall of the government which had entrusted him with his command.

This was a secret, the importance of which Napoleon could well appreciate;[18] and he forthwith communicated it to the Directory at Paris.

The events of the last twelve months in France had made Pichegru a person of still higher importance than when he commenced his intrigues with the Bourbons as general on the Rhine. Some obscure doubts of his fidelity, or the usual policy of the Directory, which rendered them averse (wherever they could help it) to continue any one general very long at the head of one army, had induced them to displace Pichegru, and appoint Hoche, a tried republican, in his room. Pichegru, on returning to France, became a member of the Council of Five Hundred, and (the royalist party having at this season recovered all but a preponderance) was, on the meeting of the chambers, called to the chair of that in which he had his place.

The Five Directors had in truth done everything to undermine their own authority. They were known to be divided in opinion among themselves; three only of their number adhered heartily to the existing constitution: one was a royalist: another was a democrat of the Robespierre school. One of these new and uncourtly men excited laughter by affecting a princely state and splendour of demeanour and equipage. Another disgusted one set of minds, and annoyed all the rest, by procuring a law for the observation of the tenth day as the day of repose, and declaring it a crime to shut up shops on the Sabbath. A ridiculous ritual of an avowedly heathen worship followed, and was received with partial horror, universal contempt. A tyrannical law about the equalisation of weights and measures spread confusion through all mercantile transactions, and was especially unpopular in the provinces. A contemptible riot, set on foot by one who called himself Gracchus Barbœuf, for the purpose of bringing back the reign of terrorism was indeed suppressed; but the mere occurrence of such an attempt recalled too vividly the days of Robespierre, and by so doing tended to strengthen the cause of the royalists in public opinion. The truth is, that a vast number of the emigrants had found their way back again to Paris after the downfall of Robespierre, and that the old sway of elegant manners and enlightened saloons was once more re-establishing itself where it had so long been supreme. The royalist club of Clichy corresponded with the exiled princes, and with the imperial government, and was gaining such influence as to fill Buonaparte himself with alarm. Everything indicated that the Directory (the five majesties of the Luxembourg, as they were called in derision) held their thrones by a very uncertain tenure; and those gentlemen, nothing being left them but a choice among evils, were fain to throw themselves on the protection of the armies which they dreaded, and of Hoche and Buonaparte—which last name in particular had long filled them with jealousy proportioned to its splendour and popularity.

Napoleon's recent conduct, in more important points than one, had excited powerfully the resentment of the Directory, which now appealed to him for aid. He had taken upon himself the whole responsibility of the preliminary treaty of Leoben, although the French government had sent General Clarke into Italy for the express purpose of controlling him, and acting as his equal at least in the negotiation. A clause in that treaty, by which Mantua, the strongest fortress in Italy, was to be surrendered back to Austria, had been judged necessary at the time by the general, in order to obtain from the emperor the boundary of the Rhine and the cession of Belgium. But the Directory thought the conqueror underrated the advantages of his own position and theirs in consenting to it, and but for Carnot would never have ratified it.[19] At the other side of the Italian Peninsula, again, the victorious general, immediately after the fall of Venice, had to superintend the revolution of Genoa; in which great city also the democratic party availed themselves of the temper and events of the time, to emancipate themselves from their hereditary oligarchy. They would fain have excluded the nobility from all share in the remodelled government; and Napoleon rebuked and discountenanced this attempt in terms little likely to be heard with approbation by the "Sires of the Luxembourg." He told the Genoese, that to exclude the nobles was in itself as unjust as unwise, and that they ought to be grateful for the means of re-organising their constitution, without passing like France through the terrible ordeal of a revolution. The rulers of France might be excused for asking at this moment—Does the lecturer of the Ligurian Republic mean to be our Washington, our Monk, or our Cromwell?

He, however, received with alacrity the call of the trembling Directory. He harangued his soldiery, and made himself secure of their readiness to act as he might choose for them. He not only offered large pecuniary supplies, and sent his lieutenant Augereau to Paris to command the National Guard for the government, should they find it necessary to appeal immediately to force, but announced that he was himself prepared to "pass the Rubicon," (an ominous phrase) and march to their assistance, with 15,000 of his best troops.

The Directory, meanwhile, had in their extremity ventured to disregard the law against drawing regular troops within a certain distance of the capital, and summoned Hoche to bring a corps of his Rhenish army for their instant protection.

It was by this means that the new revolution, as it may be called, of the 18th Fructidor was effected. On that day, (Sept. 4, 1797,) the majority of the Directory, marching their army into Paris, dethroned their two opposition colleagues. Pichegru and the other royalists of note in the assemblies, to the number of more than 150, were arrested and sent into exile. The government, for the moment, recovered the semblance of security; and Buonaparte heard, with little satisfaction, that they had been able to accomplish their immediate object without the intervention of his personal appearance on the scene. He remonstrated, moreover, against the manner in which they had followed up their success. According to him, they ought to have executed Pichegru and a few ring-leaders, and set an example of moderation, by sparing all those whose royalism admitted of any doubt, or, if it was manifest, was of secondary importance. It would have been hard for the Directory at this time to have pleased Buonaparte, or for Buonaparte to have entirely satisfied them; but neither party made the effort.

The fall of Venice, however, gave Napoleon the means, which he was not disposed to neglect, of bringing his treaty with Austria to a more satisfactory conclusion than had been indicated in the preliminaries of Leoben.

After settling the affairs of Venice, and establishing the new Ligurian Republic, the general took up his residence at the noble castle of Montebello, near Milan. Here his wife, who, though they had been married in March, 1796, was still a bride, and with whom, during the intervening eventful months, he had kept up a correspondence full of the fervour, if not of the delicacy of love,[20] had at length rejoined him. Josephine's manners were worthy, by universal admission, of the highest rank; and the elegance with which she did the honours of the castle, filled the ministers and princes, who were continually to be seen in its precincts, with admiration. While Napoleon conducted his negotiations with as much firmness and decision as had marked him in the field, it was her care that nature and art should lend all their graces to what the Italians soon learnt to call the Court of Montebello. Whatever talent Milan contained, was pressed into her service. Music and dance, and festival upon festival, seemed to occupy every hour. The beautiful lakes of Lombardy were covered with gay flotillas; and the voluptuous retreats around their shores received in succession new life and splendour from the presence of Napoleon, Josephine, and the brilliant circle amidst whom they were rehearsing the imperial parts that destiny had in reserve for them. Montebello was the centre from which Buonaparte, during the greater part of this autumn, negotiated with the emperor, controlled all Italy, and overawed the Luxembourg.

