Transcriber’s Note: Cover created by Transcriber and placed in the Public Domain.

NAPOLEON

Napoleon.

From a portrait by Lassalle.

NAPOLEON

A Sketch of

HIS LIFE, CHARACTER, STRUGGLES, AND ACHIEVEMENTS

BY

THOMAS E. WATSON
AUTHOR OF “THE STORY OF FRANCE,” ETC.

ILLUSTRATED WITH PORTRAITS AND FACSIMILES

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
1903
All rights reserved

Copyright, 1902,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped February, 1902. Reprinted May, 1902; January, 1903.

Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mass. U.S.A.

TO MY WIFE
Georgia Durham Watson

PREFACE

In this volume the author has made the effort to portray Napoleon as he appears to an average man. Archives have not been rummaged, new sources of information have not been discovered; the author merely claims to have used such authorities, old and new, as are accessible to any diligent student. No attempt has been made to give a full and detailed account of Napoleon’s life or work. To do so would have required the labor of a decade, and the result would be almost a library. The author has tried to give to the great Corsican his proper historical position, his true rating as a man and a ruler,—together with a just estimate of his achievements.

Thomson, Georgia,
Dec. 24, 1901.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

NAPOLEON

CHAPTER I

Corsica, an island in the Mediterranean Sea, has an extreme width of 52 miles and length of 116. It is within easy reach of Italy, France, Spain, Sardinia, and the African coast. Within 54 miles lies Tuscany, while Genoa is distant but 98, and the French coast at Nice is 106. Across the island strides a chain of mountains, dividing it into two nearly equal parts. The slopes of the hills are covered with dense forests of gigantic pines and chestnuts, and on their summits rests eternal snow. Down from these highlands rapid streams run to the sea. There are many beautiful valleys and many fine bays and harbors.

The population of the island was, in the eighteenth century, about 130,000. The Italian type predominated. In religion it was Roman Catholic.

The history of Corsica has been wonderfully dramatic. Peopled originally by the Celts, perhaps, the island has been so often war-swept, so often borne down under the rush of stronger nations, that the native race almost disappeared. The Greeks from Asia Minor, back in the dim ages, seized upon a part of the coast and colonized it. Carthage, in her day of greatness, was its mistress; and then came Rome, whose long period of supremacy left its stamp upon the people, bringing as it did multitudes of Italians, with their language, customs, and religion.

After the day of Rome came Germans, Byzantine Greeks, Moors, Goths, Vandals, and Longobards. For centuries the island was torn by incessant war, the Corsicans doing their utmost to keep themselves free from foreign masters. The feudal system was fastened upon the struggling people by the chiefs of the invaders. The crags were crowned with castles, and half-savage feudal lords ruled by the law of their own fierce lusts. They waged war upon each other, they ground down the native races. Unable to defend themselves, miserably poor, but full of desperate courage, the Corsicans fled from the coasts to escape the pirate, and to the mountains to resist the feudal robber. In their distress the peasants found a leader in Sambuccio, who organized them into village communities,—a democratic, self-ruling confederation. There were no serfs, no slaves, in Corsica; freedom and equality the people claimed and fought for; and under Sambuccio they totally routed the barons.

The great leader died; the barons took up arms again; the peasants appealed to the margrave of Tuscany for aid; an army came from Italy, the barons were beaten, and the village confederation restored. From A.D. 1020 to A.D. 1070, Tuscany protected the Corsicans; but the popes, having looked upon the land with eyes of desire, claimed it for the Church, and, through skilful manipulations (such as are common in cases of that kind), the people were persuaded to submit. In the year 1098 Pope Urban II. sold the island to Pisa, and for one hundred years Corsica remained under the dominion of that republic.

Genoa, however, envied Pisa this increase of territory, claimed the island for herself, and backed her claim by arms. Corsica was rent by the struggle, and the Corsicans themselves were divided into hostile camps, one favoring Pisa, the other Genoa.

The leader of the Pisan faction, Guidice della Rocca, kept up, for many years, an unequal struggle, showing wonderful courage, fertility of resource, rigorous justice, and rare clemency. He killed his own nephew for having outraged a female prisoner for whose safety he, Della Rocca, had given his word. Old and blind, this hero was betrayed by his bastard son, delivered to the Genoese, and died in a wretched Genoese dungeon; and with his downfall passed away the Pisan sovereignty.

A period of anarchy followed the death of Della Rocca. The barons were unmerciful in their extortions, and the people were reduced to extreme misery. After many years appeared another valiant patriot of the Rocca race, Arrigo della Rocca (1392). He raised the standard of revolt, and the people rallied to him. He beat the Genoese, was proclaimed Count of Corsica, and ruled the land for four years. Defeated at length by the Genoese, he went to Spain to ask aid. Returning with a small force, he routed his enemies and became again master of the island. Genoa sent another army, Arrigo della Rocca was poisoned (1401), and in the same year Genoa submitted to France.

Corsica kept up the struggle for independence. Vincentello, nephew of Arrigo della Rocca, was made Count of Corsica, and for two years maintained a gallant contest. Genoa poured in more troops, and the resistance was crushed. Vincentello left the island. Soon returning with help from Aragon, he reconquered the county with the exception of the strongholds of Calvi and Bonifaccio. Inspired by the success of Vincentello, the young king of Aragon, Alfonso, came in person with large forces to complete the conquest. Calvi was taken, but Bonifaccio resisted all efforts. The place was strongly Genoese, and for months the endurance of its defenders was desperately heroic. Women and children and priests joined with those who manned the walls, and all fought together. Spanish courage was balked, Spanish pride humbled, and Alfonso sailed away. Vincentello, bereft of allies, lost ground. He gave his own cause a death-blow by abusing a girl whose kinsmen rose to avenge the wrong. The guilty man and indomitable patriot determined to seek aid once more in Spain; but Genoa captured him at sea, and struck off his head on the steps of her ducal palace (1434).

Then came anarchy in Corsica again. The barons fought, the peasants suffered. Law was dead. Only the dreaded vendetta ruled—the law of private vengeance. So harried were the people by continued feuds, rival contentions, and miscellaneous tumult, that they met in general assembly and decided to put themselves under the protection of the bank of St. George of Genoa. The bank agreed to receive this singular deposit (1453). The Corsican nobles resisted the bank, and terrible scenes followed. Many a proud baron had his head struck off, many of them left the country. Aragon favored the nobles, and they came back to renew the fight, defeat the forces of the bank, and reconquer most of the island.

In 1464 Francesco Sforza of Milan took Genoa, and claimed Corsica as a part of his conquest. The islanders preferred Milan to Genoa, and but for an accidental brawl, peaceful terms might have been arranged. But the brawl occurred, and there was no peace. Years of war, rapine, and universal wretchedness followed. Out of the murk appears a valiant figure, Giampolo, taking up with marvellous tenacity and fortitude the old fight of Corsica against oppression. After every defeat, he rose to fight again. He never left the field till Corsican rivalry weakened and ruined him. Then, defiant to the last, he went the way of the outlaw to die in exile.

Renuccio della Rocca’s defection had caused Giampolo to fail. After a while Rocca himself led the revolt against Genoa, and was overthrown. He left the island, but came again, and yet again, to renew the hopeless combat. Finally his own peasants killed him to put an end to the miserable war, there being no other method of turning the indomitable man (1511).

Resistance over, the bank of Genoa governed the island. The barons were broken, their castles fell to ruin. The common people kept up their local home-rule, enjoyed a share in the government, and were in a position much better than that of the common people in other parts of Europe. But the bank was not satisfied to let matters rest there; a harsh spirit soon became apparent; and the privileges which the people had enjoyed were suppressed.

Against this tyranny rose now the strongest leader the Corsicans had yet found, Sampiero. Humbly born, this man had in his youth sought adventures in foreign lands. He had served the House of Medici, and in Florence became known for the loftiness and energy of his character. Afterward he served King Francis I., of France, by whom he was made colonel of the Corsican regiment which he had formed. Bayard was his friend, and Charles of Bourbon said of him, “In the day of battle the Corsican colonel is worth ten thousand men”; just as another great warrior, Archduke Charles of Austria, said of another great Corsican, serving then in France (1814), “Napoleon himself is equal to one hundred thousand men.”

In 1547 Sampiero went back to Corsica to select a wife. So well established was his renown that he was given the only daughter of the Lord of Ornano, the beautiful Vannina. The bank of Genoa, alarmed by the presence of such a man in the island, threw him into prison. His father-in-law, Francesco Ornano, secured his release.

Genoa, since her delivery from French dominion by Andrea Doria, was in league with the Emperor of Germany, with whom the French king and the Turks were at war. Hence it was that Sampiero could induce France and her allies to attack the Genoese in Corsica. In 1553 came Sampiero, the French, and the Turks; and all Corsica, save Calvi and Bonifaccio, fell into the hands of the invaders. Bonifaccio was besieged in vain, until, by a stratagem, it was taken. Then the Turks, indignant that Sampiero would not allow them to plunder the city and put all the Genoese to the sword, abandoned the cause, and sailed away. Calvi still held out. The Emperor sent an army of Germans and Spaniards; Cosmo de Medici also sent troops; Andrea Doria took command, and the French were everywhere beaten. Sampiero quarrelled with the incapable French commander, went to France to defend himself from false reports, made good his purpose, then returned to the island, where he became the lion of the struggle. He beat the enemy in two pitched battles, and kept up a successful contest for six years. Then came a crushing blow. By the treaty of Cambray, France agreed with Spain that Corsica should be given back to Genoa.

Under this terrible disaster, Sampiero did not despair. Forced to leave the island, he wandered from court to court on the continent, seeking aid. For four years he went this dreary round,—to France, to Navarre, to Florence. He even went to Algiers and to Constantinople. During this interval it was that Genoa deceived and entrapped Vannina, the wife of the hero. She left her home and put herself in the hands of his enemies. One of Sampiero’s relatives was fool enough to say to him, “I had long expected this.”—“And you concealed it!” cried Sampiero in a fury, striking his relative to the heart with a dagger. Vannina was pursued and caught, Sampiero killed her with his own hand.

Failing in his efforts to obtain foreign help, the hero came back to Corsica to make the fight alone (1564). With desperate courage he marched from one small victory to another until Genoa was thoroughly aroused. An army of German and Italian mercenaries was sent over, and the command given to an able general, Stephen Doria. The war assumed the most sanguinary character. Genoa seemed bent on utterly exterminating the Corsicans and laying waste the entire country. Sampiero rose to the crisis; and while he continued to beseech France for aid, he continued to fight with savage ferocity. He beat Doria in several encounters, and finally, in the pass of Luminada, almost annihilated the enemy. Doria, in despair, left the island, and Sampiero remained master of the field. With his pitifully small forces he had foiled the Spanish fleet, fifteen thousand Spanish soldiers, and an army of mercenaries; and had in succession beaten the best generals Genoa could send. All this he had done with half-starved, half-armed peasants, whose only strength lay in the inspiration of their patriotism and the unconquerable spirit of their leader. Few stronger men have lived and loved, hoped and dared, fought and suffered, than this half-savage hero of Corsica. With all the world against him Sampiero fought without fear, as another great Corsican was to do.

In open fight he was not to be crushed: on this his enemies were agreed, therefore treachery was tried. Genoa bribed some of the Corsican chiefs; Vannina’s cousins were roused to seek revenge; Vittolo, a trusted lieutenant, turned against his chief; and a monk, whom Sampiero could not suspect, joined the conspirators. The monk delivered forged letters to Sampiero, which led him to the ambuscade where his foes lay in wait. He fought like the lion he was. Wounded in the face, he wiped the blood out of his eyes with one hand while his sword was wielded by the other. Vittolo shot him in the back, and the Ornanos rushed upon the dying man, and cut off his head (1567).

The fall of Sampiero created intense satisfaction in Genoa, where there were bell-ringings and illuminations. In Corsica it aroused the people to renewed exertions; but the effort was fitful, for the leader was dead. In a great meeting at Orezzo, where three thousand patriots wept for the lost hero, they chose his son Alfonso their commander-in-chief.

After a struggle of two years, in which the youth bore himself bravely, he made peace and left the country. Accompanied by many companions in arms, he went to France, formed his followers into a Corsican regiment, of which Charles the Ninth appointed him colonel. Other Corsicans, taking refuge in Rome, formed themselves into the Pope’s Corsican guard.

Thrown back into the power of Genoa, Corsica suffered all the ills of the oppressed. Wasted by war, famine, plague, misgovernment, a more wretched land was not to be found. Deprived of its privileges, drained of its resources, ravaged by Turks and pillaged by Christians, it bled also from family feuds. The courts being corrupt, the vendetta raged with fury. In many parts of the country, agriculture and peaceful pursuits were abandoned. And this frightful condition prevailed for half a century.

The Genoese administration became ever more unbearable. A tax of twelve dollars was laid on every hearth. The governors of the island were invested with the power to condemn to death without legal forms or proceedings.

One day, a poor old man of Bustancio went to the Genoese collector to pay his tax. His money was a little short of the amount due—a penny or so. The official refused to receive what was offered, and threatened to punish the old man if he did not pay the full amount. The ancient citizen went away grumbling. To his neighbors, as he met them, he told his trouble. He complained and wept. They sympathized and wept. Frenzied by his own wrongs, the old man began to denounce the Genoese generally,—their tyranny, cruelty, insolence, and oppression. Crowds gathered, the excitement grew, insurrectionary feelings spread throughout the land. Soon the alarm bells were rung, and the war trumpet sounded from mountain to mountain. This was in October, 1729.

A war of forty years ensued. Genoa hired a large body of Germans from the Emperor, and eight thousand of these mercenaries landed in Corsica. At first they beat the ill-armed islanders, who marched to battle bare of feet and head. But in 1732 the Germans were almost destroyed in the battle of Calenzala. Genoa called on the Emperor for more hirelings. They were sent; but before any decisive action had taken place, there arrived orders from the Emperor to make peace. Corsica had appealed to him against Genoa, and he had decided that the Corsicans had been wronged. Corsica submitted to Genoa, but her ancient privileges were restored, taxes were remitted, and other reforms promised.

No sooner had the Germans left the island than Genoese and Corsicans fell to fighting again. Under Hyacinth Paoli and Giafferi, the brave islanders defeated the Genoese, at all points; and Corsica, for the moment, stood redeemed.

In 1735 the people held a great meeting at Corte and proclaimed their independence. A government was organized, and the people were declared to be the only source of the laws.

Genoa exerted all her power to put down the revolt. The island was blockaded, troops poured in, the best generals were sent. The situation of the Corsicans was desperate. They stood in need of almost everything requisite to their defence, except brave men. The blockade cut off any hope of getting aid from abroad. English sympathizers sent two vessels laden with supplies, and keen was the joy of the poor islanders. With the munitions thus obtained they stormed and took Alesia.

But their distress was soon extreme again, and the struggle hopeless. At this, the darkest hour, came a very curious episode. A German adventurer, Theodore de Neuhoff, a baron of Westphalia, entering the port with a single ship, under the British flag, offered himself to the Corsicans as their king. Promises of the most exhilarating description he made as to the men, money, munitions of war he could bring to Corsican relief. Easily believing what was so much to their interest, and perhaps attaching too much importance to the three English ships which had recently brought them supplies, the Corsican chiefs actually accepted Neuhoff for their king.

The compact between King Theodore and the Corsicans was gravely reduced to writing, signed, sealed, sworn to, and delivered. Then they all went into the church, held solemn religious services, and crowned Theodore with a circlet of oak and laurel leaves. Theodore took himself seriously, went to work with zeal, appointed high dignitaries of the crown, organized a court, created an order of knighthood, and acted as if he were a king indeed. He marched against the oppressors, fought like a madman, gained some advantages, and began to make the situation look gloomy to the Genoese.

Resorting to a detestable plan, they turned loose upon the island a band of fifteen hundred bandits, galley-slaves, and outlaws. These villains made havoc wherever they went. In the meantime, the Corsican chiefs began to be impatient about the succors which Theodore had promised. Evasions and fresh assurances answered for a while, but finally matters reached a crisis. Theodore was told, with more or less pointedness, that either the succors must come or that he must go. To avoid a storm, he went, saying that he would soon return with the promised relief. Paoli and the other Corsican chiefs realized that in catching at the straw this adventurer had held out to them, they had made themselves and Corsica ridiculous. They accordingly laid heavy blame on Theodore.

Cardinal Fleury, a good old Christian man, who was at this time (1737) minister of France, came forward with a proposition to interfere in behalf of Genoa, and reduce the Corsicans to submission. Accordingly French troops were landed (1738), and the islanders rose en masse to resist. Bonfires blazed, bells clanged, war trumpets brayed. The whole population ran to arms. The French were in no haste to fight, and for six months negotiations dragged along. Strange to say, the Corsicans, in their misery, gave hostages to the French, and agreed to trust their cause to the king of France. At this stage who should enter but Theodore! The indefatigable man had ransacked Europe, hunting sympathy for Corsica, and had found it where Americans found it in a similar hour of need—in Holland. He had managed to bring with him several vessels laden with cannon, small arms, powder, lead, lances, flints, bombs, and grenades. The Corsican people received him with delight, and carried him in triumph to Cervione, where he had been crowned; but the chiefs bore him no good-will, and told him that circumstances had changed. Terms must be made with France; Corsica could not at this time accept him as king—oaths, religious services, and written contract to the contrary notwithstanding. Theodore sadly sailed away.

The appeal to the French king resulted in the treaty of Versailles, by whose terms some concessions were made to the Corsicans, who were positively commanded to lay down their arms and submit to Genoa. Corsica resisted, but was overcome by France. In 1741 the French withdrew from the island, and almost immediately war again raged between Corsican and Genoese.

In 1748 King Theodore reappeared, bringing munitions of war which the island greatly needed. He seems to have succeeded in getting the Corsicans to accept his supplies, but they showed no inclination to accept himself. Once again he departed—to return no more. The gallant, generous adventurer went to London, where his creditors threw him into prison. The minister, Walpole, opened a subscription which secured his release. He died in England, and was buried in St. Anne’s churchyard, London, December, 1756.

Peace was concluded between Genoa and Corsica, whose privileges were restored. For two years quiet reigned. Family feuds then broke out, and the island was thrown into confusion. Following this came a general rising against the Genoese, in which the English and Sardinians aided the Corsicans. Genoa applied to France, which sent an army. Dismayed by the appearance of the French, the island came to terms. Cursay, the commander of the French, secured for the unfortunate people the most favorable treaty they had ever obtained. Dissatisfied with Cursay, the Genoese prevailed on France to recall him. Whereupon the Corsicans rose in arms, Gaffori being their chief. He displayed the genius and the courage of Sampiero, met with the success of the earlier hero, and like him fell by treachery. Enticed into an ambuscade, Gaffori was slain by Corsicans, his own brother being one of the assassins. The fall of the leader did not dismay the people. They chose other leaders, and continued the fight. Finally, in July, 1755, the celebrated Paschal Paoli was chosen commander-in-chief. At this time he was but twenty-four years old. Well educated, mild, firm, clear-headed, and well balanced, he was very much more of a statesman than a warrior. His first measure, full of wisdom, was the abolition of the vendetta.

Mainly by the help of his brother Clemens, Paoli crushed a rival Corsican, Matra, and established himself firmly as ruler of the island. Under his administration it flourished and attracted the admiring attention of all European liberals. Genoa, quite exhausted, appealed to France, but was given little help. As a last resort, treachery was tried: Corsican was set against Corsican. The Matra family was resorted to, and brothers of him who had led the first revolt against Paoli took the field at the head of Genoese troops. They were defeated.

Genoa again turned to France, and on August 6, 1764, was signed an agreement by which Corsica was ceded to France for four years. French garrisons took possession of the few places which Genoa still held. During the four years Choiseul, the French minister, prepared the way for the annexation of Corsica to France. As ever before, there were Corsicans who could be used against Corsica. Buttafuoco, a noble of the island, professed himself a convert to the policy of annexation. He became Choiseul’s apostle for the conversion of others. So adroitly did he work with bribes and other inducements, that Corsica was soon divided against herself. A large party declared in favor of the incorporation of the island with France. In 1768 the Genoese realized that their dominion was gone. A bargain was made between two corrupt and despotic powers by which the one sold to the other an island it did not own, a people it could not conquer,—an island and a people whose government was at that moment a model of wisdom, justice, and enlightened progress. Alone of all the people of Europe, Corsica enjoyed self-government, political and civil freedom, righteous laws, and honest administration. Commerce, agriculture, manufactures, had sprung into new life under Paoli’s guidance, schools had been founded, religious toleration decreed, liberty of speech and conscience proclaimed. After ages of combat against awful odds, the heroic people had won freedom, and, by the manner in which it was used, proved that they had deserved to win it. Such were the people who were bargained for and bought by Choiseul, the minister of France, at and for the sum of $400,000. The Bourbons had lost to England an empire beyond seas—by this act of perfidy and brutality they hoped to recover some of their lost grandeur.

Terrible passions raged in Corsica when this infamous bargain became known. The people flew to arms, and their wrongs sent a throb of sympathy far into many lands. But France sent troops by the tens of thousands; and while the Corsicans accomplished wonders, they could not beat foes who outnumbered them so heavily. Paoli was a faithful chief, vigilant and brave, but he was no Sampiero. His forces were crushed at Ponte Nuovo on June 12, 1769, and Corsica laid down her arms. The long chapter was ended, and one more wrong triumphant.

Chief among the painful features of the drama was that Buttafuoco and a few other Corsicans took service with France, and made war upon their own people.

Paoli with a band of devoted supporters left the island. From Leghorn, through Germany and Holland, his journey was a triumphal progress. Acclaimed by the liberals, honors were showered upon him by the towns through which he passed; and in England, where he made his home, he was welcomed by the people and pensioned by the government.

The French organized their administration without difficulty. The Buttafuoco element basked in the warmth of success and patronage. For a while all was serene. Later on the French grip tightened, the Corsican time-honored privileges were set aside, the old democracy was no longer the support of a government which relied more and more on French soldiers. Power, taken from the village communities, was placed entirely in the hands of a military governor and a council of twelve nobles. Frenchmen filled all the important offices. The seat of government was moved from Corte to Bastia and Ajaccio. The discontent which these changes caused broke into open rebellion. The French crushed it with savage cruelty. After that Corsica was a conquered land, which offered no further resistance; but whose people, excepting always those who had taken part with France, nursed intensely bitter feelings against their conquerors.

Of this fiery, war-worn, deeply wronged people, Napoleon Bonaparte was born; and it must be remembered that before his eyes opened to the light his mother had thrilled with all the passions of her people, her feet had followed the march, her ears had heard the roar of battle. As Dumas finely says, “The new-born child breathed air that was hot with civil hates, and the bell which sounded his baptism still quivered with the tocsin.”

CHAPTER II

“From St. Charles Street you enter on a very small square. An elm tree stands before a yellowish gray plastered house, with a flat roof and a projecting balcony. It has six front windows in each of its three stories, and the doors look old and time-worn. On the corner of this house is an inscription, Letitia Square. The traveller knocks in vain at the door. No voice answers.”

Such is the picture, drawn in 1852, of the Bonaparte mansion in Ajaccio. Few tourists go to see it, for Corsica lies not in the direct routes of the world’s trade or travel. Yet it is a house whose story is more fascinating, more marvellous, than that of any building which cumbers the earth this day.

We shut our eyes, and we see a picture which is richer than the richest page torn from romance. We see a lean, sallow, awkward, stunted lad step forth from the door of the old house and go forth into the world, with no money in his pocket, and no powerful friends to lift him over the rough places. He is only nine years old when he leaves home, and we see him weep bitterly as he bids his mother good-by. We see him at school in France, isolated, wretched, unable at first to speak the language, fiercely resenting the slights put upon his poverty, his ignorance, his family, his country—suffering, but never subdued. We see him rise against troubles as the eagle breasts the storm. We see him lay the better half of the civilized world at his feet. We see him bring sisters and brothers from the island home, and put crowns on their heads. We see him shower millions upon his mother; and we hear him say to his brother on the day he dons the robes of empire, “Joseph, suppose father were here—!”

As long as time shall last, the inspiration of the poor and the ambitious will be the Ajaccio lawyer’s son: not Alexander, the born king; not Cæsar, the patrician; but Napoleon, the moneyless lad from despised Corsica, who stormed the high places of the world, and by his own colossal strength of character, genius, and industry took them!

As long as time shall last his name will inspire not only the individual, but the masses also. Wherever a people have heard enough, read enough, thought enough to feel that absolutism in king or priest is wrong; that special privilege in clan or clique is wrong; that monopoly of power, patronage, wealth, or opportunity is wrong, there the name of Napoleon will be spoken with reverence, despot though he became, for in his innermost fibre he was a man of the people, crushing to atoms feudalism, caste, divine right, and hereditary imposture.

* * * * *

As early as the year 947 there had been Bonapartes in Corsica, for the name of one occurs as witness to a deed in that year. There were also Bonapartes in Italy; and men of that name were classed with the nobles of Bologna, Treviso, and Florence. It is said that during the civil wars of Italy, members of the Bonaparte family took refuge in Corsica, and that Napoleon’s origin can be traced to this source. It is certain that the Bonapartes of Corsica continued to claim kindred with the Italian family, and to class themselves as patricians of Italy; and both these claims were recognized. In Corsica they ranked with the nobility, a family of importance at Ajaccio.

At the time of the French invasion the representatives of the family were Lucien, archdeacon of Ajaccio, and Charles Bonaparte, a young man who had been left an orphan at the age of fourteen.

Born in 1746, Charles Bonaparte married, in 1764, Letitia Ramolino, a Corsican girl of fifteen. She was of good family, and she brought to her husband a dowry at least equal to his own estate. Beautiful, high-spirited, and intelligent, Madame Letitia knew nothing of books, knew little of the manners of polite society, and was more of the proud peasant than of the grand lady. She did not know how to add up a column of figures; but time was to prove that she possessed judgment, common sense, inflexible courage, great loftiness and energy of character. Misfortune did not break her spirit, and prosperity did not turn her head. She was frugal, industrious, strong physically and mentally, “with a man’s head on a woman’s shoulders,” as Napoleon said of her.

Charles Bonaparte was studying law in Italy when the war between France and Corsica broke out. At the call of Paoli, the student dropped his books and came home to join in the struggle. He was active and efficient, one of Paoli’s trusted lieutenants. After the battle of Ponte Nuovo, realizing that all was lost, he gave in his submission (May 23, 1769) to the French, and returned to Ajaccio.

The policy of the French was to conciliate the leading Corsicans, and special attention seems to have been given to Charles Bonaparte. His mansion in Ajaccio, noted for its hospitality, became the favorite resort of General Marbeuf, the bachelor French governor of the island. With an ease which as some have thought indicated suppleness or weakness of character, Bonaparte the patriot became Bonaparte the courtier. He may have convinced himself that incorporation with France was best for Corsica, and that his course in making the most out of the new order of things was wisdom consistent with patriotism.

Resistance to France having been crushed, the policy of conciliation inaugurated, and the Corsicans encouraged to take part in the management of their own affairs, subject to France, one might hesitate before condemning the course of Charles Bonaparte in Corsica, just as we may hesitate between the policies of Kossuth and Déak in Hungary, or of Kosciusko and Czartoryski in Poland. We may, and do, admire the patriot who resists to the death; and, at the same time, respect the citizen who fights till conquered, and then makes the best of a bad situation.

In 1765 Madame Letitia Bonaparte gave birth to her first child; in 1767, to her second, both of whom died while infants. In 1768 was born Joseph, and on August 15, 1769, Napoleon.[1]

[1] During the period of this pregnancy, Corsica was in the storm of war; and Madame Bonaparte, following her husband, was in the midst of the sufferings, terrors, and brutalities which such a war creates. The air was still electrical with the hot passions of deadly strife when the young wife’s time came. On the 15th of August, 1769, Madame Bonaparte, a devout Catholic, attended service at the church; but feeling labor approaching, hastened home, and was barely able to reach her room before she was delivered of Napoleon on a rug upon the floor.

The authority for this statement is Madame Bonaparte herself, who gave that account of the matter to the Permons in Paris, on the 18th of Brumaire, the day on which the son thus born was struggling for supreme power in France.

The story which represents the greatest of men and warriors as having come into the world upon a piece of carpet, or tapestry, upon which the heroes of the “Iliad” were represented, is a fable, according to the express statement made by Madame Bonaparte to the American General Lee, in Rome, in 1830.

Other children came to the Bonapartes in the years following, the survivors of these being: Elisa, Lucien, Louis, Pauline, Caroline, and Jerome. To support this large family, and to live in the hospitable fashion which custom required of a man of his rank, Charles Bonaparte found a difficult matter, especially as he was a pleasure-loving, extravagant man whose idea of work seemed to be that of a born courtier. He returned to Italy after the peace; spent much of his patrimony there; made the reputation of a sociable, intelligent, easy-going gentleman; and took his degree of Doctor of Laws, at Pisa, in November, 1769.

It was his misfortune to be cumbered with a mortgaged estate and a hereditary lawsuit. Whatever surplus the mortgage failed to devour was swallowed by the lawsuit. His father had expensively chased this rainbow, pushed this hopeless attempt to get justice; and the steps of the father were followed by the son. It was the old story of a sinner, sick and therefore repentant; a priest holding the keys to heaven and requiring payment in advance; a craven surrender of estate to purchase the promise of salvation. Thus the Jesuits got Bonaparte houses and lands, in violation of the terms of an ancestor’s will, the lawsuit being the effort of the legal heirs to make good the testament of the original owner.

In spite of all they could do, the Bonapartes were never able to recover the property.

Charles Bonaparte, a man of handsome face and figure, seems to have had a talent for making friends, for he was made assessor to the highest court of Ajaccio, a member of the council of Corsican nobles, and later, the representative of these nobles to France. With the slender income from his wife’s estate and that from his own, aided by his official earnings, he maintained his family fairly well; but his pretensions and expenditures were so far beyond what he was really able to afford that, financially, he was never at ease.

It was the familiar misery of the gentleman who strives to gratify a rich man’s tastes with a poor man’s purse. There was his large stone mansion, his landed estate, his aristocratic associates, his patent of nobility signed by the Duke of Florence; and yet there was not enough money in the house to school the children.

The widowed mother of Madame Letitia had married a second husband, Fesch, a Swiss ex-captain of the Genoese service, and by this marriage she had a son, Joseph Fesch, known to Napoleonic chronicles as “Uncle Fesch.” This eleven-year-old uncle taught the young Napoleon the alphabet.

In his sixth year Napoleon was sent to a dame’s school. For one of the little girls at this school the lad showed such a fondness that he was laughed at, and rhymed at, by the other boys.

Napoleon di mezza calzetta
Fa l’armore a Giacominetta.[2]

[2]Napoleon with his stockings half off
Makes love to Giacominetta.

The jeers and the rhyme Napoleon answered with sticks and stones.

It is not very apparent that he learned anything here, for we are told that it was the Abbé Recco who taught him to read; and it was this Abbé whom Napoleon remembered in his will. As to little Giacominetta, Napoleonic chronicles lose her completely, and she takes her place among the “dream children” of very primitive poesy.

Just what sort of a boy Napoleon was at this early period, it is next to impossible to say. Perhaps he did not differ greatly from other boys of his own age. Probably he was more fractious, less inclined to boyish sports, quicker to quarrel and fight. But had he never become famous, his youthful symptoms would never have been thought to indicate anything uncommon either for good or evil.

At St. Helena, the weary captive amused himself by picturing the young Napoleon as the bad boy of the town. He quarrelled, he fought, he bit and scratched, he terrorized his brothers and sisters, and so forth. It may be true, it may not be; his mother is reported as saying that he was a “perfect imp of a child,” but the authority is doubtful.

The Bonaparte family usually spent the summer at a small country-seat called Milleli. Its grounds were beautiful, and there was a glorious view of the sea. A large granite rock with a natural cavity, or grotto, offered a cool, quiet retreat; and this is said to have been Napoleon’s favorite resort. In after years he improved the spot, built a small summer-house there, and used it for study and meditation.

It is natural to suppose that Napoleon as a child absorbed a good deal of Corsican sentiment. His wet-nurse was a Corsican peasant, and from her, his parents, his playmates, and his school companions he probably heard the story of Corsica, her wrongs, her struggles, and her heroes. Della Rocca, Sampiero, Gaffori, and Paoli were names familiar to his ears. At a very early age he had all the passions of the Corsican patriot. The French were masters, but they were hated. While the Bonapartes had accepted the situation, they may not have loved it. The very servants in the house vented their curses on “those dogs of French.”

General Marbeuf, the warm friend of the family, encouraged Charles Bonaparte to make the attempt to have the children educated at the expense of France. In 1776 written application was made for the admission of Joseph and Napoleon into the military school of Brienne. At that time both the boys were on the safe side of the age-limit of ten years. But the authorities demanded proofs of nobility,—four generations thereof,—according to Bourbon law; and before these proofs could be put into satisfactory shape, Joseph was too old for Brienne.

Chosen in 1777 by the nobles of Corsica as their deputy to France, Charles Bonaparte set out for Versailles in 1778, taking with him his sons Joseph and Napoleon. Joseph Fesch accompanied the party as far as Aix, where he was to be given a free education for the priesthood by the seminary at that place. Joseph and Napoleon both stated in after years that their father visited Florence on the way to France, and was given an honorable reception at the ducal court.

The Bishop of Autun, nephew of General Marbeuf, had been interested in behalf of the Bonapartes; and it was at his school that Joseph was to be educated for the Church. Napoleon was also placed there till he could learn French enough for Brienne. On January 1, 1779, therefore, he began his studies.

The Abbé Chardon, who was his teacher, says that he was a boy of thoughtful and gloomy character. “He had no playmate and walked about by himself.” Very naturally. He was a stranger to all the boys, he was in a strange country, he could not at first speak the language, he could not understand those who did speak it—how was the homesick lad to be sociable and gay under such conditions? Besides, he was Corsican, a despised representative of a conquered race. And the French boys taunted him about it. One day, according to the teacher, the boys threw at him the insult that “the Corsicans were a lot of cowards.” Napoleon flashed out of his reserve and replied, “Had you been but four to one you would never have conquered us, but you were ten to one.” To pacify him the teacher remarked, “But you had a good general—Paoli.”—“Yes,” answered the lad of ten, “and I would like to resemble him.”

According to the school register and to Napoleon’s own record, he remained at Autun till the 12th of May, 1779. He had learned “enough French to converse freely, and to make little themes and translations.”

In the meantime, Charles Bonaparte had been attending his king, the young Louis XVI., at Versailles. Courtier in France as in Ajaccio, the adroit lawyer had pleased. A bounty from the royal purse swelled the pay of the Corsican delegates, a reward for “their excellent behavior”; and for once Charles Bonaparte was moderately supplied with funds.

On May 19, 1779, Napoleon entered the college of Brienne. Its teachers were incompetent monks. The pupils were mainly aristocratic French scions of the privileged nobility, proud, idle, extravagant, vicious. Most of these young men looked down upon Napoleon with scorn. In him met almost every element necessary to stir their dislike, provoke their ridicule, or excite their anger. In person he was pitifully thin and short, with lank hair and awkward manners; his speech was broken French, mispronounced and ungrammatical; it was obvious that he was poor; he was a Corsican; and instead of being humble and submissive, he was proud and defiant. During the five years Napoleon spent here he was isolated, moody, tortured by his own discontent, and the cruelty of his position. He studied diligently those branches he liked, the others he neglected. In mathematics he stood first in the school, in history and geography he did fairly well; Latin, German, and the ornamental studies did not attract him at all. The German teacher considered him a dunce. But he studied more in the library than in the schoolroom. While the other boys were romping on the playground, Napoleon was buried in some corner with a book.

On one occasion Napoleon, on entering a room and seeing a picture of Choiseul which hung therein, burst into a torrent of invective against the minister who had bought Corsica. The school authorities punished the blasphemy.

At another time one of the young French nobles scornfully said to Napoleon, “Your father is nothing but a wretched tipstaff.” Napoleon challenged his insulter, and was imprisoned for his temerity.

Upon another occasion he was condemned by the quartermaster, for some breach of the rules, to wear a penitential garb and to eat his dinner on his knees at the door of the common dining-room. The humiliation was real and severe; for doubtless the French lads who had been bullying him were all witnesses to the disgrace, and were looking upon the culprit with scornful eyes, while they jeered and laughed at him. Napoleon became hysterical under the strain, and began to vomit. The principal of the school happening to pass, was indignant that such a degradation should be put upon so dutiful and diligent a scholar, and relieved him from the torture.

“Ah, Bourrienne! I like you: you never make fun of me!” Is there nothing pathetic in this cry of the heart-sick boy?

To his father, Napoleon wrote a passionate appeal to be taken from the school where he was the butt of ridicule, or to be supplied with sufficient funds to maintain himself more creditably. General Marbeuf interfered in his behalf, and supplied him with a more liberal allowance.

The students, in turn, were invited to the table of the head-master. One day when this honor was accorded Napoleon, one of the monk-professors sweetened the boy’s satisfaction by a contemptuous reference to Corsica and to Paoli. It seems well-nigh incredible that the clerical teachers should have imitated the brutality of the supercilious young nobles, but Bourrienne is authority for the incident. Napoleon broke out defiantly against the teacher, just as he had done against his fellow-students: “Paoli was a great man; he loved his country; and I will never forgive my father for his share in uniting Corsica to France. He should have followed Paoli.” Mocked by some of the teachers and tormented by the richer students, Napoleon withdrew almost completely within himself. He made no complaints, prayed for no relief, but fell back on his own resources. When the boys mimicked his pronunciation, turned his name into an offensive nickname, and flouted him with the subjection of his native land, he either remained disdainfully silent, or threw himself single-handed against his tormentors.

To each student was given a bit of ground that he might use it as he saw fit. Napoleon annexed to his own plat two adjacent strips which their temporary owners had abandoned; and by hedging and fencing made for himself a privacy, a solitude, which he could not otherwise get. Here he took his books, here he read and pondered, here he indulged his tendency to day-dreaming, to building castles in the air.

His schoolmates did not leave him at peace even here. Occasionally they would band together and attack his fortress. Then, says Burgoing, one of his fellow-students, “it was a sight to see him burst forth in a fury to drive off the intruders, without the slightest regard to their numbers.”

Much as he disliked his comrades, there was no trace of meanness in his resentments. He suffered punishment for things he had not done rather than report on the real offenders. Unsocial and unpopular, he nevertheless enjoyed a certain distinction among the students as well as with the teachers. His pride, courage, maturity of thought, and quick intelligence arrested attention and compelled respect.

When the students, during the severe winter of 1783–84, were kept within doors, it was Napoleon who suggested mimic war as a recreation. A snow fort was built, and the fun was to attack and defend it with snowballs. Then Napoleon’s natural capacity for leadership was seen. He at one time led the assailants, at another the defenders, as desperately in earnest as when he afterward attacked or defended kingdoms. One student refusing to obey an order, Napoleon knocked him down with a chunk of ice. Many years after this unlucky person turned up with a scar on his face, and reminded the Emperor Napoleon of the incident; whereupon Napoleon fell into one of his best moods, and dealt liberally with the petitioner.

During the whole time Napoleon was at Brienne he remained savagely Corsican. He hated the French, and did not hesitate to say so. Of course the French here meant were the pupils of the school—the big boys who jeered at his poverty, his parentage, his countrymen. It is worth notice that he never by word or deed sought to disarm his enemies by pandering to their prejudices. He made no effort whatever to ingratiate himself with them by surrendering any of his own opinions. He would not even compromise by concealing what he felt. He was a Corsican to the core, proud of his island heroes, proud of Paoli, frankly detesting those who had trampled upon his country. It must have sounded even to the dull ears of ignorant monks as something remarkable when this shabby-looking lad, hardly in his teens, cried out, defiantly, “I hope one day to be able to give Corsica her freedom!” He had drunk in the wild stories the peasants told of Sampiero; he had devoured the vivid annals of Plutarch, and his hopes and dreams were already those of a daring man.

During these years at Brienne, General Marbeuf continued to be Napoleon’s active friend. He seems to have regularly supplied him with money, and it was the General’s interference which secured his release from imprisonment in the affair of the duel. Through the same influence Napoleon secured the good-will of Madame de Brienne, who lived in the château near the school. This lady warmed to the lad, took him to her house to spend holidays and vacations, and treated him with a motherly kindness which he never forgot.

The character which Napoleon established at Brienne varied with the point of view. To the students generally he appeared to be unsocial, quarrelsome, and savage. To some of the teachers he seemed to be mild, studious, grateful. To others, imperious and headstrong. M. de Keralio reported him officially as submissive, upright, thoughtful, “conduct most exemplary.” On all he made the impression that he was inflexible, not to be moved after he has taken his stand. Pichegru, afterward conqueror of Holland, and after that supporter of the Bourbons, was a pupil-teacher to Napoleon at Brienne, and is thought to have been the quartermaster who put upon him the shame of eating on his knees at the dining-room door. Bourbon emissaries were eager to win over to their cause the brilliant young general, Bonaparte, and suggested the matter to Pichegru. “Do not try it,” said he. “I knew him at Brienne. His character is inflexible. He has taken his side, and will not change.”

When Napoleon, in his last years, came to speak of his school days, he seemed to have forgotten all that was unpleasant. Time had swept its effacing fingers over the actual facts, and he had come to believe that he had not only been happy at Brienne, but had been a jolly, frolicksome fellow—a very cheerful, sociable, popular lad. It was some other youth who had shunned his fellows, fenced himself within a garden wall, combated all intruders with sticks and stones, and hated the French because they teased him so. The real Napoleon, according to the captive Emperor, was a boy like other boys, full of fun, frolic, tricks, and games. One of the sportive tricks of the merry and mythical Bonaparte was this: An old commandant, upward of eighty, was practising the boys at target-shooting with a cannon. He complained that the aim was bad, none of the balls hit the target. Presently, he asked of those near him if they had seen the ball strike. After half a dozen discharges, the old general bethought himself of counting the balls. Then the trick was exposed—the boys had slipped the balls aside each time the gun was loaded.

Another anecdote told by the Emperor brings him more immediately within the circle of our sympathies. Just above his own room at the college was a fellow-student who was learning to play on the horn. He practised loudly, and at all hours. Napoleon found it impossible to study. Meeting the student on the stairs, Napoleon feelingly remonstrated. The horn player was in a huff at once, as a matter of course. His room was his own, and he would blow horns in it as much as he pleased. “We will see about that,” said Napoleon, and he challenged the offender to mortal combat. Death could have no terrors compared to the incessant tooting in the room above, and Napoleon was determined to take his chances on sudden sword thrust rather than the slow tortures of the horn practice. Fellow-students interfered, a compromise was reached, and the duel did not come off. The student who roused the ire of Napoleon in this extreme manner was named Bussey, and in the campaign of 1814 Napoleon met him again, received offers of service from him, and named him aide-de-camp. It is a pleasure to be able to record that this fellow-student of Brienne remained faithful to Napoleon to the very last, in 1814 and again in 1815.

In the year 1810 the Emperor Napoleon, divorced from Josephine, was spending a few days in seclusion in the Trianon at Versailles, awaiting the coming of the Austrian wife, “the daughter of the Cæsars.” Hortense and Stephanie Beauharnais were with him, and Stephanie mischievously asked him if he knew how to waltz. Napoleon answered:—

“When I was at the military school I tried, I don’t know how many times, to overcome the vertigo caused by waltzing, without being able to succeed. Our dancing-master had advised us when practising to take a chair in our arms instead of a lady. I never failed to fall down with the chair, which I squeezed affectionately, and to break it. The chairs in my room, and those of two or three of my comrades, disappeared one after another.”

The Emperor told this story in his gayest manner, and the two ladies laughed, of course; but Stephanie insisted that he should even now learn to waltz, that all Germans waltzed, that his new wife would expect it, and that as the Empress could only dance with the Emperor, he must not deprive her of such a pleasure.

“You are right,” exclaimed Napoleon. “Come! give me a lesson.”

Thereupon he rose, took the merry Stephanie in his arms, and went capering around the room to the music of his own voice, humming the air of The Queen of Prussia. After two or three turns, his fair teacher gave him up in despair; he was too hopelessly awkward; and she flattered him, while pronouncing him a failure, by saying that he was made to give lessons and not receive them.

* * * * *

Toward the close of 1783 a royal inspector of the military schools, Keralio by name, examined the students at Brienne for the purpose of selecting those who were to be promoted to the higher military school at Paris. M. de Keralio was greatly impressed by Napoleon, and emphatically recommended his promotion. This inspector having died, his successor examined Napoleon the second time, and passed him on to the Paris school, which he entered on October 30, 1784. On the certificate which went with him from Brienne were the words, “Character masterful, imperious, and headstrong.”

When Napoleon alighted from the coach which brought him from Brienne to Paris, and stood, a tiny foreign boy, in the midst of the hurly-burly of a great city, he must have felt himself one of the loneliest and most insignificant of mortals. Demetrius Permon found him in the Palais Royal, “where he was gaping and staring with wonder at everything he saw. Truly, he looked like a fresh importation.” M. Permon invited the lad to dine, and found him “very morose,” and feared that he had “more self-conceit than was suitable to his condition.” Napoleon made this impression upon Permon by declaiming violently against the luxury of the young men at the military school, denouncing the system of education which prevailed there, comparing it unfavorably to the system of ancient Sparta, and announcing his intention of memorializing the minister of war on the subject.

Napoleon, at the military school of Paris, continued to be studious, and to read almost constantly. He was obedient to the authorities, and defiant to the young aristocrats who surrounded him and looked down on him. The extravagance, indolence, and superciliousness of the noble students, together with the general luxury which prevailed in the establishment, disgusted and enraged a scholar who had no money to spend, and who had come there to study. When he, as head of the State, came to reorganize the educational system of France, he did not forget the lessons taught by his own experience. As a man he adopted a system which avoided all the abuses which as a boy he had denounced.

During this period he may have occasionally visited the Permons in Paris and his sister Elisa, who had been admitted into the State school at St. Cyr. Madame D’Abrantes so relates in her Memoirs; and while there is a difficulty about dates, her narrative is, perhaps, substantially correct. It is a lifelike picture she paints of Napoleon’s gloom at Paris and Elisa’s sorrow at St. Cyr: Napoleon wretched because he could not pay his way among the boys; Elisa miserable because she could not keep step with the girls. Napoleon sulked and denounced luxury; Elisa wept and bewailed her poverty. Elisa was consoled by a tip given by Madame Permon. As for Napoleon, he refused to borrow: “I have no right to add to the burdens of my mother.”

On final examination, August, 1785, Napoleon stood forty-second in his class—not a brilliant mark, certainly, but it sufficed. He received his appointment of sub-lieutenant with joy unbounded. His days of tutelage were over: henceforth he was a man and an officer. Having chosen the artillery service, he set out with Des Mazis, a friend he had made at the military school, to join the regiment of La Fère, which was stationed at Valence. According to one account, Napoleon borrowed money from a cloth merchant to make this journey; according to another, Des Mazis paid the way of both. However that may be, it seems that when the young officers reached Lyons, a gay city of the south, they relaxed the rigors of military discipline to such an extent that their money all vanished. The remainder of the distance to Valence was made on foot.

* * * * *

Those biographers who devote their lives to defaming Napoleon, lay stress on the alleged fact that he was educated by the King. In becoming an adherent of the Revolution, these writers say that he betrayed an amount of moral obliquity quite appalling. Louis XVI. was king while Napoleon was at Brienne, and the suggestion that Napoleon owed a debt of gratitude to Louis XVI. is amusing. The tax-payers, the people, educated Napoleon; and whatever debt of gratitude he owed, he owed to them. In going with the Revolution, he went with those who had paid his schooling. He himself drew this distinction at the time. When M. Demetrius Permon rebuked him for criticising royalty, throwing the alleged debt of gratitude in his teeth, the boy replied, “The State educates me; not the King.”

Of course Permon could not admit the distinction, he being a noble of the Old Order; nor can biographers who write in the interest of modern Toryism admit it. But the distinction is there, nevertheless; the boy saw it, and so does impartial history.

CHAPTER III

Napoleon carried with him to his new home a letter of introduction from the Bishop of Autun to the ex-Abbot of St. Ruffe, and with this leverage he made his way into the best society of Valence. For the first time circumstances were favorable to him, and the good effects of the change were at once evident. Occupying a better place in life than before, he was more contented, more sociable. He mingled with the people about him, and made friends. No longer a waif, a charity boy from abroad, thrust among other boys who looked down upon him as a social inferior, he was now an officer of State, housed, fed, clothed, salaried at the public expense. No longer under the wheels, he held a front seat in that wondrous vehicle which men call government, and in which a few so comfortably ride while the many so contentedly wear harness and pull. No longer subject to everybody’s orders, Napoleon had become one of the masters in God’s world here below, and could issue orders himself. Glorious change! And the sun began to look bright to “Lieutenant Bonaparte of the King’s Royal Academy.” He cultivated himself and others socially. He found some congenial spirits among the elderly men of the place; also some among the young women. In the hours not spent in study, and not claimed by his duties, he could be found chatting at the coffee-house, strolling with brother officers, dancing at the neighborhood balls, and playing the beau amid the belles of this high provincial circle.

To one of these young ladies, according to tradition and his own statement, he lost his heart. But when we seek to know something more definite, tradition and his own statements differ. If we are to accept his version, the courtship led to nothing beyond a few promenades, and the eating of cherries together in the early morning. According to the local tradition, however, he proposed and was rejected. Her parents were local aristocrats, and had so little confidence in the future of the little officer that they married their girl by preference to a M. de Bressieux—a good, safe, commonplace gentleman of the province. In after years the lady reminded Napoleon of their early friendship, and he at once made generous provision for both herself and husband.

If possible, Napoleon studied more diligently at Valence than at Brienne. Plutarch’s Lives and Cæsar’s Commentaries he had already mastered while a child; Rousseau had opened a new world of ideas to him in Paris: he now continued his historical studies by reading Herodotus, Strabo, Diodorus. Anything relating to India, China, Arabia, had a peculiar charm for him. Next he learned all he could of Germany and England. French history he studied minutely, striving to exhaust information on the subject. In his researches he was not content merely with ordinary historical data: he sought to understand the secret meaning of events, and the origin of institutions. He studied legislation, statistics, the history of the Church, especially the relation of the Church to the State. Likewise he read the masterpieces of French literature and the critical judgments which had been passed upon them. Novels he did not disdain, and for poetry of the heroic cast he had a great fondness.