The final settlement with the emperor's commissioners would have taken place shortly after the fall of Venice, but for the successful intrigues of the royalist Clichyens, the universal belief that the government of France approached some new crisis, and the Austrians' hope that from such an event their negotiation might derive considerable advantages. Buonaparte well knew the secret motive which induced Cobentzel, the emperor's chief envoy, to protract and multiply discussions of which he by this time was weary. One day, in this ambassador's own chamber, Napoleon suddenly changed his demeanour; "you refuse to accept our ultimatum," said he, taking in his hands a beautiful vase of porcelain, which stood on the mantelpiece near him. The Austrian bowed. "It is well," said Napoleon, "but mark me—within two months I will shatter Austria like this potsherd." So saying, he dashed the vase on the ground in a thousand pieces, and moved towards the door. Cobentzel followed him, and made submissions which induced him once more to resume his negotiations.

The result was the treaty of Campo-Formio, so-called from the village at which it was signed, on the 3d of October, 1797. By this act the emperor yielded to France, Flanders and the boundary of the Rhine, including the great fortress of Mentz. The various new republics of Lombardy were united and recognised under the general name of the Cisalpine Republic. To indemnify Austria for the loss of those territories, the fall of Venice afforded new means—of which Napoleon did not hesitate to propose, nor Austria to accept the use. The French general had indeed conquered Venice, but he had entered into a treaty subsequently, and recognised a wholly new government in place of the oligarchy. The emperor, on the other hand, well knew that the Doge and Senate had incurred ruin by rising to his own aid. Such considerations weighed little on either side. France and Austria agreed to effect a division of the whole territories of the ancient republic. Venice herself, and her Italian provinces, were handed over to the emperor in lieu of his lost Lombardy; and the French assumed the sovereignty of the Ionian islands and Dalmatia. This unprincipled proceeding excited universal disgust throughout Europe. It showed the sincerity of Buonaparte's love for the cause of freedom; and it satisfied all the world of the excellent title of the imperial court to complain of the selfishness and rapacity of the French democracy.

The emperor set his seal at Campo-Formio to another of Buonaparte's acts of dictatorship, which, though in one point of view even more unjustifiable than this, was not regarded by the world with feelings of the same order. The Italian territory of the Valteline had for ages been subject to the Grison League. The inhabitants, roused by the prevailing spirit all around them, demanded Napoleon's intercession with their Swiss masters, to procure their admission to all the political privileges of the other cantons. They refused; and Napoleon, in the plenitude of his authority, immediately supported the Valteline in throwing off the Grison yoke, and asserting its utter independence. This territory was now annexed to the Cisalpine Republic. A government, with which France was on terms of alliance and amity, was thus robbed of its richest possession; but the Valteline belonged by natural position, religion, and language, to Italy, and its annexation to the new Italian republic was regarded as in itself just and proper, however questionable Buonaparte's title to effect that event. He himself said at the time, "It is contrary to the rights of man that any one people should be subject to another;" a canon on which his after history formed a lucid commentary.

In concluding, and in celebrating the conclusion of his treaty, Napoleon's proud and fiery temperament twice shone out. Cobentzel had set down as the first article, "The Emperor recognises the French Republic." "Efface that," said Napoleon, sternly, "it is as clear as that the sun is in heaven. Woe to them that cannot distinguish the light of either!" At the Te Deum after the proclamation of the peace, the imperial envoy would have taken the place prepared for Buonaparte, which was the most eminent in the church. The haughty soldier seized his arm and drew him back. "Had your master himself been here," said he, "I should not have forgotten that in my person the dignity of France is represented."

Various minor arrangements remained to be considered; and a congress of all the German powers being summoned to meet for that purpose at Rastadt, Napoleon received the orders of the Directory to appear there, and perfect his work in the character of ambassador of France. He took an affecting leave of his soldiery, published a temperate and manly address to the Cisalpine Republic, and proceeded, by way of Switzerland, (where, in spite of the affair of the Valteline, he was received with enthusiasm,) to the execution of his duty. He carried with him the unbounded love and devotion of one of the finest armies that ever the world had seen; and the attachment, hardly less energetic, of all those classes of society throughout Italy, who flattered themselves with the hope that the Cisalpine Republic, the creature of his hands, would in time prepare the way for, and ultimately merge in a republican constitution common to the whole Italian people. With what hopes or fears as to his future fortunes he abandoned the scene and the companions of his glory, the reader must form his own opinion.

CHAPTER X

Napoleon at Rastadt—He arrives in Paris—His reception by the Directory—His Conduct and Manners—He is appointed to command the Army for the Invasion of England—He recommends an Expedition to Egypt—Reaches Toulon—Embarks.

Napoleon was received by the ministers assembled at Rastadt with the respect due to the extraordinary talents which he had already displayed in negotiation as well as in war. But he stayed among them only two or three days, for he perceived that the multiplicity of minor arrangements to be discussed and settled, must, if he seriously entered upon them, involve the necessity of a long-protracted residence at Rastadt; and he had many reasons for desiring to be quickly in Paris. His personal relations with the Directory were of a very doubtful kind, and he earnestly wished to study with his own eyes the position in which the government stood towards the various orders of society in the all-influential capital. He abandoned the conduct of the diplomatic business to his colleagues, and reached Paris at the beginning of December. Nor was he without a feasible pretext for this rapidity. On the 2nd of October, the Directory had announced to the French people their purpose to carry the war with the English into England itself; the immediate organisation of a great invading army; and their design to place it under the command of "Citizen General Buonaparte."

During his brief stay at Rastadt the dictator of Campo-Formio once more broke out. The Swedish envoy was Count Fersen, the same nobleman who had distinguished himself in Paris, during the early period of the Revolution, by his devotion to King Louis and Marie-Antoinette. Buonaparte refused peremptorily to enter into any negotiation in which a man, so well known for his hostility to the cause of the Republic, should have any part; and Fersen instantly withdrew.

On quitting this congress Napoleon was careful to resume, in every particular, the appearance of a private citizen. Reaching Paris, he took up his residence in the same small modest house that he had occupied before he set out for Italy, in the Rue Chantereine, which, about this time, in compliment to its illustrious inhabitant, received from the municipality the new name of Rue de la Victoire. Here he resumed with his plain clothes his favourite studies and pursuits, and, apparently contented with the society of his private friends, seemed to avoid, as carefully as others in his situation might have courted, the honours of popular distinction and applause. It was not immediately known that he was in Paris, and when he walked the streets his person was rarely recognised by the multitude. His mode of life was necessarily somewhat different from what it had been when he was both poor and obscure; his society was courted in the highest circles, and he from time to time appeared in them, and received company at home with the elegance of hospitality over which Josephine was so well qualified to preside. But policy as well as pride moved him to shun notoriety. Before he could act again, he had much to observe; and he knew himself too well to be flattered by the stare either of mobs or of saloons. "They have memories for nothing here"—he said at this time to his secretary—"if I remain long without doing anything, I am done. Fame chases fame in this great Babylon. If they had seen me three times at the spectacle, they would no longer look at me." Another day Bourienne could not help congratulating him on some noisy demonstration of popular favour. "Bah!" he answered, "they would rush as eagerly about me if I were on my way to the scaffold."

In his intercourse with society at this period, he was, for the most part, remarkable for the cold reserve of his manners. He had the appearance of one too much occupied with serious designs, to be able to relax at will into the easy play of ordinary conversation. If his eye was on every man, he well knew that every man's eye was upon him; nor, perhaps, could he have chosen a better method (had that been his sole object) for prolonging and strengthening the impression his greatness was calculated to create, than this very exhibition of indifference. He did not suffer his person to be familiarised out of reverence. When he did appear, it was not the ball or bon mot of the evening before, that he recalled:—he was still, wherever he went, the Buonaparte of Lodi, and Arcola, and Rivoli. His military bluntness disdained to disguise itself amidst those circles where a meaner parvenu would have been most ambitious to shine. The celebrated daughter of Necker made many efforts to catch his fancy and enlist him among the votaries of her wit, which then gave law in Paris. "Whom," said she, half wearied with his chillness, "do you consider as the greatest of women?" "Her, madam," he answered, "who has borne the greatest number of children." From this hour he had Madame de Staël for his enemy; and yet, such are the inconsistencies of human nature, no man was more sensitive than he to the assaults of a species of enemy whom he thus scorned to conciliate. Throughout his Italian campaigns—as consul—as emperor—and down to the last hour of the exile which terminated his life—Buonaparte suffered himself to be annoyed by sarcasms and pamphlets as keenly and constantly as if he had been a poetaster.

The haughtiness, for such it was considered, of his behaviour in the society of the capital, was of a piece with what he had already manifested in the camp. In the course of his first campaigns, his officers, even of the highest rank, became sensible, by degrees, to a total change of demeanour. An old acquaintance of the Toulon period, joining the army, was about to throw himself into the general's arms with the warmth of the former familiarity. Napoleon's cold eye checked him; and he perceived in a moment how he had altered with his elevation. He had always, on the other hand, affected much familiarity with the common soldiery. He disdained not on occasion to share the ration or to taste the flask of a sentinel; and the French private, often as intelligent as those whom fortune has placed above him, used to address the great general with even more frankness than his own captain. Napoleon, in one of his Italian despatches, mentions to the Directory the pleasure which he often derived from the conversation of the men: "But yesterday," says he, "a common trooper addressed me as I was riding, and told me he thought he could suggest the movement which ought to be adopted. I listened to him, and heard him detail some operations on which I had actually resolved but a little before." It has been noticed (perhaps by over-nice speculators) as a part of the same system, that Napoleon, on his return to Paris, continued to employ the same tradespeople, however inferior in their several crafts, who had served him in the days of his obscurity.[21]

If we may follow M. de Bourienne, Napoleon at this time laboured under intense anxiety of mind. Conscious of the daring heights to which he had ere now accustomed his ambitious imagination, he was fearful that others had divined his secret, and was haunted with the perpetual dread that some accident might unite Royalists and Republicans in the work of his personal ruin.

The first public appearance of Buonaparte occurred (January 2, 1798) when the treaty of Campo-Formio was to be formally presented to the Directory. The great court of the Luxembourg was roofed over with flags; an immense concourse, including all the members of the government and of the two legislative bodies, expected the victorious negotiator; and when he appeared, followed by his staff, and surrounded on all hands with the trophies of his glorious campaign, the enthusiasm of the mighty multitude, to the far greater part of which his person was, up to the moment, entirely unknown, outleaped all bounds, and filled the already jealous hearts of the directors with dark presentiments. They well knew that the soldiery, returning from Italy, had sung and said through every village that it was high time to get rid of the lawyers, and make the "little corporal" king. With uneasy hearts did they hear what seemed too like an echo of this cry, from the assembled leaders of opinion in Paris and in France. Anxious curiosity and mutual distrust were written in every face. The voice of Napoleon was for the first time heard in an energetic speech, ascribing all the glories that had been achieved to the zeal of the French soldiery—for "the glorious constitution of the year THREE"—the same glorious constitution which, in the year eight, was to receive the coup de grace from his own hand; and Barras, as presiding director, answering, that "Nature had exhausted all her powers in the creation of a Buonaparte," awoke a new thunder of unwelcome applauses.