He read also the works of Voltaire, Necker, Filangieri, and Adam Smith. With Napoleon to read was to study. He made copious notes, and these notes prove that he bent every faculty of his mind to the book in hand. He analyzed, commented, weighed statements in the balance of his own judgment—in short, doing everything necessary to the complete mastery of the subject. A paper on which he jotted down at that time his ideas of the relations between Church and State appear to show that he had reached at that time the conclusions he afterward embodied in the Concordat. Rousseau he studied again, but the book which seems to have taken his fancy more than any other was the Abbé Raynal’s famous History of the Institutions and Commerce of the Europeans in the Two Indies. This book was a miscellany of essays and extracts treating of superstition, tyranny, etc., and predicting that a revolution was at hand in France if abuses were not reformed.

How was it that Napoleon, with his meagre salary, could command so many costly books? A recent biographer patly states that he “subscribed to a public library.” This may be true, but Napoleon himself explained to an audience of kings and princes at Erfurth, in 1808, that he was indebted to the kindness of one Marcus Aurelius, a rich bookseller, “a most obliging man who placed his books at my service.”

The personal appearance of the young lieutenant was not imposing. He was short, painfully thin, and awkward. His legs were so much too small for his boots that he looked ridiculous—at least to one young lady, who nicknamed him “Puss in Boots.” He wore immense “dog’s ears,” which fell to his shoulders, and this style of wearing the hair gave his dark Italian face a rather sinister look, impressing a lady acquaintance with the thought that he would not be the kind of man one would like to meet near a wood at night. Generally he was silent, wrapped in his own thoughts; but when he spoke, his ideas were striking and his expressions energetic. He rather affected the laconic, oracular style, and his attitude was somewhat that of a man posing for effect. In familiar social intercourse he was different. His smile became winning, his voice soft and tender, and his magnetism irresistible. He loved to joke others and play little pranks with them; but he could not relish a joke at his own expense, nor did he encourage familiarity. He had none of the brag, bluster, or roughness of the soldier about him, but in a quiet way he was imperious, self-confident, self-sufficient. So little did his appearance then, or at any other time, conform to the popular ideal of the soldier, that one old grenadier of the Bourbon armies, on having Napoleon pointed out to him, after the Italian campaign, could not believe such a man could possibly be a great warrior. “That a general!” said the veteran with contempt; “why, when he walks he does not even step out with the right foot first!”

Extremely egotistic he was, and so remained to his last hour. He had no reverence, looked for fact in all directions, had almost unerring judgment, and believed himself superior to his fellow-students, to his teachers, and to his brother officers. At the age of fifteen he was giving advice to his father—very sound advice, too. At that early age he had taken family responsibilities upon his shoulders, and was gravely disposing of Joseph and Lucien. In a remarkable letter he elaborately analyzed Joseph’s character, and reached the conclusion that he was an amiable nonentity, fit only for society. It had been well for Napoleon if he had always remembered this, and acted upon it.

In August, 1786, Napoleon spent a short time in Lyons. After this he was perhaps sent to Douay in Flanders, though he himself has written that on September 1, 1786, he obtained leave of absence and set out for Corsica, which he reached on the fifteenth of the same month.

* * * * *

Napoleon found the condition of the family greatly changed. Charles Bonaparte had died in France in February, 1785. General Marbeuf, also, was dead. The French officials were not now so friendly to the Bonapartes. Madame Letitia had been growing mulberry trees in order to obtain the governmental bounty—the government being intent upon building up the silk industry. Madame Bonaparte had apparently been giving more thought to the bounty than to the trees, and the result was that the officials had refused payment. Hence the supply of cash in the household was cut down to Napoleon’s salary (about $225), and such sums as could be teased out of the rich uncle—the miserly archdeacon. Desperately worried as he must have been by the condition of the family finances, Napoleon put a bold face upon it, strutting about town so complacently that he gave much offence to the local magnates—the town oracles whose kind words are not easily won by the neighborhood boys who have gone to distant colleges for an education and have returned for inspection and approval. To the sidewalk critics, who only nine years ago had jeered at the slovenly lad and his girl sweetheart, Napoleon’s style of walk and talk may have seemed that of inflated self-conceit.

Like a good son, Napoleon exerted himself to the utmost in behalf of his mother, making every effort to have the mulberry bounty paid, and to wring revenue out of the family property. He met with no success in either direction, though it appears that he prevailed upon the local authorities to grant some slight favor to the family. At one time Madame Letitia was reduced to the necessity of doing all her housework with her own hands.

At Elba, the Emperor related a story which belongs to this period of his life. He said that one day his mother’s mother was hobbling along the street in Ajaccio, and that he and Pauline followed the old lady, and mimicked her. Their grandmother, happening to turn, caught them in the act. She complained to Madame Letitia. Pauline was at once “spanked” and disposed of; Napoleon, who was rigged out in regimentals, could not be handled. His mother bided her time. Next day, when her son was off his guard, she cried, “Quick, Napoleon! You are invited to dine with the governor!” He ran up to his room to change clothing—she quietly followed. When she judged that the proper time had come, she rushed into the room, seized her undressed hero before he guessed her purpose, laid him across the maternal knees, and belabored him earnestly with the flat of her hand.

In October, 1787, Napoleon was again in Paris, petitioning the government in behalf of his mother, and seeking to have his furlough extended. Failing as to his mother, succeeding as to himself, he was back home in January, 1788, and remained there until June of the same year. While in Corsica, Napoleon frequently dined with brother officers in the French army. Between him and them, however, there was little congeniality. He was hotly Paolist, and his talk was either of Corsican independence or of topics historical and governmental. His brother officers did not enjoy these conversations. His patriotism offended; his learning bored them. What did the average French officer of that day know or care about history and the science of government? The upshot of such a dinner-party usually was that Napoleon got into a wrangle with that one of the officers who imagined he knew something of the subject, while the others, who honestly realized that they did not, would walk off in disgust. “My comrades, like myself,” says M. de Renain, one of the officers in question, “lost patience with what we considered ridiculous stuff and pedantry.”

So far did Napoleon carry his patriotic sentiments that he rather plainly threatened to take sides with the Corsicans if any collision should occur between the French and his countrymen. Upon this, one of the officers who disliked him asked sharply, “Would you draw your sword against the soldiers of the King?”

Napoleon, dressed in the King’s uniform, had the good sense to remain silent. The officers were offended at his tone, and, says Renain, “This is the last time he did me the honor of dining with me.”

Not for a day had Napoleon neglected his books. To escape the household noises, he went to the attic, and there pursued his studies. Far and wide ranged his restless mind, from the exact sciences, dry and heavy, to Plato and Ossian, rich in suggestions to the most opulent imagination nature ever gave a practical man. To the very last, Napoleon remained half mystic; and when he stood in the storm the night before Waterloo, and cast into the darkness the words, “We are agreed”; or when he remained silent for hours at St. Helena watching the vast wings of the mist whirl, and turn, and soar around the summit of the bleak, barren mountain of rock, we feel that if pens were there to trace his thought, Ossian would seem to live again. From his youth up the most striking characteristic of his mind was its enormous range; its wide sweep from the pettiest, prosiest details of fact to the sublimest dreams and the most chimerical fancies. Not wholly satisfied with reading and commentary, he strove to compose. Under the Bourbons, his outlook in the army was not promising. He might hope, after many tedious years of garrison service, to become a captain; after that it would be a miracle if he rose higher. Hence his lack of interest in the routine work of a soldier, and hence his ambition to become an author. He wrote a story called The Count of Essex, also a novel founded on Corsican life, and pulsing with hatred of France. Another story which he called The Masked Prophet, is the same which Moore afterward used in The Veiled Prophet of Khorassan.

His greatest exertions, however, were spent upon the History of Corsica. To this work he clung with a tenacity of purpose that is touching. All the long, tragic story of Corsica seems to have run like fire in the boy’s veins, and the heroes of his country—Paoli, Sampiero, Della Rocca—seemed to him to be as great as the men of antiquity, as perhaps they were. Therefore, the young man wrote and rewrote, trying to get the book properly written, his thoughts properly expressed. He had turned to Raynal, as we have seen, and the Abbé had kindly said, “Search further, and write it over.” And Napoleon had done so. At least three times he had recast the entire book. He sought the approval of a former teacher, Dupuy; he sent “copy” to Paoli. Dupuy had a poor opinion of the performance; and Paoli told him flatly he was too young to write history. But Napoleon persevered, finished the work, and eagerly sought publishers. Alas! the publishers shook their heads. Finally, at Paris was found a bold adventurer in the realm of book-making, who was willing to undertake half the cost if the author would furnish the other half. But for one reason or another the book was never published.

The passionate earnestness with which Napoleon toiled at his book on Corsican history, the intense sympathy with which he studied the lives of Corsican heroes, the fiery wrath he nursed against those who had stricken down Corsican liberties, were but so many evidences of the set purpose of his youth—to free his country, to give it independence. There is no doubt that the one consuming ambition of these early years was as pure as it was great: he would do what Sampiero and Paoli had failed to do—he would achieve the independence of Corsica!

Napoleon rejoined his regiment at Auxonne at the end of May, 1788. That he did so with reluctance is apparent from the manner in which he had distorted facts to obtain extension of his furlough. Garrison duty had no charms for him; the dull drudgery of daily routine became almost insupportable. It appears that he was put under arrest for the unsatisfactory manner in which he had superintended some work on the fortifications. When off duty he gave his time to his books. He became ill, and wrote to his mother, “I have no resource but work. I dress but once in eight days. I sleep but little, and take but one meal a day.” Under this regimen of no exercise, hard work, and little sleep he came near dying.

In September, 1789, came another furlough, and the wan-looking lieutenant turned his face homeward. In passing through Marseilles he paid his respects to the Abbé Raynal.

CHAPTER IV

The French Revolution was now (1789–90) getting under full headway. The States-General had met on May 5, 1789; the Third Estate had asserted and made good its supremacy. The King having ordered up troops and dismissed Necker, riots followed; the Bastille was taken and demolished. The nobles who had persuaded Louis XVI. to adopt the measures which provoked the riots, fled to foreign lands. Louis was brought from Versailles to Paris, Bailly was made mayor of the city, Lafayette commander of the National Guard, and on the night session of August 4, feudalism, losing hope, offered itself up as a sacrifice to the Revolution.

Liberty, fraternity, equality, freedom of conscience, liberty of the press, were proclaimed; and the mighty movement which was shaking down the Old Order was felt at Auxonne as in Paris. The officers, as a rule, were for the King; the soldiers for the nation. Society ladies and governmental officials were royalists, generally; so, also, the higher clericals. The curés and the masses of the people were for the Revolution.

Instinctively, and without the slightest hesitation, Napoleon took sides with the nation. He needed no coercion, no change of heart; he was already an enemy of the Ancien Régime, and had been so from his first years in France.

“How does it happen that you, Napoleon, favor democracy? You are a noble, educated at a school where none but nobles can enter; you are an officer, a position none but nobles may hold; you wear the King’s livery; you are fed on his bounty: where did you get your republican principles?”

Supposing such a question to have been put, we can imagine the answer to have been something like this:—

“I go with the reformers partly because I hate the Old Order, partly because I see in the coming changes a chance for me to rise, and partly because I believe the reformers are right. I have read books which gave me new ideas; I have thought for myself, and reached conclusions of my own. The stupid monk who threw my schoolboy essay into the fire at Brienne because it criticised royalty, only stimulated my defiance and my independence. I have seen what your system of education is, and condemn it; have learnt what your nobles are, and detest them. I have seen the Church, which preaches the beauties of poverty, rob my family of a rich inheritance, and I loathe the hypocrisy. I have read Rousseau, and believe in his gospel; have studied Raynal, and agree that abuses must be reformed. I have looked into the conduct of kings, and believe that there are few who do not deserve to be dethroned. The privileged have combined, have closed the avenues of progress to the lower classes, have taken for a few what is the common heritage of all. The people are the source of power—those below not those above. I am poor, I hate those above me, I long to be rich, powerful, admired. If things remain as they are, I shall never be heard of: revolution will change all. New men will rise to make the most of new opportunities. Hence I am a Jacobin, a democrat, a republican—call it what you will. I am for putting the premium on manhood. The tools to him who can use them! As to the King’s uniform and bounty—bah!—you must take me for a child. The King gives nothing, is nothing; the nation gives all, and is everything. I go with the nation!”

With such thoughts fermenting in his head, Napoleon reached home, and at once began to agitate the politics of the island. Corsica was far out of the track of the Revolution, and the people had not been maddened by the abuses which prevailed in France. The one great national grievance in Corsica was French domination. Therefore to arouse the island and put it in line with revolutionary France, was a huge task. Nevertheless Napoleon and other young men set about it. Copying the approved French method, he formed a revolutionary committee, and began to organize a national guard. He became a violent speaker in the Jacobin club, and a most active agitator in the town. Soon the little city of Ajaccio was in commotion.

Paoli’s agents bestirred themselves throughout the island. In some towns the patriot party rose against the French authorities. In Ajaccio the royalist party proved the stronger. The French commandant, De Barrin, closed the democratic club and proclaimed martial law. The patriots met in one of the churches, on the night of October 31, 1789, and signed a vigorous protest and appeal to the National Assembly of France. This paper was written by Napoleon, and he was one of those who signed.

Baulked in Ajaccio, Napoleon turned to Bastia, the capital. Agitating there and distributing tricolored cockades which he had ordered from Leghorn, he soon got matters so well advanced that he headed a deputation which waited upon the royal commandant and demanded that he, too, should adopt the national cockade. De Barrin, the commandant, refused. A riot broke out, and he consented. Napoleon agitated for a national guard. Deputations sought the governor and requested his sanction. He refused. One morning the streets were thronged with patriots, armed, marching to one of the churches to be enrolled. De Barrin called out his troops, trained cannon on the church, and set his columns in motion to attack. Shots were exchanged, two French soldiers killed, two wounded, and an officer got a bullet in the groin. Several Bastians, including two children, were wounded. De Barrin lost his head, yielded at all points, and ordered six hundred guns delivered to the insurgents. Prompt obedience not having been given to his order, the Bastians broke into the citadel, armed themselves, and insisted that they, jointly with the French, should garrison the fortress. When quiet was restored, the governor ordered Napoleon to leave, and he did so.

This episode in Napoleon’s career is related by an enemy of Napoleon, and it is to be received with caution. Yet as it is a companion piece to what he had attempted at Ajaccio, there is nothing violently incredible about it. It is certain he was very active at that time, and that he was often at Bastia. What was his purpose, if not to foment revolutionary movements?

On November 30, 1789, the National Assembly of France decreed the incorporation of Corsica with France, and amnesty for all political offenders, including Paoli. Bonfires in Corsica and general joy greeted the news. The triumph of the patriots was complete. A democratic town government for Ajaccio was organized, a friend of Napoleon was chosen mayor, and Joseph was put in place as secretary to the mayor. A local guard was raised, and Napoleon served as private member of it. At the club and on the streets he was one of the loudest agitators.

Paoli, now a hero in France as well as in Corsica, was called home by these events, received a magnificent ovation from the French, and reached Corsica, July, 1790. When he landed, after an exile of twenty-one years, the old man knelt to the ground and kissed it.

Supported by the town government, Napoleon renewed his activity, the immediate object aimed at being the capture of the citadel. He made himself intensely disagreeable to the royalists. Upon one occasion, during a religious procession, he was attacked by the Catholics, as an enemy of the Church. His efforts to seize the citadel came to nothing. There was an uprising of the revolutionists in the town, but the French officials fled into the citadel and prepared to defend it. Napoleon advised an attack, but the town authorities lost heart. They decided not to fight, but to protest; and Napoleon drew up the paper.

The people of Corsica met in local district meetings and chose delegates to an assembly which was to elect departmental and district councils to govern the island. This general assembly met at Orezzo, September 9, 1790, and remained in session a month. Among the delegates were Joseph Bonaparte and Uncle Fesch. Napoleon attended and took an active part in the various meetings which were held in connection with the work of the assembly. He was a frequent speaker at these meetings, and, while timid and awkward at first, soon became one of the most popular orators.

It was while he was on his way to Orezzo, that Napoleon first met Paoli. The old hero gave the young man a distinguished reception. Attended by a large cavalcade, the two rode over the fatal field of Ponte Nuovo. Paoli pointed out the various positions the troops had occupied, and related the incidents of that lamentable day. Napoleon’s comments, his peculiar and original thought and speech, struck Paoli forcibly; and he is said to have remarked that Napoleon was not modern, but reminded him of Plutarch’s heroes. Napoleon himself, when at St. Helena, represents Paoli as often patting him on the head and making the remark above mentioned.

The assembly at Orezzo voted that Corsica should constitute one department, and that Paoli should be its president. He was also made commander-in-chief of the National Guard. The conduct of Buttafuoco and Peretti who had been representing Corsica in France, was condemned. Pozzo di Borgo and Gentili were chosen to declare to the National Assembly the loyalty of Corsica to the principles of the French Revolution.

Napoleon had endeavored to secure the election of Joseph Bonaparte to the general directory of the department. In this he failed, but Joseph was chosen as one of the district directory for Ajaccio.

During the sitting of the convention Napoleon wiled away many an hour in familiar intercourse with the peasantry. He visited them at their huts, made himself at home by their firesides, and interested himself in their affairs. He revived some of the old Corsican festivals, and the target practice which had long been forbidden. Out of his own purse he offered prizes for the best marksmen. In this manner he won the hearts of the mountaineers—a popularity which was of value to him soon afterward.

Returned to Ajaccio, Napoleon continued to take prominent part in the debates of the club, and he also continued his efforts at authorship. He threw off an impassioned “open letter” to Buttafuoco. This was his first successful writing. With imperial pride, it is dated “from my summer house of Milleli.” Stimulated perhaps by the applause with which young Corsican patriots hailed his bitter and powerful arraignment of a traitor, Napoleon ventured to compete for the prize which Raynal, through the Academy of Lyons, had offered for the best essay on the subject “What truths and ideas should be inculcated in order best to promote the happiness of mankind.” His essay was severely criticised by the learned professors, and its author, of course, failed of the prize.

It was on the plea that his health was shattered, and that the waters of Orezzo were good for his complaint, that Napoleon had been enabled to prolong his stay in Corsica. In February, 1791, he rejoined his regiment at Auxonne. His leave had expired long since, but his colonel kindly antedated his return. Napoleon had procured false certificates, to the effect that he had been kept in Corsica by storms. To ease his mother’s burden, he brought with him his little brother Louis, now twelve years old, whose support and schooling Napoleon proposed to take upon himself. To maintain the two upon his slender pay of lieutenant required the most rigorous economy. He avoided society, ate often nothing but bread, carried on his own studies, and taught Louis. The affectionate, fatherly, self-denying interest he took in the boy beautifully illustrates the better side of his complex character.

During the Empire an officer, whose pay was $200 per month, complained to Napoleon that it was not enough. The Emperor did not express the contempt he felt, but spoke of the pittance upon which he had been made to live. “When I was lieutenant, I ate dry bread; but I shut the door on my poverty.”

It was at Dôle, near Auxonne, that the letter to Buttafuoco was printed. Napoleon used to rise early, walk to Dôle, correct the proofs, and walk back to Auxonne, a distance of some twenty miles, before dinner.

In June, 1791, Napoleon became first lieutenant, with a yearly salary of about $260, and was transferred to the Fourth Regiment, stationed at Valence. Glad of the promotion and the slight increase in salary, he did not relish the transfer, and he applied for leave to remain at Auxonne. Permission was refused, and he quitted the place, owing (for a new uniform, a sword, and some wood) about $23. Several years passed before he was able to pay off these debts.

Back in Valence, he again lodged with old Mademoiselle Bou, he and Louis. He continued his studies, and continued to teach Louis. His former friends were dead, or had moved away, and he did not go into society as he had done before; his position was too dismal, his poverty too real. He lived much in his room, reading, studying, composing. Travels, histories, works which treated of politics, of ecclesiastical affairs and institutions, attracted him specially. No longer seen in elegant drawing-rooms, he was the life of the political club. He became, successively, librarian, secretary, and president.

All this while the Revolution had been rolling on. The wealth of the Church was confiscated. Paper money was issued. The Festival of the Federation was solemnized. Necker lost his grip on the situation, and fled. Mirabeau became the hope of the moderates. Danton, Robespierre, Marat, became influential radicals. The Jacobin club rose to power. There developed the great feud between the Church and the Revolution, and factions began to shed blood in many parts of France. The old-maid aunts of the King fled the realm, causing immense excitement.

In April, 1791, Mirabeau died. His alliance with the court not being then known, his death called forth universal sorrow and memorial services. At Valence the republican club held such a service, and Napoleon is said to have delivered an address. Then came the flight of the King to Varennes. Upon this event also the club at Valence passed judgment, amid excitement and violent harangues.

In July, 1791, the national oath of allegiance to the new order of things was taken at Valence with imposing ceremony, as it was throughout the country. The constitution had not been finished; but the French of that day had the faith which works wonders, and they took the oath with boundless enthusiasm.

There was a monster meeting near Valence: a huge altar, a grand coming together, on common ground, of dignitaries high and low, officials of Church and State, citizens of all degrees. Patriotism for one brief moment made them all members of one fond family. “We swear to be faithful to the Nation, the law, and the King; to maintain the constitution; and to remain united to all Frenchmen by the bonds of brotherhood.” They all swore it, amid patriotic shouts, songs, cannon thunder, band music, and universal ecstasy. Mass had begun the ceremony, a Te Deum ended it. At night there was a grand banquet, and one of those who proposed a toast was Napoleon. Of course he was one of those who had taken the oath.

“Previous to this time,” said he, later, “had I been ordered to fire upon the people, habit, prejudice, education, and the King’s name would have induced me to obey. With the taking of the national oath it was otherwise; my instinct and my duty were henceforth in harmony.”

Kings and aristocrats throughout the world were turning black looks upon France, and an invasion was threatened. The Revolution must be put down. It was a fire which might spread. This threat of foreign intervention had an electrical effect upon the French, rousing them to resistance.

Paris was the storm centre, Napoleon was highly excited, and to Paris he was most eager to go. Urgently he wrote to his great-uncle, the archdeacon, to send him three hundred francs to pay his way to Paris. “There one can push to the forefront. I feel assured of success. Will you bar my road for the lack of a hundred crowns?” The archdeacon did not send the money. Napoleon also wrote for six crowns his mother owed him. The six crowns seem not to have been sent.

* * * * *

This anecdote of Napoleon’s sojourn at Valence is preserved by the local gossips: Early one morning the surgeon of the regiment went to Napoleon’s room to speak to Louis. Napoleon had long since risen, and was reading. Louis was yet asleep. To arouse the lad, Napoleon took his sabre and knocked with the scabbard on the ceiling above. Louis soon came down, rubbing his eyes and complaining of having been waked in the midst of a beautiful dream—a dream in which Louis had figured as a king. “You a king!” said Napoleon; “I suppose I was an emperor then.”

The keenest pang Napoleon ever suffered from the ingratitude of those he had favored, was given him by this same Louis, for whom he had acted the devoted, self-denying father. Not only was Louis basely ungrateful in the days of the Napoleonic prosperity, but he pursued his brother with vindictive meanness when that brother lay dying at St. Helena, publishing a libel on him so late as 1820.

A traveller in Corsica (Gregorovius, 1852) writes: “We sat around a large table and regaled ourselves with an excellent supper.... A dim olive-oil lamp lit the Homeric wanderers’ meal. Many a bumper was drunk to the heroes of Corsica. We were of four nations,—Corsicans, French, Germans, and Lombards. I once mentioned the name of Louis Bonaparte, and asked a question. The company suddenly became silent, and the gay Frenchman looked ashamed.”

* * * * *

In August, 1791, Napoleon obtained another furlough, and with about $80, which he had borrowed from the paymaster of his regiment, he and Louis set out for home. Again he left debts behind him, one of them being his board bill.

CHAPTER V

Soon after Napoleon reached home, the rich uncle, the archdeacon, died, and the Bonapartes got his money. The bulk of it was invested in the confiscated lands of the Church. Some of it was probably spent in Napoleon’s political enterprises.

Officers of the Corsican National Guard were soon to be elected, and Napoleon formed his plans to secure for himself a lieutenant colonelship. The leaders of the opposing faction were Peraldi and Pozzo di Borgo.

Three commissioners, appointed by the Directory of the Island, had the supervision of the election, and the influence of these officers would have great weight in deciding the contest. Napoleon had recently been over the island in company with Volney, inspector of agriculture and manufactures, and had personally canvassed for votes among the country people. He had made many friends; and, in spite of powerful opposition in the towns, it appeared probable that he would win. It is said that he resorted to the usual electioneering methods, including bribes, threats, promises, and hospitality. Napoleon made a good combination with Peretti and Quenza, yielding to that interest the first lieutenant colonelship. The second was to his own. But one of the commissioners, Murati, took up lodgings with Bonaparte’s rival candidate, Peraldi. This was an ominous sign for Napoleon. On the night before the election, he got together some of his more violent partisans, sent them against the house of Peraldi, and had Murati seized and brought to the house of the Bonapartes. “You were not free at Peraldi’s,” said Napoleon to the amazed commissioner; “here you enjoy liberty.” Murati enjoyed it so much that he was afraid to stir out of the house till the election was over.

Next morning Pozzo di Borgo commenced a public and violent harangue, denouncing the seizure of the commissioner. He was not allowed to finish. The Bonaparte faction rushed upon the speaker, knocked him down, kicked him, and would have killed him had not Napoleon interfered. In this episode is said to have originated the deadly hatred with which Pozzo ever afterward pursued Napoleon, who triumphed over him in the election.

Ajaccio was torn by revolutionary passion and faction. Resisting the decrees of the National Assembly of France, the Capuchin friars refused to vacate their quarters. Riotous disputes between the revolutionists and the partisans of the Old Order ensued. The public peace was disturbed. The military ousted the friars, and took possession of the cloister. This added fuel to the flames, and on Easter day there was a collision between the factions. One of the officers of the militia was killed. Next morning, reënforcements from outside the town poured in to the military. Between the volunteer guards on the one hand, the citadel garrison and the clerical faction on the other, a pitched battle seemed inevitable. Commissioners, sent by Paoli, arrived, dismissed the militia, and restored quiet by thus virtually deciding in favor of the Capuchins.

Napoleon was believed by the victorious faction to have been the instigator of all the trouble. The commander of the garrison bitterly denounced him to the war office in Paris. Napoleon, on the contrary, published a manifesto in his own defence, hotly declaring that the whole town government of Ajaccio was rotten, and should have been overthrown. Unless Ajaccio differed radically from most towns, then and now, the indictment was well founded.

At all events, his career in Corsica was at an end, for the time. He had strained his relations with the French war office, had ignored positive orders to rejoin his command, had been stricken off the list for his disobedience, had exhausted every resource on his Corsican schemes, and was now at the end of his rope. And what had he gained? He had squandered much money, wasted much precious time, established a character for trickiness, violence, and unscrupulous self-seeking; and had aroused implacable enmities, one of which (that of Pozzo) had no trifling share in giving him the death-wound in his final struggles in 1814–15. What, after it all, must he now do? He must get up a lot of certificates to his good conduct during the long time he had been absent from France; he must go to Paris and petition the central authority to be taken back to the French army. There was no trouble in getting the certificates. Paoli and his party, the priests and the wealthy towns-people, were so eager to get rid of this dangerous young man that they were ready to sign any sort of paper, if only he would go away. Armed with documentary evidence of his good behavior, Napoleon left Corsica in May, 1792, and reached Paris on the 28th of that month.

Things were in a whirl in France. War had been declared against Austria. Officers of royalist principles were resigning and fleeing the country. Excitement, suspicion, alarm, uncertainty, were everywhere. No attention could be given to Napoleon and his petition just then. He saw that he would have to wait, be patient and persistent, if ever he won reinstatement. Meanwhile he lived in great distress. With no money, no work, no powerful friends, Paris was a cold place for the suppliant. He sauntered about with Bourrienne, ate at the cheapest restaurants, discussed many plans for putting money in his purse—none of which put any there. He pawned his watch to get the bare necessaries of life.

Bearing in mind that Napoleon had been so active in the republican clubs at Valence and Ajaccio, and recalling the urgent appeal for three hundred francs which he had made to his great-uncle in order that he might go to Paris and push himself to the front, his attitude now that he was in Paris is a puzzle. According to his own account and that of Bourrienne, he was a mere spectator. A royal officer, he felt no inclination to defend the King. A violent democratic agitator, he took no part in the revolutionary movements. Seeing the mob marching to the Tuileries in June, his only thought was to get a good view of what was going on; therefore he ran to the terrace on the bank of the river and climbed an iron fence. He saw the rabble burst into the palace, saw the King appear at the window with the red cap on his head. “The poor driveller!” cried Napoleon. And according to Bourrienne he said that four or five hundred of the mob should have been swept away with cannon, and that the others would have taken to their heels.

During the exciting month of July, Napoleon was still in Paris. He was promenading the streets daily, mingling with the people; he was idle, discontented, ambitious; he was a violent revolutionist, and was not in the habit of concealing his views: therefore the conclusion is well-nigh irresistible that he kept in touch with events, and knew what was in preparation. Where was Napoleon when the battalion from Marseilles arrived? What was his attitude during Danton’s preparation for the great day on which the throne was to be overturned? Was an ardent, intensely active man like Napoleon listless and unconcerned, while the tramp of the gathering thousands shook the city? He had long since written “Most kings deserve to be dethroned”: did he by any chance hear what Danton said at the Cordeliers,—said with flaming eyes, thundering voice, and wild gesticulation,—“Let the tocsin sound the last hour of kings. Let it peal forth the first hour of vengeance, and of the liberty of the people! To arms! and it will go!”

However much we may wish for light on this epoch of Napoleon’s career, we have no record of his movements. We only know that on the 10th of August he went to see the spectacle, and saw it. From a window in a neighboring house, he looked down upon the Westermann attack and the Swiss defence. He saw the devoted guards of the palace drive the assailants out, doubtless heard Westermann and the brave courtesan, Théroigne de Méricourt, rally their forces and renew the assault; was amazed perhaps, when the Swiss ceased firing; and looked on while the triumphant Marseillaise broke into the palace. After the massacre, he walked through the Tuileries, piled with the Swiss dead, and was more impressed by the sight than he ever was by the dead on his own fields of battle. He sauntered through the crowds and the neighboring cafés, and was so cool and indifferent that he aroused suspicion. He met a gang of patriots bearing a head on a pike. His manner did not, to this gang, indicate sufficient enthusiasm. “Shout, ‘Live the nation,’” demanded the gang; and Napoleon shouted, “Live the nation!”

He saw a man of Marseilles about to murder a wounded Swiss. He said, “Southron, let us spare the unfortunate.”—“Art thou from the South?”—“Yes.”—“Then we will spare him.”

According to Napoleon, if the King had appeared on horseback,—that is, dared to come forth and lead the defence,—he would have won the day.

Other days of wrath Napoleon spent in Paris—the days of the September massacres. What he saw, heard, and felt is not known. Only in a general way is it known that during the idle summer in Paris, Napoleon lost many of his republican illusions. He conceived a horror of mob violence and popular license, which exerted a tremendous influence over him throughout his career. He lost faith in the purity and patriotism of the revolutionary leaders. He reached the conclusion that each man was for himself, that each one sought only his own advantage. For the people themselves, seeing them so easily led by lies, prejudices, and passions, he expressed contempt. The Jacobins were, he thought, a “parcel of fools”; the leaders of the Revolution “a sorry lot.”

This sweepingly severe judgment was most unfortunate; it bore bitter fruit for Napoleon and for France. He never ceased to believe that each man was governed by his interest—an opinion which is near the truth, but is not the truth. If the truth at all, it is certainly not the whole truth.

Napoleon, with the independence of his native land ever in mind, wrote to his brother Joseph to cling to Paoli; that events were tending to make him the all-powerful man, and might also evolve the independence of Corsica.

During this weary period of waiting, Napoleon was often at the home of the Permons. On the 7th or 8th of August an emissary of the revolutionary government made his way into the Permon house without a warrant, and, because M. Permon refused to recognize his authority and threatened to take a stick to him, left in a rage to report against Permon. Napoleon, happening to call at this time, learned the fact, and hurried off to the section where he boldly denounced the illegal conduct of the officer. Permon was not molested further.

* * * * *

The King became a prisoner of the revolutionists, the moderates fell from power, the radicals took the lead. Napoleon’s case had already received attention, he had already been pronounced blameless, and he was now, August 30, 1792, restored to his place in the army, and promoted. He was not only made captain, but his commission and pay were made to date from February 6, 1792, at which time he would have been entitled to his promotion had he not fallen under official displeasure. Such prompt and flattering treatment of the needy officer by the radicals who had just upset the monarchy, gives one additional cause to suspect that Napoleon’s relation to current events and Jacobin leaders was closer than the record shows. It became good policy for him in after years to suppress the evidence of his revolutionary period. Thus he burnt the Lyons essay, and bought up, as he supposed, all copies of The Supper of Beaucaire. The conclusion is irresistible that the efforts to suppress have been more successful as to the summer of 1792 than in the other instances. It is impossible to believe that Napoleon, who had been so hot in the garrison towns where he was stationed in France, and who had turned all Corsica topsy-turvy with democratic harangues and revolutionary plots, should have become a passionless gazer at the show in Paris.

Whatever share he took, or did not take, in the events of the summer, he now turned homeward. The Assembly having abolished the St. Cyr school, where his sister Elisa was, Napoleon asked and was given leave to escort her back to Corsica. Travelling expenses were liberally provided by the State. Stopping at Valence, where he was warmly greeted by local friends, including Mademoiselle Bou to whom he owed a board bill, Napoleon and Elisa journeyed down the Rhone to Marseilles, and sailed for Corsica, which they reached on the 17th of September, 1792.

The situation of the Bonaparte family was much improved. The estate was larger, the revenues more satisfactory. Joseph was in office. Lucien was a leading agitator in the Jacobin club. The estate of the rich uncle had helped things wonderfully. It must have been from this source that Napoleon derived the fine vineyard of which he spoke to Las Cases, at St. Helena, as supplying him with funds—which vineyard he afterward gave to his old nurse. The position which his promotion in the army gave him ended the persecution which had virtually driven him from home; and a reconciliation was patched up between him and Paoli.

Napoleon insisted upon holding both his offices,—the captaincy in the regular army and the lieutenant colonelship in the Corsican National Guard. Paoli strongly objected; but the younger man, partly by threats, carried his point. It may have been at this period that Paoli slightly modified the Plutarch opinion; he is said to have remarked: “You see that little fellow? Well, he has in him the making of two or three men like Marius and one like Sulla!”

During his sojourn in Corsica, Napoleon took part in the luckless expedition which the French government sent against the island of Sardinia. The Corsican forces were put under the command of Paoli’s nephew, Colonna-Cæsari, whose orders, issued to him by Paoli, who strongly opposed the enterprise, were, “See that this expedition ends in smoke.” The nephew obeyed the uncle to the letter. In spite of Napoleon’s good plan, in spite of his successful attack on the hostile forts, Colonna declared that his troops were about to mutiny, and he sailed back home.

Loudly denouncing Colonna as a traitor, Napoleon bade adieu to his volunteers, and returned to Ajaccio.

There was great indignation felt by the Jacobins against Paoli. He was blamed for the failure of the Sardinian expedition, for his luke-warmness toward the French Revolution, and for his alleged leaning to England. The September massacres, and the beheading of the King, had been openly denounced by the old hero, and he had exerted his influence in favor of conservatism in Corsica. The Bonaparte faction was much too rabid, and the Bonaparte brothers altogether too feverishly eager to push themselves forward. The friendship and mutual admiration which Napoleon and Paoli had felt for each other had cooled. Paoli had thrown ice water on the History of Corsica, and had refused to supply the author with certain documents needed in the preparation of that work. Neither had he approved the publication of the Letter to Buttafuoco; it was too bitter and violent. Again, his influence seems to have been thrown against the Bonapartes at the Orezzo assembly. All these things had doubtless had their effect; but the radical difference between the two men, Napoleon and Paoli, was one of Corsican policy. Napoleon wished to revolutionize the island, and Paoli did not. If Corsican independence could not be won, Napoleon favored the French connection. Paoli, dismayed by the violence of the Revolution in France, favored connection with England.

It is said that Lucien Bonaparte, in the club at Ajaccio, denounced Paoli as a traitor. The club selected a delegation to go to Marseilles and denounce the old hero to the Jacobin clubs there. Lucien was a member of the delegation; but after delivering himself a wild tirade against Paoli in Marseilles, he returned to Corsica. The delegation went on to Paris. In April, 1793, Paoli was formally denounced in the National Convention, and summoned to its bar for trial.

At first Napoleon warmly defended Paoli, and drew up an impassioned address to the Convention in his favor. In this paper he expressly defends his old chief from the accusation of wishing to put Corsica into the hands of the English.

Within two weeks after writing the defence of Paoli, Napoleon joined his enemies. What brought about this sudden change is not certain. His own excuse was that Paoli was seeking to throw the island to England. As a matter of fact, however, Napoleon’s course at this period seems full of double dealing. For a time he did not have the confidence of either faction.

Sémonville, one of the French commissioners then in Corsica, related to Chancellor Pasquier, many years later, how Napoleon had come and roused him, in the middle of the night, to say: “Mr. Commissioner, I have come to say that I and mine will defend the cause of the union between Corsica and France. People here are on the point of committing follies; the Convention has doubtless committed a great crime”—in guillotining the King—“which I deplore more than any one; but whatever may happen, Corsica must always remain a part of France.”

As soon as this decision of the Bonapartes became known, the Paolists turned upon them savagely, and their position became difficult. The French commissioners, of whom the leader was Salicetti, appointed Napoleon inspector general of artillery for Corsica. He immediately set about the capture of the citadel of Ajaccio, the object of so much of his toil. Force failed, stratagem availed not, attempted bribery did not succeed; the citadel remained untaken. Ajaccians bitterly resented his desertion of Paoli, and his life being in danger, Napoleon in disguise fled to Bastia. Indomitable in his purpose, he proposed to Salicetti’s commission another plan for the seizure of the coveted citadel. Some French war vessels then at St. Florent were to surprise Ajaccio, land men and guns, and with the help of some Swiss troops, and of such Corsicans as felt disposed to help, the citadel was to be taken.

Paoli was warned, and he prepared for the struggle. The French war vessels sailed from St. Florent, Napoleon on board, and reached Ajaccio on May 29. It was too late. The Paolists, fully prepared, received the assailants with musketry. Napoleon captured an outpost, and held it for two days; but the vessels could not coöperate efficiently, and the assailants abandoned the attempt. Napoleon joined his family at Calvi. They had fled from Ajaccio as Napoleon sailed to the attack, and the Paolists were so furiously enraged against them that their estates were pillaged and their home sacked. Paoli had made a last effort to conquer the resolution of Madame Letitia, but she was immovable. On June 11 the fugitives left Corsica for France, escaping from their enemies by hiding near the seashore till a boat could approach in the darkness of night and take them away. Jerome and Caroline were left behind, concealed by the Ramolinos.

Napoleon himself narrowly escaped with his life. He was saved from a trap the Peraldis had set by the faithfulness of the Bonaparte tenants. He was forced to disguise himself, and lay concealed till arrangements could be made for his flight. Far-seeing was the judgment and inflexible the courage which must have sustained him in cutting loose entirely from his first love, Corsica, and casting himself upon revolutionary France. For it would have been an easy matter for him to have gone with the crowd and been a great man in Corsica.

In his will Napoleon left 100,000 francs to Costa, the loyal friend to whom he owed life at the time the Paolists were hounding him down as a traitor.

CHAPTER VI

The French revolutionists had overturned the absolute monarchy of the Bourbons, but they themselves had split into factions. The Moderates who favored constitutional monarchy had been trodden under foot by the Girondins who favored a federated republic; and the Girondins, in their turn, had been crushed by the Jacobins who favored an undivided republic based upon the absolute political equality of all Frenchmen. To this doctrine they welded State-socialism with a boldness which shocked the world at the time, and converted it a few years later. The Girondins did not yield without a struggle, drawing to themselves all disaffected elements, including the royalists; and the revolt which followed was supported by the English. Threatened thus from within and without, the Revolution seemed doomed to perish.

It was in the midst of this turmoil that the Bonapartes landed at Toulon in June, 1793. In a short while they removed to Marseilles. Warmly greeted by the Jacobins, who regarded them as martyrs to the good cause, the immediate necessities of the family were relieved by a small pension which the government had provided for such cases. Still, as they had fled in such haste from their house in Ajaccio that Madame Letitia had to snatch up the little Jerome and bear him in her arms, their condition upon reaching France was one of destitution.

NAPOLEON

From an engraving by Tomkins of a drawing from life during the campaign in Italy. In the collection of Mr. W. C. Crane

“One of the liveliest recollections of my youth,” said Prince Napoleon, son of Jerome Bonaparte, “is the account my father gave of the arrival of our family in a miserable house situated in the lanes of Meilhan,” a poor district of Marseilles. “They found themselves in the greatest poverty.”

Having arranged for the family as well as he could, Napoleon rejoined his regiment at Nice. To shield himself from censure, on account of his prolonged absence, he produced Salicetti’s certificate to the effect that the Commissioner had kept him in Corsica. The statement was false, but served its purpose. So many officers had fled their posts, and affairs were so unsettled, that it was no time to reject offers of service; nor was it a good time to ride rough-shod over the certificate of so influential a Jacobin as Salicetti.

Napoleon’s first service in France was against the Girondin revolt. At Avignon, which the insurgents held, and which the Convention forces had invested, Napoleon, who had been sent from Nice to secure necessary stores, was appointed to the command of a battery. Mr. Lanfrey says, “It is certain that with his own hands he pointed the cannons with which Carteaux cleared Avignon of the Marseilles federates.”

About this time it was that Napoleon came in contact with Augustin Robespierre, brother of the great man in Paris. The Convention had adopted the policy of sending commissioners to the armies to stimulate, direct, and report. Robespierre was at the head of one of these formidable delegations, and was now at Avignon in his official capacity. With him, but on a separate commission, were Salicetti and Gasparin.

To these gentlemen Napoleon read a political pamphlet he had just finished, and which he called The Supper of Beaucaire. The pamphlet was a discussion of the political situation. The author threw it into the attractive and unusual form of a dialogue between several guests whom he supposed to have met at an inn in the town of Beaucaire. An actual occurrence of the sort was doubtless the basis of the pamphlet.

A citizen of Nismes, two merchants of Marseilles, a manufacturer of Montpellier, and a soldier (supposed to be Napoleon), finding themselves at supper together, fell naturally into conversation and debate, the subject being the recent convulsions. The purpose of the pamphlet was to demonstrate the weakness of the insurgent cause, and the necessity of submission to the established authorities at Paris.

The Commissioners were so well pleased with Napoleon’s production that they ordered the work published at the expense of the government. Exerting himself in behalf of his family, Napoleon secured positions in the public service for Lucien, Joseph, and Uncle Fesch.

* * * * *

Into the great seaport town of Toulon, thousands of the Girondin insurgents had thrown themselves. The royalists and the Moderates of the city made common cause with the revolting republicans, and England was ready to help hold the place against the Convention.

The royalists, confident the counter-revolution had come, began to massacre the Jacobins in the town. The white flag of the Bourbons was run up, displacing the red, white, and blue. The little boy, son of Louis XVI., who was lying in prison at Paris, was proclaimed king under the name of Louis XVII. Sir Samuel Hood, commanding the British fleet, sailed into the harbor and took possession of about twenty-five French ships, “in trust” for the Bourbons; General O’Hara hurried from Gibraltar with troops to aid in holding this “trust”; and to the support of the English flocked Spaniards, Sardinians, and Neapolitans. Even the Pope could not withhold his helping hand; he sent some priests to lend their prayers and exhortations.

When it became known throughout France that Toulon had revolted, had begun to exterminate patriots, had proclaimed a Bourbon king, had surrendered to the British the arsenal, the harbor, the immense magazines, and the French fleet, a tide of furious resentment rose against the town. There was but one thought: Toulon must be taken, Toulon must be punished. The hunger for revenge said it; the promptings of self-preservation said it; the issue was one of life or death to the Revolution.

The Convention realized the crisis; the Great Committee realized it; and the measures taken were prompt. Commissioners hurried to the scene, and troops poured in. Barras, a really effective man in sudden emergencies, Fréron, Salicetti, Gasparin, Ricord, Albitte, and Robespierre the Younger were all on hand to inspirit the army and direct events. Some twenty odd thousand soldiers soon beleagured the town. They were full of courage, fire, and enthusiasm; but their commander was a painter, Carteaux, whose ideas of war were very primitive. To find where the enemy was, and then cannonade him vigorously, and then fall on him with muskets, was about the substance of Carteaux’ military plans. At Toulon, owing to peculiarities of the position, such a plan was not as excellent as it might have been at some other places. Besides, he had no just conception of the means needed for such a work as he had undertaken. Toulon, with its double harbor, the inner and the outer, its defences by land and by sea, to say nothing of the fortresses which Lord Mulgrave had constructed on the strip of land which separated and commanded the two harbors, presented difficulties which demanded a soldier. Carteaux was brave and energetic, but no soldier; and week after week wasted away without any material progress having been made in the siege.

Near the middle of September, 1793, Napoleon appeared at Toulon,—at just the right moment,—for the artillery service had well-nigh broken down. General Duteuil, who was to have directed it, had not arrived; and Dommartin had been disabled by a wound. How did Napoleon, of the army of Italy, happen to be at Toulon at this crisis? The question is one of lasting interest, because his entire career pivots on Toulon. Mr. Lanfrey states that, on his way from Avignon to Nice, Napoleon stopped at Toulon, was invited by the Commissioners to inspect the works, and so won upon them by his intelligent comments, criticisms, and suggestions, that they appointed him at once to a command.

Napoleon’s own account of the matter was that the Minister of War sent him to Toulon to take charge of the artillery, and that it was with written authority that he confronted Carteaux, who was not at all pleased to see him. “This was not necessary!” exclaimed Carteaux. “Nevertheless, you are welcome. You will share the glory of taking the town without having borne any of the toil!”

But the biographers are almost unanimous in refusing to credit this account. Why Napoleon should have falsified it, is not apparent. Mr. Lanfrey says that Napoleon’s reason for not wishing to admit that the Commissioners appointed him was that he was unwilling to own that he had been under obligations to Salicetti. But Salicetti was only one of the Commissioners; he alone could not appoint. So far was Napoleon from being ashamed to acknowledge debts of gratitude that he never wearied of adding to the list. In his will he admits what he owed to the protection of Gasparin at this very period, and left a legacy of $20,000 to that Commissioner’s son. Hence Mr. Lanfrey’s reasoning is not convincing. Napoleon surely ought to have known how he came to be at Toulon, and his narrative is natural, is seemingly truthful, and is most positive.

But these recent biographers who dig and delve, and turn things over, and find out more about them a century after the occurrences than the men who took part in them ever knew, assert most emphatically that both Mr. Lanfrey and Napoleon are wrong. They insist that the way it all happened was this: After Dommartin was wounded, Adjutant General Cervoni, a Corsican, was sent to Marseilles to hunt around and find a capable artillery officer. Apparently it was taken for granted by whoever sent Cervoni, that capable artillery officers were straggling about at random, and could be found by diligent searchers in the lanes and by-ways of towns and cities. We are told that Cervoni, arrived in Marseilles, was strolling the streets, his eyes ready for the capable artillery officer,—when, who should he see coming down the road, dusty and worn, but his fellow-Corsican, Napoleon Bonaparte! Here, indeed, was a capable artillery officer, one who had just been to Avignon, and was on his way back to Nice.

That Cervoni should at once invite the dusty Napoleon into a café to take a drink of punch was quite as natural as any other part of this supernatural yarn. While drinking punch, Cervoni tells Napoleon his business, and urges him to go to Toulon and take charge of the artillery. And this ardently ambitious young man, who is yearning for an opening, is represented as at first declining the brilliant opportunity Cervoni thrusts upon him! But at length punch, persuasion, and sober second thought soften Napoleon, and he consents to go.

All this you may read in some of the most recent works of the diggers and delvers; and you may believe it, if you are very, very credulous.

* * * * *

The arrival on the scene of an educated artillery officer like Napoleon, one whose handling of his guns at Avignon had achieved notable success, was a welcome event. His friends, the Commissioners, took him over the field of operations to show him the placing and serving of the batteries. He was astonished at the crude manner in which all the arrangements had been made, and pointed out the errors to the Commissioners. First of all, the batteries were not in range of the enemy; the balls fell into the sea, far short of the mark. “Let us try a proof-shot,” said Napoleon; and luckily he used a technical term, coup d’épreuve. Favorably impressed with this scientific method of expression, the Commissioners and Carteaux consented. The proof-shot was fired, and the ball fell harmlessly into the sea, less than halfway to its mark. “Damn the aristocrats!” said Carteaux; “they have spoilt our powder.”

But the Commissioners had lost faith in Carteaux’ management of the artillery; they determined to put Napoleon in charge of it.

On the 29th of September, Gasparin and Salicetti recommended his promotion to the rank of major, and on the next day they reported that Bonaparte was “the only artillery captain able to grasp the operations.”

From the first Napoleon threw his whole heart into his work. He never seemed to sleep or to rest. He never left his batteries. If exhausted, he wrapped himself in his cloak, and lay down on the ground beside the guns.

From Lyons, Grenoble, Briançon, he requisitioned additional material. From the army of Italy he got more cannon. From Marseilles he took horses and workmen, to make gabions, hurdles, and fascines. Eight bronze guns he took from Martigues; timbers from La Seyne; horses from Nice, Valence, and Montpellier. At the ravine called Ollioules he established an arsenal with forty workmen, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, carpenters, all busy making those things the army needed; also a gunsmith’s shop for the repair of muskets; and he took steps to reëstablish the Dardennes gun foundry.

Thus he based his hopes of success upon work, intense, well-directed, comprehensive work. All possible precautions were taken, all possible preparations made, every energy bent to bring to bear those means necessary to the end. Nothing was left to chance, good luck, providence, or inspiration. Cold calculation governed all, tireless labor provided all, colossal driving force moved it all. In ever so short a time, Napoleon was felt to be “the soul of the siege.” In November he was made acting commander of the artillery. Carteaux had been dismissed, and to the painter succeeded a doctor named Doppet. The physician had sense enough to soon see that an easier task than the taking of Toulon would be an agreeable change, and he asked to be sent elsewhere. To him succeeded Dugommier, an excellent soldier of the old school. Dutiel, official commander of the artillery, at length arrived, and he was so well pleased with Napoleon’s work that he did not interfere.