Carnot had been exiled after the 18th Fructidor, and was at this time actually believed to be dead. The institute nominated Buonaparte to fill his place; and he was received by this learned body with enthusiasm not inferior to that of the Luxembourg. He thenceforth adopted, on all public occasions, the costume of this academy; and, laying aside as far as was possible, the insignia of his military rank, seemed to desire only the distinction of being classed with those whose scientific attainments had done honour to their country. In all this he acted on calculation. "I well knew," said he at St. Helena, "that there was not a drummer in the army, but would respect me the more for believing me to be not a mere soldier."

Some time before he left Italy, a motion had been made in one of the chambers for rewarding him with a grant of the estate of Chambord, and lost owing solely to the jealousy of the Directory. This opposition was on their part unjust and unwise, and extremely unpopular also; for it was known to all men that the general might easily have enriched himself during his wonderful campaigns, and it was almost as generally believed that he had brought with him to the Rue de la Victoire only 100,000 crowns, saved from the fair allowances of his rank. No one who considers the long series of intrigues which had passed between Buonaparte and the party that triumphed in Fructidor, can doubt how he regarded this part of their conduct. Every day confirmed them in their jealousy; nor did he take much pains on the other hand to conceal his feelings towards them. On many occasions they were willing to make use of him, although they dreaded in so doing to furnish him with new proofs of the vast superiority which he had reached in public opinion above themselves; and he was, on his part, chary of acceding to any of their proposals.

On the 21st of January, the anniversary of the death of Louis XVI. was to be celebrated, according to custom, as a great festival of the Republican calendar; and, conscious how distasteful the observance had by this time become to all persons capable of reflection, the government would fain have diverted attention from themselves, by assigning a prominent part in the ceremonial to him, on whom, as they knew, all eyes were sure to be fixed whenever he made his appearance. Napoleon penetrated their motives. He remonstrated against the ceremony altogether, as perpetuating the memory of a deed, perhaps unavoidable, but not the less to be regretted. He told them that it was unworthy of a great Republic to triumph, year after year, in the shedding of an individual enemy's blood. They answered by reminding him that the Athenians and Romans of old recorded, in similar festivals, the downfall of the Pisistratidæ and the exile of the Tarquins. He might have replied, that it is easier for a nation to renounce Christianity in name, than to obliterate altogether the traces of its humanising influence. But this view did not as yet occur to Napoleon—or if it had, could not have been promulgated to their conviction. He stood on the impolicy of the barbarous ceremony; and was at length, with difficulty, persuaded to appear in it as a private member of the institute, along with the rest of that association. His refusal to be there as the great general of the Republic annoyed the timid Directory; and yet, on his being recognised in his civic dress, and pointed out to new myriads of observers, the effect which the government had desired to produce was brought about in spite of all Buonaparte's reluctance. The purpose of the assemblage was almost forgotten: the clamours of the people converted it into another fête for Napoleon.

It has already been said that as early as October, 1797, the Directory announced their intention of committing an army, destined for the invasion of England, to the conqueror of Italy. He wholly disapproved of their rashness in breaking off the negotiations of the preceding summer with the English envoy, Lord Malmesbury, and, above all, of the insolent abruptness of that procedure.[22] But the die was cast; and he willingly accepted the appointment now pressed upon him by the government, who, in truth, were anxious about nothing so much as to occupy his mind with the matters of his profession, and so prevent him from taking a prominent part in the civil business of the state. Solely owing to his celebrity two of his brothers were already distinguished members of the legislative bodies; and there could be no doubt that the gates of either would fly open for his own admission, if he chose it, on the next election.

Whatever views of ulterior ambition might have opened themselves to Napoleon at this period, he well knew that the hour was not yet come, in which he could serve his purpose better than by the pursuit of his military career. According to De Bourienne, he had for some time flattered himself that the law, which prevented a person so young as he from being a director, might be waived in his favour; not doubting, we may conclude, that such colleagues as Barras and Rewbell would soon sink into the mere ministers of his will: but the opposition to this scheme was so determined that it was never permitted to be proposed openly. The Directory were popular with no party; but there were many parties; and, numerically, probably the royalists were the strongest. The pure republicans were still powerful: the army of Italy was distant and scattered; that of the Rhine, far more numerous, and equally well disciplined, had its own generals—men not yet in reputation immeasurably inferior to himself; and, having been less fortunate than their brethren in Italy, and consequently acquired less wealth, it was no wonder that the soldiery of the Rhine regarded the others, if not their leader, with some little jealousy. In Napoleon's own language, "the pear was not yet ripe."

He proceeded, therefore, to make a regular survey of the French coast opposite to England, with the view of improving its fortifications, and (ostensibly at least) of selecting the best points for embarking an invading force. For this service he was eminently qualified; and many local improvements of great importance, long afterwards effected, were first suggested by him at this period. But, if he had really thought otherwise beforehand (which M. de Bourienne denies), the result of his examination was a perfect conviction that the time was not yet come for invading England. He perceived that extensive and tedious preparations were indispensable ere the French shipping on that coast could be put into a condition for such an attempt; and the burst of loyalty which the threat of invasion called forth in every part of Britain—the devotion with which all classes of the people answered the appeal of the government—the immense extent to which the regular and volunteer forces were increased everywhere—these circumstances produced a strong impression on his not less calculating than enterprising mind. He had himself, in the course of the preceding autumn, suggested to the minister for foreign affairs, the celebrated Talleyrand, the propriety of making an effort against England in another quarter of the world:—of seizing Malta, proceeding to occupy Egypt, and therein gaining at once a territory capable of supplying to France the loss of her West Indian colonies, and the means of annoying Great Britain in her Indian trade and empire. To this scheme he now recurred: the East presented a field of conquest and glory on which his imagination delighted to brood: "Europe," said he, "is but a molehill, all the great glories have come from Asia." The injustice of attacking the dominions of the Grand Seignior, an old ally of France, formed but a trivial obstacle in the eyes of the Directory: the professional opinion of Buonaparte that the invasion of England, if attempted then, must fail, could not but carry its due weight: the temptation of plundering Egypt and India was great; and great, perhaps above all the rest, was the temptation of finding employment for Napoleon at a distance from France. The Egyptian expedition was determined on: but kept strictly secret. The attention of England was still riveted on the coasts of Normandy and Picardy, between which and Paris Buonaparte studiously divided his presence—while it was on the borders of the Mediterranean that the ships and the troops really destined for action were assembling.

Buonaparte, having rifled to such purpose the cabinets and galleries of the Italian princes, was resolved not to lose the opportunity of appropriating some of the rich antiquarian treasures of Egypt; nor was it likely that he should undervalue the opportunities which his expedition might afford, of extending the boundaries of science, by careful observation of natural phenomena. He drew together therefore a body of eminent artists and connoisseurs, under the direction of Monge, who had managed his Italian collections: it was perhaps the first time that a troop of Savans (there were 100 of them) formed part of the staff of an invading army.[23]

The various squadrons of the French fleet were now assembled at Toulon; and everything seemed to be in readiness. Yet some time elapsed before Napoleon joined the armament: and it is said by Miot that he did all he could to defer joining it as long as possible, in consequence of certain obscure hopes which he had entertained of striking a blow at the existing government, and remodelling it, to his own advantage, with the assent, if not assistance, of Austria. This author adds that Barras, having intercepted a letter of Buonaparte to Cobentzel, went to him late one evening, and commanded him to join the fleet instantly, on pain of being denounced as the enemy of the government; that the general ordered his horses the same hour, and was on his way to Toulon ere midnight. These circumstances may or may not be truly given. It is not doubtful that the command of the Egyptian expedition was ultimately regarded, both by Napoleon and the Directory, as a species of honourable banishment. On reaching Toulon, Buonaparte called his army together, and harangued them. "Rome," he said, "combated Carthage by sea as well as land; and England was the Carthage of France.—He was come to lead them, in the name of the Goddess of Liberty, across mighty seas, and into remote regions, where their valour might achieve such glory and such wealth as could never be looked for beneath the cold heavens of the west. The meanest of his soldiers should receive seven acres of land;"—where he mentioned not. His promises had not hitherto been vain. The soldiery heard him with joy, and prepared to obey with alacrity.

The English government, meanwhile, although they had no suspicion of the real destination of the armament, had not failed to observe what was passing in Toulon. They probably believed that the ships there assembled were meant to take part in the great scheme of the invasion of England. However this might have been, they had sent a considerable reinforcement to Nelson, who then commanded on the Mediterranean station; and he, at the moment when Buonaparte reached Toulon, was cruising within sight of the port. Napoleon well knew that to embark in the presence of Nelson would be to rush into the jaws of ruin; and waited until some accident should relieve him from his terrible watcher. On the evening of the 19th of May fortune favoured him. A violent gale drove the English off the coast, and disabled some ships so much that Nelson was obliged to go into the harbours of Sardinia to have them repaired. The French general instantly commanded the embarkation of all his troops; and as the last of them got on board, the sun rose on the mighty armament: it was one of those dazzling suns which the soldiery delighted afterwards to call "the suns of Napoleon."

Seldom have the shores of the Mediterranean witnessed a nobler spectacle. That unclouded sun rose on a semicircle of vessels, extending in all to not less than six leagues: thirteen ships of the line and fourteen frigates (under the command of Admiral Brueyes); and 400 transports. They carried 40,000 picked soldiers, and officers whose names were only inferior to that of the general-in-chief;—of the men, as well as of their leaders, the far greater part already accustomed to follow Napoleon, and to consider his presence as the pledge of victory.

CHAPTER XI

The Voyage to Egypt—Malta surrendered—The French escape Nelson, and take Alexandria—The March up the Nile—The Battle of the Pyramids—Cairo surrenders—The Battle of Aboukir.

The French fleet was reinforced, ere it had proceeded far on its way, by General Dessaix, and his division from Italy; and, having prosperous winds, appeared on the 10th of June off Malta. The Knights of St. John were no longer those hardy and devout soldiers of the cross, who for ages inspired terror among the Mussulmans, and were considered as the heroic outguards of Christendom. Sunk in indolence and pleasure, these inheritors of a glorious name hardly attempted for a moment to defend their all but impregnable island, against the fleet which covered the seas around them. The Parisian authorities had tampered successfully beforehand with some of the French knights. Division of counsels prevailed: and in confusion and panic the gates were thrown open. As Napoleon was entering between the huge rocky barriers of La Valette, Caffarelli said to him: "It is well there was some one within to open the door for us; had there been no garrison at all, the business might have been less easy."

From Malta—where he left a detachment of troops to guard an acquisition which he expected to find eminently useful in his future communications with France—Buonaparte steered eastwards; but, after some days, ran upon the coast of Candia to take in water and fresh provisions, and, by thus casually diverging from his course, escaped imminent danger. For Nelson, soon returning to Toulon, missed the shipping which had so lately crowded the harbour, and ascertaining that they had not sailed towards the Atlantic, divined on the instant that their mark must be Egypt. His fleet was inferior in numbers, but he pursued without hesitation; and taking the straight line, arrived off the Nile before any of the French ships had appeared there. Buonaparte, on hearing off Candia that the English fleet was already in the Levant, directed Admiral Brueyes to steer not for Alexandria, but for a more northerly point of the coast of Africa. Nelson, on the other hand, not finding the enemy where he had expected, turned back and traversed the sea in quest of him, to Rhodes—and thence to Syracuse. It is supposed that on the 20th of June the fleets almost touched each other; but that the thickness of the haze, and Nelson's want of frigates, prevented an encounter. Napoleon, reconnoitring the coast, ascertained that there was no longer any fleet off Alexandria, and in effect reached his destination undisturbed on the 1st of July. At that moment a strange sail appeared on the verge of the horizon. "Fortune," exclaimed he, "I ask but six hours more—wilt thou refuse them?" The vessel proved not to be English; and the disembarkation immediately took place, in spite of a violent gale and a tremendous surf. The Admiral Brueyes in vain endeavoured to persuade Buonaparte to remain on board until the weather should be more calm. He sternly refused, and landed at Marabout, three leagues to the eastward of Alexandria, about one in the morning of the 2nd July—having lost many by drowning.