The Committee of Public Safety, sitting in Paris, had sent a plan of operations, the main idea of which was a complete investment of the town. This would have required sixty thousand troops, whereas Dugommier had but twenty-five thousand. But he dared not disobey the terrible Committee. Between the loss of Toulon and his own head he wavered painfully. A council of war met. The Commissioners of the Convention were present, among them Barras, Ricord, and Fréron. Officers of the army thought the committee plan bad, but hesitated to say so in plain words. One, and the youngest, spoke out; it was Napoleon. He pointed to the map lying unrolled on the table, explained that Toulon’s defence depended on the British fleet, that the fleet could not stay if a land battery commanded the harbor, and that by seizing a certain point, the French would have complete mastery of the situation. On that point on the map he put his finger, saying, “There is Toulon.”

He put his plan in writing, and it was sent to the war office in Paris. A second council of war adopted his views, and ordered him to put them into execution.

The English had realized the importance of the strategic point named by Napoleon, and they had already fortified it. The redoubt was known as Fort Mulgrave; also as Little Gibraltar.

On the 30th of November the English made a desperate attempt to storm Napoleon’s works. They were repulsed, and their leader, General O’Hara, was taken prisoner. At St. Helena Napoleon said that he himself had seized the wounded Englishman and drawn him within the French lines. This statement appears to have been one of his fancy sketches. Others say that General O’Hara was taken by four obscure privates of Suchet’s battalion.

A cannoneer having been killed by his side, Napoleon seized the rammer and repeatedly charged the gun. The dead man had had the itch; Napoleon caught it, and was not cured until he became consul.

Constantly in the thick of the fighting, he got a bayonet thrust in the thigh. He fell into the arms of Colonel Muiron, who bore him to a place of safety. Napoleon showed the scar to O’Meara at St. Helena.

It was at Toulon that fame first took up that young dare-devil, Junot, whom Napoleon afterward spoiled by lifting him too high.

Supping with some brother officers near the batteries, a shell from the enemy fell into the tent, and was about to burst, when Junot rose, glass in hand, and exclaimed, “I drink to those who are about to die!” The shell burst, one poor fellow was killed, and Junot drank, “To the memory of a hero!”

Some days after this incident Junot volunteered to make for Napoleon a very dangerous reconnoissance. “Go in civilian’s dress; your uniform will expose you to too much risk.”—“No,” replied Junot, “I will not shrink from the chance of being shot like a soldier; but I will not risk being hanged like a spy.” The reconnoissance made, Junot came to Napoleon to report. “Put it in writing,” said Napoleon; and Junot, using the parapet of the battery as a desk, began to write. As he finished the first page, a shot meant for him struck the parapet, covering him and the paper with earth. “Polite of these English,” he cried, laughing, “to send me some sand just when I wanted it.” Before very long Napoleon was a general, and Junot was his aide-de-camp.

On December 17 everything was ready for the grand assault on the English works. Between midnight and day, and while a rainstorm was raging, the forts, which for twenty-four hours had been bombarded by five batteries, were attacked by the French. Repulsed at the first onset, Dugommier’s nerve failed him, and he cried, “I am a lost man,” thinking of that terrible committee in Paris which would cut off his head. Fresh troops were hurried up, the attack renewed, and Little Gibraltar taken. Thus Napoleon’s first great military success was won in a fair square fight with the English.

LETTER FROM BONAPARTE, COMMANDANT OF ARTILLERY, TO GENERAL CARTEAUX.

Assaults on other points in the line of defence had also been made, and had succeeded; and Toulon was at the mercy of Napoleon’s batteries. The night that followed was one of the most frightful in the annals of war. The English fleet was no longer safe in the harbor, and was preparing to sail away. Toulon was frantic with terror. The royalists, the Girondins, the refugees from Lyons and Marseilles, rushed from their homes, crowded the quays, making every effort to reach the English ships. The Jacobins of the town, now that their turn had come, made the most of it, and pursued the royalists, committing every outrage which hate and lust could prompt. Prisoners broke loose, to rob, to murder, to ravish. The town became a pandemonium. Fathers, mothers, children, rushed wildly for safety to the quays, screaming with terror, and plunging into the boats in the maddest disorder. And all this while the guns, the terrible guns of Napoleon, were playing on the harbor and on the town, the balls crashing through dwellings, or cutting lanes through the shrieking fugitives on the quays, or sinking the boats which were carrying the wretched outcasts away. The English set fire to the arsenal, dockyard, and such ships as could not be carried off, and the glare shone far and wide over the ghastly tumult. Intensifying the horror of this hideous night came the deafening explosion of the magazine ships, and the rain of the fragments they scattered over all the surrounding water.

Some fourteen thousand of the inhabitants of Toulon fled with the English; some other thousands must have perished in the bombardment and in the butcheries of the days that followed. Toulon’s baseness had aroused the ire, the diabolism of the Revolution, and the vilest men of all her ravening pack were sent to wreak revenge. There was Barras, the renegade noble; Fréron, the Marat in ferocity without Marat’s honesty or capacity; Fouché, the renegade priest. And the other Commissioners were almost as ferocious; while from the Convention itself came the voice of Barère demanding the total destruction of Toulon. Great was the sin of the doomed city; ghastly was its punishment. Almost indiscriminately people were herded and mown down with musketry.

On one of the days which ensued, Fouché wrote to his friend, Collot d’Herbois: “We have sent to-day 213 rebels to hell fire. Tears of joy run down my cheeks and flood my soul.” Royalist writers do not fail to remind the reader that this miscreant, Fouché, became minister of police to Napoleon. They omit the statement that he was used by Louis XVIII. in the same capacity.

Napoleon exerted himself to put a stop to these atrocities, but he was as yet without political influence, and he could do nothing. Some unfortunates he rescued from his own soldiers, and secretly sent away. He was forced to witness the execution of one old man of eighty-four, whose crime was that he was a millionnaire. “When I saw this,” said Napoleon afterward, “it seemed to me that the end of the world had come.”

In his spiteful Memoirs, Barras labors hard to draw a repulsive portrait of the Napoleon of Toulon. The young officer is represented as bustling about with a bundle of his Supper of Beaucaire, handing copies right and left to officers and men. He is made to profess rank Jacobinism, and to allude to Robespierre and Marat as “my saints.” He pays servile court to the wife of Commissioner Ricord, and to the Convention potentates generally. Of course he was on his knees to Barras. That lofty magnate stoops low enough to mention, as a matter detrimental to Napoleon, that his uniform was worn out and dirty—as if a tattered and soiled uniform at the close of such a siege, such herculean work, could have been anything but a badge of honor to the soldier who wore it! Dugommier’s official report on the taking of Toulon contains no mention of Napoleon by name, but he uses this expression, “The fire from our batteries, directed with the greatest talent,” etc. This allusion could have been to no other than to Napoleon.

To the minister of war Duteil wrote on December 19, 1793, “I cannot find words to describe the merit of Bonaparte; a considerable amount of science, just as much intelligence, and too much bravery, such is a feeble outline of the virtues of that rare officer.”

The Commissioners themselves, whose names crowded the name of Bonaparte out of the official report, recognized his services by at once nominating him to the post of general of brigade.

* * * * *

English authors dwell extensively on Napoleon’s hatred of their country: do they never recall the origin of the feeling? Had not England deceived old Paoli, crushed the opposite faction, and treated Corsica as a conquest? Was it not the English faction which had sacked the home, confiscated the property, and sought the lives of the Bonaparte family? Had not England been striving to force the Bourbons back on France; had it not seized the French ships at Toulon “in trust”; had it not then given to the flames not only the ships, but dockyards, arsenals, and magazines? Did not William Pitt, in the King’s speech of 1794, include among the subjects of congratulation “the circumstances attending the evacuation of Toulon”? Had not England, in 1793, bargained with Austria to despoil France and divide the booty: Austria to have Alsace and Lorraine; and England to have the foreign settlements and colonies of France? “His Majesty” (of England) “has an interest in seeing the house of Austria strengthen itself by acquisitions on the French frontier; the Emperor” (of Austria) “must see with pleasure the relative increase of the naval and commercial resources of this country” (England) “over those of France.”

Historians have long said that England’s war with France was forced upon her, that it was defensive. Does the language just quoted (official despatches) sound like the terms of self-defence? It is the language of aggression, of unscrupulous conquest; and the spirit which dictated this bargain between two powers to despoil a third is the same which gave life to each successive combination against the French Republic and the Napoleonic Empire.

Like master, like man: the British ministry having adopted the policy of blind and rancorous hostility in dealing with France, the same fury of hatred pervaded the entire public service. Edmund Burke and William Pitt inoculated the whole nation. “Young gentlemen,” said Nelson to his midshipmen, “among the things you must constantly bear in mind is to hate a Frenchman as you would the devil.” At another time, the same illustrious Englishman declared, “I hate all Frenchmen; they are equally the object of my detestation, whether royalists or republicans.” Writing to the Duke of Clarence, he stated: “To serve my king and to destroy the French, I consider the great order of all.... Down, down with the damned French villains! My blood boils at the name of Frenchman!” At Naples he exclaimed, “Down, down with the French! is my constant prayer.”

I quote Nelson simply because he was a controlling factor in these wars, a representative Englishman, a man in full touch with the policy, purpose, and passion of his government.

Consider England’s bargain with Austria; consider her bribes to Prussia to continue the struggle when even Austria had withdrawn; consider the animus of such leading actors as Burke and Nelson—is it any wonder that Napoleon regarded Great Britain as the one irreconcilable and mortal enemy of France?

And what was England’s grievance? Her rival across the Channel had overturned a throne, slain a king, and proclaimed principles which were at war with established tyranny. But had England never upset a throne, slain a king, and proclaimed a republic?

Was it any matter of rightful concern to Great Britain that France had cast out the Bourbons, and resorted to self-government? Did England, by any law human or divine, have the right to impose her own will upon a sister state? Was she right in seizing and destroying the French fleet at Toulon, which she had accepted as a trust? Unless all these can be answered Yes, Napoleon deserves no deep damnation for his hatred of Great Britain.

CHAPTER VII

The Mediterranean coast of France being almost at the mercy of the English fleet, Napoleon was sent, immediately after the fall of Toulon, to inspect the defences and put them into proper condition. He threw into this task the same activity and thoroughness which had marked him at Toulon, and in a short while the coast and the coasting trade were secure from attack.

His duties carried him to Marseilles, where he found that a fortress necessary to the defence of the harbor and town had been dismantled by the patriots, who detested it as a local Bastille. Napoleon advised that the fortifications be restored “so as to command the town.” This raised a storm. The Marseilles Jacobins denounced Bonaparte to the Convention. By that body he was summoned to appear at its bar. He had no inclination to take such a risk, and hastened to Toulon, where he put himself under the protection of Salicetti and Augustin Robespierre. At their instance he wrote to the Paris authorities an exculpatory letter, and the storm blew over.

In March, 1794, Napoleon returned to headquarters at Nice. By his influence over the Commissioners of the Convention, young Robespierre in particular, he became the dominant spirit of the army of Italy.

General Dumerbion, commander-in-chief, a capable officer but too old, had been wasting time, or the strength of his troops, for several months, in attacks upon the enemy (Piedmontese and Austrians) who were intrenched at the foot of the maritime Alps. Despondent after repeated failures, officers and men were contenting themselves with holding their positions, and conducting such operations as were consistent with extreme prudence. Napoleon had no sooner made a careful study of the positions of the opposing forces, than he drew up a plan of campaign, and submitted it to the commander-in-chief and the Commissioners. In a council of war it was discussed and approved. Early in April, the army was in motion; the position of the enemy was to be turned. Masséna led the corps which was to do what fighting was necessary. The enemy was beaten in two engagements, and Piedmont entered by the victorious French, who then turned back toward the Alps. The communications between Piedmont and the fortified camps of the enemy being thus endangered, they abandoned them without a fight; and thus in a campaign of a month the French won command of the whole range of the Alps, which had so long resisted every attack in front.

At this time the Bonaparte family was living in Nice, and Napoleon, during the months of May and June, 1794, spent much of his time with his mother and sisters. Uncle Fesch, Joseph, and Lucien were in good positions; and Napoleon secured for Louis, by the telling of some falsehoods and the use of the influence of Salicetti, the rank of lieutenant in the army. Louis was represented as having served as a volunteer at Toulon, and as having been wounded there. As a matter of fact, Louis had visited Napoleon during the siege, but had not served, and had not been wounded.

Joseph Bonaparte was made war commissioner of the first class. Napoleon, in securing him the place, represented Joseph as being the holder of the commission of lieutenant colonel of Corsican volunteers, the commission which Napoleon had won for himself at such a cost in his native land. The fraud was discovered later on; but, for the present, his brother Joseph was snugly berthed.

In July, 1794, Napoleon went to Genoa on a twofold mission. That republic, which was wholly controlled by a few rich families, had been giving aid and comfort to the enemies of republican France. The English and the Austrians had been allowed to violate Genoa’s neutrality. Also, the English had been permitted to set up an establishment for the manufacture of counterfeit assignats—that peculiar policy of the British ministry which had been used with good effect against the revolted American colonies. Besides, there was a complaint that certain stores bought from Genoa, and paid for, had not been delivered to the French.

Ostensibly, therefore, Napoleon’s mission was about the stores which Genoa withheld, and about the neutrality which she was allowing to be violated. But within this purpose lay another. Genoa, and her neutrality was an obstacle to French military plans; she was weak, and the temptation to seize upon her was strong. Napoleon while at Genoa was to look about him with the keen eyes of a military expert, and to form an opinion as to the ease with which the little republic could be made the victim of a sudden spring.

This mission, which bears an unpleasant resemblance to that of a spy, was undertaken at the instance of the younger Robespierre. Salicetti and Albitte had not been consulted, and knew nothing of the secret instructions given to Napoleon. Suddenly recalled to Paris by his brother, Robespierre wished to take with him the young officer whose “transcendent merit” he had applauded. With Napoleon to command the Paris troops, instead of Henriot, the Robespierres might confidently expect victory in the crisis they saw coming. But it was a part of Napoleon’s “transcendent merit” to possess excellent judgment, and he declined to go to Paris. So the friends parted: the one to visit little Genoa and bully its feeble Doge, the other to return to the raging capital and to meet sudden death there in generous devotion to his brother.

Napoleon reached Nice again, July 21, 1794, after his successful mission to Genoa, and in a few days later came the crash. The Robespierres were overthrown, and the Bonapartes, classed with that faction, fell with it. Napoleon was put under arrest; his brothers thrown out of employment. For some reason Salicetti and Albitte, previously so friendly to Napoleon, had turned upon him, had denounced him to the Convention, and had signed the order of arrest—an order almost equivalent to a death warrant.

It was a stunning, unexpected blow. Madame Junot, in her Memoirs, hints that the traditional woman was at the bottom of it; that the younger man, Napoleon, had found favor in the eyes of a lady who looked coldly upon the suit of Salicetti. But this explanation does not explain the hostility of other commissioners, for members of two separate commissioners signed against Napoleon. Surely he had not cut them all off from the smiles of their ladies. No; it would seem that Napoleon owed his tumble to the fact that he was standing upon the Robespierre scaffolding when it fell. He merely fell with it.

He was known as a Robespierre man, and to a very great extent he was. He had been put under heavy obligations by the younger brother whom he liked, and he did not believe that the elder was at heart a bad man. He had seen private letters which the elder brother had written to the younger, in which letters the crimes of the more rabid and corrupt revolutionists were deplored, and the necessity for moderation and purity expressed. Among those who befouled the names of the Robespierres, either then or afterward, Napoleon is not to be found. He understood well enough that the convulsion of July 27, 1794 (Thermidor), was the work of a gang of scoundrels (Barras, Fouché, Carrier, Tallien, Billaud, Collot), who took advantage of circumstances to pull down a man who had threatened to punish them for their crimes. Napoleon believed then and afterward that Robespierre had been a scapegoat, and that he had not been responsible for the awful days of the Terror in June and July 1794. The manly constancy with which he always clung to his own estimates of men and events is shown by the way in which he spoke well of the Robespierre brothers when all others damned them, and by his granting Charlotte Robespierre a pension at a time when the act could not have been one of policy. Marvellous was the complexity of Napoleon’s character; but like a thread of gold runs through all the tangled warp and woof of his life the splendid loyalty with which he remembered those who had ever been kind to him. Not once did he ever pursue a foe and take revenge so far as I can discover; not once did he ever fail to reward a friend, so far as the record is known.

Napoleon’s arrest created such indignation among the young officers of the army of Italy that a scheme for his forcible release was broached. Junot, Marmont, and other ardent friends were to take him out of prison and flee with him into Genoese territory. Napoleon would not hear of it. “Do nothing,” he wrote Junot. “You would only compromise me.”

Junot the hot-headed, Junot the tender-hearted, was beside himself with grief; and he wept like a child as he told the bad news to Madame Letitia.

But Napoleon himself was not idle. He knew that to be sent to Paris for trial at that time was almost like going to the scaffold, and he made his appeal directly to the Commissioners. By name he addressed Salicetti and Albitte, in words manly, bold, and passionate, protesting against the wrong done him, demanding that they investigate the case, and appealing to his past record and services for proofs of his republican loyalty. This protest had its effect. Salicetti himself examined Napoleon’s papers, and found nothing against him. The suspicious trip to Genoa was no longer suspicious, for his official instructions for that trip were found.

After an imprisonment of about two weeks, he was released, but his employment was gone. He still held his rank in the army, but he was not on duty. It was only as an adviser and spectator that he remained, and, at the request of Dumerbion, furnished a plan of campaign, which was successful to the extent that Dumerbion pushed it. He did not push it far enough to gain any very solid advantages, much to Napoleon’s disgust.

It was at this time that the incident occurred which he related at St. Helena. He was taking a stroll with the wife of the influential Commissioner Turreau, when it occurred to him to divert and interest her by giving her an illustration of what war was like. Accordingly he gave orders to a French outpost to attack the Austrian pickets. It was a mere whim; the attack could not lead to anything. It was done merely to entertain a lady friend. The soldiers could but obey orders. The attack was made and resisted. There was a little battle, and there were soldiers wounded, there were soldiers killed. And the entertainment which the lady got out of it was the sole other result of the attack.

It was Napoleon who told this story on himself: he declared that he had never ceased to regret the occurrence.

Corsican affairs now claimed attention for a moment in the counsels of the government at Paris (September, 1794). For after the Bonapartes had fled the island, Paoli had called the English in. The old hero intended that there should be a protectorate, thought that England would be satisfied with an arrangement of that sort, and that he, Paoli, would be left in control as viceroy or something of the kind. But the English had no idea of putting forth their strength for any such halfway purpose. They intended that Corsica should belong to England, and that an English governor should rule it. They intrigued with Paoli’s stanch friend, Pozzo di Borgo, and Pozzo became a convert to the English policy. King George III. of England wrote Paoli a polite and pressing invitation to visit England, and Paoli accepted.

England bombarded and took the remaining French strongholds (February, 1794), went into quiet and peaceable possession of the island, and appointed Sir Gilbert Elliott, governor. Of course Paoli’s stanch friend, Pozzo di Borgo, was not forgotten; he was made president of the state council under Elliott.

When commissioners from Paris came to the headquarters of the army of Italy, instructed to suspend the operations of the army and to prepare for an expedition against Corsica, Napoleon saw an opportunity to get back into active service again. He sought and obtained, perhaps by the favor of Salicetti, command of the artillery for the expedition. Great preparations were made at Toulon to organize the forces and to equip the fleet. In this work Napoleon was intensely engaged for several months. His mother and the younger children took up their residence in pleasant quarters near Antibes, and he was able to enjoy the luxury of the home circle while getting ready to drive the English out of Corsica. In due time the French fleet set sail; in due time it did what French fleets have usually done—failed dismally. The English were on the alert, swooped down, and captured two French vessels. The others ran to shelter under the guns of shore forts. The conquest of Corsica was postponed.

CHAPTER VIII

It must have been a sadly disappointed young man who rejoined his family, now at Marseilles, in the spring of 1795. Gone was the Toulon glory; gone the prestige of the confidential friend of commissioners who governed France. Barely escaping with his life from the Robespierre wreck, here he now was, stranded by the failure, the miserable collapse, of an expedition from which so much had been expected. Very gloomy must have been Napoleon’s “yellowish green” face, very sombre those piercing eyes, as he came back to his seat at the hearth of the humble home in Marseilles. Ten years had passed since he had donned his uniform; they had been years of unceasing effort, painful labor, and repeated failure. A demon of ill-luck had dogged his footsteps, foiled him at every turn, made null all his well-laid plans. Even success had come to him only to mock him and then drop him to a harder fall. Not only had he lost ground, but his brothers had been thrown out of the places he had obtained for them. In the midst of these discouragements came another: Lacombe St. Michel, a commissioner who bore him no good-will, urged the government to remove him from the army of Italy and to transfer him to the West. An order to that effect had been issued. This transfer would take him away from an army where he had made some reputation and some friends, and from a field of operations with which he was thoroughly familiar. It would put him in La Vendée, where the war was the worst of all wars,—civil strife, brother against brother, Frenchman against Frenchman,—and it would put him under the command of a masterful young man named Hoche.

Absolutely determined not to go to this post, and yet desperately tenacious in his purpose of keeping his feet upon the ladder, Napoleon set out for Paris early in May, 1795, to exert himself with the authorities. In the capital he had some powerful friends, Barras and Fréron among them. Other friends he could make. In a government where committees ruled, and where the committees were undergoing continual changes, everything was possible to one who could work, and wait, and intrigue. Therefore to Paris he hastened, taking with him his aides Junot and Marmont, and his brother Louis.

Lodged in a cheap hotel, he set himself to the task of getting the order of transfer cancelled. A general overhauling of the army list had been going on recently, and many changes were being made. Napoleon’s was not an isolated case. The mere transfer from one army to the other, his rank not being lowered, was, in itself, no disgrace; but Aubrey, who was now at the head of the war committee, decided upon a step which became a real grievance. The artillery service was overstocked with officers; it became necessary to cut down this surplus; and Napoleon, as a junior officer, was ordered to the army of the West as general of a brigade of infantry.

Napoleon regarded this as an insult, a serious injury, and he never forgave the minister who dealt him the blow. Aubrey had been a Girondin, and was at heart a royalist. He knew Napoleon to be a Jacobin, if not a Terrorist. Without supposing that there were any causes for personal ill-will, here were sufficient grounds for positive dislike in times so hot as those. In vain Napoleon applied in person, and brought to bear the powerful influence of Barras, Fréron, and the Bishop of Marboz. Either his advocates were lukewarm, or his cause was considered weak. Neither from the full committee nor from Aubrey could any concession be wrung. Aubrey, himself a soldier of the perfunctory, non-combative sort, believed that Napoleon had been advanced too rapidly. “You are too young to be commander-in-chief of artillery,” he said to the little Corsican. “Men age fast on the field of battle,” was the retort which widened the breach;—for Aubrey had not come by any of his age on fields of battle.

Foiled in his attempt on the committees as then constituted, Napoleon’s only hope was to wait until these members should go out and others come in by the system of rotation.

In the meantime he stuck to Paris with supple tenacity. By producing certificates of ill-health, he procured and then lengthened leave of absence from this obnoxious post in the West. He clung to old friends, and made new ones. Brother Lucien having been cast into prison as a rabid Jacobin, Napoleon was able to secure his release. Peremptory orders were issued that Napoleon should go to his post of duty, but he succeeded, through his friends, in evading the blow. Louis, however, lost his place as lieutenant, and was sent back to school at Châlons.

In spite of all his courage and his resources, Napoleon became, at times, very despondent. He wrote his brother Joseph that “if this continues, I shall not care to get out of the way of the carriages as they pass.” The faithful Junot shared with his chief the money he received from home, and also his winnings at the gaming table;—for Junot was a reckless gambler, and, being young, sometimes had good luck. Bourrienne and Talma may also have made loans to Napoleon in these days of distress, but this is not so certain. There is a letter which purports to have been from Napoleon to Talma, asking the loan of a few crowns, and offering repayment “out of the first kingdom I win with my sword.” But Napoleon himself declared that he did not meet Talma before the time of the consulate.

Idle, unhappy, out of pocket, Napoleon became morose and unsocial. If he seemed gay, the merriment struck his friends as forced and hollow. At the theatre, while the audience might be convulsed with laughter, Napoleon was solemn and silent. If he was with a party of friends, their chatter seemed to fret him, and he would steal away, to be seen later sitting alone in some box of an upper tier, and “looking rather sulky.”

Pacing the streets from day to day, gloomy, empty of pocket, his career seemingly closed, his thoughts were bitter. He envied and hated the young men who dashed by him on their fine horses, and he railed out at them and at fate. He envied his brother Joseph, who had married the daughter of a man who had got rich in the business of soap-making and soap-selling. “Ah, that lucky rogue, Joseph!” But might not Napoleon marry Désirée, the other daughter of the soap man? It would appear that he wished it, and that she was not unwilling, but the soap-boiler objected. “One Bonaparte in the family is enough.”

Napoleon traced his misfortunes back to the date of his arrest: “Salicetti has cast a cloud over the bright dawn of my youth. He has blighted my hopes of glory.” At another time he said mournfully, striking his forehead, “Yet I am only twenty-six.” Ruined by a fellow-Corsican! Yet to all outward appearance Salicetti and Napoleon continued to be good friends. They met at Madame Permon’s from time to time, and Salicetti was often in Napoleon’s room. Bourrienne states that the two men had much to say to each other in secret. It was as though they were concerned in some conspiracy.

On May 20, 1795 (1st of Prairial), there was a riot, formidable and ferocious, directed by the extreme democrats against the Convention and its moderates. The Tuileries was forced by the mob, and a deputy killed. Intending to kill Fréron, the crowd slew Ferraud. The head of the deputy was cut off, stuck on a pike, and pushed into the face of Boissy d’Anglas, the president. Gravely the president took off his hat and bowed to the dead. The Convention troops arrived, cleared the hall, and put down the riot.

Napoleon was a witness to this frightful scene. After it was over, he dropped in at Madame Permon’s to get something to eat. The restaurants were all closed, and he had tasted nothing since morning. While eating, he related what had happened at the Tuileries. Suddenly he inquired, “Have you seen Salicetti?” He then went on to complain of the injury Salicetti had done him. “But I bear him no ill-will.” Salicetti was implicated in the revolt, and the conspiracy which preceded it may have been the subject of those private conversations he had been having at Napoleon’s room—conversations which, according to Bourrienne, left Napoleon “pensive, melancholy, and anxious.”

The conspiracy had ripened, had burst into riot, and the riot had been crushed. “Have you seen Salicetti?” A very pertinent inquiry was this, for Salicetti was being hunted, and in a few days would be proscribed. If caught, he would probably be executed. Madame Junot says that while Napoleon spoke of Salicetti he “appeared very abstracted.” Briefly to conclude this curious episode, Salicetti was proscribed, fled for refuge to Madame Permon’s house, was hidden by her, and was finally smuggled out of Paris disguised as her valet. Napoleon had known where Salicetti lay concealed, but did not betray him. Was his conduct dictated by prudence or by generosity? There was something generous in it, no doubt; but the conclusion is almost unavoidable that there was policy, too. If driven to the wall, Salicetti could have disclosed matters hurtful to Napoleon. Those private interviews, secret conferences, daily visits to Napoleon’s room on the days the conspiracy was being formed—would they not look bad for a young officer who was known to have a grievance, and who had been heard frequently and publicly to denounce the government? This may have been what was on Napoleon’s mind while he was so much buried in thought at Madame Permon’s.

It was fine proof of Napoleon’s judgment that he did not allow himself to be drawn into the conspiracy. Angered against the government, despising many of the men who composed it, restlessly ambitious, and intensely yearning for action, the wonder is that he came within the secrets of the leaders of the revolt and yet kept his skirts clear.

Napoleon at this period was sallow and thin; his chestnut hair hung long and badly powdered. His speech was generally terse and abrupt. He had not yet developed grace of speech and manner. When he came to present Madame Permon a bunch of violets, he did it awkwardly—so much so that his ungainly manner provoked smiles. His dress was plain. A gray overcoat buttoned to the chin; a round hat pulled over his eyes, or stuck on the back of his head; no gloves, and a black cravat, badly tied; boots coarse, and generally unclean. When the weather was bad, these boots would be muddy and wet, and Napoleon would put them on the fender to dry, to the irritation of those who had exacting noses. Madame Permon’s being a nose of that class, her handkerchief rose to her nose whenever the Bonaparte boots rose to the fender. Napoleon, an observant man, took the hint, and got into the habit of stopping in the area for the chambermaid to clean his boots with her broom. His clothes had become threadbare, his hat dilapidated. The bootmaker who gave him credit in this dark hour was never forgotten. The Emperor Napoleon persisted in patronizing the clumsy cobbler whose heart had not hardened itself against the forlorn brigadier.

One night at St. Helena, when Napoleon, unable to sleep, was trying to rob time of its tedium by recalling the vicissitudes of his past, he related this incident: “I was at this period, on one occasion, suffering from that extreme depression of spirits which renders life a burden too great to be borne. I had just received a letter from my mother, revealing to me the utter destitution into which she was plunged. My own salary had been cut off, and I had but five francs in my pocket. I wandered along the banks of the river, tempted to commit suicide. In a few moments I should have thrown myself into the water, when I ran against a man dressed like a mechanic. ‘Is that you, Napoleon?’ and he threw himself upon my neck. It was my old friend, Des Mazis, who had emigrated, and who had now returned in disguise to visit his mother. ‘But what is the matter, Napoleon? You do not listen to me! You do not seem to hear me!’

“I confessed everything to him.

“‘Is that all?’ said he, and unbuttoning his coarse waistcoat and taking off a belt which he handed me, ‘Here are 30,000 francs which I can spare; take them and relieve your mother.’”

Napoleon told how he was so overjoyed that he rushed away to send the money to his mother, without having waited to thank his friend. Ashamed of his conduct, he soon went back to seek Des Mazis, but failed to find him anywhere. It was under the Empire that the two again met. Napoleon forced ten times the amount of the loan upon Des Mazis, and appointed him to a position which paid him 30,000 francs per year.

Low as he was in purse and spirit, Napoleon was too young, too strong, too self-reliant to yield to despair for any length of time. His active brain teemed with schemes for the future. His airy fancy soared all the way from plans which involved a book store, and a leasing and sub-letting of apartment houses, to service in Turkey and an empire in the East. Sometimes his friends thought him almost crazy. Going with Bourrienne, who was looking about for a suitable house, Napoleon took a fancy to the house opposite, and thought of hiring it for himself, Uncle Fesch, and his old Brienne teacher, Patrault: “With that house, my friends in it, and a horse and cabriolet, I should be the happiest fellow in the world.”

Junot relates that one evening when the two were walking in Jardin des Plantes, Napoleon appeared to be overcome by the beauties of his surroundings and the charms of the night. He made Junot his confidant—he was in love, and his affection was not returned. Junot listened, sympathized, condoled, and then made Napoleon his confidant. Junot was also in love—he loved Pauline Bonaparte, and wished to wed her. At once Napoleon recovered himself. Firmly he rejected the proposition: Junot had no fortune, Pauline had none—marriage was out of the question.

“You must wait. We shall see better days, my friend.—Yes! We shall have them even should I go to seek them in another quarter of the world!”

But where should he go? This question he put to himself and to the few friends who felt interest in his fate. One of his former teachers at Brienne, D’Harved, met him at this time in Paris, and was struck by his dejected appearance. “Chagrin and discontent were vividly painted on his face. He broke out into abuse of the government.” D’Harved was afraid that such talk would endanger listener as well as speaker, and at his instance they retired into the garden of the Palais Royal, accompanied by an Englishman named Blinkam or Blencowe. Napoleon continued to complain of the manner in which the authorities had treated him, and he declared his purpose of leaving the country. The Englishman proposed that they enter a restaurant. There the conversation was resumed. Napoleon did not favor D’Harved’s suggestion, that he offer his services to England. Nor did Germany attract him. Spain might do, for “there is not a single warrior in that country.”

Then the Englishman proposed Turkey, promising to write letters which would favorably dispose certain influential persons in Constantinople to the luckless adventurer. Napoleon jumped at the idea. “His countenance beamed with delight and hope.” He exclaimed, “I shall at once solicit permission to depart to Constantinople.” And he did so.

At the end of July, Aubrey went out of office, and was succeeded in the war committee by Doulcet de Pontécoulant. One of the first matters which engaged his attention was the condition of the army of Italy. It had been losing ground. Doulcet needed the advice of some one who was familiar with the situation there; and Boissy d’Anglas recommended Napoleon. Summoned to the war office, Napoleon answered all questions promptly, and made suggestions as to what ought to be done, which so dazzled the minister that he said to Napoleon, “General, take time and write out what you propose, so that it may be laid before the Committee.”

“Time!” cried Napoleon, “give me a couple of sheets of paper and a pen. In half an hour I will have the plan of campaign ready.” He sat down and wrote, but who could read that awful writing? Taking it home with him, he made Junot copy it, and the plan was submitted to the full committee, which sent it on to the army. Doulcet, favorably impressed by Napoleon, retained him in the topographical bureau, where he and three others drew up plans and directions for all the armies.

On the 16th of August the order was issued peremptorily, that Napoleon should proceed to the post assigned him in the army of the West. He did not obey, and powerful friends screened him. On August 30 he applied to be sent to Turkey to increase the military resources of the Sultan. On September 15 or 25 (for authorities differ painfully on the date), a report signed by Cambacérès and others decreed that his name be stricken from the list of generals in active service.

One reason given for the sudden harshness of the Committee in striking his name off the list is that he had pressed for payment of fraudulent accounts. He had claimed and received mileage from Nice to Paris, when he had come from Marseilles only. He had also claimed pay for horses sold by him according to orders, when he set forth on the Corsican expedition. The authorities had no faith in these horses, considered them purely imaginary; and, in consequence, Napoleon was spoken of very harshly by government officials. Letourneur, who had succeeded Doulcet on the Committee, was one of those who disliked and opposed him.

On September 15 a subcommittee reported to the full committee in favor of the proposition, that Napoleon be sent, with officers of his suite, to reorganize the military system of the Turks. Only in government by committee could such a contradictory series of orders and resolutions be possible. Napoleon had seriously canvassed the officers who were to compose his suite on the mission to Turkey, when symptoms of another revolutionary convulsion attracted his notice and halted his preparations.

The Convention, which had reeled and rocked along for three years, was now about to adjourn. It felt that it must, and yet it did not wish to do so. They therefore decreed that two-thirds of the next legislature should be composed of themselves. The other third, the people might elect. One reason for this strange law was that the royalist reaction had become extremely threatening. The Count of Artois was said to be hovering on the coast, ready to land an expedition from England, and to march on Paris. The army of Condé was expecting to coöperate from the Rhine. Paris was to give the signal by a revolt which should upset the Convention.

Besides the royalists, there were other formidable malcontents. There were the poorer classes, who had been deprived of their votes by the property qualification of the new constitution. In the revolt which ensued, however, the royalists were the soul of the movement. The extreme democrats, though hotly opposed to the property qualification, hated royalism worse. Santerre was ready to sustain the Convention, and did so. The very prisoners who had been lying in chains since the democratic revolt of May (1st of Prairial) were now willing to fight for the Convention, and did fight for it.

The centre of the insurrection against the Convention, its new constitution, and its decrees was the Section Lepelletier, the home of the rich men of the middle class. The National Guards from this section, it will be remembered, had fought in defence of the King on the famous 10th of August. It was now ready to fight for royalty again.

On the 4th of October (12th of Vendémiaire) the Section Lepelletier declared itself in insurrection, and it became the rallying-point for insurgents from all the sections of Paris. The National Guard, forty thousand strong, had been so reorganized that it was now with the insurgents. To the royalists the situation seemed full of promise, for the Convention had but seven or eight thousand troops upon which it could rely. General Dumas was selected by the Convention to take command of its forces, but he had left town three days before.

General Menou, in command of the Convention forces, was ordered to go and disarm and disperse the insurgents. For some reason, either because he failed to realize the gravity of the crisis, or because he was unnerved by it, he did the worst thing possible. He parleyed, and compromised. He agreed to withdraw his troops on the promise of the insurgents to withdraw theirs. He then retreated, and the insurgents held their ground and their arms, loudly proclaiming their triumph.

As the nerveless and witless Menou was drawing off his men, a young officer, on the steps of the Feydau Theatre, exclaimed to his companion, “Where can that fellow be going?” It was Napoleon speaking to Junot. And he continued: “Ah, if the sections would only let me lead them, I would guarantee to place them in the Tuileries in two hours, and have all those Convention rascals driven out!” Then he hurried to the Tuileries to see what the Convention would do next.

It was evident that on the morrow the insurgents would attack. They proclaimed their intention of doing so, and they were confident of success.

The Convention removed Menou from command, and placed him under arrest. They then chose Barras commander-in-chief, remembering his vigor and success in July, 1794, when Robespierre fell. Napoleon was made second in command.

Just how this appointment came to be made, will always be a matter of dispute. It is certain that Barras suggested Bonaparte’s name to the Committee in the words: “I have precisely the man we want. It is a little Corsican officer, who will not stand on ceremony.” Baron Fain states that Napoleon was at this time in the topographical office, that he was sent for, and sworn in by the Committee in the committee-room. Napoleon himself, in one of his different versions, relates that he was at the Feydau Theatre, was told what was happening at the Lepelletier section, left the theatre, witnessed Menou’s retreat, and then hurried to the Convention to see how the news would be received. Arrived at the Tuileries, he mixed with the crowd in the galleries, and heard his name called. Announcement was made that he had been appointed as aide to Barras.

Barras, in his turn, says that on this fateful evening Bonaparte could not be found at any of his usual haunts, that he came to the Tuileries late, looking confused, and that in answer to sharp questions he admitted that he had come from the section Lepelletier, where he had been reconnoitring the enemy. Barras charges that he had been dickering with the other side.

By whatever means it came about, Napoleon Bonaparte was acting chief in the famous 13th of Vendémiaire (5th of October, 1795). It was he whose genius converted the Tuileries, which the Parisian mobs had time and again stormed, into a fortress an army could not have taken. Cannon were at Sablons, cannon he must have, and Murat at the head of three hundred horse went in a gallop to bring the guns. In the nick of time the order was given, for the insurgents had sent also. Murat’s mounted men reached Sablons in advance of the unmounted insurgents, and the cannon were whirled away to the Tuileries. Planted so as to command all avenues of approach, they made the position invulnerable, for the insurgents had no cannon.

General Thiébault says: “From the first, his activity was astonishing: he seemed to be everywhere at once, or rather he only vanished at one point to reappear instantly. He surprised people further by his laconic, clear, and prompt orders, imperative to the last degree. Everybody was struck also by the vigor of his arrangements, and passed from admiration to confidence, and from confidence to enthusiasm.”

Morning came, and with it the insurgents; but at sight of the formidable defences which had been the work of the night, they halted. Hour after hour passed away in hoots, yells, threats, negotiation. Toward evening it seemed that the Convention troops might be brought to fraternize with the insurgents. Suddenly a musket was fired, and the battle opened; or rather the cannonade commenced, for battle it could not be called. The insurgents showed courage, but had no chance of success whatever. It was cannon against muskets, an army intrenched against a packed mob in the streets. The firing commenced at about four in the evening. By six all was over.

A few attempts to rally the insurgents were made, but were easily frustrated. The Convention forces carried out the orders Menou had received by disarming the turbulent sections. A few of the ringleaders of the revolt were tried and punished, but only one, Lafond, was executed.

During this disarmament, which recent writers say never happened, but which Menou had been officially instructed to effect, and which both Napoleon and Barras say they did effect, the victorious conventionals made one of those mistakes incident to the prevailing darkness and confusion. The house of Madame de Beauharnais was entered, the sword of her late husband, the Viscount Beauharnais, was carried off. In a day or so the son of the widow Beauharnais went to Napoleon and asked for the return of his dead father’s sword. His request immediately granted, and the sacred relic being placed in his hands, the boy covered the handle of the weapon with kisses, and burst in tears. Napoleon’s interest was deeply aroused, and he treated the lad with that winning kindness which fascinated all who came within its influence. Such report did Eugène Beauharnais carry home that his mother felt bound to call upon the General, and thank him in person; and it was thus, perhaps, that these two first met.

Later biographers scout this story as a romance fashioned by Napoleon himself, and they say that (1) no disarmament took place; and (2) that if such disarmament did take place, Madame Beauharnais, a friend of Barras, would not have been molested. To say nothing of further proof, the contemporaneous letter of Napoleon to Joseph shows that the sections were disarmed; and as to Madame Beauharnais being screened by her friendly relations with Barras, that presupposes every soldier in the Convention army to have known all about Barras’s private affairs. How could the thousands of Convention troops, fifteen hundred of whom were democrats just out of jail, know who was or was not a personal friend of Barras? The Convention was in the minority; it had less than eight thousand troops: would it have left arms in the hands of the majority and the forty thousand National Guards?

Captious critics call attention to the fact that Napoleon elsewhere stated that he met his future wife at the house of Barras. This assertion does not necessarily conflict with the other. A call at the office of an official does not constitute a social meeting. When Napoleon said he met Madame Beauharnais at the house of Barras, his meaning probably was that he there first knew her socially. And why should a man like Napoleon, who could lie so superbly when he tried, invent so bungling a hoax as one which involved a disarmament of Paris which did not take place, and the return of a sword which had never been seized?

General Thiébault says: “A few days after the 13 of Vendémiaire I happened to be at the office of the general staff when General Bonaparte came in. I can still see his little hat surmounted by a chance plume badly fastened on, his tricolor sash more than carelessly tied, his coat cut anyhow, and a sword which did not seem the kind of weapon to make his fortune. Flinging his hat on a large table in the middle of the room, he went up to an old general, named Krieg, a man of wonderful knowledge of military detail and author of a soldier’s manual. He made him take a seat beside him at the table, and began questioning him, pen in hand, about a host of facts connected with the service and discipline. Some of his questions showed such complete ignorance of some of the most ordinary things that several of my comrades smiled. I was myself struck by the number of his questions, their order, and their rapidity, no less than by the way in which the answers were caught up, and often found to resolve themselves into new questions, which he deduced as consequences from them. But what struck me still more was the sight of a commander-in-chief perfectly indifferent about showing his subordinates how completely ignorant he was of various points of the business which the junior of them was supposed to know perfectly, and this raised him a hundred cubits in my eyes.”

Here we see Napoleon drawn to the life. Instead of sitting down to gloat over his recent brilliant success, he had gone to work with the devouring zeal of a man who had done just enough to encourage him to do more. He did not idle away any time listening to congratulations. His cannon having opened one door in his advance, his eager eyes were already fixed far ahead on another, and his restless feet were in the path. In his garrison days he had not loved the details of his profession. Dull routine had been hateful, keeping him away from his books and his solitary musings. Now it was different. He saw the need of mastering everything which related to war, and, before he had even arrayed himself in new uniform, he had sought the old officer, Krieg, and was exhausting that source of information. In such direct, honest, practical way he came by that knowledge of war which justified him in saying in later years: “I know my profession thoroughly. Everything which enters into war I can do. If there is no powder, I can make it. If there are no cannon, I will cast them.” He knew better how to construct a road or a bridge than any engineer in the army. He had the best eye for ground, could best estimate distances, could best tell what men could do on the march or in the field. Down to the pettiest details, he studied it all. “Do you know how the shirts which come in from the wash should be placed in the drawer? No? Then I will tell you. Put them always at the bottom of the drawer, else the same shirts will be constantly in use.” This advice he volunteered to the astonished matron who had charge of the soldiers’ linen at the Invalides.

On October 12, 1795, Napoleon was restored to his grade in the artillery, and was named second commandant in the Army of the Interior. Ten days later, Barras having resigned his generalship, Napoleon became general of division and commander-in-chief of the Army of the Interior.

On October 26, 1795, the Convention finally adjourned; and on the next day it began to govern the country again with its two-thirds of the new legislatures (councils of Ancients and of Five Hundred) and its five regicide directors,—Barras, Carnot, Rewbell, Letourneur, and Larévellière-Lépaux.

Napoleon had become one of the dominant men of the State. In his every movement was the sense of his power. His position good, he lost no time in making it better. He took up suitable quarters in the Rue des Capuchines, surrounded himself with a brilliant staff, donned a handsome uniform, sported carriages and fine horses, and appeared in society.

He did not narrow himself to any clique or faction, but sought friends in all parties. He protected and conciliated royalists, called back to the service officers who had been retired, found good places for his friends, sent bread and wood to famishing families in the districts of the poor. At the same time he held down lawless outbreaks with a hand of iron, and went in person to close the great club of the Panthéon, the hot-bed of political agitation. He thoroughly reorganized the Army of the Interior and the National Guard, formed guards for the legislative councils and for the Directory, acting almost always on his own responsibility, and consulting his superiors but little.

Uncle Fesch came to town to be nominally Napoleon’s secretary. Joseph received money and the promise of a consulship. Lucien was reinstalled in the fruitful commissary. Louis was once more lieutenant, and Jerome was placed in school in Paris. Of course Madame Letitia and the sisters basked in the sunshine also; for Napoleon could never do too much for his family. Nor did he overlook the Permons. According to Madame Junot, he had always liked them in the days of his poverty. Now that prosperity had come, he loved them better than ever: so much so indeed that he proposed that the Bonapartes should matrimonially absorb the entire Permon family. Jerome was to be married to Laura Permon, Pauline to Albert Permon, and Napoleon, himself, was to wed the widow Permon. According to Laura (afterward Madame Junot), this proposition was formally made by Napoleon, and laughed out of court by Madame Permon. The baffled matchmaker continued his visits, however, and frequently came to the house, accompanied by members of his staff.

One day as he stepped from his carriage, a poor woman held out toward him a dead child in her arms—the youngest of her six children. It had died of starvation, and the others would die if she could not get help. Napoleon was deeply moved, gave the woman kind words and money, and followed the matter up by getting her pensioned.

There was widespread squalor and misery in Paris during the winter of 1795, and Napoleon showed tact as well as kindness and firmness in preventing tumult. Consider that little picture which is usually passed over so lightly: an angry mob of the unemployed, hungry, desperate, threatening, and on the brink of violence. They suffer, their wives starve, their children die in the garrets. Of course they blame the government. How could such misery exist where there was so much wealth and food, if the government was treating all fairly? Furious women stir about in the crowd lashing the upper classes with bitter tongues, and goading the men on to the point of rioting. Napoleon and his escort arrive. One fat fisherwoman bustles and bawls: “Don’t mind these dandies in uniform with epaulettes on their shoulders! Don’t disperse! They care not if the poor people starve, if they can but eat well and grow fat.”

Think of Napoleon, the leanest of all lean men, “the thinnest and oddest object I ever laid eyes on,” sitting there on his horse representing the unpopular “they”! “Madame, pray look at me: tell us which of us two is the fatter.” The paunchy fisherwoman was stunned; the crowd laughed, and fell to pieces.

CHAPTER IX

The young Republic found itself beset by the old governments of Europe. Because the Revolution proclaimed a new gospel, because it asserted the divine right of the people to govern themselves, because it made war upon caste and privilege, because it asserted the equal right of every citizen to take his share in the benefits as well as the burdens of society, because it threatened the tyranny of both Church and State, it was hated with intense bitterness by the kings, the high-priests, and the aristocracy of Europe.

In 1793 the first great league was formed to crush it, and to restore the Old Order in France. The strong member of this combination against human progress was Great Britain. Rendered secure from attack by her ocean girdle and her invincible fleets, she nevertheless dreaded what were called “French principles.” In these principles she saw everything to dread; for they were most insidious, and few were the men of the masses who, having learned what the new doctrine was, did not embrace it.

The common man, the average man, the full-grown man, the man who had not been stunted by the Orthodox pedagogue or priest, could not listen to the creed of the French republicans without feeling in his heart of hearts that it offered to the world an escape from the system which then enslaved it. Into Great Britain, in Germany, in Italy, in the Netherlands, in Russia itself, the shock with which the Old Order had fallen in France sent its vibrations—tremors which made the kings, princes, and privileged who dwelt in the upper stories of the social fabric quake with terror for the safety of the entire building.

The controlling man in England was William Pitt, able, proud, cold, ambitious. Personally honest, his policy sounded the deepest depravities of statecraft. Under his administration India was looted, ravaged, enslaved; Ireland coerced and dragooned; France outlawed because she dared to kill a king and call into life a republic; Europe bribed to a generation of war; freedom of thought, and speech, and conduct denied, and the cause of feudalism given a new lease of life. The aims and ends of this man’s statesmanship were eternally bad; his methods would have warmed the heart of a Jesuit. He would not stoop to base deeds himself, would not speak the deliberately false word, would not convey the bribe, would not manufacture counterfeit money, would not arm the assassin, would not burn cities nor massacre innocent women and children. No, no!—he belonged to what Lord Wolseley complacently calls “the highest type of English gentleman,” and his lofty soul would not permit him to do things like these himself. He would not corrupt Irish politicians to vote for the Union; but he would supply Castlereagh with the money from which the bribes were paid. He would not himself debauch editor or pamphleteer to slander a political foe, and deceive the British nation; but he supplied funds to those who did. Nor would he have put daggers into the hands of fanatics that they might do murder; but he protected and aided in England those who did. Not a political criminal himself, he used criminals and garnered the harvest of their crimes. Not himself capable of political theft, he countenanced the political thief, approved his success, and as a receiver of stolen goods, knowing them to have been stolen, haughtily added huge gains to his political wealth.

The same lofty-minded minister who had debauched Ireland—an enemy to Irish independence—made war upon free speech and political liberty in England, and exhausted the resources of diplomacy and force to stamp out the revolutionary movement of France. Under his sanction, his emissaries attacked the French Republic by forging and counterfeiting her paper currency; by arming her factions the one against the other; by corrupting her trusted leaders; by nerving the hand of the assassin when the corruptionist could not prevail. That London harbored the Bourbon and his paid assassin was due to the influence of William Pitt. That the Bourbon could land on the French coast the emissaries who came to rouse Vendeans to revolt, or to murder Bonaparte in Paris, was due to the position of William Pitt.

To the same eminent statesman was due the fact that for a whole generation British newspapers were so filled with falsehoods against France and Napoleon that an Englishman could not know the truth without leaving his country to hear it. To the same cause was due the league after league of Europe against France, which, beginning in 1793, reunited and renewed the struggle as often as opportunity offered until France was crushed, and the hands upon the clock of human progress put back a hundred years.