Egypt, a province of the Ottoman empire, then at peace with France, was of course wholly unprepared for this invasion. The Turks, however, mustered what force they could, and, shutting the gates of the city, held out—until a division, headed by Napoleon in person, forced their way, at three in the morning, through the old crumbling walls, and it was no longer possible to resist at once superior numbers and European discipline. Two hundred French died in the assault; the Turkish loss was much greater: and, if we are to believe almost all who have written concerning this part of his history, Buonaparte, after taking possession, abandoned the place for three hours to the unbridled licence of military execution and rapine—an atrocity for which, if it really occurred, there could have been only one pretext; namely, the urgent necessity of striking awe and terror into the hearts of the population, and so preventing them from obeying the call of their military chieftains, to take arms in defence of the soil. De Bourienne and Berthier, however, wholly deny this story.

If Napoleon's conduct on this occasion was as it has been commonly represented, it was strangely contrasted with the tenor of his General Order to the army, issued immediately before their disembarkation. "The people," he then said, "with whom we are about to live, are Mahometans; the first article of their faith is, There is no God but God, and Mahomet is his Prophet. Do not contradict them: deal with them as you have done with the Jews and the Italians. Respect their muphtis and imans, as you have done by the rabbis and the bishops elsewhere.... The Roman legions protected all religions. You will find here usages different from those of Europe: you must accustom yourselves to them. These people treat their women differently from us; but in all countries he who violates is a monster; pillage enriches only a few; it dishonours us, destroys our resources, and makes those enemies whom it is our interest to have for friends."

To the people of Egypt, meanwhile, Napoleon addressed a proclamation in these words:—"They will tell you that I come to destroy your religion; believe them not: answer that I come to restore your rights, to punish the usurpers, and that I respect, more than the Mamelukes ever did, God, his Prophet, and the Koran. Sheiks and Imans, assure the people that we also are true Mussulmans. Is it not we that have ruined the Pope and the Knights of Malta? Thrice happy they who shall be with us! Woe to them that take up arms for the Mamelukes! they shall perish!"[24]

Buonaparte was a fatalist—so that one main article of the Mussulman creed pleased him well. He admired Mahomet as one of those rare beings, who, by individual genius and daring, have produced mighty and permanent alterations in the world. The General's assertion of his own belief in the inspiration of the Arab impostor, was often repeated in the sequel; and will ever be appreciated, as it was at the time by his own soldiery—whom indeed he had addressed but the day before in language sufficiently expressive of his real sentiments as to all forms of religion. Rabbi, muphti, and bishop, the Talmud, the Koran, and the Bible, were much on a level in his estimation. He was willing to make use of them all as it might serve his purpose; and, though not by nature cruel, he did not hesitate, when his interest seemed to demand it, to invest his name with every circumstance of terror, that could result from the most merciless violation of those laws of humanity which even his Koran enforces, and which his own address to his army had so recently inculcated.

Napoleon left Alexandria on the 7th July, being anxious to force the Mamelukes to an encounter with the least possible delay. He had a small flotilla on the Nile, which served to guard his right flank: the infantry marched over burning sand at some distance from the river. The miseries of this progress were extreme. The air is crowded with pestiferous insects, the glare of the sand weakens most men's eyes, and blinds many; water is scarce and bad: and the country had been swept clear of man, beast, and vegetable. Under this torture even the gallant spirits of such men as Murat and Lannes could not sustain themselves:—they trod their cockades in the sand. The common soldiers asked, with angry murmurs, if it was here the General designed to give them their seven acres? He alone was superior to all these evils. Such was the happy temperament of his frame, that—while others, after having rid them of their usual dress, were still suffused in perpetual floods of perspiration, and the hardiest found it necessary to give two or three hours in the middle of the day to sleep—Napoleon altered nothing; wore his uniform buttoned up as at Paris; never showed one bead of sweat on his brow; nor thought of repose except to lie down in his cloak the last at night, and start up the first in the morning. It required, however, more than all his example of endurance and the general influence of Napoleon's character, could do to prevent the army from breaking into open mutiny. "Once," said he at St. Helena, "I threw myself suddenly amidst a group of generals, and, addressing myself to the tallest of their number with vehemence, said, You have been talking sedition: take care lest I fulfil my duty: your five feet ten inches would not hinder you from being shot within two hours."

For some days no enemy appeared; but at length scattered groups of horsemen began to hover on their flanks; and the soldier, who quitted the line but for a moment, was surrounded and put to death ere his comrades could rescue him. The rapidity with which the Mamelukes rode, and their skill as marksmen, were seconded by the character of the soil and the atmosphere; the least motion or breath of wind being sufficient to raise a cloud of sand, through which nothing could be discerned accurately, while the constant glare of the sun dazzled almost to blindness. It was at Chebreis that the Mamelukes first attacked in a considerable body; and at the same moment the French flotilla was assaulted. In either case the superiority of European discipline was made manifest; but in either case also the assailants were able to retreat without much loss. Meantime the hardships of the march continued; the irregular attacks of the enemy were becoming more and more numerous; so that the troops, continually halting and forming into squares to receive the charge of the cavalry by day, and forced to keep up great watches at night, experienced the extremes of fatigue as well as of privation. In the midst of this misery the common men beheld with no friendly eyes the troop of savans mounted on asses (the common conveyance of the country), with all their instruments, books and baggage. They began to suspect that the expedition had been undertaken for some merely scientific purposes; and when, on any alarm, they were ordered to open the square and give the learned party safe footing within, they used to receive them with military jeerings. "Room for the asses:—stand back, here come the savans and the demi-savans."

On the 21st of July the army came within sight of the Pyramids, which, but for the regularity of the outline, might have been taken for a distant ridge of rocky mountains. While every eye was fixed on these hoary monuments of the past, they gained the brow of a gentle eminence, and saw at length spread out before them the vast army of the beys, its right posted on an entrenched camp by the Nile, its centre and left composed of that brilliant cavalry with which they were by this time acquainted. Napoleon, riding forwards to reconnoitre, perceived (what escaped the observation of all his staff) that the guns on the entrenched camp were not provided with carriages; and instantly decided on his plan of attack. He prepared to throw his force on the left, where the guns could not be available. Mourad Bey, who commanded in chief, speedily penetrated his design; and the Mamelukes advanced gallantly to the encounter. "Soldiers," said Napoleon, "from the summit of yonder pyramids forty ages behold you;" and the battle began.

The French formed into separate squares, and awaited the assault of the Mamelukes. These came on with impetuous speed and wild cries, and practised every means to force their passage into the serried ranks of their new opponents. They rushed on the line of bayonets, backed their horses upon them, and at last, maddened by the firmness which they could not shake, dashed their pistols and carbines into the faces of the men. They who had fallen wounded from their seats, would crawl along the sand, and hew at the legs of their enemies with their scimitars. Nothing could move the French: the bayonet and the continued roll of musketry by degrees thinned the host around them; and Buonaparte at last advanced. Such were the confusion and terror of the enemy when he came near the camp, that they abandoned their works, and flung themselves by hundreds into the Nile. The carnage was prodigious. Multitudes more were drowned. Mourad and a remnant of his Mamelukes retreated on Upper Egypt. Cairo surrendered: Lower Egypt was entirely conquered.

Such were the immediate consequences of the Battle of the Pyramids. The name of Buonaparte now spread panic through the East; and the "Sultan Kebir" (or King of Fire—as he was called from the deadly effects of the musketry in this engagement) was considered as the destined scourge of God, whom it was hopeless to resist.

The French now had recompense for the toils they had undergone. The bodies of the slain and drowned Mamelukes were rifled, and, it being the custom for those warriors to carry their wealth about them, a single corpse often made a soldier's fortune. In the deserted harems of the chiefs at Cairo, and in the neighbouring villages, men at length found proofs that "eastern luxury" is no empty name. The savans ransacked the monuments of antiquity, and formed collections which will ever reflect honour on their zeal and skill. Napoleon himself visited the interior of the Great Pyramid, and on entering the secret chamber, in which, 3000 years before, some Pharaoh had been in-urned, repeated once more his confession of faith—"There is no God but God, and Mahomet is his prophet." The bearded orientals who accompanied him, concealed their doubts of his orthodoxy, and responded very solemnly, "God is merciful. Thou hast spoken like the most learned of the prophets."

While Napoleon was thus pursuing his career of victory in the interior, Nelson, having scoured the Mediterranean in quest of him, once more returned to the coast of Egypt. He arrived within sight of the towers of Alexandria on the 1st of August—ten days after the battle of the Pyramids had been fought and won—and found Brueyes still at his moorings in the bay of Aboukir. Nothing seems to be more clear than that the French admiral ought to have made the best of his way to France, or at least to Malta, the moment the army had taken possession of Alexandria. Napoleon constantly asserted that he had urged Brueyes to do so. Brueyes himself lived not to give his testimony; but Gantheaume, the vice-admiral, always persisted in stating, in direct contradiction to Buonaparte, that the fleet remained by the General's express desire. The testimonies being thus balanced, it is necessary to consult other materials of judgment; and it appears extremely difficult to doubt that the French admiral,—who, it is acknowledged on all hands, dreaded the encounter of Nelson—remained off Alexandria for the sole purpose of aiding the motions of the army, and in consequence of what he at least conceived to be the wish of its general. However this might have been, the results of his delay were terrible.

The French fleet were moored in a semicircle in the bay of Aboukir, so near the shore, that, as their admiral believed, it was impossible for the enemy to come between him and the land. He expected, therefore, to be attacked on one side only, and thought himself sure that the English could not renew their favourite manœuvre of breaking the line,[25] and so at once dividing the opposed fleet, and placing the ships individually between two fires. But Nelson daringly judged that his ships might force a passage between the French and the land, and succeeding in this attempt, instantly brought on the conflict, in the same dreaded form which Brueyes had believed impossible. The details of this great sea fight belong to the history of the English hero.[26] The battle was obstinate—it lasted more than twenty hours, including the whole night. A solitary pause occurred at midnight, when the French admiral's ship L'Orient, a superb vessel of 120 guns, took fire, and blew up in the heart of the conflicting squadrons, with an explosion that for a moment silenced rage in awe. The admiral himself perished. Next morning two shattered ships, out of all the French fleet, with difficulty made their escape to the open sea. The rest of all that magnificent array had been utterly destroyed, or remained in the hands of the English.

Such was the battle of Aboukir, in which Nelson achieved, with a force much inferior to the French, what he himself called, "not a victory, but a conquest." Three thousand French seamen reached the shore: a greater number died. Had the English admiral possessed frigates, he must have forced his way into the harbour of Alexandria, and seized the whole stores and transports of the army. As things were, the best fleet of the Republic had ceased to be; the blockade of the coast was established: and the invader, completely isolated from France, must be content to rely on his own arms and the resources of Egypt.

CHAPTER XII

Buonaparte's Administration in Egypt—Armaments of the Porte—Buonaparte at Suez—At El-Arish—Gaza, Jaffa, Acre—Retreat to Egypt—Defeat of the Turks at Aboukir—Napoleon embarks for France.

Before Nelson's arrival, Buonaparte is said to have meditated returning to France, for the purpose of extorting from the government those supplies of various kinds which, on actual examination, he had perceived to be indispensable to the permanent occupation of Egypt, and which he well knew the Directors would refuse to any voice but his own. He intended, it is also said, to urge on the Directory the propriety of resuming the project of a descent on England itself, at the moment when the mind of that government might be supposed to be engrossed with the news of his dazzling successes in Egypt. All these proud visions died with Brueyes. On hearing of the battle of Aboukir a solitary sigh escaped from Napoleon. "To France," said he, "the fates have decreed the empire of the land—to England that of the sea."