Without England, the coalitions against republican France would have had trifling results. It was England which furnished inexhaustible supplies of money; England which scoured the ocean with her fleets and maintained the blockade.

There had been a time when the French Revolution was not unpopular in Great Britain. This was when the reform movement was under the control of leaders who proclaimed their purpose to be to model the monarchy in France upon that of England. So long as professions of this sort were made, there was nothing to awaken distrust in staid, conservative England. Even aristocracy loves a fettered king. But when more radical men wrested leadership from the constitutionals, and boldly declared that the work of reform must strike deeper, must destroy feudalism root and branch, must consign a corpulent Church to the poverty whose beauties it preached, the lords and the bishops of Great Britain realized that the time had come when they must legislate, preach, pray, and fight against inovations which, if successful in France, would inevitably cross the narrow Channel.

All the machinery of repression was put to work. Books were written against the Revolution, and paid for by pensions drawn from the common treasury. Sermons were preached against the Revolution, and paid for in salaries drawn from the State funds. Parliament was set in motion to enact rigorously oppressive laws, and courts were set in motion to enforce the statutes. The political system in England might be ever so bad, but the people should not discuss it. Public meetings became criminal; public reading rooms, unlicensed, were criminal. By the plain letter of the law of Christian England, if any citizen opened his house or room “for the purpose of reading books, or pamphlets, or newspapers,” such citizen became a criminal and such house “a disorderly house.” Before the citizen could permit others to use his books for pay, he must secure the approval and the license of bigoted Tory officials. No public meeting at all could be held unless a notice of such meeting signed by a householder, and stating the object of the meeting, should be inserted in a newspaper at least five days previous to the meeting. And even then the Tory justice of the peace was empowered to break up the meeting and imprison the persons attending it, if he thought the language held by the speaker of the meeting was calculated to bring the King or the government into contempt. Not even in the open fields could any lecture, speech, or debate be had without a license from a Tory official.

The government spy, the paid informer, went abroad, searching, listening, reporting, persecuting, and prosecuting. No privacy was sacred, no individual rights were respected, terrorism became a system. Paine’s Rights of Man threw the upper classes into convulsions; his Common Sense became a hideous nightmare. Men were arrested like felons, tried like felons, punished like felons for reading pamphlets and books which are now such commonplace exponents of democracy that they are well-nigh forgotten. It was a time of misrule, of class legislation, of misery among the masses. It was a time when the laborer had almost no rights, almost no opportunities, almost no inducement to live, beyond the animal instinct which preserves the brute. It was a time when the landlord was almost absolute master of land and man; when the nobleman controlled the King, the House of Lords, and the House of Commons. It was a time when a duke might send half a dozen of his retainers to take seats in Parliament, or when he might advertise the seats for sale and knock them down to the highest bidder. It was a time when a close corporation of hereditary aristocrats controlled England like a private estate, taxed her people, dictated her laws, ruled her domestic and foreign policies, and made war or peace according to their own good pleasure. It was a time when it might have been said of most English towns as the town-crier reported to his Tory masters in reference to the village of Bolton—that he had diligently searched the place and had found in it neither The Rights of Man nor Common Sense.

There was one class which shared with the nobles the control of English national policies, and this was that of the great merchants and manufacturers. The exporter, The Prince of Trade, was a power behind the throne, and in foreign affairs his selfish greed dominated England’s policy.

This governing class, as Napoleon said, looked upon the public, the people, as a milch cow; the only interest which they had in the cow was that it should not go dry. Offices, dignities, salaries, were handed down from sire to son. By hereditary right the government, its purse and its sword, belonged to these noble creatures whose merit frequently consisted solely in being the sons of their sires. To fill the ships which fought for the supremacy of this oligarchy, press-gangs prowled about the streets on the hunt for victims. Poor men, common laborers, and people of the lowlier sort were pounced upon by these press gangs, and forcibly carried off to that “hell on earth,” a British man-of-war of a century ago. One instance is recorded of a groom coming from the church where he had just been married, and who was snatched from the arms of his frantic bride and borne off—to return after many years to seek for a wife long since dead, in a neighborhood where he had long been forgotten.

In the army and in the fleet soldiers and sailors were lashed like dogs to keep them under; and it was no uncommon thing for the victims to die from the effects of the brutal beating.

Considering all these things, the reader will understand why England made such determined war upon republican France. Against that country she launched armies and fleets, bribed kings and ministers, subsidized coalitions, straining every nerve year in and year out to put the Bourbons back on the throne, and to stay the advance of democracy. She temporarily succeeded. Her selfish King, nobles, and clericals held their grip, and postponed the day of reform. But the delay was dearly bought. The statesmanship of Pitt, Canning, Castlereagh, and Burke strewed Europe with dead men, and loaded nations with appalling debts. Upon land and sea, in almost every clime, men of almost every race were armed, enraged, and set to killing each other in order that the same few might continue to milk the cow.

In forming an opinion about Napoleon, it must be remembered that when he first came upon the scene he found these conditions already in existence,—Europe in league against republican France. With the creation of those conditions he had had nothing to do. Not his was the beginning of the Revolution; not his the execution of Louis XVI.; not his the quarrel with England. If Great Britain and her allies afterward concentrated all their abuse, hatred, and hostility upon him, it was because he had become France; he had become, as Pitt himself said, “the child and champion of democracy”; he had become as Toryism throughout the world said, the “embodiment of the French Revolution.”

This is the great basic truth of Napoleon’s relations with Europe; and if we overlook it, we utterly fail to understand his career. In an evil hour for France, as well as for him, the allied kings succeeded in making the French forget her past. It was not till the Bourbons had returned to France, to Spain, to Italy; it was not till feudalism had returned to Germany with its privilege, its abuses, its stick for the soldier, its rack and wheel for the civilian; it was not till Metternich and his Holy Alliance had smashed with iron heel every struggle for popular rights on the Continent; it was not till Napoleon, dead at St. Helena, was remembered in vivid contrast to the soulless despots who succeeded him, that liberalism, not only in France, but throughout the world, realized how exceeding great had been the folly of the French when they allowed the kings to divorce the cause of Napoleon from that of the French people.

CHAPTER X

The French Revolution was no longer guided by the men of ideals. With the downfall of Robespierre had come the triumph of those who bothered themselves with no dreams of social regeneration, but whose energies were directed with an eye single to their own advantage. Here and there was left a relic of the better type of revolutionist, “a rose of the garden left on its stalk to show where the garden had been”; but to one Carnot there were dozens of the brood of Barras.

The stern, single-minded, terribly resolute men of the Great Committee, who had worked fourteen hours a day in a plainly furnished room of the Tuileries, taking their lunch like common clerks as they stood about the table at which they wrote,—smiling perhaps, as they ate, at some jest of Barère,—with no thought of enriching themselves, intent only upon working out the problems of the Revolution in order that France might find her way to a future of glory and happiness—these men were gone, to come no more. Fiercely attached to variant creeds, they had warred among themselves, destroying each other, wearying the world with violence, and giving the scoundrels the opportunity to cry “Peace!” and to seize control. True, the work of the Revolution had been done too well to be wholly undone. Feudalism had been torn up root and branch; it could never be so flourishing again. Absolutism, royal and papal infallibility, had been trodden into the mire where they belonged; they might be set in place again, but they would never more look quite so dazzling, nor be worshipped with quite such blindness of devotion. Great principles of civil and religious liberty had been planted; they could never be wholly plucked out. The human race had for once seen a great people fill its lungs and its brain with the air and the inspiration of absolute freedom from priest, king, aristocrat, precedent, conventionality, and caste-made law; the spectacle would never be forgotten, nor the example cease to blaze as a beacon, lighting the feet and kindling the hopes of the world.

But, for the time, the triumph of the venal brought with it shame and disaster to the entire body politic. The public service corrupt, the moral tone of society sank. Ideals came into contempt, idealists into ridicule. The “man of the world,” calling himself practical, and priding himself on his ability to play to the baser passions of humanity, laughed revolutionary dogmas aside, put revolutionary simplicity and honesty out of fashion, made a jest of duty and patriotism, and prostituted public office into a private opportunity.

Hordes of adventurers, male and female, stormed the administration, took it, and looted it. The professional money-getter controlled the Directory: the contractor, stock-jobber, fund-holder, peculator, and speculator. In all matters pertaining to finance, the Bourse was the government. The nobility of the Old Order had monopolized the State’s favors under the kings; the rich men of the middle class, the Bourgeoisie, did so now. The giver and the taker of bribes met and smiled upon each other; the lobbyist hunted his prey and found it. Once again the woman, beautiful, shrewd, and unchaste, became greater than the libertine official who had surrendered to her charms; and she awarded fat contracts, trafficked in pardons and appointments, and influenced the choice of army chiefs.

The government no longer concerned itself with chimeras, dreams of better men and methods, visions of beneficent laws dealing impartially with an improving mass of citizenship. Just as the Grand Monarch’s court had revelled in the fairyland of joy and light and plenty at Versailles while peasants in the provinces fed on grass and roots, dying like flies in noisome huts and garrets; just as the Pompadour of Louis the XV. had squandered national treasures upon diamonds, palaces, endless festivities, while the soldiers of France starved and shivered in Canada, losing an empire for want of ammunition to hold it! so, under the Directory, Barras held court in splendor, while workmen died of want in the garrets of Paris; and he feasted with his Madame Tallien or his Josephine Beauharnais, while the soldiers on the Rhine or on the Alps faced the winter in rags, and were forced to rob to keep from starvation.

This wretched state of things had not reached its climax at the period I am treating, but the beginnings had been made, the germs were all present and active.

In this revival of mock royalty, Barras outshone his peers. He was of most noble descent, his family “as old as the rocks of Provence”; his manners redolent of the Old Régime, and much more so his morals. His honesty, like his patriotism, delighted in large bribes; and he never by any chance told the truth if a lie would do as well. His person was tall and commanding; his voice, in a crisis, had sometimes rung out like a trumpet and rallied the wavering, for the man was brave and capable of energetic action. But he was a sensualist, base to the core, vulgar in mind and heart, true to no creed, and capable of no high, noble, strenuous rôle. Rotten himself, he believed that other men were as degraded. As to women, they never stirred a thought in him which would not, if worded in the ears of a true woman, have mantled her cheek with shame.

This was the man to whom Napoleon had attached himself; this was the man in whose house Josephine was living when Napoleon met her. Barras was the strong man of the hour; Barras had places to give and favors to divide; Barras was the candle around which fluttered moths large and small; and to this light had come the adventurer from Corsica, and the adventuress from Martinique. Usually it is the candle which singes the moth; in this case it was the moths which put out the candle.

Napoleon had become a thorough man of the world. Hard experience had driven away sentimental illusions. The visionary of the Corsican sea-lulled grotto, the patriotic dreamer of the Brienne garden-harbor, had died some time ago. The man who now commanded the Army of the Interior was different altogether. Reading, experience, observation, the stern teachings of necessity, had taught him to believe that the Italian proverb was true, “One must not be too good, if one would succeed.” He believed now that rigid principles were like a plank strapped across the breast: not troublesome when the path led through the open, but extremely detrimental to speed in going through a wood. He had studied the lives of great men,—Alexander, Cæsar, Richelieu, Frederick, Cromwell,—and the study had not tended to his elevation in matters of method. He had studied the politics of the world, the records of national aggrandizement, the inner secrets of government, and his conceptions of public honor had not been made more lofty. He had come to believe that interest governed all men; that no such things as disinterested patriotism, truth, honor, and virtue existed on earth. He believed that life was a fight, a scramble, an unscrupulous rush for place, power, riches; and that the strongest, fleetest, most artful would win—especially if they would take all the short cuts. Idealogists he despised.

Cold, calculating, disillusioned, he took the world as he found it. New men and women he could not create, nor could he create other conditions, moral, social, political, or material. He must recognize facts, must deal with actualities. If bad men alone could give him what he wanted, he must court the bad men. If bad men only could do the work he wanted done, he must use the bad men. Barras, Fréron, Tallien, being in power, he would get all he could out of them, just as he had exhausted the friendship of Robespierre and Salicetti, and just as he afterward used Fouché and Talleyrand.

Nor was he more scrupulous in his relations with women. He must have known the character of Madame Tallien, mistress and then wife of the man of July, and now mistress of Barras; but nevertheless he sought her acquaintance, and cultivated her friendship. Knowing the character of Madame Tallien, he must have felt that her bosom friend, Madame Beauharnais, could not be wholly pure. He saw them together night and day, he witnessed their influence with Barras; it is impossible that he did not hear some of the talk which coupled their names with that of the libertine Director. He must have heard of the early life of this creole widow, whose husband, the Viscount Beauharnais, had separated from her, accusing her of scandalous immorality. He must have heard that after her husband had been guillotined, and she herself released from prison by the overthrow of Robespierre, she had begun a life of fashionable dissipation. He must have heard the talk which coupled her name with that of such women as Madame Tallien, Madame Hamelin, and a dozen other Aspasias of like kind. The names of her lovers were bruited about like those of Madame Tallien, one of these lovers having been General Hoche. Now that she, a widow just out of prison, having no visible income or property, and whose children had been apprenticed at manual labor, sported a magnificent establishment, wore most expensive toilets, led the life of the gayest of women,—the favorite of those who had recently beheaded her husband,—the world classed her with those with whom she was most intimate, and thought her morals could not be purer than those of her associates. Justly or unjustly, she was regarded as one of the lights of the harem of Barras; and people were beginning to hint that she and her extravagance had become a burden of which the Director would gladly be rid.

Napoleon had never come under the spell of such society as that which he had now entered. That fleeting glimpse of polite society which he had caught at Valence bore no comparison to this. In his limited experience he had not met such women as Madame Tallien and Josephine. He moved in a new sphere. Around him was the brilliance of a court. In apartments adorned with every ornament and luxury, night was turned into day; and with music, the dance, the song, the feast, men and women gave themselves to pleasure. He, the unsocial man of books and camps, was not fitted to shine in this social circle. He was uncouth, spoke the language with an unpleasant accent, had no graces of manner or speech, had nothing imposing in figure or bearing, and he felt almost abashed in the high presence of these elegant nullities of the drawing-room.

Shy, ill at ease, he was not much noticed and not much liked by the ladies of the directorial court, with one exception—Josephine. Either because of the alleged return of the sword, and the good impression then made, or because of her natural tact and kindness of heart, Madame Beauharnais paid the uncouth soldier those little attentions which attract, and those skilful compliments which flatter, and almost before he was aware of it Napoleon was fascinated. Here was a woman to take a man off his feet, to inflame him with passion. She was no longer young, but she was in the glorious Indian summer of her charms. Her perfect form was trained in movements of grace. Her musical voice knew its own melody, and made the most of it. Her large, dark eyes with long lashes were soft and dreamy. Her mouth was sweet and sensuous. Her chestnut hair was elegantly disordered, her shoulders and bust hid behind no covering, and of her little feet and shapely ankles just enough was seen to please the eye and stimulate the imagination.

As to her costume and her general toilet, it was all that studied art and cultivated taste could do for generous nature. Madame Tallien was more beautiful and more queenly than Josephine, many others excelled her in wit, accomplishments, and mere good looks; but it may be doubted whether any lady of that court, or other courts, ever excelled the gentle Josephine in the grace, the tact, the charm, which unites in the make-up of a fascinating society woman.

Add to this that she was sensual, elegantly voluptuous, finished in the subtle mysteries of coquetry, fully alive to the power which the physically tempting woman exerts over the passions of men, and it can be better understood how this languishing but artful widow of thirty-three intoxicated Napoleon Bonaparte, the raw provincial of twenty-seven.

That he was madly infatuated, there can be no doubt. He loved her, and he never wholly ceased to love her. Never before, never afterward, did he meet a woman who inspired him with a feeling at all like that he felt for her. If he did not know at that time what she had been, he knew after the marriage what she continued to be, and he made a desperate effort to break the spell. He could not completely do so. She might betray his confidence, laugh at his love-letters, neglect his appeals, squander his money, sell his secrets, tell him all sorts of falsehoods, underrate his value, misconceive his character, and befoul his honor with shameless sin; but against her repentance and her childlike prayers for pardon, the iron of his nature became as wax. Before those quivering lips, before those tear-filled eyes, before that tenderly sweet voice, all broken with grief, he could rarely stand. “I will divorce her!” he said fiercely to his brothers, when they put before him proofs of her guilt, after the Egyptian campaign. But through the locked door came the sobs of the stricken wife, came her plaintive pleadings. “Mon ami!” she called softly, called hour after hour, piteously knocking at the door. It was too much; the cold resolution melted; the soldier was once more the lover, and the door flew open. When the brothers came next day to talk further about the divorce, they found little Josephine, happy as a bird, sitting on Napoleon’s knee, and nestling in his arms.

“Listen, Bourrienne!” exclaimed Napoleon, joyously, on his return to Paris from Marengo, “listen to the shouts of the people! It is sweet to my ears, this praise of the French—as sweet as the voice of Josephine!”

Even when cold policy demanded the divorce, it was he who wept the most. “Josephine! my noble Josephine! The few moments of happiness I have ever enjoyed, I owe to you!”

And in the closing scene at St. Helena it was the same. The dying man thought no more of the Austrian woman. Even in his delirium, the wandering memory recalled and the fast freezing lips named “Josephine!”

* * * * *

Yet calculation played its part in Napoleon’s marriage, as it did in everything he undertook. He was made to believe that Josephine had fortune and high station in society. He weighed these advantages in considering the match. Both the fortune and the social position would be valuable to him. In fact, Josephine had no fortune, nor any standing in society. Men of high station were her visitors; their wives were not. All the evidence tends to show that Barras arranged the match between his two hangers-on, and that the appointment to the command of the Army of Italy became involved in the negotiation. Napoleon received this coveted commission March 7, 1796; two days later the marriage occurred.

On the register both Napoleon and Josephine misrepresented their ages. He had made himself one year older, and she three years younger, than the facts justified. There was a difference of six years between them, and Madame Letitia angrily predicted that they would have no children.

In forty-eight hours after the marriage, Napoleon set out for Italy. At Marseilles he stopped, spending a few days with his mother and sisters. On March 22, 1796, he was at Nice, the headquarters of the army with which he was to win immortality.

Almost at every pause in his journey Napoleon had dashed off hot love-letters to the languid Josephine whom he left at Paris. The bride, far from sharing the groom’s passion, did not even understand it—was slightly bored by it, in fact. Now that he had gone off to the wars, she relapsed into her favorite dissipations, she and her graceful daughter Hortense.

Madame Junot gives an account of a ball at the banker Thellusson’s, which not only illustrates the social status of Josephine, but also the mixed conditions which the Revolution had brought about in society.

Thellusson was a rich man, and not a nobleman; one of those unfortunate creatures who, in the eyes of lank-pursed aristocrats, have more money than respectability. In our day he would be called a plutocrat, and he would hire some bankrupt imbecile with a decayed title to marry his idiotic daughter. For Thellusson, just like a plutocrat with more money than respectability, craved what he did not have, and was giving entertainments to foist himself up the social height. Of course he crowded his sumptuous rooms with a miscellany of people, most of whom despised him, while they feasted with him. It was one of these entertainments, a ball, at which took place the incidents Madame Junot relates.

It seems that a captious, querulous, nose-in-the-air Grand Dame, Madame de D., had been decoyed to this Thellusson ball by the assurance of the Marquis de Hautefort that she would meet none but the best people—her friends of the Old Régime. Very anxious to see former glories return, and very eager to meet her friends of this bewitching Old Régime, Madame de D. not only came to the ball herself, but consented to bring her daughter, Ernestine. As all high-born people should, Madame de D. and her daughter Ernestine arrived late. The ballroom was brilliant, but crowded. The high-born late comers could find no seats, an annoyance which the Marquis de Hautefort, who was on the lookout for them, at once tried to remedy.

A sylph-like young lady, who had been divinely dancing, was being led to her place beside another beautifully dressed woman who seemed to be an elder sister. So charming was the look of these seeming sisters that even Madame de D. admired.

“Who are those persons?” she inquired of the Marquis, before the seats had been brought.

“What!” he exclaimed, “is it possible that you do not recognize Viscountess Beauharnais, now Madame Bonaparte, and her daughter Hortense? Come, let me seat you beside her; there is a vacant place by her, and you can renew your acquaintance.”

Madame de D. stiffened with indignation and made no reply. Taking the old Marquis by the arm, she led him to a side room and burst forth: “Are you mad? Seat me beside Madame Bonaparte! Ernestine would be obliged to make the acquaintance of her daughter. I will never connect myself with such persons—people who disgrace their misfortunes!”

Presently there entered the ballroom a woman, queen-like, lovely as a dream, dressed in a plain robe of Indian muslin, a gold belt about her waist, gold bracelets on her arms, and a red cashmere shawl draped gracefully about her shoulders.

“Eh! my God! who is that?” cried Madame de D.

“That is Madame Tallien,” quoth the Marquis.

The high-born relic of the Old Régime flamed with wrath, and was beginning a tirade against the Marquis for having dared to bring her to such a place, when the door flew open, and in burst a wave of perfume and—Madame Hamelin, the fastest woman of the fastest set in Paris. All the young men crowded around her.

“And now in heaven’s name, Marquis, who may that be?”

At the words demurely uttered, “It is Madame Hamelin,” the high-born Madame de D. unfurled the red banner of revolt. It was the one shock too much.

“Come, Ernestine! Put on your wrap! We must go, child. I can’t stand it any longer. To think that the Marquis assured me I should meet my former society here! And for the last hour I have been falling from the frying-pan into the fire! Come, Ernestine!”

And out they went.

CHAPTER XI

The year 1796 found the Republic in sorry plight. The treasury was empty, labor unemployed, business at a standstill. So much paper money, genuine and counterfeit, had been issued, that it almost took a cord of assignats to pay for a cord of wood. Landlords who had leased houses before the Revolution, and who had now to accept pay in paper, could hardly buy a pullet with a year’s rental of a house. There was famine, stagnation, maladministration. The hope of the Republic was its armies. Drawn from the bosom of the aroused people at the time when revolutionary ardor was at its height, the soldiers, after three years of service, were veterans who were still devoted to republican ideals. Great victories had given them confidence, and they only needed proper equipment and proper direction to accomplish still greater results. At the end of 1795, Moreau commanded the army of the Rhine, Jourdan that of the Sambre and Meuse, Hoche that of the West. Schérer commanded the Army of Italy, where, on November 24, 1795, he beat the Austrians and Sardinians in the battle of Loano. He did not follow up his victory, however, and the Directory complained of him. On his part he complained of the Directory. They sent him no money with which to pay his troops, no clothing for them, and only bread to feed them on. The commissary was corrupt; and the Directory, which was corrupt, winked at the robbery of the troops by thievish contractors. Schérer, discouraged, wished to resign. It was to this ill-fed, scantily clothed, unpaid, and discouraged army that Napoleon was sent; and it was this army which he thrilled with a trumpet-like proclamation.

“Soldiers! You are naked, badly fed. The government owes you much; it can give you nothing. Your endurance, and the courage you have shown, do you credit, but gain you no advantage, get you no glory. I will lead you into the most fertile plains in the world. Rich provinces, great cities, will be in your power; and there you will find honor, glory, and riches. Soldiers of Italy, can you be found wanting in courage?”

The army was electrified by this brief address, which touched masterfully the chords most likely to respond. Courage, pride, patriotism, and cupidity were all invoked and aroused. For the first time the soldiers of the Revolution were tempted with the promise of the loot of the vanquished. “Italy is the richest land in the world; let us go and despoil it.” Here, indeed, was the beginning of a new chapter in the history of republican France.

NAPOLEON

From a print in the collection of Mr. W. C. Crane. The original engraving by G. Fiesinger, after a miniature by Jean-Baptiste-Paulin Guérin. Deposited in the National Library, Paris, 1799.

Not without a purpose did Napoleon so word his proclamation. There had been an understanding between himself and the Directory that his army must be self-sustaining; he must forage on the enemy as did Wallenstein in the Thirty Years’ War. The government had exerted itself to the utmost for Napoleon, and had supplied him with a small sum of specie and good bills; but, this done, he understood that the Directors could do no more. As rapidly as possible he put his army in marching order, and then marched. From the defensive attitude in which Schérer had left it, he passed at once to the offensive. The plan of campaign which Napoleon, the year before, had drawn up for the revolutionary committee, and which, when forwarded to the army, Kellermann had pronounced “the dream of a madman,” was about to be inaugurated by the lunatic himself.

The generals of division in the Army of Italy were older men, older officers than Napoleon, and they resented his appointment. Masséna, Augereau, Sérurier, Laharpe, Kilmaine, Cervoni, but especially the two first, murmured discontentedly, calling Napoleon, “one of Barras’s favorites,” a “mere street general,” a “dreamer” who had “never been in action.”

Napoleon, aware of this feeling, adopted the wisest course. He drew around himself the line of ceremony, repelled with steady look all inclination toward familiarity, abruptly cut short those who ventured to give advice, adopted a stern, imperative, distant manner, took the earliest opportunity of showing his absolute self-confidence and his superiority, indulged in no levity or dissipation, and issued his orders in a tone so laconic and authoritative that, after his first formal interview with his division commanders at Albenga, his power over them was established. On leaving the tent of the new chief, Augereau remarked to Masséna, “That little —— of a general frightened me,” and Masséna confessed to the same experience.

The military plans of the Directory, emanating from such men as Carnot and Bonaparte, were bold and practical. Austria, which had invaded France from the Rhine, was to be held in check there by Moreau and Jourdan at the same time that she was assailed by way of Italy. The three armies of the republic, operating far apart, were to coöperate in general design, and were finally to converge upon Vienna. Incidentally to this plan of campaign, Genoa was to be brought to terms for violations of neutrality; the Pope was to be punished for his constant encouragement to La Vendée and the royalists generally; and also because he had screened the assassins of the French ambassador, Basseville. Sardinia (whose king was father-in-law to the Counts of Provence and Artois, afterward respectively Louis XVIII. and Charles X.) was to be humbled for its alliance with Austria against France.

The armies opposed to Napoleon were commanded by old men, excellent officers so long as war was conducted with a sword in one hand and a book of etiquette in the other. Opposed to a man like Napoleon, who set all rules at naught, and put into practice a new system, they were sadly outclassed and bewildered.

Napoleon intended to force his way into Italy at the point where the Alps and the Apennines join. From Savona on the Mediterranean to Cairo it is about nine miles by a road practicable for artillery. From Cairo carriage roads led into Italy. At no other point could the country be entered save by crossing lofty mountains. Therefore Napoleon’s plan was to turn the Alps instead of crossing them, and to enter Piedmont through the pass of Cadibona.

Putting his troops in motion, he threw forward toward Genoa a detachment under Laharpe. The Austrian commander, thinking that Bonaparte’s plan was to seize Genoa, divided his forces into three bodies,—the Sardinians on the right at Ceva, the centre under D’Argenteau marching toward Montenotte, and the right under Beaulieu himself moved from Novi upon Voltri, a town within ten miles of Genoa. Between these three divisions there was no connection; and, on account of the mountainous country, it was difficult for them to communicate with each other, or be concentrated.

On April 10, 1796, Beaulieu attacked Cervoni, leading the van of the French in their march toward Genoa, and drove him.

But D’Argenteau, who had advanced on Montenotte, was less fortunate. Colonel Rampon, who commanded twelve hundred Frenchmen at this point, realized the immense importance of checking the Austrian advance, to prevent it from falling upon the flank of Napoleon’s army as it moved along the Corniche road. Throwing himself into the redoubt of Montelegino, Rampon barred the way of the Austrians with heroic gallantry. Three times he threw back the assault of the entire Austrian-Sardinian division. During the combat he called upon his little band to swear that they would die in the redoubt rather than give it up, and the oath was taken with the greatest enthusiasm.

Had D’Argenteau continued his efforts, the oath-bound defenders would probably have been exterminated, but he did not persevere. He drew off his forces in the evening, to wait till next morning, and then renew the attack. Morning came, but so did Napoleon. D’Argenteau looked around him, and lo! he was a lost man. Three French divisions enveloped the one division of their foe, and to the discomfited Austrians was left the dismal alternative of surrender or a desperate fight against overwhelming odds. The battle was fought, and Napoleon won his first individual and undivided triumph, the victory of Montenotte. The enemy lost colors and cannon, a thousand slain, and two thousand prisoners.

Napoleon had kept the divisions of his army so skilfully placed that each could support the other, and all could concentrate. Thus he crushed the Austrian centre, which could get no support from its two wings, and with his small force triumphed over the larger armies opposed to him.

But in this his first campaign, Napoleon’s tactics presented that weak point which was in the end to be his ruin; he risked so much that one slip in his combination was too likely to bring about a Waterloo. Had Rampon been merely an average officer, or had D’Argenteau been a Rampon, or had the gallant twelve hundred been merely average soldiers, the road through the pass at Montenotte would have been cleared, the Austrians would have been on Napoleon’s flank, and only a miracle could have saved him from disaster. But Napoleon was young, and luck was with him: the time was far distant when he himself was to be angrily amazed at seeing Fortune mock his best combinations, and trivial accidents ruin his campaigns.

Swiftly following up his advantage, Napoleon pushed forward to Cairo, to wedge his army in between the separated wings of the enemy. At Dego, lower down the valley of the Bormida, in which the French were now operating, were the rallying Austrians, guarding the road from Acqui into Lombardy. To the left of the French were the Sardinians in the gorges of Millesimo, blocking the route from Ceva into Piedmont. It was necessary for Napoleon to strike the enemy at both points, drive them farther apart, so that he might combat each in detail.

On April 13 the French moved forward, Augereau to the attack of the Sardinians, Masséna and Laharpe against the Austrians. The Sardinians were strongly posted on high ground, but the onset of the French carried all before it. So impetuous had been the rush of Augereau, that one of the divisions of the enemy under General Provera was cut off. That brave soldier threw himself into the old castle of Cossario, and could not be dislodged. Napoleon in person came up and directed three separate assaults, which were heavily repulsed. Provera was then left in possession, the castle blockaded, and the strength of the French reserved for the remaining divisions of the Sardinian army. On the next day (April 14) General Colli, commander-in-chief of the Sardinian army, made every effort to relieve Provera, but was repulsed and driven back upon Ceva, farther than ever from the Austrians. Provera then surrendered.

While the battle raged at Millesimo, Laharpe had crossed the Bormida, his troops wading up to their waists, and attacked the Austrian flank and rear at Dego; at the same time Masséna struck the line of communication between the two armies on the heights of Biastro. Both attacks succeeded; and as Colli retreated on Turin, Beaulieu drew off toward Milan.

On the morning after these victories a fresh Austrian division, which had come from Voltri on the seacoast to join the main army, reached Dego, and drove out the few French they found there. The appearance of this force in his rear gave Napoleon a surprise, and a feeling of alarm ran through his army. He immediately marched upon the town, and gave battle. The French were twice beaten off. A third charge led by Lanusse, waving his hat on the point of his sword, carried all before it.

For his gallantry in this action, Lanusse was made brigadier general on the recommendation of Napoleon, under whose eyes the splendid charge had been made. Lieutenant Colonel Lannes distinguished himself greatly also, and Napoleon made him colonel on the field.

The result of these battles were nine thousand of the enemy taken prisoners, other thousands killed, besides thirty cannon taken, and a great quantity of baggage. Napoleon was now master of the valley of the Bormida, and of all the roads into Italy. It was his duty, for Carnot had so ordered, to leave the Sardinians and pursue the Austrians. He took just the opposite course. Turning to his left, he entered the gorges of Millesimo, and followed the road to Piedmont. Laharpe’s division was left to watch the Austrians. On April 28 the French were in full march upon Mondovi. When they reached the height of Mount Lemota, “the richest provinces in the world” lay beneath them, stretching from the foot of the height as far as eye could reach. The troops, so wonderfully led and so daringly fought, were in raptures with themselves and their chief.

As they looked down upon the lovely Italian plains, dotted with towns and silvered with rivers, they broke into enthusiastic cheers for the young Napoleon. For him and for them it was a proud moment. “Hannibal forced the Alps; we have turned them.”

Passing the Tanaro, the French entered the plains, and for the first time cavalry was in demand. On April 22 the Sardinians made a stubborn fight at Mondovi. They had repulsed Sérurier with heavy loss on the day before; but now Sérurier was joined by Masséna and the Sardinians routed. The Piedmontese cavalry, however, turned upon the French horse, which had pursued too far, and General Stengel, its commander, was killed. Murat, at the head of three regiments, dashed against the Sardinian cavalry with such reckless courage that they broke. The Sardinians, defeated at all points, lost three thousand, slain or prisoners, eight cannon, ten stand of colors. Colli requested an armistice which Napoleon refused to grant. The French continued their advance upon Turin. The king of Sardinia, Amadeus, wished to prolong the struggle; but his courtiers clamored for peace, and prevailed. Overtures were made, Napoleon gladly accepted. Such terror had Napoleon inspired by his rapid and brilliant victories that he practically dictated his own terms to the king. The “Keys of the Alps,” Coni and Tortona, besides Alessandria and other fortresses, were surrendered to him pending negotiations, and the immense magazines they contained were appropriated to the use of the French army. The Sardinian army was to be retired from the field, and the roads of Piedmont were to be opened to the French. The Austrian alliance should cease, and the royalist émigrés from France should be expelled. This armistice was signed April 29, 1796. As to a definitive peace, plenipotentiaries were to be sent at once to Paris to conclude it.

Napoleon had violated both the letter and the spirit of his instructions in virtually making peace with the king of Sardinia. The Directory, many republicans in France, and many in the army maintained that Amadeus, a kinsman of the Bourbons, should have been dethroned, and his country revolutionized. Augereau and others boldly declared their disapproval of Napoleon’s course. He himself was serenely certain that he had done the proper thing, and he gave himself no concern about the grumblers.

To Paris he sent his brilliant cavalry-officer, Murat, with twenty-one flags taken from the enemy. To his troops he issued a stirring address, recounting their great achievements, and inspiring them to still greater efforts.

With hands freed, Napoleon turned upon the Austrians. Deceiving them as to the point at which he would cross the Po, they prepared for him at one place while he dashed at another. While Beaulieu waited at Valenza, Napoleon was crossing at Placenza, May 7, 1796. On the next day an Austrian division arrived at Fombio, a league from Placenza. Napoleon attacked and routed it, taking two thousand prisoners and all their cannon. Beaulieu put his troops in motion, hoping to catch the French in the act of crossing the river.

As the Austrians, preceded by a regiment of cavalry, approached, they struck the advance posts of Laharpe. That general rode forward to reconnoitre, and, returning by a different road, was fired upon and killed by his own troops, in almost precisely the same manner as the great Confederate soldier, Stonewall Jackson, was slain at Chancellorsville.

The Austrians, realizing that they were too late, drew off toward Lodi. On May 10, Napoleon overtook them there. The town was on that side of the river Adda on which were the French, and Napoleon drove out the small detachment of Austrians which held it.

On the opposite side of the river Beaulieu had stationed twelve thousand infantry, two thousand horse, and twenty cannon to dispute the passage. A single wooden bridge, which the retreating Austrians had not had time to burn, spanned the river. In the face of an army sixteen thousand strong, and twenty pieces of artillery ready to rain a torrent of iron on the bridge, Napoleon determined to pass. Behind the walls of the town of Lodi the French army was sheltered. Napoleon, under fire, went out to the bank of the river to explore the ground and form his plan. Returning, he selected six thousand grenadiers, and to these he spoke brief words of praise and encouragement, holding them ready, screened behind the houses of the town, to dash for the bridge at the word. But he had also sent his cavalry up the stream to find a ford to cross, and to come upon the Austrian flank. Meanwhile his own artillery rained a hail of deadly missiles upon the Austrian position, making it impossible for them to approach the bridge. The anxious eyes of Napoleon at last saw that his cavalry had forded the river, and were turning the Austrians’ flank. Quick as a flash the word went to the waiting grenadiers, and with a shout of “Live the Republic,” they ran for the bridge. A terrific fire from the Austrian batteries played upon the advancing column, and the effect was so deadly that it hesitated, wavered, seemed about to break. The French generals sprang to the front,—Napoleon, Lannes, Masséna, Berthier, Cervoni,—rallied the column, and carried it over the bridge. Lannes was the first man across, Napoleon the second. The Austrian gunners were bayoneted before the infantry could come to their support. In a few minutes the Austrian army was routed.

The moral effect of this victory, “the terrible passage of the bridge of Lodi,” as Napoleon himself called it, was tremendous. Beaulieu afterward told Graham that had Napoleon pushed on, he might have taken Mantua without difficulty—no preparations for its defence having then been made. The Austrians lost heart, uncovered Milan in their retreat; and, five days after the battle, Napoleon entered the Lombard capital, under a triumphal arch and amid thousands of admiring Italians.

It was after this battle that some of the soldiers got together and gave Napoleon the name of the “Little Corporal,” an affectionate nickname which clung to him, in the army, throughout his career. His personal bravery at Lodi, and his readiness to share the danger, made a profound impression on his troops, and when he next appeared he was greeted with shouts of “Live the Little Corporal.”

Napoleon asked a Hungarian prisoner, an old officer, what he now thought of the war. The prisoner, not knowing that Napoleon himself was the questioner, replied: “There is no understanding it at all. You French have a young general who knows nothing about the rules of war. To-day he is in your front, to-morrow in the rear. Now he is on your left, and then on your right. One does not know where to place one’s self. Such violation of the rules is intolerable.”

Upon the victor himself Lodi made a lasting impression; it was the spark, as he said afterward, “which kindled a great ambition.” Already Napoleon had begun to levy contributions and to seize precious works of art. The Duke of Parma, pleading for peace and protection, had been required to pay $400,000, to furnish sixteen hundred horses and large quantities of provisions. His gallery was stripped of twenty of its best paintings, one of which was the “Jerome” of Correggio. The Duke offered $200,000 to redeem this painting, but Napoleon refused. The offence which this duke had committed was his adhesion to the coalition against France, and his contributing three thousand soldiers to aid in the glorious work of maintaining feudalism.

In France the effect of Napoleon’s victories upon the excitable, glory-loving people was prodigious. His name was on every tongue. Crowds gathered around the bulletins, and the streets rang with acclamations. Murat and Junot, bringing to Paris the captured colors, were given enthusiastic ovations by government and people. But the Directors began to be uneasy. They would have been more or less than human had they relished the autocratic manner in which Napoleon behaved. He had ignored their plans and their instructions. He had developed an imperiousness which brooked no control. His fame was dwarfing all others to an extent which gave rise to unpleasant forebodings. All things considered, the Directors thought it would be a good idea to divide the Italian command. To that effect they wrote Napoleon. In reply he offered to resign. A partner he would not have: he must be chief, or nothing. The Directors dared not make such an issue with him at a time when all France was in raptures over his triumphs; and they yielded.

CHAPTER XII

Throughout Italy the principles of the French Revolution had made considerable progress, and in every province there were intelligent men who welcomed the advent of Napoleon as the dawn of a new era. The young warrior was an astute politician, and he assumed the pose of liberator. With the same pen he wrote proclamations to Italy and letters to France: in the one he dwelt on the delights of liberty; in the other on the amount of the loot. And while apparently there was shameful inconsistency here, really there was much sincerity. He was in earnest when he spoke of tributes to be levied upon princes and municipalities; he was also in earnest when he spoke of planting in Italy the principles of the French Revolution. The extreme type of misgovernment which prevailed throughout the Italian peninsula shocked his reason, his sense of justice.

He despised the pampered nobles who could neither govern, fight, nor die like men. He loathed an idle, ignorant, ferocious priesthood which robbed the peasantry in the name of religion, and which compelled rich and poor to bow before such idols as the black doll of Loretto. Hence, while he compelled the defeated enemies of France, the ruling princes, to pay heavy sums by way of indemnity, he did, in fact, replace the old feudal institutions with new ones and better ones.

Napoleon has been heartily abused because he stripped the art galleries of Italy of their gems—statuary and paintings. French writers of the royalist school swell the cry and emphasize the guilt. Lanfrey, particularly, calls the world to witness the fact that he hangs his head in shame, so much is his conscience pricked by Napoleon’s seizure of pictures. How absurd is all this! If to the victor belong the spoils, where is the line to be drawn? If one may take the purse of the vanquished, his jewels, his house, his lands, why are his pictures sacred? If the civilized world insists upon maintaining the trained soldier, and continues to hunger after the alleged glories of wars of conquest, we must get accustomed to the results. Wars of conquest are waged for very practical purposes. We combat the enemy because he happens to be in possession of something which we want and which we mean to have. When we have taken the trouble to go up against this adversary, prepared to smite him hip and thigh, in robust, Old-Testament style, and have prevailed against him by the help of the Lord, shall we not Biblically despoil him of all such things as seem good in our own eyes? Are we to allow the vanquished heathen—heathen because vanquished—to choose for us those things which we shall take with us when we go back home? If mine enemy has a golden crown, or a golden throne, the appearance and the weight and the fineness of which please me exceedingly, shall I not take it? If I happen to be a king, shall I not include such trophies among my “crown jewels” in my strong “Tower of London”?

And if by chance there should be in the land of mine enemy, the land which the Lord has given me as the conquest of my sword, a diamond of surpassing size and purity,—a gem so rich and rare that the mouth of the whole world waters at the mere mention of Kohinoor—the heathen name thereof,—shall I not take this rare gem from among unappreciative heathen, and carry it to my own land, where people worship the only true and living God and cultivate ennobling fondness for the best diamonds? If I should chance to be king of my native land, shall I not gladden the heart of my queen by the gift of the marvellous gem, so that she may wear it upon her royal brow, and so outshine all royal ladies whomsoever?

Between such trophies as these and paintings, Napoleon could see no difference in principle. Numerous are the historians, tracking dutifully after other historians, who have been, these many years, heaping abuse upon Napoleon concerning those Italian paintings. It so happens that while the present chronicler has been engaged with this book, the world has witnessed quite a variety of warfare. There has been battle and conquest in China, South Africa, the Philippines; and the Christian soldiers of Europe and America have prevailed mightily against the heathen and the insurgent. There has been much victory and much loot; and with the record of what our Christian soldiers took in Africa, Asia, and the islands of the sea fresh in mind, it seems to me that we might all become silent about Napoleon’s Italian “works of art.”

* * * * *

Lombardy, in 1796, was a possession of the house of Austria, and was nominally ruled by the Archduke Ferdinand, who lived at Milan in magnificent state. The victorious approach of the French filled him and his court with terror, and he called on the Church for help. The priests aroused themselves, put forth the arm ecclesiastic, and endeavored to avert the storm by religious ceremonies. The bones of the saints were brought out, processions formed, and street parades held. Also there were chants, prayers, mystical invocations. Heaven was implored to interfere and save the city. Heaven, as usual, had no smiles for the weak; the angels, who save no doves from hawks, no shrieking virgin from the ravisher, concerned themselves not at all (so far as any one could see) with the terrors of the priests and the nobles of Milan. The Archduke with his Duchess, and the ever faithful few, deserted his beautiful capital; and Count Melzi went forth with a deputation to soften the wrath of the conqueror.

Napoleon’s terms were not hard. Money he needed to pay his troops, also provisions, clothing, munitions of war. These he must have, and these Milan could supply. About $4,000,000 was the sum demanded, but he allowed this to be reduced by payments in such things as the army needed. The conquered province was reorganized on a liberal basis, a national guard enrolled, new officials appointed, and a constitution framed for it—all this being provisional, of course.

The Duke of Modena sued for peace, and was made to pay $2,000,000, furnish provisions and horses, and to give up many precious works of art.

During the negotiations with Modena, Salicetti came into Napoleon’s room one day and said: “The brother of the Duke is here with four coffers of gold, 4,000,000 francs. He offers them to you in his brother’s name, and I advise you to accept them.”

“Thank you,” answered Napoleon, “I shall not for that sum place myself in the power of the Duke of Modena.”

Such rivulets of gold as Napoleon had set flowing into the army chest had far-reaching influence. First of all, the army itself was put into first-class condition. The troops were newly clothed, well fed, punctually paid. The pockets of the generals were filled with coin. The cavalry was splendidly mounted; the artillery brought to perfection. As a war machine, the Army of Italy was now one of the best the world ever saw. The Directors were not forgotten. Napoleon gladdened the souls of Barras and his colleagues with $1,000,000 in hard cash. Other millions followed the first, Napoleon doling out the sums judiciously, until his contributions exceeded $4,000,000.

To Moreau, sitting idly on the Rhine, purse empty and spirit low, Napoleon sent a million in French money. To Kellermann, commanding in Savoy, he sent 1,200,000 francs. It is hardly necessary to add that he kept the lion’s share of all his booty for his own army chest. Austria was rousing herself to renew the struggle, France could send him no supplies, and it would have been lunacy for him to have emptied his pockets at the opening of another campaign.

After a rest of a week in Milan, the French army was pushed forward toward Austria. Napoleon advanced his headquarters to Lodi on the 24th of May, 1796. Shortly after his arrival, he learned that a revolt had broken out behind him, that the French garrison at Pavia had surrendered, and that insurrection had spread to many towns of Lombardy, and that in Milan itself there was revolt.

He immediately turned back with a small force, reëntered Milan, fought the insurgents at Binasco, where Lannes took and burned the town, and then with fifteen hundred men stormed Pavia, defended by thirty thousand insurgents, forced his way in, and gave it over to pillage, butchery, and the flames. The French officer who had signed the order of capitulation was court-martialled and shot.

Why had the Italians risen against their liberator? There are those who say that his exactions in money, provisions, horses, paintings, and so forth caused it. This could hardly have been the sole cause, for Napoleon’s exactions did not directly reach the peasants. His heavy hand was felt by the rich men of the Church and the State; but upon the poor he laid no burden. A more reasonable explanation seems to be that the priests, encouraged by aristocrats, preached a crusade against the French marauders, who looted rich temples, and made spoil of things that were believed to be holy. Besides, these marauders were infidel French who had trampled upon the Church in France, confiscating the riches thereof, and ousting fat clericals from high, soft places. The Pope knew that his turn would come,—Basseville’s ghost not yet being laid,—and that he would have to suffer for all the cruel blows he had aimed at republican France. Therefore as Napoleon marched off to meet the Austrians, who were reported to be mustering in overwhelming numbers, it was thought to be a good time to kindle flames in his rear. Priests rushed frantically to and fro, the cross was lifted on high, church bells pealed from every steeple, and the ignorant peasants flew to arms to win a place in heaven by shedding the blood of heretics.

The insurrection stamped out, Napoleon proved what he thought of its origin. He demanded hostages, not from the peasants, but from the nobles. The hostages were given, and there was no further revolt.

The Austrian army, in its retreat from Lodi, had taken up the line of the Mincio, its left at Mantua and its right at Peschiera, a city belonging to Venice. This violation of neutral ground by Beaulieu gave Napoleon an excuse, and he seized upon the Venetian town of Brescia. He proclaimed his purpose to do nothing against Venice, to preserve strict discipline, and to pay for whatever he might take. Pursuing his march, he again deceived the aged Beaulieu as to the place where he meant to cross the river; and he was over the Mincio before the Austrians could mass sufficient troops to make any considerable resistance. On the other side of the river, Napoleon, in passing with a small escort from the division of Augereau to that of Masséna, narrowly missed falling into the hands of an Austrian corps which was hastening up the river to join Beaulieu. Napoleon, after having ridden some distance with Augereau, had returned to Valeggio, where he stopped to get a foot-bath to relieve a headache. At this moment the light cavalry of the enemy dashed into the village. There was barely time to sound the alarm, close the gates of the carriage-way, and to post the escort to defend the place. Napoleon ran out the back way with only one boot on, made his escape through the garden, jumped on his horse, and galloped as hard as he could to Masséna, whose troops, near by, were cooking their dinner. Masséna promptly aroused his men, rushed them against the enemy—and then it was the turn of the Austrians to run.

The danger which he had incurred caused Napoleon to form a personal guard for his own protection. Called by the modest name of Guides at first, the force swelled in numbers and importance until it became the immortal Imperial Guard. Its commander was Bessières, a young officer of humble birth, who had attracted Napoleon’s notice during the campaign by his coolness and courage. He became Marshal of France and Duke of Istria.

In the fighting which took place at Borghetta, the cavalry began to show its capacity for achieving brilliant results. It was young Murat, the innkeeper’s son, who inspired, led it, and impetuously fought it. A finer cavalier never sat a horse. A better leader of cavalry never headed a charge. It was a sight to see him,—brilliantly dressed, superbly mounted, on fire with the ardor of battle, leading his magnificent squadrons to the charge. Even Napoleon thrilled with unwonted admiration in looking upon Murat in battle. “Had I been at Waterloo,” said Murat, the outcast, in 1815, with a flash of his old pride, “the day had been ours.”

And the sad, lonely man of St. Helena assented:—

“It is probable. There were turning-points in that battle when such a diversion as Murat could have made might have been decisive.”

Beaulieu fell back to the Tyrol, and Napoleon occupied Peschiera. He was furiously angry with Venice because she had allowed Beaulieu to take possession of this town, which cost the lives of many Frenchmen before it was retaken. The Venetian Senate, bewildered and dismayed, sent envoys to propitiate the terrible young warrior. Napoleon assumed his haughtiest tone, and threatened vengeance.

Finally, when the Venetians had opened to him the gates of Verona, and had agreed to supply his army, he began to soften, and to talk to the envoys of a possible alliance between Venice and France.

On June 5, 1796, one of these envoys wrote of Napoleon, in a letter to Venice, “That man will some day have great influence over his country.”

The French were now masters of the line of the Adige, which Napoleon considered the strongest for the defence of Italy. This line was of vast importance to him, for he knew that Austria was recruiting her strength and preparing to retrieve her losses. He had won Italy; could he hold it? That was now the issue.

Before reënforcements from Austria could arrive, Napoleon calculated that he would have time to punish the Pope and to humble Naples. Leaving Mantua invested, and the line of the Adige well defended, he took one division and turned to the South. There were many reasons why he should do so. The Bourbons of Tuscany had welcomed the English to Leghorn, and in Naples preparations were being made to equip a large force to act against the French. Genoa was giving trouble, her nobles being very unfriendly to France. In Genoese territories troops of disbanded Piedmontese soldiers, escaped Austrian prisoners and deserters, infested the Apennine passes, stopped couriers, plundered convoys, and massacred French detachments.

Reaching Milan, Napoleon directed Augereau upon Bologna, and Vaubois on Modena. To the Senate of Genoa was sent a haughty letter demanding to know whether that state could put down the disorders of which the French complained. Murat, the bearer of the message, read it to the trembling Senate. It had the effect desired: Genoa promised, and did all that was asked.

Lannes, with twelve hundred men, sent to chastise the feudatory families of Austria and Naples, resident in Genoese territories, did the work with energy and success. Châteaux of conspiring nobles were burnt; and wherever any of the bands which had been molesting the French could be found, they were summarily shot down.

Naples was cowed before she had been struck, and she sent in her submission to the conqueror. He dealt with her leniently. She must abandon the coalition against France, open all her ports to the French, withdraw her ships from England, and deliver to Napoleon the twenty-four hundred cavalry which she had furnished to Austria. This armistice signed, he turned his attention and his troops in the direction of Rome. Bologna, a papal fief, was seized. Ferrara, another papal domain, threw off the papal yoke.

The Pope, smitten with fear, sent Azara, the ambassador of Spain, to negotiate terms; and again Napoleon was mild. He required that Ancona should receive a French garrison, that Bologna and Ferrara should remain independent, that an indemnity of 21,000,000 francs should be paid, that one hundred statues and paintings should be given up, besides grain and cattle for the army. The Pope consented. Here again Napoleon gave great offence to the Directory, and to many republicans in France, as well as in the army.

The Pope had been the centre of the hostility against the Revolution and its principles. He had actively coöperated with the enemies of France, had torn her with civil strife, had suffered her ambassador to be brutally murdered, and had given aid, comfort, blessings, and pontifical inspiration to her enemies wherever he could. The Directory wished that the papal power should be totally destroyed. Napoleon had no such intention. Catholicism was a fact, a power, and he proposed to deal with it accordingly. He accepted the money and the paintings and the marbles: Basseville’s ghost being left to lay itself as best it could. In delicate compliment to the Pope, the young conqueror did not enter Rome. In all his passings to and fro, this modern Cæsar, this restorer of the Empire of the West, never set his foot in the Sacred City.

On June 26, 1796, Napoleon crossed the Apennines into Tuscany. By forced marches, a division was thrown forward to Leghorn, where, it was hoped, the English ships would be taken. Warned in time, they had sailed away, but the French seized large quantities of English goods. Leaving a garrison at Leghorn, Napoleon proceeded to Florence, where the grand-duke fêted him royally. The grand-duchess did not appear at the banquet: she was “indisposed.” Italy having been pacified in this swift manner, Napoleon returned to his army headquarters near Mantua.

CHAPTER XIII

Even Austria could now see that Beaulieu was no match for Napoleon. In his place the Emperor sent the aged Wurmser, another officer excellent in the old leisurely cut-and-dried style of campaigning. If Napoleon would rest satisfied to wage war according to the rules laid down in the books, Wurmser would perhaps crush him, for to the 34,000 French there would be 53,000 Austrians in the field, not counting the 15,000 Austrians who were blockaded in Mantua by 8000 French.

Napoleon was at Milan when news came that Wurmser had issued from the mountain passes and was in full march to envelop the French below Lake Garda. Hastening back to the front, Napoleon established headquarters at Castel-Nuovo. Wurmser was confident; Napoleon anxious, watchful, and determined. The Austrians were divided into three columns,—one came down the western bank of Lake Garda, and the other two down the eastern shore. At first the Austrians drove the French at all points, and Napoleon’s line was broken, July 30, 1796. This brought on the crisis in which it is said that he lost his nerve, threw up the command, and was saved by doughty Augereau. The evidence upon which this alleged loss of nerve is based is of the frailest, and the undisputed record of the campaign discloses Napoleon’s plan, Napoleon’s orders, and Napoleon’s presence throughout. His only hope was to prevent the junction of the Austrian divisions. Could he hold two off while he concentrated on the third? Practically the same tactics which won at Montenotte prevailed again. While Wurmser was passing forward to Mantua by forced marches, Napoleon had already called in Sérurier; and when the Austrians arrived, expecting to capture the besiegers, no besiegers were there. They had spiked their siege guns, destroyed surplus ammunition, and gone to join the main army of Napoleon, and to aid in crushing one of Wurmser’s lieutenants while Wurmser was idling uselessly at Mantua. Almost identically the same thing had occurred at Montenotte, where Beaulieu had rushed upon Voltri to capture French who had been withdrawn, and who were destroying Colli at Montenotte while Beaulieu at Voltri talked idly with Lord Nelson of the English fleet, devising plans whereby Napoleon was to be annihilated. Napoleon struck the first blow at Quasdanovitch, who led the Austrian division which had come down the western side of the lake. At Lonato, July 31, 1796, the French beat the Austrians, driving them back, recovering the line of communication with Milan which had been cut. Then Napoleon hastened back to confront the Austrian centre. Twenty-five thousand Austrians, marching to join Quasdanovitch, reached Lonato. On August 3, Napoleon threw himself upon this force, and almost destroyed it. So demoralized were the Austrians that a force of four thousand surrendered to twelve hundred French.

LETTER TO JOSEPHINE.

Next day Wurmser came up offering battle. Stretching his line too far and leaving his centre weak, Napoleon struck him there, beat him with heavy loss, and sent him flying back toward the mountains. In these various operations, Austria had lost about forty thousand men; France about ten thousand. Mantua had been revictualled, and the French now invested it again. Their siege outfit having been destroyed, they could only rely upon a blockade to starve the enemy out.

Both armies were exhausted, and there followed a period of rest. Reënforcements were received by Wurmser, and by Napoleon also. The Austrians still outnumbered him, but Napoleon took the offensive. Wurmser had committed the familiar mistake of dividing his forces. Napoleon fell upon Davidovitch at Roveredo and routed him. Then turning upon Wurmser, who was advancing to the relief of Mantua, Napoleon captured at Primolano the Austrian advance guard. Next day, September 8, 1796, he defeated the main army at Bassano.

Wurmser was now in a desperate situation. Shut in by the French on one side and the river Adige on the other, his ruin seemed inevitable. By the mistake of a lieutenant colonel, Legnano had been left by the French without a garrison, and the bridge not destroyed. Here Wurmser crossed, and continued his retreat on Mantua. He gained some brilliant successes over French forces, which sought to cut him off, and he reached Mantua in such good spirits that he called out the garrison and fought the battle of St. George. Defeated in this, he withdrew into the town. He had lost about twenty-seven thousand men in the brief campaign.

At length the armies on the Rhine had got in motion. Moreau crossed that river at Kehl, defeated the Austrians, and entered Munich. Jourdan crossed at Dusseldorf, and won the battle of Alten Kirchen. Then the young Archduke Charles, learning a lesson from Napoleon, left a small force to hold Moreau in check, and massed his strength against Jourdan. The French were badly beaten, and both their armies fell back to the Rhine. The original plan of a junction of Jourdan, Moreau, and Bonaparte for an advance upon Vienna was, for the present, frustrated.

Encouraged by the success, Austria sent a new army of fifty-three thousand men, under Alvinczy, to recover the lost ground in Italy. Napoleon had about forty thousand troops, several thousand of whom were in hospitals, and once more his safety depended upon preventing the concentration of the enemy.

As in the former campaign, Austria won the first encounters. Vaubois was driven to Trent, and from Trent to Roveredo, and from thence to Rivoli. Masséna fell back, before superior numbers, from Bassano. Napoleon, with the division of Augereau, went to Masséna’s support. All day, November 6, 1796, Augereau fought at Bassano, and Masséna at Citadella. Alvinczy gave ground, but the French retreated, because of the defeat of Vaubois. It seemed now that the two Austrian divisions would unite, but they did not. At Rivoli a French division, eager to win back the respect of their chief, who had publicly reproved them and degraded their commander, held Davidovitch in check, and prevented his junction with Alvinczy. Fearful that Rivoli might be forced, and the Austrian divisions united, Napoleon again attacked Alvinczy. This time the French were repulsed with heavy loss, some three thousand men (November 13, 1796). Napoleon now had a fresh Austrian army on each flank, and Wurmser on his rear.

Should the three Austrian commanders coöperate, the French were lost. But Napoleon calculated upon there being no coöperation, and he was correct. Nevertheless, he almost desponded, and in the army there was discouragement.

As night closed round the dejected French, Napoleon ordered his troops to take up arms. Leaving a garrison to hold the town, he led his troops out of Verona, and crossed to the right side of the Adige. Apparently he was in retreat upon the Mincio. Down the Adige he marched as far as Ronco. There he recrossed the river on a bridge of boats which he had prepared. On this march the French had followed the bend which the river here makes to the Adriatic. Therefore he had reached the rear of the enemy simply by crossing the Adige and following its natural curve. Arrived at Ronco and crossing the river again, the troops saw at a glance the masterly move their chief had made; their gloom gave way to enthusiastic confidence.

It is a marshy country about Ronco, and the roadways are high dikes lifted above the swamp,—one of these raised roads leading to Verona in Alvinczy’s front, another leading from Ronco to Villanova in the Austrian rear. Early in the morning, November 15, 1796, Masséna advanced from Ronco on the first of these roads, and Augereau on the other. Masséna passed the swamp without opposition, but Augereau met an unforeseen and bloody resistance at the bridge of Arcole, a town between Ronco and Villanova, where the little river Alpon crosses the road on its way to the Adige. Two battalions of Croats with two pieces of artillery defended this bridge, and so bravely was their task done that Augereau’s column was thrown back in disorder. There was no better soldier in the army than he, and Augereau seized the standard himself, rallied his men, and led them to the bridge. Again the Croats drove them back with enfilading fire. The bridge must be taken; it was a matter of vital necessity, and Napoleon dashed forward to head the charge. Seizing the colors, he called upon the troops to follow, and with his own hands planted the flag on the bridge. But the fire of the enemy was too hot, their bayonets too determined: the Croats drove the French from the bridge, and in the confusion of the backward struggle, Napoleon got pushed off the dike into the swamp where he sank to his waist. “Forward! forward! To save our general!”

With this cry the French grenadiers rallied their broken line, made a desperate rush, drove back the Croats, and pulled Napoleon out of the mud.

It was in the charge led by Napoleon that Muiron, his aide, threw himself in front of his chief, as a shield, saved Napoleon’s life, and lost his own.

It was not till a French corps, which had crossed the Adige lower down at a ferry, came upon the Austrian flank, that the French were able to carry the bridge and take Arcole. By this time, owing to stubborn fight at the bridge, Alvinczy had had time to get out of the trap which Napoleon had planned. The Austrians took up a new position farther back, and were still superior in numbers and position to the French. If Davidovitch would only brush Vaubois out of his way and come upon Napoleon’s flank, and if Wurmser would only bestir himself against the weakened blockading force at Mantua and make trouble in Napoleon’s rear, it would be the French, not the Austrians, who would feel the inconvenience of the trap! But Davidovitch did nothing; Wurmser did nothing; and Alvinczy continued to make mistakes. For when Napoleon, after the first day’s fighting before Arcole, fell back to Ronco in fear that Davidovitch might come, Alvinczy took up the idea that the French were in full retreat, and he started in pursuit, using the raised roads for his march. On these dikes only the heads of columns could meet, the Austrian superiority in numbers was of no advantage, and Napoleon could not have been better served than by the offer of battle under such conditions. Again there was a day of fighting. Napoleon attempted to get to Alvinczy’s rear by crossing the Alpon, but failed. Night came, both armies drew off, and nothing decisive had been done.

Again Napoleon fell back to Ronco to be prepared for Davidovitch, and again the son of David was not at hand. Neither was Wurmser doing anything in the rear. In front, Alvinczy, stubbornly bent on staying just where Napoleon wanted him, came upon the narrow dikes again. Once more it was a battle between heads of columns, where the veteran French had the advantage of the recent recruits of Austria. For a moment the giving way of part of the bridge the French had made over the Adige threatened them with disaster. The Austrians came forward in force to cut off a demi-brigade left on their side of the broken bridge. But the bridge was repaired, French troops rushed over, and threw the Austrians back on the marsh. Napoleon laid an ambuscade in some willows bordering the Alpon, and when the enemy, in retreat, passed along the dike, the soldiers in the ambuscade poured a deadly fire on their flank, and then charged with the bayonet. Taken by surprise, assailed on front of flank, some three thousand Croats were thrown into the swamp, where most of them perished.

Calculating that in the battles of the last three days Alvinczy had lost so many men that his army did not now outnumber the French, Napoleon determined to leave the swamps, advance to the open, dry ground, and beat the Austrians in pitched battle. Crossing the Alpon by a bridge built during the night, the French fought a sternly contested field on the afternoon of the 17th of November, 1796, and finally won it. Napoleon had sent about twenty-five mounted guides with four trumpets to the swamp on which rested the Austrian left, and this trifling force breaking through the swamp, and making a tremendous noise with their trumpets, caused the Austrians to think that another ambuscade was being sprung. This fear, falling upon them at a time when they were almost overcome by the stress of actual battle, decided the day. Alvinczy retreated on Montebello, and the long struggle was ended. It is said that Napoleon, who had not taken off his clothes for a week, and who for nearly three days had not closed his eyes, threw himself upon his couch and slept for thirty-six hours.

At last Davidovitch roused himself, swept Vaubois out of his path, and came marching down to join Alvinczy. There was no Alvinczy to join; Davidovitch was some three or more days too late. And Wurmser down at Mantua made brilliant sally, to create apprehension in the rear. The old man was a week or so behind time. The grip of Napoleon still held; the line of the Adige was intact.

But while Napoleon had succeeded in holding his own, he had done so by such desperate straits and narrow margins, leaving the Austrian armies unbroken, that the Emperor decided on another great effort. Recruits and volunteers were enrolled to reënforce Alvinczy, and hurried forward, bearing a banner embroidered by the Empress. Once more the Austrians took the field with superior numbers; once more these forces were divided; once more Napoleon beat them in detail by skilful concentration.

General Provera was to lead a division to the relief of Mantua; Alvinczy was to overwhelm Napoleon. Provera was to follow the Brenta, pass the Adige low down, and march across to Mantua. Alvinczy was to move along the Adige from Trent, and fall upon the main French army, which it was hoped would have been drawn to the lower Adige by the demonstration of Provera.

The heights of Rivoli on Monte Baldo command the valley of the Adige; and no sooner had the preliminary movements of the enemy revealed their plan of campaign, than Napoleon sent orders to Joubert to seize and fortify the plateau of Rivoli, and to hold it at all hazards. This was on January 13, 1797. That night Napoleon himself marched to Rivoli with twenty thousand men, reaching the heights by a forced march at two in the morning.

Alvinczy felt so confident of enclosing and capturing the small force of Joubert that he had gone to sleep, ranging his army in a semicircle below to await the dawn, when Joubert was to be taken immediately after breakfast.

When Napoleon arrived, between midnight and day, he looked down from the heights, and there below, peacefully snoring and bathed in moonlight, were the confident Austrians—five divisions strong. Leaving them to slumber, he spent the balance of the wintry night getting ready for the battle that would come with the day. As morning broke, the Austrians attacked the French right at St. Mark, and the contest soon raged along the whole line as far as Caprino, where the French left was driven. Berthier and Masséna restored order, and repulsed every charge. Strongly posted on the heights, the French had all the advantage. Alvinczy found it impossible to use his cavalry or artillery with effect, and many of his troops could not be brought into action. In relative position, Napoleon held the place of Meade at Gettysburg, and Alvinczy that of Lee. Perhaps Napoleon was even better intrenched than Meade, and Alvinczy less able to bring his forces up the heights than Lee. The result was what it was almost bound to be—the Austrians were routed with terrible loss, and fled in disorder. So great was the panic that a young French officer, René, in command of fifty men at a village on Lake Garda, successfully “bluffed” and captured a retreating body of fifteen hundred Austrians. Joubert and Murat pursued vigorously, and in two days they took thirteen thousand prisoners. It was not till the battle of Rivoli had raged for three hours that Alvinczy realized that he was attempting the foolhardy feat of storming the main French army, posted by Napoleon himself, in almost impregnable positions.

Leaving Joubert and Murat to follow up the victory, Napoleon went at full speed to head off Provera. That gallant officer had fought his way against Augereau and Guieu, and had reached the suburb of St. George, before Mantua, with six thousand men. He had lost the remainder on the way—some twelve thousand. Throughout the day of January 15, 1797, he was held in check by Sérurier. Next morning the battle was renewed; but Napoleon had arrived. Provera attacked the French in front; Wurmser in the rear. Sérurier threw Wurmser back into Mantua; and Victor, who had come with Napoleon, vanquished Provera so completely that he laid down his arms. This action is known as that of La Favorita (the name of a country-seat of the Dukes of Mantua near by), and threw into the hands of the French six thousand prisoners, including the Vienna volunteers and many cannon. One of the trophies was the banner embroidered by the Empress of Austria.

A few days later Mantua capitulated, and the last stronghold of the Austrians in Italy was in the hands of the French.

Critics who understand all the mysteries of Napoleon’s character say that there was not a trace of chivalry or generosity in him. Yet at Mantua he, a young soldier, would not stay to gloat over the humiliation of the veteran Wurmser. He praised that old man by word and by letter, he granted him liberal terms, and he left the older Sérurier to receive Wurmser’s sword. Was not this delicate, even chivalrous to Wurmser? Was it not even more generous to Sérurier? Mr. Lanfrey hints “No”; but Wurmser thought “Yes,” for he warmly expressed his admiration for Napoleon; and out of gratitude warned him, while he was at Bologna, of a plot the papal party had made to poison him—a warning which probably saved his life.

The Pope, believing that Napoleon could not possibly escape final defeat at the hands of Austria, had broken their friendly compact. A crusade had been preached against the French, sacred processions paraded, and miracles worked. The bones of martyrs bled, images of the Virgin wept. Heaven was outspoken on the side of Rome beyond all doubt. Aroused by these means, the peasants flocked to the standard of the Pope; and an army, formidable in numbers, had been raised.

Leaving Sérurier to receive the capitulation of Mantua, Napoleon hastened to Bologna, and organized a force of French, Italians, and Poles to operate against the papal troops. Despatching the greater part of his little army to Ancona, he advanced with about three thousand men into the States of the Church. Cardinal Busca with an army of mercenaries, fanatical peasants, and miscellaneous Italian recruits was intrenched on the banks of the Senio to dispute its passage. The French came marching up in the afternoon of a pleasant spring day; and the Cardinal, with a solicitude which did honor to his conscience, sent a messenger, under flag of truce, to notify Napoleon that if he continued to advance, he would be fired upon. Greeting this as the joke of the campaign, the French became hilarious; but Napoleon gravely returned a polite answer to the Cardinal, informing him that as the French had been marching all day, were tired, and did not wish to be shot at, they would stop. Accordingly, camp was struck for the night. Before morning, Lannes had taken the cavalry, crossed the river above, and got in the Cardinal’s rear. Day broke, and there was some fighting. In a short while the Cardinal fled, and the greater part of his motley army were prisoners. Advancing on Faenza, which had closed its gates and manned its ramparts, the French battered their way in with cannon, and routed the defenders. Napoleon’s policy with the Pope was not that of the Directory; it was his own, and it was subtle and far-sighted. Prisoners were kindly treated and released. Cardinals and influential priests were caressed. Papal officers recently captured were visited, soothed by conciliatory speech, assured that the French were liberators and desired only the welfare of a regenerated Italy—redeemed from papal thraldom and rusty feudalism. For the first time modern Italians heard a great man outlining the future of a united Italy.

At Loretto were found the relics which made that place one of the holiest of shrines. The very house in which Mary, the mother of Jesus, had received the visit of Gabriel was at Loretto. Had you asked how came it there, the answer would have been that the angels carried it from Nazareth to Dalmatia to keep the Saracens from getting it. From Dalmatia the angels, for reasons equally good, had carried it to Loretto. Within this holy hut was a wooden image of Mary, old, blackened, crudely carved. The angels had carved it. In times of clerical distress this image of Mary was seen to shed tears. As there had been quite an access of clerical woe recently, in consequence of Napoleon’s brutal disregard of papal armies led by priests with crucifixes in their hands, the wooden Virgin had been weeping profusely.

Napoleon had doubtless familiarized himself with the methods by which pagan priests had kept up their stupendous impostures, and he had a curiosity to see the old wooden doll which was worshipped by latter-day pagans at Loretto. He found a string of glass beads so arranged that they fell, one after another, from the inside, athwart the Virgin’s eyes, and as she was kept at some distance from the devotees, and behind a glass case, the optical illusion was complete. Napoleon exposed the trick, and imprisoned the priests who had caused the recent tears to flow.

To add to the sanctity of the shrine at Loretto, there was a porringer which had belonged to the Holy Family, and a bed-quilt which had belonged to Mary, the mother of Jesus. Thousands of devout Catholics prostrated themselves every year before these relics, and countless were the rich offerings to the shrine.

Napoleon took from the church pretty much all the treasure which the priests had not carried off; and the wooden Madonna was sent to Paris. In 1802 he restored it to the Pope, and it was put back in its old place in the Virgin’s hut.

Many of the French priests who had refused the oath of allegiance to the new order of things in France had taken refuge in the papal States. The Directory wished Napoleon to drive these men out of Italy. He not only refused to do that, but he gave them the benefit of his protection. In a proclamation to his troops he directed that the unfortunate exiles should be kindly treated; and he compelled the Italian monasteries, which had indeed grown weary of these come-to-stay visitors, to receive them and supply all their wants.

The breadth and depth of Napoleon’s liberalism was also shown by the protection he gave to the Jews. These people had, at Ancona, been treated with mediæval barbarity. Napoleon relieved their disabilities, putting them upon an exact political equality with other citizens. In favor of certain Mohammedans, who resided there, he adopted the same course.

Capturing or dispersing the Pope’s troops as he went, and winning by his clemency the good-will of the people, Napoleon drew near Rome. The Vatican was in dismay, and the Pontiff listened to those who advised peace. The treaty of Tolentino was soon agreed upon, and the papal power once again escaped that complete destruction which the Directory wished. A mere push then, an additional day’s march, the capture of another priest-led mob, would have toppled the sovereignty which was at war with creed, sound policy, and common sense. It cost torrents of blood, later, to finish the work which Napoleon had almost completed then.

By the treaty of Tolentino, February 19, 1797, the Pope lost $3,000,000 more by way of indemnity; the legations of Bologna and Ferrara, together with the Romagna, were surrendered; papal claims on Avignon and the Venaisson were released, and the murder of Basseville was to be formally disavowed. To his credit be it said that Napoleon demanded the suppression of the Inquisition; to his discredit, that he allowed the priests to wheedle him into a waiver of the demand.

“The Inquisition was formerly a bad thing, no doubt, but it is harmless now—merely a mild police institution. Pray let it be.” Napoleon really was, or pretended to be, deceived by this assurance, and the Inquisition remained to purify faith with dungeon, living death in foul tombs, torture of mind and of body in Italy, in Spain, in South America, in the far Philippines.

“Most Holy Father,” wrote Bonaparte to the Pope; “My Dear Son,” wrote the Pope to Bonaparte; and so they closed that lesson.

Amid all the changes made and to be made in Italy there was one government Napoleon did not touch. This was the little republic of San Marino, perched upon the Apennines, where from its rain-drenched, wind-swept heights it had for a thousand years or more looked tranquilly down upon troubled Italy. Governed by a mixed council of nobles, burgesses, and farmers, it was satisfied with itself, and asked only to be let alone. Now and then a pope had shown a disposition to reach out and seize the little republic, but it had always managed to elude the fatherly clutch. Napoleon respected the rights of San Marino, and offered to increase its territory. San Marino declined; it had enough. More would bring trouble. Presenting it with four cannon as a token of his esteem, the great Napoleon got out of the sunshine of this Italian Diogenes, and left it in peace. In 1852 the Pope again hungered for San Marino; but Napoleon III. interfered, and the smallest and oldest republic in the world was left to its independence in its mountain home.

CHAPTER XIV

The hope of Austria was now the Archduke Charles, who had so brilliantly forced the two French armies on the Rhine to retreat. He was a young man, younger even than Napoleon, being but twenty-five years of age. The Aulic Council at Vienna decided to pit youth against youth, and the Archduke was ordered to take chief command in Italy. Aware of the fact that the Archduke was waiting for reënforcements from the army of the Rhine, Napoleon decided to take the initiative, and strike his enemy before the succors arrived.

Masséna was ordered up the Piave, to attack a separate division under Lusignan, while Napoleon moved against the Archduke on the Tagliamento. By forced marches, the French reached the river before they were expected (March 16, 1797). Making as if they meant to force a passage, they opened upon the Austrians, who awaited them upon the other side, and gave them a soldierly reception. Then, as if he had suddenly changed his mind and meant to bivouac there, Napoleon drew back his troops, and preparations for a meal were made. The Archduke, deceived by this, drew off also, and returned to his tent. Suddenly the French sprang to arms, and dashed for the fords. Bernadotte’s division led, and before the Austrians could get into line, the French were safely over, and prepared for action. The Austrians fought, and fought well; but they were outnumbered, as they had been outgeneralled, and they were beaten, losing prisoners and cannon. Masséna, equally successful, had defeated and captured Lusignan, and was nearing the Pass of Tarvis, which leads into Germany from the Italian side. The Archduke hurried to the defence of this vital point, gathering in all his forces as he went. Taking position in front of the pass, he awaited Masséna. By forced marches that intrepid soldier, “the pet child of victory,” came up, battle was joined, and desperately contested. Masséna won; and the road to Vienna was cleared. The Archduke fell back to Villachi; Masséna waited at Tarvis, hoping to capture an Austrian division which was advancing to the pass, pursued by General Guieu. Not till the Austrians reached Tarvis did they perceive that they were enclosed, front and rear. Demoralized, they surrendered after feeble resistance.

Bernadotte and Sérurier took Gradisca and its garrison, after the former had sacrificed several hundred men in reckless assault upon the ramparts.

On March 28, 1797, Napoleon, with the main body of his army, passed into Corinthia by the Col de Tarvis. Pressing on, he reached Klagenfurth, from which he wrote to the retreating Archduke a letter suggesting peace, March 31, 1797. In reply, the Austrian commander stated that he had no authority to treat. The French continued a vigorous advance, and near Newmarket the Archduke, having received four battalions of the long-expected reënforcements, stood and fought. He was beaten with a loss of three thousand men. He then asked for an armistice, which was refused. Napoleon would treat for peace, but a truce he would not grant. At Unzmark the Archduke was again worsted, and his retreat became almost a rout. On April 2, 1797, the advance guard of Napoleon was at Leoben, and the hills of Vienna were in sight from the outposts. Then came officers to ask a suspension of arms to treat for peace; and the preliminaries of Leoben, after some delays, were signed.

Many reasons have been suggested for Napoleon’s course in tendering peace when he was apparently carrying all before him. It is said that he became alarmed at non-coöperation of the armies of the Rhine; again, that he was discouraged by Joubert’s want of success in the Tyrol; again, that he feared insurrection in his rear. Whatever the motive, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that he made a huge mistake. The French on the Rhine had moved. Desaix was driving one Austrian army through the Black Forest; Hoche had beaten and was about to surround the other. Austria’s situation was desperate, and Vienna must have fallen. There are those who suggest that Napoleon hastened to suspend the war to deprive rival generals, Hoche especially, of a share in his glory. This is far-fetched, to say the least of it. Month after month he had done all in his power to get those rival generals to move. To the Directory he sent appeals, one after another, to order the Rhine armies to cross and coöperate. He even sent money from his own army chest; and for fear the funds might lodge somewhere in Paris, he sent them directly to the Rhine.

Bourrienne is not an authority friendly to Napoleon, and yet Bourrienne states that when Napoleon, after the truce, received the despatches announcing the progress of Desaix and Hoche, he was almost beside himself with chagrin. He even wanted to break the armistice, and his generals had to remonstrate. This testimony would seem to conclusively prove that Napoleon offered peace because he had lost hope in the coöperation which had been promised him, and which was necessary to his triumph. Singly he was not able to hold disaffected Italy down, guard a long line of communications, and overthrow the Austrian Empire. The preliminaries of Leoben and the treaty of Campo Formio will always be subject of debate. The part which Venice was made to play—that of victim to the perfidy of Napoleon and the greed of Austria—aroused pity and indignation then, and has not ceased to be a favorite pivot for Napoleonic denunciation. Austria was very anxious to hold Lombardy. Napoleon was determined to hold both Lombardy and Belgium. Venice was coldly thrown to Austria as compensation, because it was easier to seize upon decrepit Venetia than to meet another effort of the great Empire whose courage and resources seemed inexhaustible. Perhaps a clearer case of political hard-heartedness had not been seen since Russia, Prussia, and Austria cut up Poland and devoured it.

But after this has been said, let the other side of the picture be viewed. Venice had undertaken to maintain neutrality, and had not maintained it. She had allowed both belligerents to take her towns, use her fortresses, eat her supplies, and pocket her money. Trying to please both, she pleased neither; and they united to despoil her.

Again, there was the quarrel between the city of Venice and the Venetian territories on the mainland. Venice had its Golden Book in which were written the names of her nobles. Aristocrats on the mainland craved the writing of their names in this Golden Book, and were refused that bliss; hence heartburnings, which were referred to Napoleon. He advised the Venetian Senate to write the names in the book, and the Senate refused. Venice had long been governed by a few families, and these few had the customary obstinacy and prejudice of a caste. They treated Venetia simply as a fief—an estate belonging to the nobles.

Again, republican leaven had been at work throughout Venetia, and Napoleon had advised the Senate to remodel its mediæval institutions. Other states in Italy were yielding to the trend of the times, and Venice should do likewise. The Senate refused, until its consent came too late to avert its doom.

Again, Napoleon had warned Venice that she was too weak to maintain neutrality, and had advised her to make an alliance with France. She had refused.

Again, as Napoleon was about to set out to join his army for the invasion of Germany, he warned Venice to make no trouble in his rear. Things he might forgive were he in Italy, would be unpardonable if done while he was in Germany. Venetia could not, or would not, profit by this warning. While Napoleon was in Germany, tumults arose in the Venetian states, and the French in considerable numbers were massacred. At Verona the outbreak was particularly savage, three hundred of the French have been butchered, including the sick in the hospitals. To leave nothing undone which could be done to give Napoleon the excuses he wanted, a French vessel, which, chased by two Austrian cruisers, had taken refuge in the harbor at Venice, was ordered to leave (according to the law of the port), and when she refused, was fired upon. Her commander and others were killed, and some horrible details aggravated the offence.

Napoleon may have had his intentions from the first to sacrifice Venetia. He may have been insincere in offering the weak old oligarchy the protection of liberal institutions and a French alliance. Letters of his, inconsistent with each other, have been published. They prove his duplicity, his craft, his cunning, his callousness; but this was long after Venice had provoked him.

However cold-blooded Napoleon’s treatment of Venice may have been, the European conscience could not have been as much shocked as royalist writers pretend, for after Napoleon’s overthrow, Venice, which he had reformed and regenerated, was thrown back as a victim to Austria.

* * * * *

It was a brilliant gathering which surrounded Napoleon and Josephine in the summer of 1797. Diplomats, statesmen, adventurers, soldiers, men of science and literature, thronged Milan, and paid court at beautiful Montebello, the palatial country-seat where Napoleon had taken up his residence after the preliminaries of Leoben. Many subjects of importance needed his thought, his fertile resources, his ready hand. His republics needed guidance, the affairs of Genoa and Venice were unsettled, German princelets from along the Rhine had a natural curiosity to know just who they belonged to, and details of the coming treaty of Campo Formio needed to be worked out. It was a busy and a glorious season for Napoleon. He stood on the highest of pinnacles, his renown blazing to the uttermost parts of Europe; and to him was drawn the enthusiastic admiration which turns so warmly to heroes who are young. He had, as yet, made few enemies. All France was in raptures over him; even Austrians admired him. The aristocrats, lay and clerical, in Italy doubtless wished him dead; but the masses of the people looked up to him in wonder and esteem. Of Italian extraction, he spoke their language, knew their character, despised it, imperiously dominated it, and was therefore loved and obeyed.

Miot de Melito, an unfavorable witness, declares that Napoleon already harbored designs for his own sovereignty, and made no secret thereof. “Do you think I am doing all this for those rascally lawyers of the Directory?” He may possibly have said so, but it is not probable. A man like Napoleon, meditating the seizure of power and the overturn of government, does not, as a rule, talk it to the Miots de Melito. Had Napoleon had any such clearcut design as Miot records, he would not have allowed the wealth of Italy to roll through his army chest, while he himself was left poor. Like Cæsar, he would have returned laden with spoil, to be used in furthering his plans. Napoleon doubtless took something for Napoleon out of the millions which he handled, but the amount was so inconsiderable that he keenly felt the burden of debt which Josephine had made in furnishing his modest home in Paris. And when the time did come to overturn the “rascally lawyers,” he had to borrow the money he needed for that brief campaign. No; the simple truth is that Napoleon indulged no sordid appetites in his Italian campaign. He made less money out of it than any of his lieutenants, than any of the army contractors, than any of the lucky spoilsmen who followed in his wake. If he had harbored, the designs attributed to him by Miot, it was obviously a mistake for him to have declined the $800,000 in gold secretly offered him by the Duke of Modena. At St. Helena he uttered something which sounds like an admission that, in view of his subsequent necessities in Paris, he should have accepted the money. For wealth itself Napoleon had no longing—glory, power, fame, all these stood higher with him. The 7,000,000 francs Venice offered were as coolly refused as the smaller sum tendered by Modena, and the principality offered by the Emperor of Germany.

* * * * *

The elections of 1797 were not favorable to the Directory. Many royalists found seats in the Assembly, and the presiding officer of each legislative body was an opponent to the government. Two of the Directors, Carnot and Barthélemy, joined the opposition.

Openly and boldly, the malcontents, including royalists, constitutionals, and moderates, declared their purpose of upsetting the Directory. Barras, Rewbell, and Larévellière were united, and Barras still retained sufficient vigor to act promptly at a crisis. Seeing that bayonets were needed, he called on Hoche for aid. Hoche was willing enough, but he involved himself in a too hasty violation of law, and became useless. Then Barras turned to Napoleon, and Napoleon was ready. Angry with the legislative councils for having criticised his high-handed conduct in Italy, and feeling that for the present his own interest was linked with that of the Directory, he did not hesitate. He sent Augereau to take command of the government forces at Paris, and Augereau did his work with the directness of a bluff soldier. “I am come to kill the royalists,” he announced by way of public explanation of his presence in town. “What a swaggering brigand is this!” cried Rewbell when he looked up from the directorial chair at Augereau’s stalwart, martial figure. Augereau marched thousands of troops into Paris at night, seized all the approaches to the Tuileries where the councils sat, and to the guard of the councils he called out through the closed gates, “Are you republicans?” and the gates opened. Augereau broke in upon the conspirators, seized with his own hand the royalist commander of the legislative guard, tore the epaulettes from his shoulders, and threw them in his face. Roughly handled like common criminals, the conspirators were carted off to prison. Carnot fled; Barthélemy was arrested at the Luxembourg palace. With them fell Pichegru, the conqueror of Holland. While still in command of the republican army, he had entered into treasonable relations with the royalists, and had agreed to use his republican troops to bring about a restoration of the monarchy. This plot, this treason, had not been known when Pichegru, returned from the army, had been elected to one of the councils and made its president. Moreau had captured the correspondence from the Austrians, and had concealed the facts. After Pichegru’s arrest by Augereau, the secret of the captured despatches came to light. Moreau himself made the report, and the question which sprang to every lip was, Why did he not speak out before? This universal and most natural query became the first cloud upon the career of the illustrious Moreau. As Napoleon tersely put it, “By not speaking earlier, he betrayed his country; by speaking when he did, he struck a man who was already down.” After having saved the government, as Augereau fancied he alone had done, that magnificent soldier’s opinion of himself began to soar. Why should he not become a director, turn statesman, and help rule the republic? Very influential people, among them Napoleon and all the Directors, were able to give good reasons to the contrary, and Augereau was compelled to content himself with remaining a soldier. Although he bragged that he was a better man than Bonaparte, he yielded to the silent, invisible pressure of the little Corsican, and he went to take command of the unemployed army of the Rhine. In a few months the same fine, Italian hand transferred him to the command of the tenth division in Perpignan, where he gradually, if not gracefully, disappeared from the political horizon.

The negotiation for final peace between Austria and France continued to drag its slow length along. Diplomats on either side exhausted the skill of their trade, each trying to outwit the other. How many crooked things were done during those weary months, how many bribes were offered and taken, how many secrets were bought and sold, how much finesse was practised, how many lies were told, only a professional and experienced diplomatist would be competent to guess. Into all these wire-drawn subtleties of negotiation Napoleon threw a new element,—military abruptness, the gleam of the sword. Not that he lacked subtlety, for he was full of it. Not that he was unable to finesse, for he was an expert. Not that he scorned to lie, for he delighted in artistic deception. But on such points as these the veteran Cobentzel and the other old-time diplomats could meet him on something like an equality. To throw in a new element altogether, to hide his perfect skill as a machinator under the brusque manners of a rude soldier, was to take the professionals at a disadvantage. Just as the Hungarian veteran had complained that Napoleon would not fight according to rule, Cobentzel and his band were now embarrassed to find that he would not treat by established precedent. Wearied with delays, indignant that they should threaten him with a renewal of the war, and determined to startle the antiquated Austrian envoys into a decision, Napoleon is said to have sprung up from his seat, apparently in furious wrath, exclaiming, “Very well, then! Let the war begin again, but remember! I will shatter your monarchy in three months, as I now shatter this vase,” dashing to the floor a precious vase which Catherine II. of Russia had given Cobentzel.

This story, told by so many, is denied by about an equal number. Cobentzel himself contradicted it, but he makes an admission which almost amounts to the same thing. He says that Napoleon became irritated by the delays, worked himself into a passion, tossed off glass after glass of punch, became rude to the negotiators, flung out of the room, and required a good deal of pacification at the hands of his aides. Says Cobentzel: “He started up in a rage, poured out a flood of abuse, put on his hat in the conference room itself” (an awful thing to do!), “and left us. He behaved as if he had just escaped from a lunatic asylum.”

Between this Austrian admission and the Austrian denial the substantial difference is not great. Reading between Cobentzel’s lines, one sees that the brutal young soldier ran over Austria’s delicate old diplomat just as he had been running over a lot of Austria’s delicate old generals.

The next day after this violent scene, the treaty of Campo Formio was signed. By its terms Austria ceded Lombardy, Belgium, and the German principalities on the Rhine. It recognized the Italian republic; the Cisalpine, composed of Lombardy, Modena, Ferrara; the Romagna, Mantua, Massa-e-Carrara; the Venetian territory, west of the Adige and the Valtelline. It also recognized the Ligurian republic, recently formed by Napoleon out of Genoa and its states. France kept the Ionian Isles, and the Venetian factories opposite on the mainland. To Austria was given the Italian lands eastward from the Adige. Within this concession was embraced the venerable city of Venice.

In the treaty of Campo Formio, Napoleon insisted that Austria should liberate the prisoner of Olmutz, Lafayette, who had been lying in a dungeon since 1793.

To regulate the redistribution of German territory, made necessary by the treaty, a congress was to be convened at Rastadt. It may as well be stated in this place that the congress met, remained in session a long while, and could not reach an agreement. Napoleon having gone to Egypt, Austria renewed the war, broke up the congress, and murdered the French envoys.

The Directors were strongly opposed to the terms of the Campo Formio treaty, but they were powerless. Napoleon disregarded their positive instructions, relying for his support upon the enthusiasm with which the French would hail peace. His calculations proved correct. The nation at large welcomed the treaty as gladly as they had done his victories. It seemed the final triumph and permanent establishment of the new order. Against so strong a current in Bonaparte’s favor, the Directory did not venture to steer.

Setting out for Paris, November 17, 1797, Napoleon passed through a portion of Switzerland, where he was encouraging the democratic movement which led to the formation of the Helvetian republic. At Geneva and Lausanne he was given popular and most hearty ovations. He put in appearance at Rastadt, where the congress was in session, and remained just long enough to exchange ratifications of the Campo Formio treaty with Cobentzel; and to hector, insult, and drive away Count Fersen, the old friend of Marie Antoinette. Count Fersen had come as Swedish envoy; and to Napoleon his presence seemed improper, as perhaps it was.

CHAPTER XV

Military critics agree that the Italian campaign was a masterpiece; and many say that Napoleon himself never surpassed it. At no other time was he perhaps quite the man he was at that early period. He had his spurs to win, his fame to establish. Ambition, the thirst for glory, his youth, his intense activity of mind and body, the stimulus of deadly peril, formed a combination which did not quite exist again. To the last a tremendous worker, he probably never was on the rack quite as he was in this campaign. In Italy he did all the planning, and saw to all the execution. He marched with his troops night and day, fair weather and foul. He shared the dangers like a common soldier, pointing cannon, leading charges, checking retreat, taking great risks in reconnoitring. He went without food, sleep, or shelter for days at a time. Horses dropped under him, some from wounds, some from fatigue. He marched all night before the battle of Rivoli, directed his forces during the battle, galloped himself to bring up support at critical points; and then, at two or three in the afternoon, when Alvinczy was beaten, he set out to the relief of Sérurier, marched again all night, and again directed a battle—that of La Favorita. This was but one instance; there were dozens of others, some even more remarkable. For Napoleon never seemed to tire: mind and body were like a machine. He was thin, looked sickly, and indeed suffered from the skin disease caught from the dead cannoneer at Toulon; but his muscles were of steel, his endurance phenomenal, his vitality inexhaustible. The impression he made upon one close observer at this period was condensed in the words, “the little tiger.”

JOSEPHINE IN 1800

From a pastel by P. P. Prud’hon

Inexorably as he marched and fought his men, he as carefully looked after their proper treatment. He was tireless in his efforts to have them shod, clothed, fed as they should be; when sick or wounded, he redoubled his attention. Oppressed as he was by work and responsibility, he found time to write letters of condolence to the bereaved, those who had lost husbands, sons, or nephews in his service. Quick to condemn and punish negligence, stupidity, or cowardice, he was as ready to recognize and reward vigilance, intelligence, and courage. He cashiered General Vallette in the field, but Rampon, Murat, Junot, Marmont, Bessières, Lannes, and hundreds of others he picked out of the ranks and put in the lead. “I am ashamed of you. You no longer deserve to belong to the army. Let it be written on your colors, ‘They no longer belong to the army of Italy.’” Thus in stern tones he spoke to Vallette’s troops, who had done too much running as compared to their fighting. The soldiers were in despair. Some groaned; some wept; all were ashamed. “Try us again, General. We have been misrepresented. Give us another chance, General!” Napoleon softened, spoke as his matchless tact suggested, and in the battles that followed no troops fought better than these.

Complete genius for war Napoleon displayed in the campaign: masterly plans, perfection of detail, penetration of the enemy’s plan, concealment of his own, swift marching, cautious manœuvring, intrepidity in fighting, absolute self-possession, sound judgment, inflexible will power, capacity to inspire his own army with confidence and the enemy with almost superstitious terror.[3] An incident occurred after the battle of Lonato, attested by Marmont and Joubert, which reads like fiction. Napoleon with twelve hundred men was at Lonato making arrangements for another battle. An Austrian column of four thousand, bewildered in the general confusion, strayed into the neighborhood, and were told by some peasants that only twelve hundred French were in the place. The Austrians advanced to capture this band and sent a summons. Napoleon ordered that the herald should be brought in blindfolded. When the bandage was removed, the herald found himself in the presence of Napoleon, around whom stood his brilliant staff. “What means this insolence? Demand my surrender in the midst of my army? Go tell your commander that I give him eight minutes to lay down his arms.” And the Austrian commander had time to his credit when his surrender of his four thousand had been made.

[3] It was a curious remark Napoleon made at St. Helena, that his whole military career had taught him nothing about a battle which he did not know at the time he fought his first; subsequent campaigns taught him no more than the first.

It was at this period that Napoleon developed his wonderful fascination of manner. As he could intimidate by frowns, harsh tones, fierce looks, and cutting words, he could charm with the sweetest of smiles, the kindest of glances, the most caressing words. If he wished to please, he could, as a rule, do so; if he wished to terrify, it was rarely he failed. Already there were hundreds of young officers who swore by him, lived for his praise, and were ready to die for him. Muiron had done so; Lannes, Junot, Marmont, Bessières, Berthier, Murat, were as ready. As to the army itself, Cæsar had never more completely the heart of the Tenth Legion than the young Napoleon that of the army of Italy. No higher reward did his soldiers crave than his words of praise. His proclamations intoxicated them like strong wine. They were ready to dare all, endure all, to please him, win his smile, wear his splendid tribute. “I was at ease; the Thirty-second was there;” and the delighted regiment embroidered the words on its flag. “The terrible Fifty-seventh” were proud to see on their banner that battle name given them by their “Little Corporal”; just as, at Toulon, he had kept the most exposed of the batteries filled with men by posting the words, “The Battery of those who are not afraid.”

Planning, executing, marching, fighting, organizing new states, Napoleon was still the ardent lover. Josephine he never neglected. Courier sped after courier, bearing short, hasty, passionate love-letters to Josephine. He was in all the stress and storm, often cold, drenched by wintry rains, pierced by wintry winds, hungry, overwhelmed with work and care, yet not a day did he forget his bride. She was lapped in luxury at Paris,—warmth, light, pleasure, joyous ease, and companionship about her; and she laughed at the love-letters, thinking them wild, crude, extravagant. “Bonaparte is so queer!”

In June, 1796, Napoleon was made to believe that Josephine was in a fair way to become a mother. His raptures knew no bounds. The letter which he then wrote her is certainly the most ardently tender, furiously affectionate scrawl ever penned. It drives in upon the impartial reader the conviction that this strange man possessed the uxorious and paternal spirit in its most heroic form; and that had he been fitly mated, his developing character would have reached a perfect harmony and equilibrium. It was in him to have found exquisite enjoyment in home-life; it was in him to have bent caressingly over wife and child, to have found at the fireside repose and happiness. As it was, his marriage was one source of his ruin. In Josephine he found no loyalty, no sympathy of the higher sort, and she bore him no children. She froze his hot affection with that shallow amiability which smiled on him as it smiled on all the others. She outraged his best feelings by her infidelities. She destroyed his enthusiasm, his hopes, his ideal of pure and lofty womanhood. He waited on her too long for children. His character, undeveloped on that side, hardened into imperial lines, until he himself was the slave of political necessities. The second marriage, and the son he idolized, came too late.

Napoleon, the lover-husband, who had quitted his bride in forty-eight hours after the marriage, repeatedly implored her to join him at headquarters. Josephine had no inclination to obey: Paris was too delightful. Upon various excuses she delayed, and it was not till July, 1796, that she reached Italy.

Arrived in Milan, she was rapturously welcomed by Napoleon, and found herself treated by the Italians almost as a queen. She was lodged in a palace, surrounded with luxury, and flattered by the attentions of thronging courtiers. She moved from place to place as the months passed on, shared some of the dangers of the campaign, and by her grace, amiability, and tact made many a conquest useful to her many-sided lord. One conquest she made for herself, and not for her lord. A certain officer named Hypolite Charles, attached to Leclerc’s staff, was young, handsome, gallant,—such a contrast to the wan, wasted, ungainly, skin-diseased Napoleon! Josephine looked upon Charles and found him pleasing. The husband, engrossed by war and business, was often absent. Charles was not engrossed with war, was present, and was not a Joseph. Here was youth, inclination, opportunity—and the old result. Scandal ensued, Napoleon’s sisters made shrill outcry, the husband heard the story, and Charles joined the absent. It was thought for a while that Napoleon would have him shot, but apparently there was some invincible reason to the contrary. He went to Paris and obtained a good position—rumor said by the influence of Josephine.

If Napoleon was imperious at school, a tyrant in his childhood, self-willed and indomitable when out of employment and threatened with starvation, how were the Directors to curb him now? Just as natural as it seemed to be for him to command when among soldiers, it was for him to treat king, duke, and pope as equals, lay down the law of national relations, and create new governments in Italy. He assumed the power as a matter of course, and his assumption of authority was nowhere questioned. “Bless me! I was made that way,” exclaimed Napoleon. “It is natural for me to command.”

The Directors would gladly have dismissed him, for they doubted, disliked, and feared him; but they dared not face him and France on such an issue. He rode rough-shod over their policies and their instructions, and they could do nothing. They had thought of sending Kellermann, had actually appointed him to share the command; Napoleon flatly said the command could not be shared, and Kellermann had to go elsewhere.

They sent General Clarke as agent to manage negotiations, treaties, and to supervise matters generally. Napoleon said to Clarke, “If you have come here to obey me, well and good; but if you think to hamper me, the sooner you pack up and leave, the better.” Clarke found himself completely set aside and reduced to nothing. The Directory itself, overawed by Napoleon’s tone, wrote Clarke, in effect, that he must not oppose the imperious commander-in-chief.

There were official commissioners in the field, Salicetti and others. How powerful and dreaded these commissioners had formerly been! Had not Napoleon courted them and their wives with all the haughty cajolery of a proud nature which stoops to conquer? Now he would stoop no more; he had conquered. Salicetti and company did the stooping; and when, at length, their doings displeased the conqueror of Italy, he ordered them off.

The Milanese, historic Lombardy, was the first province which he fashioned into a republic. Here he met Count Melzi, almost the only man Italy could boast. Working with Melzi and others, the Transpadane republic was established—the child of Napoleon’s brain and energy.

Afterward as liberalism spread, and the papal yoke was thrown off, Bologna, Reggio, Ferrara, clamored for republican institutions. The dream of Italian unity began to be a reality.

Modena caught the infection; its miserly duke had already run away, carrying his treasure. He had failed to pay 500,000 francs of his fine; and, seizing upon this pretext, Napoleon granted the petitions of the people, grouped Modena with the papal legations, and gave organization under a liberal constitution to the Cispadane republic. At a later day the two republics were united into one, and became the Cisalpine.

In the wake of the victorious army skulked the hungry civilian, the adventurer seeking gain, the vultures grouping to the carcass. It was feast-day for the contractor, the speculator, the swindler, the robber, the thief. It threw Napoleon into rage to see himself surrounded by a horde of imitators, puny plunderers doing on a small scale, without risking battle, what he did in grand style, after a fair fight. Soldiers who brought scandal on the army by too notorious pillage he could shoot, and did shoot; he resented the limitations of power which kept the civilian buccaneers from being shot.