He endured this great calamity with the equanimity of a masculine spirit. He gave orders that the seamen landed at Alexandria should be formed into a marine brigade, and thus gained a valuable addition to his army; and proceeded himself to organise a system of government, under which the great natural resources of the country might be turned to the best advantage. We need not dwell on that vain repetition of his faith in Mahomet, to which he would not and could not give effect by openly adopting the rules and ceremonies of the Koran; which accordingly but amused his own followers; and which deceived none of the Mussulman people. This was the trick of an audacious infidel, who wanted wholly that enthusiasm without which no religious impostor can hope to partake the successes of the Prophet of Mecca. Passing over this worthless preliminary, the arrangements of the new administration reflect honour on the consummate understanding, the clear skill, and the unwearied industry of this extraordinary man.

He was careful to advance no claim to the sovereignty of Egypt, but asserted, that having rescued it from the Mameluke usurpation, it remained for him to administer law and justice, until the time should come for restoring the province to the dominion of the Grand Seignior. He then established two councils, consisting of natives, principally of Arab chiefs and Moslem of the church and the law, by whose advice all measures were, nominally, to be regulated. They formed of course a very subservient senate. He had no occasion to demand more from the people than they had been used to pay to the beys; and he lightened the impost by introducing as far as he could the fairness and exactness of a civilised power in the method of levying it. He laboured to make the laws respected, and this so earnestly and rigidly, that no small wonder was excited among all classes of a population so long accustomed to the licence of a barbarian horde of spoilers. On one occasion one of the Ulemahs could not help smiling at the zeal which he manifested for tracing home the murder of an obscure peasant to the perpetrator. The Mussulman asked if the dead man were anywise related to the blood of the Sultan Kebir? "No," answered Napoleon, sternly—"but he was more than that—he was one of a people whose government it has pleased Providence to place in my hands." The measures which he took for the protection of travellers to Mecca were especially acceptable to the heads of the Moslem establishment, and produced from them a proclamation, (in direct contradiction to the Koran,) signifying that it was right and lawful to pay tribute to the French. The virtuosi and artists in his train, meanwhile, pursued with indefatigable energy their scientific researches; they ransacked the monuments of Egypt, and laid the foundation, at least, of all the wonderful discoveries, which have since been made concerning the knowledge, arts, polity (and even language) of the ancient nation. Nor were their objects merely those of curiosity. They, under the General's direction, examined into the long-smothered traces of many an ancient device for improving the agriculture of the country. Canals that had been shut up for centuries were re-opened: the waters of the Nile flowed once more where they had been guided by the skill of the Pharaohs or the Ptolemies. Cultivation was extended; property secured; and it cannot be doubted that the signal improvements since introduced in Egypt, are attributable mainly to the wise example of the French administration. At Cairo itself there occurred one stormy insurrection, provoked, as may be supposed, by some wantonness on the part of the garrison; but, after this was quelled by the same merciless vigour which Napoleon had displayed on similar occasions in Italy, the country appears to have remained in more quiet, and probably enjoyed, in spite of the presence of an invading army, more prosperity, than it had ever done during any period of the same length, since the Saracen government was overthrown by the Ottomans.

In such labours Napoleon passed the autumn of 1798. "At this period," writes his secretary, "it was his custom to retire early to bed, and it was my business to read to him as long as he remained awake. If I read poetry, he soon fell asleep, but if, as sometimes happened, he called for The Life of Cromwell, I made up mind to want repose for that night."

General Dessaix, meanwhile, had pursued Mourad Bey into Upper Egypt, where the Mamelukes hardly made a single stand against him, but contrived, by the excellence of their horses, and their familiarity with the deserts, to avoid any total disruption of their forces. Mourad returned to the neighbourhood of Cairo on hearing of the insurrection already mentioned; but departed when he learned its suppression. Those gallant horsemen were gradually losing numbers in their constant desert marches—they were losing heart rapidly: and everything seemed to promise, that the Upper Egypt, like the Lower, would soon settle into a peaceful province of the new French colony.

The General, during this interval of repose, received no communication from the French government; but rumours now began to reach his quarters which might well give him new anxieties. The report of another rupture with Austria gradually met with more credence; and it was before long placed beyond a doubt, that the Ottoman Porte, instead of being tempted into any recognition of the French establishment in Egypt, had declared war against the Republic, and summoned all the strength of her empire to pour in overwhelming numbers on the isolated army of Buonaparte.

As yet, however, there was no appearance of an enemy; and Napoleon seized the opportunity to explore the Isthmus of Suez, where a narrow neck of land divides the Red Sea from the Mediterranean, partly with the view of restoring the communication which in remote times existed between them, and partly of providing for the defence of Egypt, should the Ottomans attempt their invasion by the way of Syria.

He visited the Maronite monks of Mount Sinai, and, as Mahomet had done before him, affixed his name to their charter of privileges; he examined also the fountain of Moses: and nearly lost his life in exploring, during low water, the sands of the Red Sea, where Pharaoh is supposed to have perished in the pursuit of the Hebrews. "The night overtook us," says Savary in his Memoirs, "the waters began to rise around us, the guard in advance exclaimed that their horses were swimming. Buonaparte saved us all by one of those simple expedients which occur to an imperturbable mind. Placing himself in the centre, he bade all the rest form a circle round him, and then ride out each man in a separate direction, and each to halt as soon as he found his horse swimming. The man whose horse continued to march the last, was sure, he said, to be in the right direction; him accordingly we all followed, and reached Suez at two in the morning in safety, though so rapidly had the tide advanced, that the water was at the poitrels of our horses ere we made the land."

On his return to Cairo, the General despatched a trusty messenger into India, inviting Tippoo Saib to inform him exactly of the condition of the English army in that region, and signifying that Egypt was only the first post in a march destined to surpass that of Alexander! "He spent whole days," writes his secretary, "in lying flat on the ground stretched upon maps of Asia."