An indirect result of Napoleon’s victories in Italy was the loss of Corsica to England. The rule of Britannia had not pleased the Corsicans, nor been of any special benefit to England. Toward the close of 1796 the islanders revolted, and the English withdrew. Corsica became again a province of France.

CHAPTER XVI

On December 5, 1797, Napoleon returned to Paris. With studious eye for effect, he adopted that line of conduct most calculated, as he thought, to preserve his reputation and to inflame public curiosity. He was determined not to stale his presence. Making no display, and avoiding commonplace demonstrations, he doffed his uniform, put on the sober dress of a member of the Institute, to which he was elected in place of Carnot, screened himself within the privacy of his home, and cultivated the society of scholars, authors, scientists, and non-combatants generally. When he went out, it was as a private citizen, his two-horse carriage unattended by aides or escort. He demurely attended the meetings of the Institute, and on public occasions was to be found in his place, in his class, among the savants, just as though he had set his mind now on literary matters and was going to write a book. His brother Joseph gave it out that Napoleon’s ambition was to settle down and be quiet, to enjoy literature, friends, and, possibly, the luxuries of the office of Justice of the Peace. It must have been a queer sight to have seen the little Corsican dress-parading as a guileless man of letters; it is very doubtful whether many were deceived by his exaggerated modesty. Those who were in place and power, the men whom he would have to combat and overcome, were not for a moment duped. They suspected, dreaded, and watched him. Prepare for him they could not, for they had not the means. He had said nothing and done nothing which they had not indorsed; with hearts full of repugnance, with faces more or less wry, they had sanctioned even when their instructions had been disobeyed. They could not seize him by brute force, or put him out of the way. They were too weak; he too strong. He was the idol of soldiers and civilians alike; the Directors were not the idols of anybody. They could not even have him poisoned, or stabbed, for he was on his guard against that very thing. Soon after his return to Paris he had received warning of a plot to poison him; he had caused the bearer of the note to be accompanied by a magistrate to the house of the woman who had furnished the information, and she was found lying dead on the floor, her throat cut and her body mutilated. The would-be murderers had, doubtless, discovered her betrayal of them, and had in this manner taken vengeance and assured their own safety. After such an occurrence, Napoleon was not the man to be caught napping; and it was noticed that at the official banquets to which he was invited he either ate nothing, or slightly lunched on wine and bread brought by one of his aides.

The Directory gave him, in due time, a grand public reception at the Luxembourg, which was attended by immense numbers, and which was as imposing as the pomp of ceremony and the genuine enthusiasm of the people could make it. But the part played by the Directory and Talleyrand was theatrically overdone, and gave a tone of bombast and insincerity to the whole.

What now must Napoleon do? There was peace on the Continent; he was too young for a place in the Directory, and if he remained in Paris too long, France would forget him. This was the reasoning of Napoleon, the most impatient of men. Evidently the reasoning was unsound; it was dictated only by his feverish, constitutional need of action. There was no danger of his sinking out of notice or importance in France. There was the danger of his being identified with a party, but even this peril has been exaggerated. Astute and coldly calculating as he was, the party he would have chosen, had he seen fit to choose one at all, would probably have been the strongest, and political success comes to that in the long run.

He had been too impatient in Corsica in his earlier struggles; he had there alienated the wise and lovable Paoli, who wanted to be his friend, but could not sympathize with his too violent, too selfishly ambitious character. He had been too impatient to get on in France, and had been perilously near losing his head as a terrorist in the fall of Robespierre. Too anxious for social recognition and independent military command, he had fallen into the snares of Barras and the shady adventuress of whom the libertine Director was tired, and had rushed into a marriage which proved fatal to him as a man and a monarch. The same feverish haste was again upon him, and was to continue to be upon him all the days of his life, until his final premature rush from Elba was to lead him, through the bloody portals of Waterloo, to his prison on the bleak rock of St. Helena.

How could a few months of quiet in Paris have tarnished his fame? Had he not seen the heart of liberalism throughout all Europe warm to Paoli,—the time having come,—although the patriot exile had been sitting quietly at English firesides for twenty-one years?

Who in France was likely to outstrip Napoleon in one year, two years, ten years? Hoche was dead, Moreau in disgrace, Jourdan under the cloud of defeat, Augereau on the shelf, Carnot an exile, Pichegru banished. In the Directory there was not a man who could give him the slightest concern.

But to Napoleon it seemed absolutely necessary that he must be actively engaged—publicly, and as master. He could not get the law changed so that he could become a director; he could not quite risk an attack in the Directory. That pear was not yet ripe. He had wished to be sent to Rastadt to straighten matters there, but the Directory chose another man. Napoleon, resenting the slight, threatened, once too often, to resign. A Director (some say Rewbell, others Larévellière) handed him a pen, with the challenge, “Write it, General!” Moulins interposed, and Napoleon beat a retreat, checkmated for the time.

Apparently, as a last resort, the expedition to Egypt was planned, both Napoleon and the Directory cordially agreeing upon one thing—that it was best for him to leave France for a while.

The attack on Egypt suggested itself naturally enough as a flank movement against England. The idea did not originate with Napoleon; it was familiar to the foreign policy of France, and had been urged upon the Bourbon kings repeatedly. With his partiality for the East, whose vague, mysterious grandeurs and infinite possibilities never ceased to fascinate him, the oft-rejected plan became to Napoleon a welcome diversion. Veiling his design under the pretence of a direct attack upon England, he bent all his energies to the preparations for the invasion of Egypt. Nominally belonging to Turkey, the ancient ally of France, Egypt was in fact ruled by the Mamelukes, a military caste which had, in course of time, evolved from the personal body-guard of Saladin. The reign of the Mamelukes was harsh and despotic; they paid little respect to religion, and none to law; and Napoleon thought that by telling the Sultan he would overthrow the Mamelukes in the Sultan’s interest, while he assured the subject Egyptians that he came to liberate them from Mameluke tyranny, he would deceive both Sultan and Egyptians. As it happened, he deceived neither.

It was a part of the scheme agreed on by Napoleon and the Directors that Talleyrand should go to Constantinople and gain over the Sultan to neutrality, if to nothing more favorable. With this understanding, Napoleon gathered up the best generals, the best troops, the best vessels, swept the magazines, cleaned out the directorial treasury, and even borrowed from the Institute its best savants, and weighed anchor at Toulon, May 18, 1798, for Alexandria. The wily Talleyrand did not go to Turkey, had apparently never intended to go, and that part of the plan failed from the beginning. English diplomats took possession of the Sultanic mind; and what they saw, the heir of the Prophet saw. To save herself from a movement which threatened her in the East, Great Britain warmed to the infidel, forgot crusading vows and traditions, guided infidel counsels, supplied infidel needs, and aimed infidel guns. So that from the day he set sail, Napoleon had against him all the resources of England, all the power of Ottoman arms, all the strength of Mameluke resistance, all the discouragement of native Egyptian hostility.

NAPOLEON

From the painting by Paul Delaroche entitled “General Buonaparte crossing the Alps”

To reach Egypt at all it was necessary that he should run the extreme risk of encountering the British fleet. By the victory England had won over the Spanish allies of France off Cape St. Vincent (February, 1797), and over the Dutch at Camperdown (October, 1797), France was left without naval support. In a sea-fight between herself and England, all the advantage would have been with her foe. Conscious of this, Nelson did his utmost to come upon Napoleon during his voyage, and the two fleets passed each other once in the night; but Napoleon’s rare luck favored him, and Nelson missed his prey.

The capture of Malta was a part of Napoleon’s plan. This island fortress belonged to the Knights of St. John, a belated remnant of the ancient orders of chivalry, created for the purpose of retrieving Palestine from the infidel. These soldiers of the Cross had fallen upon evil days and ways; their armor very rusty indeed, their banners covered with dust, their spurs very, very cold. In a world which had seen a new dispensation come, the knights were dismally, somewhat ludicrously, out of place. Asked, What are you doing here? What do you intend to do? What is your excuse for not being dead? the knights would have been stricken dumb. No intelligible reply was possible. Camped there upon a place of strength and beauty, a fortress girdled by the Mediterranean, they were, in theory, Christendom’s outpost against the infidel. Christendom, in theory, was yet intent upon raising up champions who would tread in the steps of Godfrey, of Tancred, of Richard Cœur de Lion. In theory, Christendom was never going to rest till the tomb of Jesus had been redeemed, till the shadow of Mahomet should be lifted from the Holy Land. And so it happened that the knights had stopped at Malta, long ages ago, resting upon their arms, until such time as Christendom should rouse itself and send reënforcement. The time had never come. The knights, they waited; but the crusader of Europe had gone home to stay. Once and again, as the centuries crept slowly by, the Church had turned in its sleep and mumbled something about the tomb of Christ; but the Church was only talking in its sleep, and the knights had continued to wait. A king, now and then, suddenly awakened to the fact that he was a very great scoundrel, must finally die, would probably go to hell, and therefore needed to redeem himself at the expense of the infidel, swore a great oath to renew the crusades; but such vows bore no fruit; the spasm of remorse passed over, and the knights continued to wait. Really, it was not so hard upon them. They had a royal home, a royal treasury, a royal standing and a sacred. They lived a pleasant life; they doffed iron armor, and wore silks, velvets, and other precious stuffs more congenial to the flesh than metallic plates. They came to love such things as good eating, joyous entertainments, the smiles and the favors of fair ladies, and the sweetness of doing nothing generally.

Malta being defended by such decadent champions, it was easily captured by such a man as Napoleon Bonaparte. There was, perhaps, bribery; there was, certainly, collusion, and the resistance offered was but nominal. General Caffarelli probably voiced the general sentiment when he said, looking around at the vast strength of the fortress, “It is lucky we had some one to let us in.”

Leaving a garrison under Vaubois to hold the place, Napoleon again set sail for Egypt.

Nelson was flying hither and thither, on the keenest of hunts, hoping to pounce upon the crowded vessels of the French, and to sink them. Storms, fog, bad guessing, and Napoleonic luck fought against the English, and they missed the quarry completely. Napoleon hastily landed near Alexandria, July 2, 1798, marched upon the city, and easily took it. After a short rest, the army set out by the shortest route for Cairo. The sun was terribly hot, the desert a burning torment, water it was almost impossible to supply, food failed, and the skirmishes of the enemy from behind sandhills, rocks, or scraggy bushes harassed the march, cutting off every straggler. Bitterly the soldiers complained, contrasting this torrid wilderness to the fertile beauty of Italian plains. Even the generals became disheartened, indignant, almost mutinous. Men like Murat and Lannes dashed their plumed and braided hats on the ground, trampled them, and damned the day that had brought them to this barren Hades.

The common soldiers bitterly recalled Napoleon’s promise that each of them should make enough out of the campaign to buy seven acres of land. Was this desert a fair sample of the land they were to get? If so, why the limit of seven acres?

The trying march was over at last, the Nile was reached, and then came the relief of battle and easy victory. The Mamelukes were great horsemen, the best in the world, perhaps; but they had no infantry and no artillery worth the name. In the hands of Napoleon they were children. Battle with Mamelukes was target practice, during which French marksmen, in hollow square, shot out of their saddles the simple-minded Mamelukes, who fancied that they could do everything with horses.

In all of the battles which took place, the tactics of the French were the same: “Form square: savants and asses to the centre.” Then, while the baggage, the learned men, and the long-eared donkeys rested securely within the lines, a steady fire of musketry and cannon emptied the saddles of the heroes of the desert.

To see the Mamelukes come thundering on to the attack, was magnificent; to see them drop in the sand without having been able to reach the French, was pitiful.

After a skirmish at Shebreis, in which the Mamelukes were driven off without any difficulty (July 13), came the encounter known as the Battle of the Pyramids (July 21), chiefly remembered now as that in which Napoleon dramatically exclaimed to his troops as they were being made ready for the struggle, “Soldiers, from yonder pyramids forty centuries look down upon you!” The telescope had revealed to him the fact that the artillery of the enemy consisted of guns taken from their flotilla on the river. These guns were not on carriages, like field artillery, and therefore they could not be moved at will during battle. This suggested to him a change in his own dispositions. A portion of his army being left to deal with the stationary artillery and the infantry which manned the feeble, sand-bank intrenchments, he directed the other to march out of the range of the guns, for the purpose of throwing against the Mameluke horse his own cavalry, supported by infantry and artillery. Murad Bey, the commander-in-chief of the opposing army, seized the moment when this change was being made by Napoleon to launch against him a mass of seven thousand Mameluke horse. This mighty host struck the division of Desaix when it was in motion, and therefore unprepared for cavalry. For an instant the French, at least of that column, were in peril. So quickly, however, did the veterans of Desaix form squares, so quickly did Napoleon see the point of danger and send relief, that the battle was never in real doubt. The camp of the Arabs was stormed, the Mameluke cavalry slaughtered; and, inflicting a loss computed at ten thousand on the enemy, the French had but a score or two killed and one hundred and twenty wounded.

The Mameluke power was shattered by the Battle of the Pyramids, and the conquest of Egypt was practically achieved. For some days Frenchmen fished the Nile for dead Mamelukes, to secure the wealth which those warriors carried on their persons.

Arrived in Cairo, Napoleon did his utmost to assure the permanence of his triumph. He caused the religion, the laws, the customs of the country, to be respected. Pursuing his policy of trying to deceive the Mahometans, he proclaimed that the French were the true champions of the Prophet; that they had chastised the Pope, and conquered the Knights of Malta; therefore the people of Egypt should be convinced that they were the enemies of the Christians.

“We are the true Mussulmans!” read the proclamation. “Did we not destroy the Pope because he had preached a crusade against the Mahometans? Did we not destroy the Knights of Malta because they said that God had directed them to fight the followers of Mahomet?”

He cultivated the influential men of the country, and encouraged the belief that he himself might become a Mussulman. In truth, Napoleon admired Mahomet greatly, and he never shrank from saying so, then or afterward. In the classification of the books of his private library, made in his own writing, he grouped under the same head the Bible, the Koran, the Vedas, and Mythology, and Montesquieu’s Spirit of Laws. These he enumerated in the class of Politics and Morals. He reminded his soldiers that the Roman legions had respected all religions. He did not remind them that Roman rulers had considered all religions as equally useful for purposes of government; nor that Roman philosophers had regarded them all as equally sons and daughters of that primeval pair, Fear and Fraud—fear of the unknown, and the fraud which practises upon it.

Napoleon found that Mahometan priests were as eager to convert him as Christian priests had been to capture Constantine and Clovis. In the one case as in the other, the priests were willing to compromise the creed to gain the convert. Napoleon did not quite join the faithful himself, but he approved of General Menou’s apostasy, and he ostentatiously observed the Mahometan festivals.

Both Napoleon and Bourrienne denied, as others assert, that he went into the mosque, sat cross-legged on the cushion amid the faithful, muttered Koran verses as they did, and rolled head and body about as a good Mussulman should. If he did not do so it was because he thought, as a matter of policy, that the act would not compensate him for the trouble and the ridicule. He afterward did just about that much for the Christian religion; and faith had no more to do with his conduct in the one case than in the other.

As he went farther with the Jacobins than it was pleasant to remember, so he probably went farther with the Mahometans than he cared to admit; for he certainly prevailed upon the priesthood to do that which was forbidden by the Koran unless he was a convert. They officially directed the people to obey him and pay him tribute. Nor is there any doubt that the leaders among the priests liked him well enough, personally, to watch over his personal safety. General Kléber, who succeeded him in command, neglected to pay the chiefs those attentions Napoleon had lavished upon them, and in turn they neglected him. To this, perhaps, his assassination was due.

Regarding Egypt as a colony to be developed, rather than a conquest to be despoiled, Napoleon devoted every attention to civil affairs. He reorganized the administration, conforming as nearly as possible to established customs. He set up a printing-press, established foundries and manufactories, planned storage dams and canals to add to the cultivable soil, organized an institute, and started a newspaper. He sent his savants abroad to dig, delve, excavate, explore, map the present and decipher the past of Egypt. Napoleon himself used his leisure in visiting historic places and making plans for the material progress of the benighted land. He discovered traces of the ancient canal connecting the Nile with the Red Sea, and formed the resolution of reopening it. He himself located the lines for new canals. He crossed the Red Sea ford which the Israelites used in fleeing from bondage, and, staying too long on the opposite shore, was caught by the rising tide, and came near meeting the fate of Pharaoh and his host. More self-possessed than Pharaoh, Napoleon halted when he realized his peril, caused his escort to form a circle around him, and each to ride outward. Those who found themselves going into deeper water drew back, followed those who had found fordable places; and, by this simple manœuvre, he deprived needy Christendom of a new text and a modern instance.

While on the farther shore Napoleon visited the Wells of Moses, and heard the petition of the monks of Sinai. At their request, he confirmed their privileges, and put his name to the charters which bore the signature of Saladin.

A terrible blow fell upon him in August when Nelson destroyed the French fleet in the famous battle of the Nile. There is doubt as to who was to blame for this calamity. Napoleon cast it upon Brueys, the French admiral who lost the battle; and Brueys, killed in the action, could not be heard in reply. He had drawn up his ships in semicircle so close to the shore that he considered himself comparatively safe, protected as he was by land batteries at the doubtful end of his line.

But Nelson, on the waters, was what Bonaparte was on land—the boldest of planners and the most desperate of fighters. He came up at sunset, and did not wait till morning, as Brueys expected. He went right to work, reconnoitred his enemy, conceived the idea of turning his line, getting in behind with some of his ships, and thus putting the French between two fires. The manœuvre was difficult and dangerous, but succeeded. Nelson rammed some of his ships in on the land side of the amazed Brueys, who had made no preparations for such a manœuvre. Caught between two terrible fires, Brueys was a lost man from the beginning. It was a night battle, awful beyond the power of description. When it ended next day, the English had practically obliterated the French fleet; Napoleon was cut off from Europe. When the news reached him, he was stunned, almost crushed; but rallying immediately, he wrote to Kléber, “The English will compel us to do greater things in Egypt than we had intended.”

Desaix conquered Upper Egypt; organized resistance to the invaders ceased for the time, and from the cataracts to the sea Napoleon held the valley down. The administration began to work smoothly, taxes seemed lighter because more equitably distributed, and the various enterprises Napoleon had set on foot began to show some life. He enrolled natives in his army, and formed a body of Mamelukes which afterward appeared so picturesquely in France. Two young Mamelukes, Roustan and Ibrahim, given him by one of the pachas, became his personal attendants, and served him faithfully till his power was broken in 1814.

The ruin of the fleet was not the only grief of Napoleon in the months which followed. Junot had acted the part of the candid friend, and had revealed to Napoleon the secret of Josephine’s infidelities. Captain Hypolite Charles had reappeared in the absence of the husband, and was now living with the wife at Malmaison. So openly was this connection kept up that the Director, Gohier, a friend of Josephine, advised her to divorce Napoleon and marry Charles. The first shock of Junot’s revelation threw Napoleon into a paroxism of wrath, then into a stupor of despair and dull disgust with everything. Then, by a reaction, natural, perhaps, to a man of his temperament, he threw himself into libertine excesses. Prior to this period his morals, considering the times and the temptations, had been remarkably pure. Henceforth he was occasionally to give himself a license which scandalized even the French officers. Scorning subterfuge and concealment, he became as bold as any born king, a rake by divine right, in the shamelessness of his amours. He appeared in public at Cairo with Madame Foures, his mistress, riding in the carriage by his side; and if Bourrienne tells the truth on Napoleon, and Carlyle tells no lie on Peter the Great, the one was about as obscene as the other while the lustful impulse prevailed.

CHAPTER XVII

Carefully as Napoleon had cultivated the native authorities, deferred to prejudice and custom, and maintained discipline, native opposition to French rule seems to have been intense. A revolt in Cairo took him by surprise. It had been preached from the minaret by the Muezzins in their daily calls to prayer. It broke out with sudden fury, and many Frenchmen were slaughtered in Cairo and the surrounding villages. Napoleon quelled it promptly and with awful severity. The insurrection, coming as it did upon the heels of all his attempts at conciliation, filled him with indignant resentment, and, in his retaliation, he left nothing undone to strike terror to the Arab soul. Insurgents were shot or beheaded without mercy. Donkey trains bearing sacks were driven to the public square, and the sacks being untied, human heads rolled out upon the ground—a ghastly warning to the on-looking natives. Such is war; such is conquest. The conquered must be tamed. Upon this principle acted the man of no religion, Napoleon, in Egypt, and the Christian soldier, Havelock, in Hindustan. The Christian Englishmen who put down the Indian mutiny were as deaf to humanity as was the Deist who quelled the revolt in Cairo. Like all the cruelty whose injury society really feels, the crime is in the system, not the individual. War is war; and as long as Christendom must have war to work out the mysterious ways of God, we must be content with the thorns as well as the fruits. If it be a part of the white man’s burden to exterminate black and brown and yellow races to clear the way for the thing we call Christian civilization, Napoleon’s course in Egypt was temperate and humane. Upon all his deeds a blessing might be asked by the preachers who incited the soldiers of America, Great Britain, Germany, Russia, in the wars of the year 1900; and the chaplains who went, on good salaries, to pray for those who shot down Filipinos, Chinamen, or even South African Boers could just as easily have given pious sanction to the murders-in-mass committed by Bonaparte.

Inspired by the result of the battle of the Nile, England, Turkey, the Mamelukes, and the Arabs made great preparations to drive Napoleon out of Egypt. A Turkish army was to be sent from Rhodes; Achmet, Pacha of Acre, surnamed Djezzar, the Butcher, was raising forces in Syria, and Commodore Sir Sidney Smith was cruising on the coast ready to help Turks, Mamelukes, and Arabs against the French. Sir Sidney had been a political prisoner in Paris, had recently made his escape, and had been assisted in so doing by Napoleon’s old schoolmate, Phélippeaux. Following Sir Sidney to the East, Phélippeaux, a royalist, was now at hand eager to oppose the republican army of Napoleon, and capable of rendering the Turks valuable service. There is no evidence that he was actuated by personal hatred of Napoleon. They had not liked each other at school, and had kicked each other’s shins under the table; but, as men, they had taken different sides as a matter of policy or principle, and it was this which now arrayed them against each other.

Napoleon’s invariable rule being to anticipate his enemy, he now marched into Syria to crush Djezzar before the Turkish army from Rhodes could arrive. Leaving Desaix, Lanusse, and other lieutenants to hold Egypt, he set out with the main army February 11, 1799. El Arish was taken February 20, 1799, and Gaza followed. Jaffa, the ancient Joppa, came next (March 6), and its name will always be associated with a horrible occurrence. Summoned to surrender, the Arabs had beheaded the French messenger. The place was stormed, and the troops gave way to unbridled license and butchery. The massacre went on so long and was so hideous that Napoleon grew sick of it, and sent his step-son, Eugène, and another aide, Croisier, to put a stop to it. He meant, as he claimed, that they were sent to save the non-combatants,—old men, women, and children. He did not mean them to save soldiers, for, by the benign rules of war, all defenders of a place taken by assault could be slain. Misunderstanding Napoleon, or not knowing the benign rules, Eugène and Croisier accepted the surrender of three or four thousand Arab warriors, and brought them toward headquarters. As soon as Napoleon, walking in front of his tent, saw these prisoners coming, he exclaimed, in tones of grief: “Why do they bring those men to me? What am I to do with them?” Eugène and Croisier were severely reprimanded, and he again asked: “What am I to do with these men? Why did you bring them here?”

Under the alleged necessity of the case, want of food to feed them, or vessels to send them away, a council of war unanimously decided that they should be shot. With great reluctance, and after delaying until the murmurs of the troops became mutinous, Napoleon yielded, and the prisoners were marched to the beach and massacred. That this was a horribly cruel deed no one can deny; but the barbarity was in the situation and the system, not the individual. Napoleon himself was neither blood-thirsty nor inhumane. The last thing he had done before quitting France had been to denounce the cruelty of the authorities in dealing with émigrés who were non-combatants. His proclamation, which really invited soldiers to disobey a cruel law, closed with the ringing statement, “The soldier who signs a death-warrant against a person incapable of bearing arms is a coward!”

In passing judgment upon Napoleon, we must adopt some standard of comparison; we must know what military precedents have been, and what the present practice is. Three days after the battle of Culloden the Duke of Cumberland, being informed that the field was strewn with wounded Highlanders who still lived,—through rain and sun and the agony of undressed wounds,—marched his royal person and his royal army back to the field and, in cold blood, butchered every man who lay there. A barn, near the battle-field, was full of wounded Scotchmen; the royal Duke set it on fire, and all within were burned to death.

During the conquest of Algiers, in 1830, a French commander, a royalist, came upon a multitude of Arabs—men, women, children—who had taken refuge in a cave. He made a fire at the cavern’s mouth and smoked them all to death.

In the year 1900, Russians, Germans, and other Christians invaded China to punish the heathen for barbarities practised upon Christian missionaries. A German emperor (Christian, of course) said, “Give no quarter.” Germans and Russians killed everything that was Chinese—men and women and children. Armed or not armed, working in fields or idle, walking in streets or standing still, giving cause or giving none, the heathen were shot and bayoneted and sabred and clubbed, until the streets were choked with dead Chinese, the rivers were putrid with dead Chinese, the very waters of the ocean stank with dead Chinese. Prisoners were made to dig their own graves, were then shot, tumbled into the hole, and other prisoners made to fill the grave. Girls and matrons were outraged in the presence of brothers, sons, husbands, fathers; and were then shot, or stabbed to death with swords or bayonets.

Were it not for examples such as these, the reader might feel inclined to agree with the anti-Bonaparte biographers who say that the Jaffa massacre was the blackest in the annals of civilized warfare.

Rid of his prisoners, Napoleon moved forward on the Syrian coast and laid siege to St. Jean d’Acre. The town had strong, high walls, behind which were desperate defenders. The lesson from Jaffa had taught the Arab that it was death to surrender. To him, then, it was a stern necessity to conquer or die. The English were there to help. Sir Sidney Smith furnished guns, men to serve them, and skilled engineers.

Napoleon was not properly equipped for the siege, for his battering train, on its way in transports, was stupidly lost by the captain in charge. Sir Sidney took it and appropriated it to the defence. In vain Napoleon lingered till days grew into weeks, weeks into months. He was completely baffled. There were many sorties, many assaults, dreadful loss of life, reckless deeds of courage done on both sides. Once, twice, the French breached the walls, made good their assault, and entered the town, once reaching Djezzar’s very palace. It was all in vain. Every house was a fortress, every street an ambuscade, every Arab a hero,—the very women frantically screaming “Fight!”

With bitterness in his soul, Napoleon turned away: “that miserable hole has thwarted my destiny!” And he never ceased to ring the changes on the subject. Had he taken Acre, his next step would have been to the Euphrates; hordes of Asiatics would have flocked to his banner; the empire of Alexander would have risen again under his touch; India would have been his booty; Constantinople his prize; and then, from the rear, he would have trodden Europe into submission. He saw all this on the other side of Acre, or thought he saw it. But the town stood, and the château in Spain fell.

Once he had been drawn from the siege to go toward Nazareth to the aid of Kléber, who was encompassed by an army outnumbering his own by ten to one. As Napoleon came within sight, he could see a tumultuous host of cavalry enveloping a small force of infantry. The throngs of horsemen surged and charged, wheeled and turned, like a tossing sea. In the midst was an island, a volcano belching fire. The tossing sea was the Mameluke cavalry; the island in the midst of it was Kléber. Forming so that his line, added to Kléber’s, would envelop the enemy, Napoleon advanced; and great was the rout and the slaughter of the foe. No organized force was left afield either in Syria or Egypt.

Now that the siege of Acre was abandoned, the army must be got back to Cairo, and the country laid waste to prevent Djezzar from harassing the retreat. What could not be moved, must be destroyed. The plague, brought from Damietta by Kléber’s corps, had stricken down almost as many as had perished in the siege. To move the wounded and the sick was a heavy undertaking, but it was done. On the night of May 20, 1799, Napoleon began his retreat. A terrible retreat it was, over burning sands, under brazen skies, amid stifling dust, maddening thirst—and over all the dread shadow of the plague. In their selfish fears, the French became callous to the sufferings of the wounded and the sick. The weak, the helpless, were left to die in the desert. Every hamlet was fired, the fields laden with harvest were in flames, desolation spread far and wide. “The whole country was in a blaze.”

Napoleon doggedly kept his course, full of dumb rage—seeing all, feeling all, powerless in the midst of its horrors. At Tentoura he roused himself to a final effort to save the sick and the wounded. “Let every man dismount; let every horse, mule, camel, and litter be given to the disabled; let the able go on foot.” The order so written, despatched to Berthier, and made known through the camp, Vigogne, groom to the chief, came to ask, “What horse shall I reserve for you, General?”

It was the touch that caused an explosion. Napoleon struck the man with his whip! “Off, you rascal! Every one on foot, I the first. Did you not hear the order?”

The hungry desert swallowed horses and men. The heavy guns were abandoned. The army pressed on in sullen grief, anger, despondency. The chief trudged heavily forward, in grim silence.

On May 24, the French were at Jaffa again. Here the hospitals were full of the plague-stricken and the wounded. Napoleon visited these men, spoke encouraging words to them, and, according to Savary, touched one of the victims of the plague in order to inspire confidence—the disease being one with whose spread imagination is said to have much to do. Bourrienne denies this story; but according to a report written by Monsieur d’Ause, administrator of the army of the East, and dated May 8, 1829, Napoleon not only touched the afflicted, but helped to lift one of them off the floor. Substantially to the same effect is the testimony of the chief surgeon of the army, Desgenettes. Bourrienne also denies that the sick were taken away by the retreating French. Monsieur d’Ause reports that the wounded and the sick were put on board seven vessels (he names the vessels), and sent by sea to Damietta. This statement is corroborated by Grobert, Commissioner of War, who gives the names of the officers placed in charge of the removal. A few of the plague-stricken were so hopelessly ill that Napoleon requested the surgeon to administer opium. It would put the poor creatures out of their misery, and prevent them from falling into the hands of the enemy. Desgenettes made the noble reply which Napoleon himself quoted admiringly, “My duty is to cure, not to kill.” But Napoleon’s suggestion was really humane; as he says, any man in the condition of these hopeless, pain-racked invalids would choose the painless sleep of opium rather than the prolonged agony of the disease.

In the year 1900 the Europeans, beleaguered by the Chinese in Tien-Tsin, adopted the view of Napoleon. They killed their own wounded to prevent them from falling into the hands of the heathen. According to reports published throughout Christendom and not contradicted, Admiral Seymour of the British Navy issued orders to that effect. And when the barbarities which the Christians inflicted upon the heathen became worse than death, Chinamen did as Seymour had done—killed their own friends to escape the torture.

Napoleon not insisting on poison, the few invalids who could not be moved were left alive, and several of these yet breathed when Sir Sidney Smith took possession of Jaffa.

After another dreadful desert-march, in which Napoleon tramped in the sand at the head of his troops, the army reached Cairo, June 14, 1799. With all his art, Napoleon only partially made the impression that he had returned victorious. During his absence there had been local revolts, soon repressed, and he found the country comparatively quiet. It was probably a relief to him when news came that the expected Turkish army had arrived at Aboukir. In open fight on fair field he could wipe out the shame of Acre. With all his celerity of decision, movement, and concentration, he was at Aboukir on July 25, 1799, where the Turkish army had landed. But for an accident, he would have taken it by surprise. In the battle which followed, the Turks were annihilated. Out of a force of twelve thousand scarce a man escaped. Its commander, Mustapha, was taken prisoner by Murat, after he had fired his pistol in the Frenchman’s face, wounding him in the head. A blow of Murat’s sabre almost severed the Turk’s hand. Carried before Napoleon, the latter generously said, “I will report to the Sultan how bravely you have fought.”—“You may save yourself the trouble,” the proud Turk answered; “my master knows me better than you can.”

The aid, counsel, and presence of Sir Sidney Smith had not availed the enemy at Aboukir as at Acre. It was with difficulty that he escaped to his ships. As to Phélippeaux, he had been stricken by the plague and was mortally ill, or already dead.

On his return to Alexandria, Napoleon sent a flag of truce to Sir Sidney, proposing an exchange of prisoners. During the negotiations, the English commodore sent Napoleon a file of English newspapers and a copy of the Frankfort Gazette. Throughout the night Napoleon did not sleep; he was devouring the contents of these papers. The story which they told him was enough to drive sleep away.

It is possible that Talleyrand, by way of Tripoli, may have been corresponding with Napoleon; and it seems that a letter from Joseph Bonaparte had also reached him; but Bourrienne, his private secretary, positively denies that he knew of conditions in France prior to the battle of Aboukir. Although it is possible he may have received letters which his private secretary knew nothing about, it is not probable. It would seem, therefore, that his knowledge of the situation in Europe was derived from the newspapers sent him by Sir Sidney Smith.

CHAPTER XVIII

With the first coming of the armies of revolutionary France to Italy, the establishment of republics in the peninsula, and the talk of Italian unity, even Rome and Naples began to move in their shrouds. Probably two systems of government more utterly wretched than those of the Pope and the Neapolitan Bourbons never existed. While changes for the better were taking place in the immediate neighborhood of these misruled states, it was natural that certain elements at Rome and Naples should begin to hope for reforms.

The support of the Pope and of the Bourbons was the ignorance of the lowest orders and the fanaticism of the priests. The middle classes, the educated, and even many of the nobles favored more liberal principles. In December, 1797, the democratic faction at Rome came into collision with the papal mob; and the papal troops worsted in the riot, the democrats sought shelter at the French embassy, Joseph Bonaparte being at that time the minister of France. The papal faction, pursuing their advantage, violated the privilege of the French ministry, and General Duphot, a member of the embassy, was killed. This was the second time a diplomatic agent of France had been slain by the Pope’s partisans in Rome. Joseph Bonaparte left the city, and General Berthier marched in at the head of a French army. The Pope was removed, and finally sent to Valence, where he died in 1799. His temporal power having been overthrown, the liberals of Rome, including many clericals who were disgusted with the papal management of political affairs, held a great meeting in the forum, renounced the authority of the Pope, planted a liberty tree in front of the Capitol, and declared the Roman republic, February 15, 1798.

In the spring of 1798 the democratic cantons in Switzerland had risen against the aristocracy of Berne, had called in the French, and on April 12, 1798, the Helvetic republic had been proclaimed.

This continued and successful advance of republican principles profoundly alarmed the courts and kings of Europe. Great Britain, having failed in her efforts to make favorable terms of peace with the French Directory, and having gained immense prestige from the battle of the Nile, organized a second great coalition in the autumn of 1798. Russia, Turkey, Naples, and England combined their efforts to crush republican France.

A Neapolitan army, led by the Austrian general, Mack, marched upon Rome for the purpose of restoring the temporal power of the Pope. Its strength was overwhelming, the French retreated, and Ferdinand of Naples made his triumphant entrance into Rome in November, 1798. The liberty tree was thrown down, an immense cross set up in its place, many liberals put to death in spite of Ferdinand’s pledge to the contrary, and a few Jews baptized in the Tiber. The French, having left a garrison in the castle of St. Angelo, General Mack issued a written threat to shoot one of the sick French soldiers in the hospital for every shot fired from the castle.

Ferdinand gave the credit of his victory to “the most miraculous St. Januarius.” To the King of Piedmont, who had urged Ferdinand to encourage the peasants to assassinate the French, he wrote that the Neapolitans, guided by Mack, had “proclaimed to Europe, from the summit of the Capitol, that the time of the kings had come.”

We do not know of any incident which more fully illustrates the meaning of the gigantic efforts made by Europe against France and Napoleon than this. Ferdinand called to the Pope to return, to sweep away all reforms, to restore all abuses, to become master again of life, liberty, and property: “The time of the kings has come!” And back of the Bourbon king, back of these efforts of Naples to inaugurate the return of the Old Order and all its monstrous wrongs, was Nelson and the English government.

If “the most miraculous St. Januarius” had joined Ferdinand in his Roman campaign, the saint soon wearied of it, for the conquest was lost as soon as made. The Neapolitan forces were badly handled, and the favorites of the saint fell easy prey to the heretic French. King Ferdinand, losing faith in Januarius, fled, the French reëntered Rome, the republic was set up again; and Championnet, the French general, invaded Neapolitan territory. In December, 1798, the royal family of Naples took refuge on Nelson’s ship, and soon sailed for Sicily. The republicans of Naples rose, opened communications with the French, who entered the city, January 23, 1799; and the Parthenopean republic was proclaimed. Representative government took the place of intolerant priest-rule and feudalism. Against this new order of things the clergy preached a crusade. The ignorant peasants of the rural districts and the lowest rabble of the city flew to arms, and civil war in its worst form was soon raging between the two factions—that which favored and that which opposed the republic.

In the meantime the forces of the great coalition were getting under way. A Russian army, led by the celebrated Suwarow, was on the march toward Italy. Austria had recuperated her strength, and the Archduke Charles beat the French, under Jourdan, at the battle of Stockach, March 25, 1799. On the 28th of April of the same year, as the French envoys to the Congress of Rastadt were leaving that place, they were assailed by Austrian hussars, two of them killed, and the third left for dead. The Archduke Charles commenced an investigation of this crime, but was stopped by the Austrian Cabinet. The evidence which he collected was spirited away, and has never since been found.

On April 5, 1799, the army of Italy, under Schérer, was defeated by the Austrians, who recovered at one blow Italian territory almost to Milan. In June, Masséna was beaten by the Archduke Charles at Zurich, and fell back to a strong position a few miles from that city.

Suwarow having reached Italy in April, 1799, began a career of victory which would have been followed by momentous results had not Austrian jealousy marred the campaign. His impetuous valor overwhelmed Schérer; and, by the time Moreau was put in command of the French, the army was too much of a wreck for even that able officer to stand the onset of the Russians. General Macdonald, hastening to Moreau’s aid, was not quite quick enough. The dauntless and vigilant old Russian commander made a dash at Macdonald, struck him at the Trebbia, and well-nigh destroyed him, June 18, 1799.

Southern Italy rose against the French. Cardinal Ruffo, at the head of an army of peasants, ravaged Calabria and Apulia. On the 15th of June, 1799, this army, assisted by the lazzeroni of Naples, attacked the republican forces in the suburbs of that city, and for five days there was a carnival of massacre and outrage. On the 19th the Cardinal proposed a truce. The republicans who remained in possession of the forts agreed; negotiations followed, and on the 23d terms of peace were signed by Ruffo on behalf of the King of Naples, and guaranteed by the representatives of Russia and Great Britain. It was agreed that the republicans should march out with the honors of war, that their persons and property should be respected, and that they should have the choice of remaining, unmolested at home, or of being safely landed at Toulon. On the faith of this treaty the democrats yielded up the forts, and ceased all resistance. At this juncture, Nelson sailed into the harbor and annulled the treaty. A reign of terror followed.

The Queen of Naples was the sister of Marie Antoinette,—a violent, cruel, profligate woman. She and her friend, Lady Hamilton, wife of the English minister and mistress of Lord Nelson, hounded on the avengers of the republican revolt, and Naples became a slaughter-pen. Perhaps the blackest of all the black deeds done in that revel of revenge was the murder of Admiral Carraccioli.

This man was a prince by birth, a member of one of the noblest Italian houses; his character was as lofty as his birth, and he was seventy years old. He had joined the republicans, and had commanded their naval forces. Involved in the failure of his cause, he was entitled to the protection of the treaty of capitulation.

Nelson, returning from his Victory of the Nile, and inflated with pride and political rancor, annulled the terms which Cardinal Ruffo had accepted—doing so over the Cardinal’s protest, be it said to his honor. The republican garrisons of the castles were delivered by Nelson to the vengeance of their enemies. As to Prince Carraccioli, Nelson himself took charge of his case. The gray-haired man, who had honorably served his country for forty years, was brought on board the English vessel, with hands tied behind him, at nine o’clock in the forenoon. By ten his trial had begun; in two hours it was ended. Sentenced to death immediately, he was, at five o’clock in the afternoon of the same day, hanged at the yard-arm, his body cut down at sunset, and thrown into the sea. In vain the old man had pleaded that the president of the court-martial was his personal enemy. In vain he had asked for time, a rehearing, a chance to get witnesses. Nelson was unrelenting. Then the victim of this cold-blooded murder begged that he might be shot. “I am an old man, sir. I leave no family to grieve for me, and therefore cannot be supposed to be very anxious to live; but the disgrace of being hanged is dreadful to me!” And again Nelson refused all concession.

Lady Hamilton, Nelson’s mistress, looked on with unconcealed satisfaction as the prince-republican was choked to death with a rope; and if ever Nelson felt a pang because of his shocking inhumanity, it has escaped the record.

Who has not had his ears deafened by royalist diatribes concerning the murder of the Duke d’Enghien? And how silent are the same royalist authors concerning the murder of the Prince Carraccioli!

The closer the facts of history are studied and compared, the less certain the reader will be that Napoleon Bonaparte was a whit worse in any respect than the average public man of his time.

* * * * *

From the newspapers which Napoleon read at Alexandria during the night of July 25, 1799, he first learned the full extent of the disasters which had befallen France in his absence.

“Great heavens, the fools have lost Italy! I must return to France!”

In the East his work was done. He had crushed organized resistance. From the cataracts to the sea all was quietude. True, he had not conquered Syria, but he had broken Djezzar’s strength, and destroyed the relieving army of Turks. What remained? What more had he to do in Egypt? Was he, when France was in such dire distress, to stay at Cairo running the newspaper, making pencils, supervising canals and schools, and dawdling along the Nile as local governor?

In France itself there was no division of sentiment on the subject. All felt that the best soldier of the Republic was needed at home. “Where is Bonaparte?” was the cry throughout the country. The need for him was felt in Italy as well as France, on the Rhine as on the Seine.

Even the Directory realized the necessity for the presence of the one Frenchman who could restore courage, inspire confidence, assure victory. They despatched a special messenger to call him home (September, 1799). This courier did not reach Egypt, and the order of recall was revoked; but the fact that it was issued, proves that Napoleon, in returning to France, obeyed an impulse which even his enemies shared.

Hastily and secretly making the necessary arrangements, and taking with him a chosen few of his soldiers and his savants, Napoleon embarked in four small vessels, August 23, 1799, and next morning made sail for France.

In the army left behind there was a wail of despair, a burst of wrath. Napoleon’s name was cursed,—the traitor, the deserter, the coward! This was very natural, and very unjust. Kléber himself, to whom Napoleon had delegated the chief command, was as indignant as the rest. In bitter, unmeasured terms he denounced Bonaparte in letters to the Directory—despatches which, when opened, were opened by Bonaparte, First Consul. Kléber had grossly exaggerated the difficulties of his situation, and soon gave proof of that fact. He was in no real danger. When other armies were thrown against him, he gloriously defeated them, and held his ground.

Uncontrollable circumstances, the continued hostility of England, the unforeseen inability of Napoleon to throw succors into Egypt, alone defeated his plans, finally. Never did a man strive harder to send relief to a lieutenant. There is something positively pathetic in the strenuous and fruitless efforts made by Napoleon to triumph over the incompetence of his naval commanders, and to compel them to exhibit enterprise, courage, and zeal in the relief of Egypt. It was all in vain. “I cannot create men,” he said sadly. He certainly never was able to find effective aid in his navy, and Egypt was finally lost, in spite of all he could do.

That he was correct in his judgment in attaching so much importance to the conquest of Egypt, subsequent events have proved. In seizing upon the exhaustless granary of the East, the enormously important midway station on the road to India, his was the conception of a far-sighted statesman. It was his fate to teach the world, England especially, the vital importance of Malta and of Egypt, and to lose both.

CHAPTER XIX

The seas were infested with hostile ships, and a more perilous voyage than Napoleon’s from Egypt few men ever risked. His little sailing vessels had but one element of security—their insignificance. They could hope to slip by where larger ships would be sighted; and they could retreat into shoal water where men-of-war could not follow. Napoleon had with him some four or five hundred picked troops and a few cannon; his plan was to run ashore on the African coast, and make his way overland, if he should find his escape cut off on the ocean by English ships. Keeping close to the shore, he made tedious progress against contrary winds, and did not arrive off Corsica till the last days of September, 1799. He had not intended to land on his native soil, but the adverse gales made it necessary to put into the harbor of Ajaccio. Sending ashore for fruit and the latest journals, he sat up all night on board reading. He now learned that the battle of Novi had been fought, and Joubert killed.

The presence of Napoleon in the harbor of Ajaccio created a sensation on shore, and the people thronged the streets and the quays, eager for a sight of the hero of Italy and of Egypt. His victories in the East were known, for he himself had dictated the reports, and had not weakened them with any dashes of modesty. Around his name, therefore, had formed a halo, and even those Corsicans who had scorned him when feeble, admired him now that he was strong. Yielding to popular pressure, Napoleon landed. His reception was enthusiastic. The square was filled with shouting multitudes, the windows and the roofs crowded with the curious, everybody wanting to catch sight of the wondrous little man who had so quickly become the first soldier of the world. Crowds of admiring islanders remembered that they were his cousins. The number of god-children laid to him was immense. His old nurse hobbled to him, hugged him, gave him a blessing, and a bottle of goat’s milk.

He walked St. Charles Street, into the little square, and into the old Bonaparte home, which the English troops had used as a barrack. He visited the country-seat, the grotto of Milleli, all the old familiar scenes. He showed his staff, with some pride, the estates of his family; and to the tenants and the herdsmen he gave cattle and land. The soldiers of the garrison, drawn up to receive him, were in a wretched condition; they had received no pay for more than a year. Napoleon gave them $8000, all he had, saving necessary travelling expenses. To his nurse he gave a vineyard and a house in Ajaccio.

The Corsicans tell the story that during the time when the young Lieutenant Bonaparte was trying to revolutionize the island, a priest, standing at the window of a house overlooking the street, aimed a gun at the little Jacobin’s head. Napoleon, ever watchful, saw the movement just in time to dodge. The bullet struck the wall, and Napoleon scurried off.

This priest, having remained in Ajaccio, and the situation having undergone a change, was very uncomfortable; for Napoleon now had it in his power to make his old enemy do the dodging. But he bore no malice. He offered the embarrassed priest his hand, made a joke of the shot out of the window, and put the good man quite at his ease.

It was while attending a ball given in his honor in Ajaccio that Admiral Ganteaume sent word that the wind had changed, and the voyage could be resumed. Hurriedly bidding adieu to friends, he quitted Corsica for the last time.

On October 8, 1799, the four vessels entered the roads of Fréjus, and immediately upon its becoming known that Napoleon was on board, the water was covered with the boats of hundreds crowding to meet him. It was in this spontaneous rush of the people to greet the returning hero that the quarantine law was violated. The joy of the people was unbounded. They rang the bells, they filled the streets with shouting multitudes, they hailed him as the deliverer of France. A king in the best of Bourbon days had never drawn a warmer welcome. On his way from the coast he met with a prolonged ovation. At Lyons it was as though Napoleon had already become the ruler of France.

General Marbot, late commander of Paris, now passing through Lyons on his way to Italy, was somewhat scandalized and offended to see that Bonaparte was treated like a sovereign. Says his son in his Memoirs:—

“The houses were all illuminated, and decorated with flags, fireworks were being let off; our carriage could hardly make its way through the crowd. People were dancing in the open spaces, and the air rang with cries of: ‘Hurrah for Bonaparte! He will save the country!’”

The hotel keeper had given to Napoleon the rooms for which General Marbot had spoken, and Napoleon was in them. Learning how General Marbot had been treated, Napoleon invited him to come and share the rooms comrade-like. Marbot went to another hotel, rather in a huff, it would seem; and Napoleon, determined not to make an enemy out of such an occurrence, went on foot and at once to apologize and express his regrets to General Marbot in his rooms at the other hotel. As he passed along the street he was followed by a cheering crowd.

“General Marbot,” says his son, “was so shocked at the manner in which the people of Lyons were running after Napoleon, as though he were already king, that the journey to Italy was resumed as speedily as possible.”

Napoleon’s route led him through Valence, where there was not only the miscellaneous crowd to cheer him, but some true and tried personal friends. For example, there was old Mademoiselle Bou, who had credited him for board. Napoleon greeted her affectionately and made her some valuable presents, which are now to be seen in the museum of the town. Indeed, the news, flashed to all parts of France, “Bonaparte has come!” created a kind of universal transport. One deputy, Baudin by name, died of joy. Chancellor Pasquier relates that he was at the theatre one evening in Paris, when he saw two very pretty women, sitting in the box next to him, receive a message. They rose in excitement and hurried away. These very pretty women, as Pasquier learned, were the sisters of Bonaparte. A courier had brought the news that their brother had landed at Fréjus. Béranger says in his autobiography: “I was sitting in our reading room with thirty or forty others, when suddenly the news was brought in that Bonaparte had returned from Egypt. At the words every man in the room started to his feet, and burst into one long shout of joy!”

By the signal telegraph of that day, the news had flown to the capital, and in a short while carriages were rumbling along the road out of Paris toward Lyons, bearing relatives and friends to meet the returning hero. One of these lumbering vehicles bore the uneasy Josephine. At Lyons, Napoleon, suspicious of political foes perhaps, changed his course, and hastened toward Paris by a different road. Would-be assassins, if there were any, as well as faithful friends, would fix their plans for nothing.

When Napoleon got down from his carriage before his house in the street which was called, in compliment to him, the street of Victory, there was no wife, no relative, no friend to greet him. His home was a dismal picture of darkness, silence, desertion; and it chilled him with a painful shock which he never ceased to remember. The anxious Josephine, the faithless wife, had gone to meet him, to weep away her sins on his breast, had missed him because of his change of route; and Napoleon, not knowing this, believed she had fled his home to escape his just anger. Bitter days and nights this eminently human Bonaparte had known; bitter days and nights he was to know again; but it may be doubted whether any of them gave to him a bitterer cup to drink than this of his return from Egypt.

Josephine came posting back as fast as she could, worn out with fear and fatigue. Napoleon refused to see her. Locked in his room, he paced the floor, his mind in a tempest of wrath, grief, mortification, wounded love. The guilty wife grovelled at the door, assaulting the barriers with sobs, plaintive cries, soft entreaties. Her friends, Madame Tallien, the Director Gohier, her children, Eugène and Hortense, and some of Napoleon’s friends, besieged the infuriated husband, appealing to his pride, his generosity, his self-interest, his fondness for the children,—in short, using every conceivable inducement,—and at length Napoleon, worn out and softened, allowed Eugène and Hortense to put Josephine into his arms.

Bourrienne relates that many years afterward, strolling along the boulevard with Napoleon, he felt the Emperor’s hand suddenly close on his arm with spasmodic grip. A carriage had just passed, and within it Napoleon had recognized Hypolite Charles, Josephine’s old-time paramour. That this coxcomb still lived, is proof enough that Napoleon the Great scorned personal revenge.

While the hope of the Bonaparte family was in the East, its interest had not been neglected in France. Joseph had been established in state at Paris (town house, country house, etc.) and had cultivated influential men of all parties. Lucien had been elected in Corsica as deputy to the Council of Five Hundred. Bold, and gifted with eloquence, he had become a power in the council, and had been elected its president. Josephine herself had been effective, so splendid had been her establishment, so charming her tact and gracious ways. Therefore, when the returning soldier cast his eye over the political field, there was much to give him satisfaction. He was committed to no party; he was weighed down by no record; he was held in no rigid grooves. Towering above all other heads, he alone could draw strength from all parties. As he himself said, in his march to power he was marching with the nation. Barras admits that all France was rushing to him as to a new existence. That he would become the ruler was expected, was desired; it was only a question of when and how. The almost unanimous voice of the people would have made him Director. Details alone caused differences of opinion. Should the constitution be set aside? Should Bonaparte be one of five Directors? Or should he be vested with a virtual dictatorship? Should the powers of government be distributed, as under the Directory, or should they be concentrated? It was on details like these that differences arose; but as to the importance of having the benefit of Napoleon’s services, the great mass of Frenchmen were agreed. True, the brilliant triumphs of Masséna around Zurich, and the overthrow of the English and Russians in Holland, by Brune, had saved the Republic from the pressing dangers of foreign invasion; but the foreign invasion was not the only cause of disquiet in France. The root of the evil was thought to be weakness of the government. The constitution had been violated by the Directors in Fructidor when Augereau had broken in upon the councils and arrested so many members. Three Directors, it will be remembered, had driven out two, Carnot and Barthélemy. Afterward, in Floréal (May 11, 1798), the elections had been set aside to get rid of objectionable members. In each of these cases the vacancies made by force had been filled by the victors.

Then, finally, the reaction had become too strong, and in Prairial (June 18, 1799) the Fructidorians had in turn been beaten, and the Directory changed by the putting in of Sieyès, Gohier, Moulins, and Roger-Ducos.

People grew weary of so many convulsions, so much uncertainty, so much vacillation, so much disorder. Besides, the finances were in hopeless confusion. National bankruptcy virtually existed, and a forced loan of 100,000,000 francs, the law of hostages, and the vexatious manner in which the new Sunday law was enforced gave offence in all classes. Barras had managed to keep his place in the Directory, but not his power. Sieyès had entered the Directory, but wished to overthrow it. Even had there been no Bonaparte to plan a change, a change was inevitable. Sieyès had said, “France needs a head and a sword.” With Sieyès present, only the sword was lacking, and he had tried to find one. Joubert was chosen, but got killed. Bernadotte was mentioned, but he would not take the risk. Moreau was sounded, but would not agree to act. Nevertheless, it was but a question of time when the man and the opportunity would meet. It might possibly have happened that Sieyès with his new constitution and his new executive would have saved the Republic. Better men, coming to the front and casting out the scum which had floated to the top of the revolutionary current, might have established the Republic on a solid basis, and saved the world from the hideous revel of blood and carnage which marked the era of Napoleon. No one can tell. It is easy to say that the directorial régime had failed; it is no less easy to say that a change could have been made without rushing into imperialism. Republics, being merely human, cannot be perfected in a day; and there is some injustice in cutting down the tree because it is not laden with fruit as soon as it is planted.

While Napoleon was exploring the ground and selecting his point of attack, the Directory adopted no measures of self-defence. In a general way they suspected Bonaparte and dreaded him, but they had no proofs upon which they could act. Their minister of war, Dubois de Crancé told them a plot was brewing, and advised the arrest of Napoleon. “Where are your proofs?” demanded Gohier and Moulins. The minister could not furnish them. Then a police agent warned them. Locking the informer in a room, the Directors began to discuss the matter. The agent became alarmed for his own safety, and escaped through a window.

Anxious to get Napoleon away from Paris, the Directors offered him his choice of the armies. He pleaded shattered health, and declined. There were two parties, possibly three, with the aid of either of which Napoleon might have won his way to power. There were the Jacobins, the remnants of the thorough-going democrats, who had made the Revolution. These were represented in the Directory by Gohier and Moulins, men of moderate capacity and fine character. But Napoleon had been cured of his youthful Jacobinism, and believed that if he now conquered with the democrats, he would soon be called on to conquer against them. Again, there were the moderates, the politicians, who were sincere republicans, but who opposed the radicalism of the democrats on the one hand, and the weakness of the Directory on the other. Sieyès and Roger-Ducos represented these in the Directory, and their following among the rich and middle-class republicans was very large. Lastly came the Barras following, the Rotten, as Napoleon called them, who would agree to pretty much any change which would not take from them the opportunities of jobbery.

Each of these parties courted Napoleon, who listened to them all, used them all, and deceived them all. Barras he despised, yet lulled to the last moment. Gohier and Moulins were carefully manipulated and elaborately duped. Sieyès and his associates were used as tools, and then, after the bridge had been crossed, thrown over.

Even the royalists were taken in; they were beguiled with hints that Napoleon was preparing a way for the return of the Bourbons—he to act the part of Monk to the exiled King.

Napoleon’s first plan was to oust from the Directory the hateful Sieyès,—“that priest sold to Prussia,” and this proposition he urged upon Gohier and Moulins. As there were no legal grounds upon which the election of Sieyès could be annulled, and as Napoleon himself had not reached the age of forty, required by the constitution, Gohier and Moulins refused to have anything to do with the scheme. Its mere mention should have put them on guard; but it did not. Then Napoleon seemed, for a moment, to consider an alliance with Barras. Fouché and other friends of that Director brought the two together, and there was a dinner which was to have smoothed the way to an agreement. Unfortunately for Barras he blundered heavily in proposing an arrangement which meant that he should have the executive power, while Napoleon should merely be military chief. Napoleon, in disgust, looked the Director out of countenance, and, taking his carriage, returned home to tell Fouché what a fool Barras had made of himself. The friends of the Director, going to him at once, were able to convince even him that he had bungled stupidly; and next day he hastened to Bonaparte to try again. He was too late. Napoleon, upon leaving Barras the day before had called in to see Sieyès, and to tell him that the alliance of the Bonapartes would be made with him alone.

Naturally these two men were antagonistic. When Napoleon, quitting the army without orders, had landed at Fréjus, Sieyès had proposed to his colleagues in the Directory to have the deserter shot. The weak Directory had no such nerve as such a plan required, and the advice was ignored. Sieyès detested the abrupt, imperious soldier; and Napoleon despised the ex-priest as a confirmed, unpractical, and conceited visionary. Before he had failed with Gohier and Moulins, Napoleon had treated Sieyès with such contempt as to ignore his presence, when they were thrown together at one of the official banquets. The enraged ex-priest exclaimed to his friends, “See the insolence of that little fellow to a member of the government which ought to have had him shot!” Napoleon, intent upon the plan of ousting Sieyès from the Directory, asked his friends, “What were they thinking about to put into the Directory that—priest sold to Prussia?”

Powerful as were these feelings of reciprocal dislike, they were overcome. Talleyrand, Joseph Bonaparte, Cabanis, and others plied both the warrior and the priest with those arguments best suited to each. The promptings of self-interest, as well as the necessities of the case, drew them together. With Sieyès—jealous, irritable, suspicious, impracticable—the task had been most difficult. He knew he was being ensnared,—emphatically said so,—but yielded.

“Once Napoleon gets in he will push his colleagues behind him, like this,” and Sieyès forcibly illustrated what he meant by bustling between Joseph and Cabanis, and then thrusting them back. Among the civilians the Bonaparte campaign at this crisis was actively aided by Talleyrand, Cambacérès, Roger-Ducos, Roederer, Boulay, Regnier, Cabanis, the friend of Mirabeau. Among the soldiery the leading canvassers were Sébastiani, Murat, Leclerc, Marmont, Lannes, Macdonald.

The plan agreed on was that the Council of Ancients, a majority having been gained over, should decree the removal of the legislative sessions to St. Cloud, name Napoleon commander of all the troops in Paris, appoint a provisional consulate (Napoleon, Sieyès, and Roger-Ducos), during which the councils should stand adjourned and a new constitution be framed. The day fixed upon was the 18th of Brumaire (November 9, 1799), and the Ancients were to meet at seven and pass the decrees agreed on by the Bonaparte steering committee. The Five Hundred, a majority of which had not been won, were to meet after the Ancients should have voted the removal of the councils to St. Cloud. Hence they would be powerless to prevent Napoleon from doing what he proposed for the 18th. Whether they would be able to resist him after they formed themselves at St. Cloud on the 19th, was another matter.

CHAPTER XX

There were in Paris at this time certain battalions which had served under Napoleon in Italy; also the directorial, legislative, and national guards, which he had organized. Naturally these troops were all favorably disposed toward him. They had been urging the great soldier to review them. The officers of the garrison and of the National Guard who had not been presented to him had asked him to receive them. Napoleon had postponed action on these requests, thereby increasing the eagerness of officers and men. Now that his plans were matured, he named the 18th of Brumaire (November 9, 1799) for the review, and invited the officers to call upon him early in the morning. His excuse for this unusual hour was that he would have to leave town. Other appointments of interest Napoleon made at about the same time. He had agreed to have a conference with Barras on the night of the 17th of Brumaire, and the Director had caught at the promise as the drowning catch at anything within reach. When Bourrienne went, about midnight, to plead headache for the absent Napoleon, he saw Barras’s face fall as soon as the door opened. The worn-out debauchee had no faith in the headache of Napoleon; but yet he had lacked the wish, or the energy, or the influence, to oppose the plot which he now felt sure was aimed at him as well as the others.

Gohier also had his appointments with Bonaparte. The Director was to breakfast, he and wife, with Napoleon on the 18th of Brumaire, and Napoleon was to dine with Gohier on the same day. The minister of war, Dubois de Crancé, had warned both Gohier and Moulins; but it was not till this late day that Gohier became suspicious enough to stay away from Bonaparte’s house on the morning of the 18th. His wife went, found the place thronged with officers in brilliant uniform, and soon left.

In this assembly of soldiers stood the conspicuous figure of Moreau. Discontented with the government, and without plan of his own, he had allowed Napoleon to win him by flattering words, accompanied by the complimentary gift of a jewelled sword. He had joined the movement with his eyes shut. He did not know the plan, and would not listen when Napoleon offered to explain it.

Bernadotte, the jealous, had stood aloof. Inasmuch as he was, in some sort, a member of the Bonaparte family (he and Joseph having married sisters), earnest efforts had been made to neutralize him, if nothing more. Napoleon afterward stated that Bernadotte would have joined him, had he been willing to accept Bernadotte as a colleague.

Whatever efforts were made to gain this inveterate enemy of Napoleon had no other result than to put him in possession of the secret, and to fill him with a cautious desire to defeat the plot. Augereau and Jourdan, both members of the Five Hundred, and known Jacobins, were not approached at all. General Beumonville, the ex-Girondin, had joined.

Meanwhile the conspiracy was at work from the Sieyès-Talleyrand end of the line. The Council of Ancients, convoked at seven in the morning in order that unfriendly and unnotified deputies might not be present, voted that the councils should meet at St. Cloud, and that Napoleon should be invested with command of all the troops in Paris. This decree, brought to him at his house, was immediately read by him from the balcony, and heard with cheers by the officers below.

The Napoleonic campaign was based upon the assumption that the country was in danger, that the Jacobins had made a plot to overthrow everything, and that all good citizens must rush to the rescue. Upon this idea the council had voted its own removal to a place of safety, and had appointed Napoleon to defend the government from the plotters who were about to pounce upon it. Therefore when Napoleon read the decree, he called aloud to the brilliant throng of uniformed officers, “Will you help me save the country?” Wildly they shouted “Yes,” and waved their swords aloft. Bernadotte and a few others did not like the looks of things, and drew apart; but, with these exceptions, all were enthusiastic; and when Napoleon mounted his horse, they followed. He went to the Council of Ancients, where he took the oath of office, swearing not to the constitution then in existence, but that France should have a republic based on civil liberty and national representation.

The councils stood adjourned to St. Cloud, and Napoleon went into the gardens of the Tuileries to review the troops. He briefly harangued them, and was everywhere hailed by them with shouts of “Long live Bonaparte!” So strong ran the current that Fouché volunteered aid that had not been asked, and closed the city gates. “My God! what is that for?” said Napoleon. “Order the gates opened. I march with the nation, and I want nothing done which would recall the days when factious minorities terrorized the people.”

Augereau, seeing victory assured, regretted that he had not been taken into the confidence of his former chief, “Why, General, have you forgotten your old comrade, Augereau?” (Literally, “Your little Augereau.”) Napoleon had no confidence in him, no use for him, and virtually told him so.

The Directory fell of its own weight; Sieyès and Roger-Ducos, as it had been agreed, resigned. Gohier and Moulins would not violate the constitution, which forbade less than three Directors to consult together; and the third man, Barras, could not be got to act. The plot had caught him unprepared. He knew that something of the kind was on foot, and had tried to get on the inside; but he did not suspect that Napoleon would spring the trap so soon. He had forgotten one of the very essential elements in Napoleonic strategy. Barras bitterly denies that the calamity dropped upon him while he was in his bath. He strenuously contends that he was shaving. When Talleyrand and Bruix came walking in with a paper ready-drawn for him to sign, he signed. It was his resignation as Director. Bitterly exclaiming, “That—Bonaparte has fooled us all,” he made his swift preparations, left the palace, and was driven, under Napoleonic escort, to his country-seat of Gros-Bois. His signature had been obtained, partly by threats, partly by promises. He was to have protection, keep his ill-gotten wealth, and, perhaps, finger at least one more bribe. It is said that Talleyrand, in paying over this last, kept the lion’s share for himself.

The minister of war, Dubois de Crancé, had been running about seeking Directors who would give him the order to arrest Napoleon. How he expected to execute such an order if he got it, is not stated. As Napoleon was legally in command of eight thousand soldiers, who were even then bawling his name at the top of their voices, and as there were no other troops in Paris, it may have been a fortunate thing for the minister of war that he failed to get what he was running after.

From this distant point of view, the sight of Dubois de Crancé, chasing the Napoleonic programme, suggests a striking resemblance to the excitable small dog who runs, frantically barking, after the swiftly moving train of cars. “What would he do with it if he caught it?” is as natural a query in the one case as in the other.

So irresistible was the flow of the Bonaparte tide that even Lefebvre, commander of the guard of the Directory, a man who had not been taken into the secret, and who went to Bonaparte’s house in ill-humor, to know what such a movement of troops meant, was won by a word, a magnetic glance, a caressing touch, and the tactful gift of the sabre “which I wore at the Battle of the Pyramids.” “Will you, a republican, see the lawyers ruin the Republic? Will you help me?” “Let us throw the lawyers into the river!” answered the simple-minded soldier, promptly.

According to Fouché, it was about nine o’clock in the morning when Dubois found the two Directors, Gohier and Moulins, and asked for the order to arrest Bonaparte. While they were in doubt and hesitating, the secretary of the Directory, Lagarde, stated that he would not countersign such an order unless three Directors signed it.

“After all,” remarked Gohier, encouragingly, “how can they have a revolution at St. Cloud when I have the seals of the Republic in my possession?” Nothing legal could be attested without the seals. Gohier had the seals; hence, Gohier was master of the situation. Of such lawyers, in such a crisis, well might Lefebvre say, “Let us pitch them into the river.”

Quite relieved by the statement about the seals, Moulins remembered another crumb of comfort: he had been invited to meet Napoleon at dinner that very day at Gohier’s. Between the soup and the cheese, the two honest Directors would penetrate the designs of the schemer, Napoleon, and then checkmate him.

Moreau had already been commissioned to keep these confiding legists from running at large. However, it was not a great while before they realized the true situation, and then they came to a grotesque conclusion. They would go to Napoleon and talk him out of his purpose. Barras had already sent Bottot, his private secretary, to see if anything could be arranged. Napoleon had sternly said, “Tell that man I have done with him.” He had also addressed the astonished Bottot a short harangue intended for publication: “What have you done with that France I left so brilliant? In place of victory, I find defeat”—and so forth.

Gohier and Moulins were civilly treated, but their protests were set aside. They reminded Napoleon of the constitution, and of the oath of allegiance. He demanded their resignations. They refused, and continued to remonstrate. At this moment word came that Santerre was rousing the section St. Antoine. Napoleon said to Moulins, “Send word to your friend Santerre that at the first movement St. Antoine makes, I will have him shot.” No impression having been made by the Directors on Napoleon, nor by him on them, they went back to their temporary prison in the Luxembourg.

Thus far there had been no hitch in the Bonaparte programme. The alleged Jacobin plot nowhere showed head; the Napoleonic plot was in full and peaceable possession. There was no great excitement in Paris, no unusual crowds collecting anywhere. Proclamation had been issued to put the people at ease, and the attitude of the public was one of curiosity and expectancy, rather than alarm. Not a single man had rallied to the defence of the Directory. Their own guard had quietly departed to swell the ranks which were shouting, “Hurrah for Bonaparte!” Victor Grand, aide-de-camp to Barras, did indeed wait upon that forlorn Director at seven o’clock in the morning of the 18th, and report to him that one veteran of the guards was still at his post. “I am here alone,” said the old soldier; “all have left.”

Here and there were members of the councils and generals of the army who were willing enough to check the conspiracy of Napoleon, if they had only known how. With the Directory smashed, the councils divided and removed, the troops on Napoleon’s side, and Paris indifferent, how could Bernadotte, Jourdan, and Augereau do anything?

They could hold dismal little meetings behind closed doors, discuss the situation, and decide that Napoleon must be checked. But who was to bell the cat? At a meeting held by a few deputies and Bernadotte in the house of Salicetti, it was agreed that they should go to St. Cloud next morning, get Bernadotte appointed commander of the legislative guard, and that he should then combat the conspirators. Salicetti betrayed this secret to Napoleon; and, through Fouché, he frustrated the plan by adroitly detaining its authors in Paris next morning.

To make assurance doubly sure, orders were issued that any one attempting to harangue the troops should be cut down.

Sieyès advised that the forty or fifty members of the councils most violently opposed to the Bonaparte programme be arrested during the night. Napoleon refused. “I will not break the oath I took this morning.”

By noon of the 19th of Brumaire (November 10, 1799) the members of the councils were at St. Cloud, excited, suspicious, indignant. Even among the Ancients, a reaction against Napoleon had taken place. Many of the members had supported him on the 18th of Brumaire because they believed he would be satisfied with a place in the Directory. Since then further conferences and rumors had convinced them that he aimed at a dictatorship. Besides, those deputies who had been tricked out of attending the session of the day before, resented the wrong, and were ready to resist the tricksters. During the couple of hours which (owing to some blunder) they had to wait for their halls to be got ready, the members of the two councils had full opportunity to intermingle, consult, and measure the strength of the opposition. When at length they met in their respective chambers, they were in the frame of mind which produces that species of disturbance known as a parliamentary storm. Napoleon and his officers were grimly waiting in another room of the palace for the cut-and-dried programme to be proposed and voted. Sieyès had a coach and six ready at the gates to flee in case of mishap.

In the Five Hundred the uproar began with the session. The overwhelming majority was against Bonaparte—this much the members had already ascertained. But the opposition had not had time to arrange a programme. Deputy after deputy sprang to his feet and made motions, but opinions had not been focussed. One suggestion, however, carried; they would all swear again to support the constitution: this would uncover the traitors. It did nothing of the kind. The conspirators took the oath without a grimace—Lucien Bonaparte and all. As each member had to swear separately, some two hours were consumed in this childish attempt to uncover traitors and buttress a falling constitution.

In the Ancients, also, a tempest was brewing. When the men, selected by the Bonaparte managers, made their opening speeches and motions, opposition was heard, explanations were demanded, and awkward questions asked. Why move the councils to St. Cloud? Why vest extraordinary command in Bonaparte? Where was this great Jacobin plot? Give facts and name names!

No satisfaction could be given to such demands. The confusion was increased by the report made to the body that four of the Directors had resigned. Proceedings were suspended until the Council of Five Hundred could receive this report, and some action be suggested for filling the places thus made vacant.

At this point Napoleon entered the hall. He could hear the wrangle going on in the Five Hundred, but he had not expected trouble in the Ancients. The situation had begun to look dangerous. Augereau, thinking it safe to vent his true feeling, had jeeringly said to Napoleon, “Now you are in a pretty fix.”

“It was worse at Arcole,” was the reply.

Napoleon had harangued sympathetic Jacobins in small political meetings; but to address a legislative body was new to him. His talk to the Ancients was incoherent and weak. He could not give the true reasons for his conduct, and the pretended reason could not be strengthened by explanation or fact. He was asked to specify the dangers which he said threatened the Republic, asked to describe the conspiracy, and name the conspirators. He could not do so, and after rambling all round the subject, his friends pulled him out of the chamber. Notwithstanding his disastrous speech, the conspiracy asserted its strength, and the Council of Ancients was held to the Bonaparte programme. Napoleon at once went to the Council of Five Hundred, and his appearance, accompanied by armed men, caused a tumult. “Down with the Dictator! For shame! Was it for this you conquered. Get out! Put him out!” Excited members sprang to their feet shouting, gesticulating, threatening. Rough hands were laid upon him. Knives may have been drawn. The Corsican, Peretti, had threatened Mirabeau with a knife in the assembly hall: Tallien had menaced Robespierre with a dagger; there is no inherent improbability in the story that the Corsican, Arena, a bitter enemy of Napoleon, now struck at him with a knife. At all events, the soldiers thought Napoleon in such danger that they drew him out of the press, General Gardanne (it is said) bearing him backward in his arms.

“Hors la loi!” was shouted in the hall—the cry before which Robespierre had gone down. “Outlaw him! Outlaw him!”

Lucien Bonaparte, president of the body, refused to put the motion. The anger of the Assembly then vented itself upon Lucien, who vainly attempted to be heard in defence of his brother. “He wanted to explain,” cried Lucien, “and you would not hear him!” Finding the tumult grow worse, and the demand that he put the motion grow more imperative, he stripped himself of the robe of office, sent for an escort of soldiers, and was borne out by Napoleon’s grenadiers.

While the council chamber rang with its uproar, there had been consternation outside. For a moment the Bonaparte managers hesitated. They had not foreseen such a check. Napoleon himself harangued the troops; and telling them that an attempt had been made on his life, was answered by cries of “Long live Bonaparte!” It was noticed that he changed his position every moment, zig-zagging as much as possible, like a man who feared some assassin might aim at him from a window in the palace. He said to Sieyès, “They want to outlaw me!” Seated in his carriage, ready to run, but not yet dismayed, the ex-priest is said to have answered: “Then do you outlaw them. Put them out.” Napoleon, reëntering the room where the officers were sitting or standing, in dismay and inaction, struck the table with his riding-whip, and said, “I must put an end to this.” They all followed him out. Lucien, springing upon a horse, harangued the troops, calling upon them to drive out from the hall the factious minority which was intimidating the virtuous majority of the council. The soldiers hesitated. Drawing his sword, Lucien shouted, “I swear that I will stab my brother to the heart if ever he attempt anything against the liberties of the people!”

This was dramatic, and it succeeded. The troops responded with cheers, and Napoleon saw that they were at length ready. “Now I will soon settle those gentlemen!” He gave Murat the signal; Murat and Le Clerc took the lead; and to the roll of drums the file advanced. The legislators would have spoken to the troops, but the drums drowned the protest. Before the advancing line of steel, the members fled their hall, and the Bonaparte campaign was decided.

But once more Sieyès was the giver of sage advice. Legal forms must be respected. France was not yet ready for the bared sword of the military despot. The friendly members of the Council of Five Hundred must be sought out and brought back to the hall. The deputies were not yet gone, were still lingering in astonishment and grief and rage about the palace. Lucien Bonaparte, the hero of this eventful day, contrived to assemble about thirty members of the Council of Five Hundred who would vote the Bonaparte programme through. They spent most of the night adopting the measures proposed. It was past midnight when the decrees of this Rump Parliament were presented to the Ancients for ratification. In that assembly the Bonaparte influence was again supreme, and no bayonets were needed there. Napoleon, Sieyès, and Roger-Ducos having been named provisional consuls, appeared before the Five Hundred between midnight and day to take the oath of office.

The legislative councils then stood adjourned till February 19, 1800. Commissions had been selected to aid in framing the constitution. Lucien made the last speech of the Revolution, and, according to Mr. Lanfrey, it was the most bombastic piece of nonsense and falsehood that had been uttered during the entire period. He compared the Tennis Court Oath to the work just done, and said that, as the former had given birth to liberty, this day’s work had given it manhood and permanence.

Not until the last detail of the work had been finished and put in legal form, did Napoleon quit St. Cloud. He had even dictated a proclamation in which he gave to the public his own account of the events of the day. He again laid stress on the Jacobin plot which had threatened the Republic, he again renewed his vows to that Republic, he praised the conduct of the Ancients, and claimed that the violence used against the Five Hundred had been made necessary by the factious men, would-be assassins, who had sought to intimidate the good men of that body. This proclamation was posted in Paris before day.

To humor the fiction, if it was a fiction, that Napoleon had been threatened with knives, a grenadier, Thomas Thomé, was brought forward, who said that he had warded off the blow. He showed where his clothes had been cut or torn. As soon as the stage could be properly arranged for the scene, the amiable and grateful Josephine publicly embraced Thomé and made him a present of jewels. Napoleon promoted him later to a captaincy.

The men who stood by Napoleon in this crisis left him under a debt which he never ceased to acknowledge and to pay. With one possible exception, he loaded them with honors and riches. The possible exception was Collot, the banker, who, according to Fouché, supplied the campaign fund. The bare fact that Napoleon did not at any time treat Collot with favor, is strong circumstantial evidence that he rendered no such aid at this crisis as created a debt of gratitude.

It was morning, but before daybreak, when Napoleon, tired but exultant, reached home from St. Cloud. As he threw himself upon the bed by the side of Josephine, he called out to his secretary:—

“Remember, Bourrienne, we shall sleep in the Luxembourg to-morrow.”

CHAPTER XXI

On Sunday evening, Brumaire 19, Napoleon had been a desperate political gambler, staking fortune and life upon a throw; on Monday morning following he calmly seated himself in the armchair at the palace of the Luxembourg and began to give laws to France. He took the first place and held it, not by any trick or legal contrivance, but by his native imperiousness and superiority. In genius, in cunning, in courage, he was the master of the doctrinaire Sieyès, and of the second-rate lawyer, Roger-Ducos; besides, he held the army in the hollow of his hand.

The sad comfort of saying “I told you so,” was all that was left to Sieyès. “Gentlemen, we have a master,” said he to his friends that Monday evening; and the will of this imperious colleague he did not seriously try to oppose. In the very first meeting of the consuls, Napoleon had won the complete supremacy by refusing to share in the secret fund which the Directors had hidden away for their own uses. They had emptied the treasury, and had spent $15,000,000 in advance of the revenues, yet they had laid by for the rainy day which might overtake themselves personally the sum of 800,000 francs or about $160,000. Sieyès blandly called attention to this fact, and proposed that he, Ducos, and Napoleon should divide the fund. “Share it between you,” said Napoleon, who refused to touch it.

NAPOLEON

As First Consul, at Malmaison. From a painting by J. B. Isabey

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Without the slightest apparent effort, Napoleon’s genius expanded to the great work of reorganizing the Republic. Heretofore he had been a man of camps and battle-fields; but he had so completely mastered everything connected with the recruiting equipment and maintenance of an army, had served so useful an apprenticeship in organizing the Italian republics, and had been to school to such purpose in dealing with politicians of all sorts, negotiating treaties, and sounding the secrets of parties, that he really came to his great task magnificently trained by actual experience.

In theory the new government of the three consuls was only experimental, limited to sixty days. The two councils had not been dissolved. Purged of about sixty violently anti-Bonaparte members, the Ancients and the Five Hundred were but adjourned to the 19th of February, 1800. If by that time the consuls had not been able to offer to France a new scheme of government which would be accepted, the councils were to meet again and decide what should be done. On paper, therefore, Napoleon was a consul on probation, a pilot on a trial trip. In his own eyes he was permanent chief of the State; and his every motion was made under the impulse of that conviction.

Determined that there should be no reaction, that the scattered forces of the opposition should have no common cause and centre of revolt, he stationed his soldiers at threatened points; and then used all the art of the finished politician to deceive and divide the enemy. To the royalists he held out the terror of a Jacobin revival; to the Jacobin, the dread of a Bourbon restoration. To the clergy he hinted a return of the good old days when no man could legally be born, innocently married, decently die, or be buried with hope of heaven, unless a priest had charge of the functions. But above all was his pledge of strong government, one which would quell faction, restore order, secure property, guarantee civil liberty, and make the Republic prosperous and happy. The belief that he would make good his word was the foundation of the almost universal approval with which his seizure of power was regarded. He was felt to be the one man who could drag the Republic out of the ditch, reinspire the armies, cleanse the public service, restore the ruined finances, establish law and order, and blend into a harmonious nationality the factions which were rending France. Besides, it was thought that a strong government would be the surest guarantee of peace with foreign nations, as it was believed that the weakness of the Directory was an encouragement to the foreign enemies of the country.

One of Napoleon’s first acts was to proclaim amnesty for political offences. He went in person to set free the hostages imprisoned in the Temple. Certain priests and émigrés who had been cast into prison, he released. The law of hostages, which held relatives responsible for the conduct of relatives, he repealed.

The victims of Fructidor (September, 1797) who had been banished, he recalled—Pichegru and Aubrey excepted.

Mr. Lanfrey says that this exception from the pardon is proof of Napoleon’s “mean and cruel nature.” Let us see. Pichegru, a republican general, in command of a republican army, had taken gold from the Bourbons, and had agreed to betray his army and his country. Not only that, he had purposely allowed that army to be beaten by the enemy. As Desaix remarked, Pichegru was perhaps the only general known to history who had ever done a thing of the kind. Was Napoleon mean and cruel in letting such a man remain in exile? Had Washington captured and shot Benedict Arnold, would that have been proof that Washington’s nature was mean and cruel? In leaving Pichegru where he was, Napoleon acted as leniently as possible with a self-convicted traitor.

As to Aubrey, he had held a position of the highest trust under the Republic, while he was at heart a royalist; he had used that position to abet royalist conspiracies; he had gone out of his way to degrade Napoleon, had refused to listen to other members of the government in Napoleon’s favor, and had urged against Napoleon two reasons which revealed personal malice,—Napoleon’s youth, and Napoleon’s politics. To pardon such a man might have been magnanimous; to leave him under just condemnation was neither mean nor cruel.

Under the law of that time, there were about 142,000 émigrés who had forfeited life and estate. They had staked all in opposition to the Revolution, had lost, and had been put under penalty. Almost immediately, Napoleon began to open the way for the return of these exiles and for the restoration of their property. As rapidly as possible, he broadened the scope of his leniency until all émigrés had been restored to citizenship save the very few (about one thousand) who were so identified with the Bourbons, or who had so conspicuously made war on France, that their pardon was not deemed judicious.

Priests were gradually relieved from all penalties and allowed to exercise their office. Churches were used by Christians on the seventh-day Sabbath, and by Theophilanthropists on the Decadi—the tenth-day holiday. The one sect came on the seventh day with holy water, candles, holy image, beads, crucifix, song, prayer, and sermon on faith, hope, and charity,—with the emphasis thrown on the word, Faith. The other sect came on the tenth day with flowers for the altar, hymns and addresses in honor of those noble traits which constitute lofty character, and with the emphasis laid upon such words as Brotherhood, Charity, Mercy, and Love.

It was not a great while, of course, before the Christians (so recently pardoned) found it impossible to tolerate the tenth-day people; and they were quietly suppressed in the Concordat.

One of the Directors, Larévellière, was an ardent Theophilanthropist, and he had made vigorous effort to enroll Napoleon on that side, soon after the Italian campaign. The sect, being young and weak, found no favor whatever in the eyes of the ambitious politician; and he who in Egypt sat cross-legged among the ulemas and muftis, demurely taking lessons from the Koran, had no hesitation in repelling the advances of Theosophy.

Going, perhaps, too far in his leniency to the émigrés (Napoleon said later that it was the greatest mistake he ever made!), the new government certainly erred in its severity toward the Jacobins. Some fifty-nine of these were proscribed for old offences, and sentenced to banishment. Public sentiment declared against this arbitrary ex post facto measure so strongly that it was not enforced.

The men of the wealthy class were drawn to the government by the repeal of the law called the Forced Loan. This was really an income tax, the purpose of which was to compel the capitalists to contribute to the support of the State. The Directors, fearing that the rich men who were subject to the tax might not make true estimates and returns, assessed it by means of a jury. Dismal and resonant wails arose from among the stricken capitalists.

Although the government created the tax as a loan, to be repaid from the proceeds of the national domain, the antagonism it excited was intense. In England, Mr. Pitt had (1798) imposed a tax upon incomes,—very heavy in its demands, and containing the progressive principle of the larger tax for the larger income,—but the Directors were too feeble to mould the same instrument to their purpose in France. Faultily assessed, stubbornly resisted, irregularly collected, it yielded the Directory more odium than cash.

The five per cent funds which had fallen to one and a half per cent of their par value before the 18th of Brumaire, had risen at once to twelve per cent, and were soon quoted at seventeen.

Confidence having returned, Napoleon was able to borrow 12,000,000 francs for the immediate necessities of the State. The income tax having been abolished, an advance of twenty-five per cent was made in the taxes on realty, personalty, and polls. Heretofore, these taxes had been badly assessed, badly collected, imperfectly paid into the treasury. Napoleon at once remodelled the methods of assessment, collection, and accounting. Tax collectors were required to give bonds in cash; were made responsible for the amount of the taxes legally assessed; were given a certain time within which to make collection, and were required to give their own bills for the amount assessed. These bills, backed by the cash deposit of the collectors, became good commercial paper immediately, and thus the government was supplied with funds even before the taxes had been paid.

It was with this cash deposit of the collectors that Napoleon paid for the stock which the government took in the Bank of France which he organized in January, 1800.

There yet remained in the hands of the government a large amount of the confiscated land, and some of this was sold. To these sources of revenue were soon added the contributions levied upon neighboring and dependent states, such as Genoa, Holland, and the Hanse towns.

Under the Directory, tax-collecting and recruiting for the army had been badly done because the work had been left to local authorities. The central government could not act upon the citizen directly; it had to rely upon these local authorities. When, therefore, the local authorities failed to act, the machinery of administration was at a standstill. Napoleon changed all this, and devised a system by which the government dealt directly with the citizen. It was a national officer, assisted by a council, who assessed and collected taxes. The prefects appointed by Napoleon took the place of the royal intendants of the Bourbon system. Holding office directly from the central government, and accountable to it alone, these local authorities became cogs in the wheel of a vast, resistless machine controlled entirely by the First Consul. So perfect was the system of internal administration which he devised, that it has stood the shock of all the changes which have since occurred in France.

Keeping himself clear of parties, and adhering steadily to the policy of fusion, Napoleon gave employment to men of all creeds. He detested rogues, speculators, embezzlers. He despised mere talkers and professional orators. He wanted workers, strenuous and practical. He cared nothing for antecedents, nor for private morals. He knew the depravity of Fouché and Talleyrand, yet used them. He gave employment to royalists, Jacobins, Girondins, Deists, Christians, and infidels. “Can he do the work, and will he do it honestly?” these were the supreme tests. No enmity would deprive him of the service of the honest and capable. No friendship would tolerate the continuance in office of the dishonest or incompetent. Resolute in this policy of taking men as he found them, of making the most of the materials at hand, he gave high employment to many a man whom he personally disliked. He gave to Talleyrand the ministry of foreign affairs, to Fouché that of the police, to Carnot that of war. To Moreau he gave the largest of French armies; Augereau, Bernadotte, Jourdan, he continued to employ. “I cannot create men; I must use those I find.” Again he said, “The 18th of Brumaire is a wall of brass, separating the past from the present.”

If they were capable, if they were honest, it did not matter to Napoleon whether they had voted to kill the King or to save him; he put them to work for France. Once in office, they must work. No sinecures, no salaries paid as hush money, or indirect bribe, or pension for past service, or screen for the privileged; without exception all must earn their wages. “Come, gentlemen!” Napoleon would say cheerfully to counsellors of State who had already been hammering away for ten or twelve hours, “Come, gentlemen, it is only two o’clock! Let us get on to something else; we must earn the money the State pays us.” He himself labored from twelve to eighteen hours each day, and his activity ran the whole gamut of public work,—from the inspection of the soldier’s outfit, the planning of roads, bridges, quays, monuments, churches, public buildings, the selection of a sub-prefect, the choice of a statue for the palace, the review of a regiment, the dictation of a despatch, or the details of a tax-digest, to the grand outlines of organic law, national policy, and the movements of all the armies of the Republic.

Under the Directory, the military administration had broken down so completely that the war office had lost touch with the army. Soldiers were not fed, clothed, or paid by the State. They could subsist only by plundering friends and foes alike. Frightful ravages were committed by civil and military agents of the French Republic in Italy, Switzerland, and along the German frontier. When Napoleon applied to the late minister of war, Dubois de Crancé, for information about the army, he could get none. Special couriers had to be sent to the various commands to obtain the most necessary reports. Under such mismanagement, desertions had become frequent in the army, and recruiting had almost ceased. The old patriotic enthusiasm had disappeared; the “Marseillaise” performed at the theatres, by order of the Directory, was received with hoots. To breathe new life into Frenchmen, to inspire them again with confidence, hope, enthusiasm, was the great task of the new government. The Jacobin was to be made to tolerate the royalist, the Girondin, the Feuillant, and the priest. Each of these in turn must be made to tolerate each other and the Jacobin. The noble must consent to live quietly within the Republic which had confiscated his property, and by the side of the man who now owned it. The republican must dwell in harmony with the emigrant aristocracy which had once trodden him to the earth, and which had leagued all Europe against France in the efforts to restore old abuses. In the equality created by law, the democrat must grow accustomed to the sight of nobles and churchmen in office; and the man of the highest birth must be content to work with a colleague whose birth was of the lowest. Ever since the Revolution began, there had been alternate massacres of Catholics by revolutionists, and of revolutionists by Catholics. It is impossible to say which shed the greatest amount of blood—the Red Terror of the Jacobins, or the White Terror of the Catholics. Fanaticism in the one case as in the other had shown a ferocity of the most relentless description. The cruel strife was now to be put down, and the men who had been cutting each other’s throats were to be made to keep the peace.

Napoleon, in less than a year, had completely triumphed over the difficulties of his position. The machinery of state was working with resistless vigor throughout the realm. The taxes were paid, the laws enforced, order reëstablished, brigandage put down, La Vendée pacified, civil strife ended. The credit of the government was restored, public funds rose, confidence returned. Men of all parties, of all creeds, found themselves working zealously to win the favor of him who worked harder than any mortal known to history.

Meanwhile Sieyès and the two commissions had been at work on the new constitution. Dreading absolute monarchy on the one hand, and unbridled democracy on the other, Sieyès had devised a plan of government which, as he believed, combined the best features of both systems. There was to be universal suffrage. Every tax-paying adult Frenchman who cared enough about the franchise to go and register should have a vote. But these voters did not choose office-holders. They simply elected those from whom the office-holders should be chosen. The great mass of the people were to elect one-tenth of their number, who would be the notables of the commune. These would, in turn, elect one-tenth of their number, who would be the notables of the department. These again would elect one-tenth, who would be the national notables. From these notables would be chosen the office-holders,—national, departmental, and communal. This selection was made, not by the people, but by the executive. There was to be a council of state working immediately with the executive by whom its members were appointed. This council acting with the executive would propose laws to the tribunate, an assembly which could debate these prepared measures and which could send three of its members to the legislative council to favor or oppose the law. This legislature could hear the champions of the tribunate, and also the delegates from the council of state; and after the speeches of these advocates, pro and con, the legislature, as a constitutional jury which heard debate without itself debating, could vote on the proposed law. Besides, there was to be a Senate, named by the executive, holding office for life. This Senate was to choose the members of the legislative council and of the tribunate, as well as the judges of the high court of appeals. In the Senate was lodged the power of deciding whether laws were constitutional.

According to the Sieyès plan, there were to have been two consuls, of war and of peace respectively; and these consuls were to have named ministers to carry on the government through their appointees. Above the two consuls was to be placed a grand elector, who should be lodged in a palace, maintained in great state, magnificently salaried, but who should have no power beyond the choice of the consuls. If the Senate should be of the opinion, at any time, that the grand elector was not conducting himself properly, it could absorb him into its own body, and choose another.

Sieyès had been one of the charter members of the revolutionary party, had helped to rock the cradle when the infant was newly born, had lived through all the changes of its growth, manhood, madness, and decline. Much of the permanent good work of the Revolution was his. He now wished to frame for the French such a fundamental law as would guard their future against the defects of their national character, while it preserved to them what was best in the great principles of the Revolution.

Once a churchman himself, he knew the Church and dreaded it. He feared that the priests, working through superstitious fears upon the minds of ignorant masses, would finally educate them into hostility to the new order—train them to believe that the Old Régime had been the best, and should be restored. To get rid of this danger (the peril of royalists and priests from above acting upon the ignorant masses below), the far-sighted statesman, dealing with France as it was, did not favor popular sovereignty. Only by indirection were the masses to be allowed to choose their rulers. The people could choose the local notables from whom the local officers must be taken; and these local notables could vote for departmental notables from whom departmental officers should be chosen; and those departmental notables would select from their own numbers the national notables from whom holders for national positions must be taken.

These electoral bodies grew smaller as they went upward. The 5,000,000 voters of the nation first elected 500,000 local notables; these chose from themselves 50,000 departmental electors; and these in turn took by vote 5000 of their own number to constitute the electoral class for national appointments. The executive filled all offices from these various groups. From below, the masses furnished the material to be used in governing; from above, the executive made its own selection from that material.

This was far from being representative government; but it was far from being mere despotism, military or otherwise. It was considered as free a system as France was then prepared for; and he is indeed a wise man who knows that she would have done better under a constitution which granted unlimited popular control. The French had not been educated or trained in republican government, and the efforts which had been made to uphold a republic in the absence of such education and experience had resulted in the dictatorship of the Great Committee and of the Directory.

Napoleon and Sieyès were agreed on the subject of popular suffrage; they were far apart on the question of the executive. By nature “imperious, obstinate, masterful,” the great Corsican had no idea of becoming a fatuous, functionless elector. “What man of talent and honor would consent to such a rôle,—to feed and fatten like a pig in a stye on so many millions a year?” Before this scornful opposition the grand elector vanished. In his place was put a First Consul, in whom were vested all executive powers. Two associate consuls were given him, but their functions in no way trenched upon his.

The constitution, rapidly completed, was submitted to the people by the middle of December, 1799. It was adopted by three million votes—the negative vote being insignificant.

“This constitution is founded on the true principles of representative government, on the sacred rights of property, equality, and liberty.” “The Revolution is ended.” So ran the proclamation published by the provisional government.

It was a foregone conclusion that Napoleon would be named First Consul in the new government which the people had ratified. It is no less true that he dictated the choice of his two colleagues,—Cambacérès and Lebrun. These were men whose ability was not of the alarming kind, and who could be relied upon to count the stars whenever Napoleon, at midday, should declare that it was night. Sieyès was soothed with the gift of the fine estate of Crosne, and the presidency of the Senate. Roger-Ducos also sank peacefully into the bosom of that august, well-paid Assembly.

It was on Christmas Eve of 1799 that the government of the three permanent consuls began; by the law of its creation it was to live for ten years.

This consular government was a magnificent machine, capable of accomplishing wonders when controlled by an able ruler. The gist of it was concentration and uniformity. All the strength of the nation was placed at the disposal of its chief. He could plan and execute, legislate and enforce legislation, declare war and marshal armies, and make peace. He was master at home and abroad. In him was centred France. He laid down her laws, fixed her taxes, dictated her system of schools, superintended her roads and bridges, policed her towns and cities, licensed her books, named the number of her armies; pensioned the old, the weak, and the deserving; censored her press, controlled rewards and punishments,—his finger ever on the pulse-beat of the nation, his will its master, his ideals its inspiration.

No initiative remained with the people. Political liberty was a reminiscence. The town bridge could not be rebuilt or the lights of the village changed without authority granted from the Consul or his agents. “Confidence coming from below; power descending from above,” was the principle of the new Sieyès system. Under just such a scheme it was possible that it might happen that the power of the ruler would continue to come down long after the confidence of the subject had ceased to go up.

The Revolution had gone to the extreme limits of popular sovereignty by giving to every citizen the ballot, to every community the right of local self-government; and to the masses the privilege of electing judicial and military as well as political officers. France was said to be cut up into forty thousand little republics. The central authority was almost null; the local power almost absolute. It was this federative system carried to excess (as under the Articles of the Confederation in our own country) which had made necessary the despotism of the Great Committee. The consular constitution was the reverse of this. Local government became null, the central authority almost absolute. Prefects and sub-prefects, appointed by the executive, directed local affairs, nominally assisted by local boards, which met once a year. Even the mayors held their offices from the central power. From the lowest round of the official ladder to the highest, was a steady climb of one rung above the other. The First Consul was chief, restrained by the constitution; below him, moving at his touch, came all the other officers of state.

Under Napoleon the burden of supporting the State rested on the shoulders of the strong. Land, wealth, paid the direct taxes; the customs duties were levied mainly upon luxuries, not upon the necessaries of life. Prior to the Revolution the taxes of the unprivileged had amounted to more than three-fourths of the net produce of land and labor. Under the Napoleonic system the taxes amounted to less than one-fourth of the net income.

Before the Revolution the poor man lost fifty-nine days out of every year in service to the State by way of tax. Three-fifths of the French were in this condition. After the Revolution the artisan, mechanic, and day laborer lost from nine to sixteen days per year. Before the Revolution Champfort could say, “In France seven millions of men beg and twelve millions are unable to give anything.” To the same purport is the testimony of Voltaire that one-third of the French people had nothing.

Under Napoleon an American traveller, Colonel Pinkney could write, “There are no tithes, no church taxes, no taxation of the poor. All the taxes together do not go beyond one-sixth of a man’s rent-roll.”

Before the Revolution the peasant proprietor and small farmer, out of 100 francs net income, paid 14 francs to the seigneur, 14 to the Church, and 53 to the State. After Napoleon’s rise to power, the same farmer out of the same amount of income paid nothing to the seigneur, nothing to the Church, very little to the State, and only 21 francs to the commune and department. Under the Bourbons such a farmer kept for his own use less than 20 francs out of 100; under Napoleon he kept 79.

Under the Bourbons the citizen was compelled to buy from the government seven pounds of salt every year at the price of thirteen sous per pound, for himself and each member of his family. Under Napoleon he bought no more than he needed, and the price was two sous per pound.

Under the Bourbons the constant dread of the peasant, for centuries, had been Famine—national, universal, horribly destructive Famine. With Napoleon’s rise to power, the spectre passed away; and, excepting local and accidental dearths in 1812 and 1817, France heard of Famine no more.

Napoleon believed that each generation should pay its own way. He had no grudge against posterity, and did not wish to live at its expense. Hence he “floated” no loans, issued no bonds, and piled up no national debt.

The best of the Bourbon line, Henry IV., lives in kindly remembrance because he wished the time to come when the French peasant might, once a week, have a fowl for the pot. Compare this with what Lafayette writes (in 1800): “You know how many beggars there were, people dying of hunger in our country. We see no more of them. The peasants are richer, the land better tilled, and the women better clad.”

Morris Birkbeck, an English traveller, writes, “Everybody assures me that the riches and comfort of the farmers have been doubled in twenty-five years.

“From Dieppe to this place, Montpellier, we have not seen among the laboring people one such famished, worn-out, wretched object as may be met in every parish in England, I had almost said on almost every farm.... A really rich country, and yet there are few rich individuals.”

As one reads paragraphs like these, the words of John Ruskin come to mind, “Though England is deafened with spinning-wheels, her people have no clothes; though she is black with digging coal, her people have no fuel, and they die of cold; and though she has sold her soul for gain, they die of hunger!”

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How the government which was overthrown by Napoleon could have gone on much longer even Mr. Lanfrey does not explain. It had neither money nor credit; the very cash box of the opera had been seized to obtain funds to forward couriers to the armies. It had neither honesty nor capacity. Talleyrand, treating with the American envoys, declined to do business till his hands had been crossed, according to custom; brigands robbed mail coaches in the vicinity of Paris; the public roads and canals were almost impassable; rebellion defied the government in La Vendée. The Directory did not even have the simple virtue of patriotism; Barras was sold to the Bourbons, and held in his possession letters-patent issued to him by the Count of Provence, appointing him royal commissioner to proclaim and reëstablish the monarchy. “Had I known of the letters-patent on the 18th of Brumaire,” exclaimed Napoleon afterward, “I would have pinned them upon his breast and had him shot.”

CHAPTER XXII

All honor to the ruler who commences his reign by words and deeds which suggest that he has somewhere heard and heeded the golden text, “Blessed are the peacemakers!”

There had been riots in France and the clash of faction; there had been massacre of Catholic by Protestant and of Protestant by Catholic; there had been civil war in La Vendée. Napoleon had no sooner become master than his orders went forth for peace, and a year had not passed before quiet reigned from Paris to all the frontiers. Royally he pardoned all who would accept his clemency, giving life and power to many a secret foe who was to help pull him down in the years to come. France tranquillized within, the First Consul turned to the enemies without,—to the foreign powers which had combined against her.

On Christmas Day, December 25, 1799, Napoleon wrote to the King of England and to the Emperor of Austria nobly worded letters praying that the war might cease. Written with his own hand, and addressed personally to these monarchs, the question of etiquette is raised by royalist writers. They contend that letters, so addressed, were improper. Think of the coldness of nature which would make the lives of thousands of men turn on a pitiful point like that! These letters were not sincere, according to Napoleon’s detractors. How they come to know this, they cannot explain; but they know it. The average reader, not gifted with the acumen of the professional detractor, can only be certain of the plain facts of the case, and those are, that Napoleon made the first overtures for peace; that his words have the ring of sincerity, and the virtue of being positive; and that his conciliatory advances were repelled, mildly by Austria, insolently by Great Britain.

So arrogant was the letter of reply which Grenville, the English minister, sent to the French foreign office that even George III. disapproved of it. With incredible superciliousness the French were told by the English aristocrat that they had better restore the Bourbons under whose rule France had enjoyed so much prosperity at home and consideration abroad. Inasmuch as England had but recently despoiled Bourbon France of nearly every scrap of territory she had in the world,—Canada, India, etc.,—Grenville’s letter was as stupidly scornful of fact as it was of good manners. The Bourbon “glory” which had sunk so low that France had not even been invited to the feast when Poland was devoured; so low that the French flag had been covered with shameful defeat on land and sea, was a subject which might have made even a British cabinet officer hesitate before he took the wrong side of it.

The honors of the correspondence remained with Napoleon; and by way of retort to Grenville’s plea, that the Bourbons were the legitimate rulers of France, whom the people had no right to displace, the surly Englishman was reminded that the logic of his argument would bring the Stuarts back to the throne of England, from which a revolting people had driven them. The truth is that Pitt’s ministry believed France exhausted. Malta and Egypt were both coveted by Great Britain, and it was believed that each would soon be lost by France. It was for reasons like these that Napoleon’s overtures were rejected.

With the Emperor of Russia the First Consul was more fortunate. The Czar had not liked the manner in which he had been used by his allies, England and Austria. In fact, he had been shabbily treated by both. Added to this was his dissatisfaction with England because of her designs on Malta, in whose fate he took an interest as protector of the Knights of St. John.

Napoleon cleverly played upon the passions of the Czar (who was more or less of a lunatic), flattered him by releasing the Russian prisoners held by France, and sending them home in new uniforms. Soon Napoleon had no admirer more ardent than the mad autocrat Paul, who wrote him a personal letter proposing a joint expedition against India.

Prussia had declared her neutrality. Napoleon sent Duroc and a letter to the young King urging an alliance, Hamburg being the bait dangled before the Prussian monarch’s eyes. He was gracious, and he was tempted, but he did not yield: Prussia remained neutral.

Great Britain had good reasons for wishing for the restoration of the Bourbons, from whose feeble hands so much of the colonial Empire of France had dropped; she had good reason to believe that a continuation of the war would increase her own colonial empire, but the manner in which she repelled Napoleon’s advances gave to France just the insult that was needed to arouse her in passionate support of the First Consul.

Forced to continue the war, his preparations were soon made.

* * * * *

It may be doubted whether any victory that he ever won held a higher place in the memory of the great captain than that of Marengo. He never ceased to recall it as one of the most glorious days of his life. We see a proof of this in the Memoirs of General Marbot. The year was 1807, the battle of Eylau had been fought, the armies were in motion again; and Lannes, hard-pressed by the Russian host at Friedland, had sent his aide-de-camp speeding to the Emperor to hurry up support.

“Mounted on my swift Lisette, I met the Emperor leaving Eylau. His face was beaming. He made me ride up by his side, and as we galloped I had to give him an account of what had taken place on the field of battle before I had left. The report finished, the Emperor smiled, and asked, “Have you a good memory?”—“Pretty fair, sire.”—“Well, what anniversary is it to-day, the 14th of June?”—“Marengo.”—“Yes,” replied the Emperor, “and I am going to beat the Russians to-day as I beat the Austrians at Marengo.” And as Napoleon reached the field, and rode along the lines, he called out to his troops, “It is a lucky day, the anniversary of Marengo!” The troops cheered him as he rode, and they won for him the great battle of Friedland.”

The old uniform, sabre, spurs, hat, he had worn on that sunny day in Italy, in 1800, he scrupulously kept. In the year he was crowned Emperor he carried Josephine to see the plain he had immortalized, fought again in sham fight the battle of Marengo, wearing the faded uniform he had worn on that eventful day.

Even on his last journey to dismal St. Helena, it seems that these relics of a glorious past were not forgotten. We read that when the dead warrior lay stark and stiff in his coffin on that distant rock, they spread over his feet “the cloak he had worn at Marengo.”

* * * * *

It was indeed a brilliant campaign, great in conception, execution, results.

Moreau’s army lay upon the Rhine, more than one hundred thousand strong. Masséna with the army of Italy guarded the Apennines, facing overwhelming odds. From Paris the First Consul urged Masséna to hold his ground, and Moreau to advance. Against the latter was a weak Austrian commander, Kray, and forces about equal to the French. Much time was lost, Napoleon proposing a plan which Moreau thought too bold, and was not willing to risk. Finally the First Consul yielded, gave Moreau a free hand, and the advance movement began. The Rhine was crossed, and Moreau began a series of victories over Kray which brought him to the Danube. But the Austrians, taking the offensive against the army of Italy, cut it in two, and shut up Masséna in Genoa, where the English fleet could coöperate against the French.

It was then that Napoleon, almost by stealth, got together another army, composed partly of conscripts, partly of veterans from the armies of La Vendée and Holland, and hurried it to the foot of the Alps. The plan was to pass these mountains, fall upon the Austrian rear, and redeem Italy at a blow. His enemies heard of the Army of the Reserve which he was collecting at Dijon. Spies went there, saw a few thousand raw recruits, and reported that Napoleon had no Army of Reserve—that he was merely trying to bluff old Melas into loosening his grip on Genoa. It suited Napoleon precisely to have his new army treated as a joke. With consummate art he encouraged the jest while he collected, drilled, and equipped at different points the various detachments with which he intended to march.

Under the constitution the First Consul could not legally command the army. He was not forbidden, however, to be present as an interested spectator while some one else commanded. So he appointed Berthier, General-in-chief.

Early in May, 1800, all was ready, and the First Consul left Paris to become the interested spectator of the movements of the Army of the Reserve. At the front, form and fiction gave way to actuality, and Napoleon’s word was that of chief. At four different passes the troops entered the mountains, the main army crossing by the Great St. Bernard.

Modern students, who sit in snug libraries and rectify the arduous campaigns of the past, have discovered that Napoleon’s passage of the Alps was no great thing after all. They say that his troops had plenty to eat, drink, and wear; thousands of mules and peasants to aid in the heavy work of the march; no foes to fight on the way; and that his march was little more than a military parade. Indeed, it was one of those things which looked a deal easier after it had been done than before. And yet it must have been a notable feat to have scaled those mighty barriers on which lay the snow, to have threaded those paths up in the air over which the avalanche hung, and below which the precipice yawned—all this having been done with such speed that the French were in Italy before the Austrians knew they had left France. Much of the route was along narrow ledges where the shepherd walked warily. To take a fully equipped army over these rocky shelves,—horse, foot, artillery, ammunition, supplies,—seems even at this admire-nothing day to have been a triumph of organization, skill, foresight, and hardihood. Only a few months previously a Russian army, led by Suwarow, had ventured to cross the Alps—and had crossed; but only half of them got out alive.

In less than a week the French made good the daring attempt, and were in the valleys of Italy marching upon the Austrian rear. They had brought cavalry and infantry almost without loss. Cannon had been laid in hollowed logs and pulled up by ropes. The little fort of Bard, stuck right in the road out of the mountains, had, for a moment, threatened the whole enterprise with ruin. Napoleon had known of the fortress, but had underrated its importance. For some hours a panic seemed imminent in the vanguard, but a goat-path was found which led past the fort on rocks higher up. The cannon were slipped by at night, over the road covered with litter.

Remaining on the French side to despatch the troops forward as rapidly as possible, Napoleon was one of the last to enter the mountains. He rode a sure-footed mule, and by his side walked his guide, a young peasant who unbosomed himself as they went forward. This peasant, also, had his eyes on the future, and wished to rise in the world. His heart yearned for a farm in the Alps, where he might pasture a small flock, grow a few necessaries, marry a girl he loved, and live happily ever afterward. The traveller on the mule seemed much absorbed in thought; but, nevertheless, he heard all the mountaineer was saying.

He gave to the young peasant the funds wherewith to buy house and land; and when Napoleon’s empire had fallen to pieces, the family of his old-time guide yet dwelt contentedly in the home the First Consul had given.

So completely had Napoleon hoodwinked the Austrians that the Army of the Reserve was still considered a myth. Mountain passes where a few battalions could have vanquished an army had been left unguarded; and when the French, about sixty thousand strong, stood upon the Italian plains, Melas could with difficulty be made to believe the news.

Now that he was in Italy, it would seem that Napoleon should have relieved Genoa, as he had promised. Masséna and his heroic band were there suffering all the tortures of war, of famine, and of pestilence. But Napoleon had conceived a grander plan. To march upon Genoa, fighting detachments of Austrians as he went, and going from one hum-drum victory to another was too commonplace. Napoleon wished to strike a blow which would annihilate the enemy and astound the world. So he deliberately left Masséna’s army to starve while he himself marched upon Milan. One after another, Lannes, leading the vanguard, beat the Austrian detachments which opposed his progress, and Napoleon entered Milan in triumph.

Here he spent several days in festivals and ceremonials, lapping himself in the luxury of boundless adulation. In the meantime he threw his forces upon the rear of Melas, spreading a vast net around that brave but almost demoralized commander.

On June 4 Masséna consented to evacuate Genoa. His troops, after having been fed by the Austrians, marched off to join the French in Italy. Thus, also, a strong Austrian force was released, and it hastened to join Melas.

When Bourrienne went into Napoleon’s room late at night, June 8, and shook him out of a sound sleep to announce that Genoa had fallen, he refused at first to believe it. But he immediately rose, and in a short while orders were flying in all directions, changing the dispositions of the army.

On June 9, Lannes, with the aid of Victor, who came up late in the day, won a memorable victory at Montebello.

Napoleon, who had left Milan and taken up a strong position at Stradella, was in a state of the utmost anxiety, fearing that Melas was about to escape the net. The 10th and 11th of June passed without any definite information of the Austrian movements. On the 12th of June his impatience became so great that he abandoned his position at Stradella and advanced to the heights of Tortona. On the next day he passed the Scrivia and entered the plain of Marengo, and drove a small Austrian force from the village. Napoleon was convinced that Melas had escaped, and it is queer commentary upon the kind of scouting done at the time that the whereabouts of the Austrian army was totally unknown to the French, although the two were but a few miles apart. Leaving Victor in possession of the village of Marengo, and placing Lannes on the plain, Napoleon started back to headquarters at Voghera. By a lucky chance the Scrivia had overflowed its banks, and he could not cross. Thus he remained near enough to Marengo to repair his terrible mistake in concluding that Melas meant to shut himself up in Genoa. Desaix, just returned from Egypt, reached headquarters June 11, and was at once put in command of the Boudet division. On June 13 Desaix was ordered to march upon Novi, by which route Melas would have to pass to Genoa.

Thus on the eve of one of the most famous battles in history, the soldier who won it was completely at fault as to the position and the purpose of his foe. His own army was widely scattered, and it was only by accident that he was within reach of the point where the blow fell. The staff-officer whom he had sent to reconnoitre, had reported that the Austrians were not in possession of the bridges over the Bormida. In fact they were in possession of these bridges, and at daybreak, June 14, they began to pour across them with the intention of crushing the weak French forces at Marengo and of breaking through Napoleon’s net. About thirty-six thousand Austrians fell upon the sixteen thousand French. Victor was driven out of the village, and by ten o’clock in the morning his troops were in disorderly retreat. The superb courage of Lannes stayed the rout. With the utmost firmness he held his troops in hand, falling back slowly and fighting desperately as he retired. At full speed Napoleon came upon the field, bringing the consular guard and Monnier’s division. Couriers had already been sent to bring Desaix back to the main army; but before these messengers reached him, he had heard the cannonade, guessed that Melas had struck the French at Marengo, and at once set his columns in motion toward the field of battle.

Napoleon’s presence, his reënforcements, his skilful dispositions, had put new life into the struggle; but as the morning wore away, and the afternoon commenced, it was evident that the Austrians would win. The French gave way at all points, and in parts of the field the rout was complete. Napoleon sat by the roadside swishing his riding-whip and calling to the fugitives who passed him to stop; but their flight continued. A commercial traveller left the field and sped away to carry the news to Paris that Napoleon had suffered a great defeat.

Melas, oppressed by age and worn out by the heat and fatigue of the day, thought the battle won; went to his headquarters to send off despatches to that effect, and left to his subordinate, Zach, the task of the pursuit. But Desaix had come—“the battle is lost, but there is time to gain another.”

Only twelve pieces of artillery were left to the French. Marmont massed these, and opened on the dense Austrian column advancing en échelon along the road. Desaix charged, and almost immediately got a ball in the breast and died “a soldier’s beautiful death.” But his troops pressed forward with fury, throwing back in confusion the head of the Austrian column. At this moment, “in the very nick of time” as Napoleon himself admitted to Bourrienne, Kellermann made his famous cavalry charge on the flank of the Austrian column, cut it in two, and decided the day. The French lines everywhere advanced, the Austrians broke. They were bewildered at the sudden change: they had no chief, Zach being a prisoner, and Melas absent. In wildest confusion they fled toward the bridges over the Bormida, Austrian horse trampling Austrian foot, and the French in hot pursuit.

Some sixteen thousand men were killed or wounded in this bloody battle, and very nearly half of these were French. But the Austrians were demoralized, and Melas so overcome that he hastened to treat. To save the relics of his army, he was willing to abandon northern Italy, give up Genoa, and all fortresses recently taken.

From the field of Marengo, surrounded by so many dead and mangled, Napoleon wrote a long letter to the Emperor of Austria, urgently pleading for a general peace.

Returning to Milan, he was welcomed with infinite enthusiasm. He spent some days there reëstablishing the Cisalpine republic, reorganizing the administration, and putting himself in accord with the Roman Catholic Church. Just as earnestly as he had assured the Mahometans in Egypt that his mission on earth was to crush the Pope and lower the Cross, he now set himself up as the restorer of the Christian religion. He went in state to the cathedral of Milan to appear in a clerical pageant; and he took great pains to have it published abroad that the priests might rely upon him for protection.

Leaving Masséna in command of the army of Italy, Napoleon returned to Paris by way of Lyons. The ovations which greeted him were as spontaneous as they were hearty. Never before, never afterward, did his presence call forth such universal, sincere, and joyous applause. He was still young, still the first magistrate of a republic, still conciliatory and magnetic, still posing as a public servant who could modestly write that “he hoped France would be satisfied with its army.” He was not yet the all-absorbing egotist who must be everything. Moreau was still at the head of an army, Carnot at the war office, there was a tribunate which could debate governmental policies; there was a public opinion which could not be openly braved.

Hence it was a national hero whom the French welcomed home, not a master before whom flatterers fawned. All Paris was illuminated from hut to palace. Thousands pressed forward but to see him; the Tuileries were surrounded by the best people of Paris, all eager to catch a glimpse of him at a window, and greeting him wherever he appeared with rapturous shouts. He himself was deeply touched, and said afterward that these were the happiest days of his life. The time was yet to come when he would appear at these same windows to answer the shouts of a few boys and loafers, on the dreary days before Waterloo.

With that talent for effect which was one of Napoleon’s most highly developed traits, he had ordered the Consular Guard back to France almost immediately after Marengo, timing its march so that it would arrive in Paris on the day of the great national fête of July 14. On that day when so many thousands of Frenchmen, dressed in gala attire, thronged the Field of Mars and gave themselves up to rejoicings, the column from Marengo, dust-covered, clad in their old uniform, and bearing their smoke-begrimed, bullet-rent banners, suddenly entered the vast amphitheatre. The effect was electrical. Shout upon shout greeted the returning heroes; and with an uncontrollable impulse the people rushed upon these veterans from Italy with every demonstration of joy, affection, and wild enthusiasm. So great was the disorder that the regular programme of the day was thrust aside; the men of Marengo had dwarfed every other attraction.

About this time the Bourbons made efforts to persuade Napoleon to play the part of Monk in restoring the monarchy. Suasive priests bearing letters, and lovely women bearing secret offers, were employed, the facile Josephine lending herself gracefully to the intrigue. The First Consul was the last of men to rake chestnuts out of the fire for other people, and the Bourbons were firmly advised to accept a situation which left them in exile.

Failing in their efforts to bribe him, the monarchists determined to kill him; and the more violent Jacobins, seeing his imperial trend, were equally envenomed. It was the latter faction which made the first attempt upon his life. The Conspiracy of Ceracchi, Arena, and Topino-Lebrun was betrayed to the police. Ceracchi was an Italian sculptor who had modelled a bust of Napoleon. Arena was a Corsican whose brother had aimed a knife at Napoleon on the 19th of Brumaire. Topino-Lebrun was the juryman who had doubted the guilt of Danton, and who had been bullied into voting death by the painter David. They were condemned and executed.

A yet more dangerous plot was that of the royalists. An infernal machine was contrived by which Napoleon was to have been blown up while on his way to the opera. The explosion occurred, but a trifle too late. Napoleon had just passed. The man in charge of the machine did not know Josephine’s carriage from Napoleon’s, and approached too near in the effort to make certain. A guard kicked him away, and while he was recovering himself Napoleon’s coachman drove furiously round the corner. A sound like thunder was heard, many houses were shattered, many people killed and wounded.

“Drive on!” shouted Napoleon; and when he entered his box at the opera, he looked as if nothing had occurred. “The rascals tried to blow me up,” he said coolly as he took his seat and called for an opera-book. But when he returned to the Tuileries he was in a rage, and violently accused the Jacobins of being the authors of the plot. Fouché in vain insisted that the royalists were the guilty parties; the First Consul refused to listen. Taking advantage of the feeling aroused in his favor by the attempts to assassinate him, he caused a new tribunal to be created, composed of eight judges, who were to try political offenders without jury, and without appeal or revision. By another law he was empowered to banish without trial such persons as he considered “enemies of the State.” One hundred and thirty of the more violent republicans were banished to the penal colonies.

For the purpose of feeling the public pulse, a pamphlet was put forward by Fontanes and Lucien Bonaparte, called a “Parallel between Cæsar, Cromwell, Monk, and Bonaparte.” It was hinted that supreme power should be vested in Napoleon, that he should be made king. The pear was not quite ripe, the pamphlet created a bad effect. Napoleon, who had undoubtedly encouraged its publication, promptly repudiated it; and Lucien, dismissed from his office as Secretary of the Interior, was sent to Spain as ambassador.

* * * * *

However willing Austria might be for peace, she could not make it without the consent of England, her ally. The British ministry viewed with the spirit of philosophy the crushing blows which France had dealt Austria, and, secure from attack themselves, encouraged Austria to keep on fighting. Not able to send troops, England sent money. With $10,000,000 she bought the further use of German soldiers to keep France employed on the Continent, while Great Britain bent her energies to the capture of Malta and of Egypt. Thus it happened that the armistice expired without a treaty having been agreed on; and the war between the Republic and the Empire recommenced (November, 1800). Brune defeated the Austrians on the Mincio; Macdonald made the heroic march through the Splügen Pass; Moreau won the magnificent victory of Hohenlinden (December 4, 1800).

It seems that, with a little more dash, Moreau might have taken Vienna, exposed as it was to the march of three victorious armies. But Austria asked for a truce, gave pledges of good faith, and the French halted. On February 9, 1801, the Peace of Lunéville put an end to the war. France had won the boundary of the Rhine; and, in addition to the territory made hers by the treaty of Campo Formio, gained Tuscany, which Napoleon had promised to Spain, in exchange for Louisiana.

Napoleon’s position on the Continent was now very strong. Prussia was a friendly neutral; Spain an ally; Italy and Switzerland little more than French provinces; the Batavian republic and Genoa submissive subjects; Portugal in his power by reason of his compact with Spain; and the Czar of Russia an enthusiastic friend. England was shut out from the Continent almost completely.

Her insolent exercise of the right of search of neutral vessels on the high seas, a right which had no basis in law or justice, had provoked the hatred of the world, and Napoleon took advantage of this feeling and of Russia’s friendship to reorganize the armed neutrality of the northern powers for the purpose of bringing England to reason. Her reply was brutal and effective. She sent her fleet, under Parker and Nelson, to bombard Copenhagen and to destroy the Danish navy. The work was savagely done, and the northern league shattered. The English party at St. Petersburg followed up this blow by the murder of the Czar Paul. Hardly had the young Alexander been proclaimed before he announced his adhesion to the English and his antagonism to the French. He may, possibly, have been free from the guilt of conniving at his father’s murder; but it is not to be denied that he continued to reward with the highest offices the chief assassins—Bennigsen, for example.

* * * * *

Kléber, who had gloriously maintained himself in Egypt, was assassinated on the day of Marengo. It is one of the mysteries of Napoleon’s career that he allowed the incompetent Menou to succeed to a command where so much executive and administrative ability was required. One is tempted to think that even at this early date the genius of Napoleon was overtaxed. In trying to do so many things, he neglected some. Egypt he certainly tried to relieve by sending reënforcements; but he slurred all, neglected all, and lost all, by allowing so notorious an imbecile as Menou to remain in chief command. Why he did not appoint Reynier or Lanusse, both of whom were already in Egypt, or why he did not send some good officer from France, can only be explained upon the theory that his mind was so much preoccupied with other matters that he failed to attach due importance to the situation of the Army of the East.

Menou’s administration was one dreary chapter of stupidities; and when the English landed at Alexandria, they found an easy conquest. With little effort and little bloodshed the French were beaten in detail, and agreed to quit the country.

When the tidings reached Napoleon, his anger and chagrin were extreme. He jumped upon his horse and dashed off into the forest of Bougival as if the furies were after him. Hour after hour he rode frantically in the wood, to the wonder of his staff, who could not guess what it was all about. At last, when the storm had spent itself, he unbosomed himself to the faithful Junot. That night Junot said to his wife, “Ah, my General suffered cruelly to-day: Egypt has been taken by the English!”

Malta having been captured also, Napoleon had the mortification of realizing that his expedition to the East had had no other result than to sow seed for an English harvest.

However, Great Britain was dismayed at the increase of her public debt, oppressed by the load of taxation, and somewhat intimidated by the energy which Napoleon began to show in building up the French navy. A monster demonstration at Boulogne,—where he gathered an immense number of armed sloops, apparently for the purpose of invading England,—and the failure of an attack which Nelson made on this flotilla, had an effect; and in March, 1802, to the joy of the world, the Peace of Amiens was signed.

For the first time since 1792 universal peace prevailed in Europe.

CHAPTER XXIII

Nothing but memories now remains to France, or to the human race, of the splendors of Marengo, of Austerlitz, Jena, and Wagram; but the work which Napoleon did while Europe allowed him a few years of peace will endure for ages. Had the Treaty of Amiens been lasting, had England kept faith, had the old world dynasties been willing to accept at that time those necessary changes which have since cost so much labor, blood, and treasure, Napoleon might have gone down to history, not as the typical fighter of modern times, but as the peerless developer, organizer, administrator, and lawgiver. In his many-sided character there was the well-rounded man of peace, who delighted in improvement, in embellishment, in the growth of commerce, agriculture, and manufactures; in the progress of art, science, and literature; in the thorough training of the young, the care of the weaker members of society, the just administration of wise laws, the recognition of merit of all kinds. The orderly march of the legions of industry was no less satisfying to him than the march of armies. We have read so much of his battles that we have come to think of him as a man who was never so happy as when at war. This view is superficial and incorrect. It appears that he was never more energetic, capable, effective, never more at ease, never more cheerful, contented, kind, and magnetic than in the work connected with his schools, hospitals, public monuments, public improvements of all sorts, the codification of the laws, the encouragement and development of the various industries of France. No trophy of any of his campaigns did he exhibit with more satisfaction than he took in showing to visitors a piece of sugar made by Frenchmen from the beet—a triumph of home industry due largely to his stimulating impulse.

In all such matters his interest was intelligent, persistent, and intense. Few were the months given to him in which to devote himself to such labor; but he took enormous strides in constructing a new system for France which worked wonders for her, and which has had its influence throughout the civilized world.

The men of the Revolution had sketched a grand scheme of state education, but it remained a sketch. Napoleon studied their scheme, improved it, adopted it, and put it into successful operation. His thorough system of instruction, controlled by the State, from the primary schools to the Lyceums and the Technological Institute remain in France to-day substantially as he left them.

Under the Directory society had become disorganized and morals corrupt. Napoleon, hard at work on finance, laws, education, military and civil administration, inaugurated the reform of social abuses also. With his removal to the Tuileries, February 1800, may be dated the reconstruction of society in France. The beginnings of a court formed about him, and into this circle the notoriously immoral women could not enter. It must have been a cruel surprise to Madame Tallien—coming to visit her old friend Josephine—when the door was shut in her face by the usher. Of course it was by Napoleon’s command that this was done, never by Josephine’s. Applying similar rules to the men, Napoleon compelled Talleyrand to marry the woman with whom he openly lived; and even the favorite Berthier, too scandalously connected with Madame Visconti, was made to take a wife. Sternly frowning upon all flaunting immoralities, the First Consul’s will power and example so impressed itself upon the nation that the moral tone of society throughout the land was elevated, and a loftier moral standard fixed.

Under the Directory the material well-being of the country, internally, had been so neglected that even the waterways fell into disuse. Under the consular government the French system of internal improvements soon began to excite the admiration of Europe. Englishmen, coming over after the peace, and expecting to see what their editors and politicians had described as a country ruined by revolution, were amazed to see that in many directions French progress could give England useful lessons. Agriculture had doubled its produce, for the idle lands of former grandees had been put into cultivation. The farmer was more prosperous, for the lord was not on the lookout to seize the crop with feudal dues as soon as made. Nor was the priest seen standing at the gate, grabbing a tenth of everything. Nor were state taxes levied with an eye single to making the burden as heavy as peasant shoulders could bear.

Wonder of wonders! the man in control had said, and kept saying, “Better to let the peasant keep what he makes than to lock it up in the public treasury!” The same man said, “Beautify the markets, render them clean, attractive, healthy—they are the Louvres of the common people.” It was such a man who would talk with the poor whenever he could, to learn the facts of their condition. In his stroll he would stop, chat with the farmer, and, taking the plough in his own white hands, trace a wobbly furrow.

Commerce was inspired to new efforts, for the First Consul put himself forward as champion of liberty of the seas, combatting England’s harsh policy of searching neutral vessels and seizing goods covered by the neutral flag.

Manufactures he encouraged to the utmost of his power, by shutting off foreign competition, by setting the example of using home-made goods, and by direct subsidies. He even went so far as to experiment with the government warehouse plan, advancing money out of the treasury to the manufactures on the deposit of products of the mills.

No drone, be he the haughtiest Montmorency, whose ancestor had been in remote ages a murderer and a thief, could hold office under Napoleon. Unless he were willing to work, he could not enter into the hive. For the first time in the political life of the modern French, men became prouder of the fact that they were workers, doers of notable deeds, than that they were the fifteenth cousin of some spindle-shanked duke whose great-great-grandfather had held the stirrup when Louis XIII. had straddled his horse.

Having founded the Bank of France, January, 1800, Napoleon jealously scrutinized its management, controlled its operations, and made it useful to the State as well as to the bankers. He watched the quotations of government securities, took pride in seeing them command high prices, and considered it a point of honor that they should not fall below eighty. When they dropped considerably below that figure, some years later, the Emperor went into the market, made “a campaign against the Bears,” and forced the price up again—many a crippled bear limping painfully off the lost field.

The First Consul also elaborated a system of state education. Here he was no Columbus, no creator, no original inventor. His glory is that he accomplished what others had suggested, had attempted, but had not done. He took hold, gave the scheme the benefit of his tremendous driving force, and pushed it through. It will be his glory forever that in all things pertaining to civil life he was the highest type of democrat. Distinctions of character, merit, conduct, talent, he could understand; distinctions of mere birth he abhorred. The very soul of his system was the rewarding of worth. In the army, the civil service, the schools, in art and science and literature, his great object was to discover the real men,—the men of positive ability,—and to open to these the doors of preferment.

Remembering the sufferings he and his sister had endured at the Bourbon schools where the poor scholars were cruelly humiliated, he founded his training-schools, military and civil, upon the plan which as a boy he had sketched. The young men at his military academies kept no troops of servants, and indulged in no hurtful luxury. They not only attended to their own personal needs, but fed, curried, and saddled their own horses.

It was such a man as Napoleon who would turn from state business to examine in person an ambitious boy who had been studying at home for admission into one of the state schools, and who had been refused because he had not studied under a professor. “This boy is competent; let him enter the school,” wrote Napoleon after the examination: and the young man’s career was safe.

It was such a man who would invite the grenadiers to the grand banquets at the palace, and who would direct that special courtesies should be shown these humblest of the guests.

It was such a man who would read every letter, every petition addressed to him, and find time to answer all. Never too proud or too busy to hear the cry of the humblest, to reward the merit of the obscurest, to redress the grievance of the weakest, he was the man to make the highest headed general in the army—Vandamme himself, for instance,—apologized to the obscure captain who had been wantonly insulted. Any private in the ranks—the drummer boy, the grenadier—was free to step out and speak to Napoleon, and was sure to be heard as patiently as Talleyrand or Murat or Cambacérès in the palace. If any difference was made, it was in favor of the private soldier. Any citizen, male or female, high or low, could count with absolute certainty on reaching Napoleon in person or by petition in writing, and upon a reply being promptly given. One day a careless secretary mislaid one of these prayers of the lowly, and the palace was in terror at Napoleon’s wrath until the paper was found. Josephine might take a petition, smile sweetly on the supplicant, forget all about it, and suavely assure the poor dupe when meeting him next that his case was being considered. Not so Napoleon. He might not do the sweet smile, he might refuse the request, but he would give the man his answer, and if his prayers were denied, would tell him why.

The Revolution having levelled all ranks, there were no visible marks of distinction between man and man. Napoleon was too astute a politician not to pander to mankind’s innate craving for outward tokens of superiority. The Legion of Honor was created against stubborn opposition, to reward with ribbons, buttons, and pensions those who had distinguished themselves by their own efforts in any walk of life. It embraced merit of every kind,—civil, military, scientific, literary, artistic. Men of all creeds, of every rank, every calling, were eligible. The test of fitness for membership was meritorious service to the State. Such at least was Napoleon’s theory: whether he or any one else ever strictly hewed to so rigid a line may be doubted. His order of nobility had this merit: it was not hereditary, it carried no special privileges, it could not build up a caste, it kept alive the idea that success must be founded upon worth, not birth. In theory such an order of nobility was democratic to the core. Lafayette, whom Napoleon had freed from captivity, recalled to France, and reinstated in his ancestral domain, scornfully declined to enter this new order of nobility. So did many others—some because they were royalists, some because they were republicans. In a few years the institution had become so much a part of national life that the restored Bourbons dared not abolish it.

* * * * *

“I will go down to posterity with the Code in my hand,” said Napoleon with just pride, for time has proven that as a lawgiver, a modern Justinian, his work has endured.

Early in his consulate he began the great labor of codifying the laws of France,—a work which had often been suggested, and which the Convention had partially finished, but which had never been completed.

To realize the magnitude of the undertaking, we must bear in mind that, under the Old Order, there were all sorts of law and all kinds of courts. What was right in one province was wrong in another. A citizen who was familiar with the system in Languedoc would have found himself grossly ignorant in Brittany. Roman law, feudal law, royal edicts, local customs, seigniorial mandates, municipal practices, varied and clashed throughout the realm. The Revolution had prostrated the old system and had proposed to establish one uniform, modern, and equitable code of law for the whole country; but the actual carrying out of the plan was left to Napoleon.

Calling to his aid the best legal talent of the land, the First Consul set to work. Under his supervision the huge task was completed, after the steady labor of several years. The Civil Code and the Code of Civil Procedure, the Criminal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure, were the four parts of the completed system, which, adopted in France, followed the advance of the Empire and still constitutes the law of a large portion of the civilized world.

Every statute passed under Napoleon’s eye. He presided over the meetings when the finished work of the codifiers came up for sanction, and his suggestions, reasoning, experience, and natural wisdom left their impress upon every page. “Never did we adjourn,” said one of the colaborers of Napoleon, “without learning something we had not known before.”

It is the glory of this Code that it put into final and permanent shape the best work of the Revolution. It was based upon the great principle that all citizens were legally equals; that primogeniture, hereditary nobility, class privileges, and exemptions were unjust; that property was sacred; that conscience was free; that state employment should be open to all, opportunities equal to all, state duties and state burdens the same to all; that laws should be simple, and legal proceedings public, swift, cheap, and just; and that personal liberty, civil right, should be inviolable.

Recognizing his right as master-builder, his persistence, zeal, active coöperation in the actual work, and the modern tone which he gave to it, the world does him no more than justice in calling it the Code Napoléon.

Another great distinctive work of the First Consul is the Concordat; and here his claim to approval must ever remain a question. Those who believe that the State should unite with the Church and virtually deny to posterity the right to investigate the most important of subjects, will always strain the language of praise in giving thanks to Napoleon for the Concordat. On the contrary, those who believe that the State should not unite with the hierarchy of any creed, but should let the question of religion alone,—leave it to be settled by each citizen for himself,—will forever condemn the Concordat as the colossal mistake of Napoleon’s career.

It will be remembered that the Revolution had confiscated the enormous, ill-gotten, and ill-used wealth of the Catholic Church, but in lieu of this source of revenue had provided ample salaries to the clergy, to be paid from the public treasury. It is not true that the Christian worship was forbidden or religion abolished. Throughout the Reign of Terror the Catholic Church continued to be a state institution. Only those priests who refused to take the oath of allegiance to the New Order were treated as criminals. It was not till September, 1794, that the Convention abolished the salaries paid by the State, thus separating Church and State. After this all creeds were on a level, and each citizen could voluntarily support that which he preferred,—Catholic, Protestant, or the Theophilanthropist.

It was the princely bishop, archbishop, and cardinal who had brought reproach upon the Church under the Old Régime; it was the humble parish priest who had maintained some hold upon the love and the respect of the people. When the Revolution burst upon the land, it was the prince of the Church who fled to foreign shores; it was the parish priest who remained at the post of duty. Bravely taking up the cross where the cardinals and bishops had dropped it, the curés reorganized their Church, pledged themselves to the new order of things, and throughout France their constitutional Church was at work—a voluntary association, independent of Rome, and supporting itself without help from the State. In one very essential particular it stood nearer to the Christ standard than the Church it replaced—it charged no fees for administering the sacraments.

This revived Gallican Church was distasteful to Napoleon, for he wished the State, the executive, to be the head, centre, and controlling power of everything. Voluntary movements of all sorts were his aversion.

To the Pope this independent Gallican Church was a menace, an impertinence, a revolt. Catholicism, be it never so pure in creed, must yield obedience and lucre to Rome, else it savors of heresy, schism, and dire sinfulness.

Again, to the Pope and to the princes of the Church this equality among the denominations in France was a matter that was almost intolerable. Where creeds stand on the same footing, they will compete for converts; where there is room for competition, there is license for investigation, debate, reason, and common sense. And we have the word of Leo XIII., echoing that of so many of his predecessors, that religion has no enemy so subtle, so much to be dreaded, so much needing to be ruthlessly crushed, as reason, investigation.

The Pope of Napoleon’s day held this view, as a matter of course; and in order to bring about a renewal of the union between the Catholic Church and the government of France he was ready to concede almost anything Napoleon might demand. Once the union had been accomplished, no matter on what terms, the papacy would feel safe. Evolution and time would work marvels; the essential thing was to bring about the union. Napoleon was mortal, he would die some day, and weaker men would succeed him—a stronger would never appear. Let the Pope bend a little to that imperious will, let concessions be made while the Church was getting fulcrum for its lever. Once adjusted, the lever would do the rest. So it appeared from the point of view of the Pope: time has proven him right.

On the part of Napoleon there were reasons of policy which lured him into the toils of Rome. Immense results, immediate and personal, would follow his compact with the Pope; for these he grasped, leaving the future to take care of itself.

For Napoleon was personally undergoing a great transformation. Gradually his mind had filled with dreams of empire. The cannon of Marengo had hardly ceased to echo before he began to speak of “My beautiful France.” Between himself and those about him he steadily increased the distance. His tone was that of Master. Tuscany having been taken from Austria, he made a kingdom out of it, put a feeble Bourbon upon its throne, dubbed the puppet King of Etruria, and brought him to Paris where the people of France could behold a king playing courtier to a French consul. At the Tuileries the ceremony and royalty encroached constantly upon republican forms, and the lip service of flatterers began to displace military frankness and democratic independence.

Looking forward to supreme power, Napoleon was too astute a politician to neglect the priest. As Alexander had bent his head in seeming reverence at altars, and listened with apparent faith to Grecian oracles; as Cæsar had posed as Roman chief priest, and leagued himself to paganism; so Napoleon, who had been a Mussulman at Cairo, would now become a Catholic in Paris. It was a matter of policy, nothing more.

“Ah, General,” said Lafayette to him, “what you want is that the little vial should be broken over your head.”

It all led up to that.

Monarchy was to be restore, and its natural supports—the aristocrat and the priest—were needed to give it strength. By coming to terms with the Pope, Napoleon would win, and the Bourbons lose, the disciplined hosts of the Catholic Church.

Therefore the Concordat was negotiated, and the French Church, which even under the Bourbons had enjoyed a certain amount of independence, was put under the feet of the Italian priest, under the tyranny of Rome.

By this compact the Pope held to himself the right to approve the clerical nominees of the State, while the tax-payers were annually to furnish $10,000,000 to pay clerical salaries. By this compact was brought back into France the subtle, resistless power of a corporation which, identifying itself with God, demands supreme control.

Napoleon himself soon felt the strength of this released giant, and the France of to-day is in a death grapple with it.

The time may come when the Concordat will be considered Napoleon’s greatest blunder, his unpardonable political sin. It was not faith, it was not even philanthropy which governed his conduct. It was cold calculation. It was merely a move in the game of ambition. At the very moment that he claimed the gratitude of Christians for the restoration of religion, he sought to soothe the non-believers by telling them that under his system religion would disappear from France within fifty years.

It is not true that a majority of the French clamored for a return of the old forms of worship. On the contrary, the vast majority were indifferent, if not hostile. In the army it caused a dangerous conspiracy among the officers, against Napoleon’s life.

When the Concordat came to be celebrated by a pompous pagan ceremonial in the cathedral of Notre Dame, it required all of his authority to compel a respectful attendance, as it had required the utmost exercise of his power to secure the sanction of the state authorities to the Concordat itself. More than one saddened Frenchman thought what General Delmas is reported to have said, when Napoleon asked his opinion of the ceremonial at Notre Dame; “It is a fine harlequinade, needing only the presence of the million men who died to do away with all that.”

Yes, a million Frenchmen had died to do away with that,—the worst feature of the Old Order,—and now it had all come back again. Once more the children of France were to have their brains put under the spell of superstition. They were to be taught the loveliness of swallowing every marvel the priest might utter, and the damnation of thinking for oneself upon any subject ecclesiastical. They were to be crammed from the cradle, on one narrow creed, and incessantly told that hell yawned for the luckless wight who doubted or demurred.

With a line of writing, with a spurt of the pen, Napoleon reënslaved the nation. So well had the image breakers of the Convention done their work that it appeared to be only a question of time when France, “having by her own exertions freed herself, would, by the force of her example, free the world.” As Méneval states, “Catholicism seemed at its last gasp.” Rapidly Europe was being weaned from a worn-out creed, a threadbare paganism. Idols had been broken, miracles laughed out of countenance, the bones of alleged saints allowed to rest, and the mummeries of heathen ceremonial mocked till even the performers were ashamed.

A few bigots or fanatics, chained by an education which had left them no room for unfettered thought, longed for the return of the old forms; but the mass of the French people had no more wish for their reëstablishment than for the restoration of the Bourbons. France was religiously free: every citizen could believe or not believe, worship or not worship, just as he pleased.

Of all rulers, Napoleon had the best opportunity to give mental independence an open field and a fair fight. No ruler less strong than he could have achieved the task of lifting the Church from the dust, and frowning down the ridicule which had covered with discredit idol, shrine, creed, and ceremonial rite.

He did it—he alone! And verily he reaped his reward. The forlorn prisoner of St. Helena, sitting in misery beside the cheerless hearth in the night of endless despair, cursed himself bitterly for his huge mistake.

Some who defend the Concordat say that it enabled Napoleon to make alliances which otherwise he could not have made. The facts do not support the assertion. He was at peace with Continental Europe already, and Great Britain was certainly not influenced to peace by France’s agreement with the Pope. No alliances which Napoleon ever made after the Concordat were stronger than those he had made before; and as the restorer of Catholicism in France, he was not nearer the sincere friendships of monarchs and aristocracies abroad than he had been previous to that time.

In the murk of modern politics the truth is hard to find, but even a timid man might venture to say that the question of religion is the last of all questions to influence international relations. Comparing the prolonged security which Turkey has enjoyed with the fate which recently befell Catholic Spain and Protestant South African republics, the casual observer might hazard the statement that it is at least as safe to be Mahometan as Christian, so far as winning international friendship is concerned.

“Don’t strike! I am of the same faith as you—both of us hope for salvation in the blood of the same Savior!” is a plea which is so worthless among Christians that the weaker brother never even wastes breath to make it.

CHAPTER XXIV

To say that the French were pleased with the consular government, would convey no idea of the facts. France was delighted, France was in raptures. Excepting the inevitable few,—some royalists, some Jacobins and some lineal descendants of the Athenians who grew tired of hearing Aristides called The Just,—all Frenchmen heartily united in praise of Bonaparte.

As proudly as Richelieu, in Bulwer’s play, stands before his king and tells what he has done for France,—a nation found lying in poverty, shame, defeat, deathly decay, and lifted by the magic touch of genius to wealth, pride, victory, and radiant strength,—so the First Consul could have pointed to what France had been and what she had become, and justly claim the love and admiration of his people.

What reward should be given such a magistrate? In 1802 his consulship, which had already been lengthened by ten years, was, by the almost unanimous vote of the people, changed into a life tenure.

Consul for life (August, 1802), with the power to name his own successor, Napoleon was now virtually the king of France.

* * * * *

In St. Domingo, the Revolution in France had borne bitter fruit. The blacks rose against the whites, and a war of extermination ensued.

The negroes, immensely superior in numbers, overcame the whites, and established their independence. Toussaint L’Ouverture, the leader of the blacks, and a great man, became president of the black republic, which he patterned somewhat after Napoleon’s consulate.

The rich French planters, who had the ear of Napoleon in Paris, urged him to put down the revolt, or to bring the island back under French dominion. Thus these Bourbon nobles led Napoleon into one of his worst mistakes. He aligned himself with those who wished to reëstablish slavery, put himself at enmity with the trend of liberalism everywhere, and plunged himself into a ruinous war.

Mainly from the army of the Rhine, which was republican and unfriendly to himself, he drew out of France twenty thousand of her best troops, put them under command of Leclerc, his brother-in-law, and despatched them to St. Domingo, to reconquer the island.

Here again it is impossible to escape the conclusion that Napoleon had not duly considered what he was doing. There is evidence of haste, want of investigation, lack of foresight and precaution. The whole plan, from inception to end, bears the marks of that rashness which is forever punishing the man who tries to do everything.

The negroes gave way before Leclerc’s overwhelming numbers; and, by treachery, Toussaint was captured and sent to France to die in a dungeon; but the yellow fever soon came to the rescue of the blacks, and the expedition, after causing great loss of life, ended in shameful failure. Leclerc died, the remnants of the French army were brought back to Europe in English ships, and the negroes established their semi-barbarous Republic of Hayti (1804).

This much may be said by way of defence for Napoleon’s treatment of San Domingo: it had been one of the choicest possessions of the French crown, and he wished to regain it for his country, just as he regained Louisiana, and just as he yearned for the lost territories in Hindustan. Visions of a vast colonial empire haunted his imagination, and the spirit which influenced him in his efforts in the West Indies was, perhaps, the same which lured him to Egypt, which caused him to attach such extreme importance to Malta, and which caused him to send men-of-war to South Australia to survey the coast for settlement.

* * * * *

Meantime the Peace of Amiens was becoming a very frail thing, indeed. To all men, war in the near future seemed inevitable. Very positively England had pledged herself to restore Malta to the Knights of St. John; very emphatically she now refused to do so. By way of excuse she alleged that France had violated the spirit of the treaty by her aggressions on the Continent. In reply, Napoleon insisted that France had done nothing which it was not well known she intended at the time peace was made. He also reminded England that she had taken India. And this was true, but truth sometimes cuts a poor figure in debate. In vain such splendid types of English manhood as Charles Fox stood forth boldly in the British Parliament, and defended the First Consul. England was determined not to give up the Mediterranean fortress. France had no navy, no sailor with a spark of Nelson’s genius, and Malta was safe. On the Continent Napoleon might rage and might destroy; but England had proved how easy it was for her to bear the losses inflicted upon Continental Europe, and she was prepared to prove it again. Safe in her sea-girt isle, she was not to be intimidated by armies hurled against her allies.

In this crisis, when conciliatory measures might have availed to avert war, Lord Whitworth was sent to Paris as British ambassador. With his coming all hope of accommodation vanished. He was a typical English aristocrat, the very worst man who could have been sent if peace was desired. From the first, his letters to his government show that he was intensely hostile to Napoleon and to the consular government. To his superiors at home he misrepresented the situation in France, and where he did not misrepresent, he exaggerated. Finally, when Napoleon went out of his way to have a long conference with him, and to urge that England should keep her contract, he showed himself coldly irresponsive, and hinted that Malta would not be given up. Following this private and urgent conference came the public reception, in which Napoleon, with some natural display of temper and with the frankness of a soldier, asked Whitworth why England wanted war, and why she would not respect treaties. Whereupon Whitworth represented to his court that he had been grossly insulted, and all England rang with indignation. A falser statement never caused more woe to the human race. Bismarck cynically confessed that he it was who changed the form, the wording, and the tone of “the Ems telegram” which caused the Franco-German War of 1870–1. It is not too much to say that Whitworth’s exaggerated report, and the changes for the worse which the British ministry made in it when making it public, was one of the controlling causes of the wars, the bloodshed, and the misery which followed the year 1804.

During all this while the English newspapers were filled with the bitterest abuse of Napoleon. The most shameful lies that were ever published against a human being were constantly repeated against him in the British journals. That he should be subjected to such treatment during years of peace, and while he was giving most cordial welcome to the thousands of Englishmen who were now visiting France, filled Napoleon with wrath. He knew that by law the press of Great Britain was free; but he also knew that these papers, especially the ministerial papers, would not be filled with scurrilous personal abuse of him unless the government encouraged it. He knew that the political press reflects the views of the political party, and that when ministerial journals hounded him with libels, the ministers had given the signal. In vain he protested to the English ministry; he was told that in England the press was free. Then, as all his admirers must regret, he, also, stooped to libels and began to fill the official organs in France with outrageous attacks upon England.

Another grievance Napoleon had against Great Britain—she harbored men who openly declared their intention of assassinating him. English protection, English ships, English money, were ever at the command of the royalists who wished to stir up revolt in France, or to land assassins who wished to creep to Paris. On this subject, also, the English government would give no satisfaction. It coldly denied the accusation, disavowed the assassins, and continued to encourage assassination.

While relations were thus strained, a report of General Sébastiani on the eastern situation was published. In the paper, Sébastiani had ventured to say that six thousand French troops might reconquer Egypt. Here was another insult to England. Here was another excuse for editorial thunder, another provocative of parliamentary eloquence. England did not choose to remember that Sir Robert Wilson had just published a book, also on the eastern situation, and that in this publication Napoleon had been represented as the murderer of prisoners at Jaffa, and the poisoner of his own sick in the hospitals. This book had been dedicated to the Duke of York by permission, and had been presented by the author to George III., at a public levee.

England was bent on war; no explanations or remonstrances would soothe her, and on May 18 war was declared. But she had already seized, without the slightest warning, hundreds of French ships laden with millions of merchandise—ships which had come to English harbors trusting to her faith pledged in the treaty. This capture and confiscation excited almost no comment, but when Napoleon retaliated by throwing into prison thousands of Englishmen who were travelling in France, England could find no words harsh enough to condemn the outrage. Even so intelligent a historian as Lockhart is aghast at Napoleon’s perfidy. For, mark you, England had always seized what she could of the enemy’s property previous to a declaration of war, whereas Napoleon’s counterstroke was a novelty. It had never been done before, therefore it was an unspeakable atrocity—“It moved universal sympathy, indignation, and disgust.” So says Lockhart, repeating dutifully what his father-in-law, Sir Walter Scott, had already said. And the most recent British historian, J. H. Rose, writing of that period, falls into the well-worn path of Tory prejudice, and ambles along composedly in the hallowed footprints of Lockhart and Sir Walter.

Their style of putting the case is like this: It was wrong to seize an enemy’s ships and sailors previous to a declaration of war, but Great Britain had always done it, and, consequently, she had a right to do it again. It was right for France to retaliate, but France had never retaliated, and, consequently, she had no right to do it now. Thus England’s hoary wrong had become a saintly precedent, while Napoleon’s novelty of retaliation was a damnable innovation. In this neat manner, entirely satisfactory to itself, Tory logic makes mesmeric passes over facts, and wrongs become rights while rights become wrongs.

The eminent J. H. Rose, Master of Arts, and “Late Scholar of Christ’s College, Cambridge,” remarks:

“Napoleon showed his rancour by ordering some eight or ten thousand English travellers in France to be kept prisoners.” Why the eminent Master of Arts and “Late Scholar of Christ’s College” did so studiously omit to state that England had already seized French ships and sailors before Napoleon seized the travellers, can be explained by no one but a master of the art of writing partisan history.

“Napoleon showed his rancour”—by hitting back when Britain dealt him a sudden unprovoked and dastardly blow. Showed his rancour! “Sir, the phrase is neat,” as Mirabeau said to Mounier upon a certain historic occasion.

Napoleon hastened to put Louisiana beyond England’s reach. This imperial, but undeveloped, province had been lost to France by the Bourbon, Louis XV. and had only recently been recovered. Napoleon profoundly regretted the necessity which compelled him to sell it to the United States, for he realized its value.

The war recommenced with vigor on both sides. Great Britain seized again upon all the colonies which she had released by treaty, and French armies in Italy or Germany added territory to France.

Spain refusing to join the league against Napoleon, Great Britain made war upon her, captured her treasure ships upon the high seas, and thus forced her into the arms of France. She not only put her fleet at Napoleon’s disposal, but agreed to furnish him a monthly subsidy of more than $1,000,000.

Definitely threatening to invade Great Britain, Napoleon made preparations for that purpose on a scale equal to the mighty task. Along the French and Dutch coasts 160,000 men were assembled, and vast flotillas built to take them across the Channel. So great was the alarm felt in England that her coasts were watched by every available ship, and almost the entire manhood of the island enrolled itself in the militia, and prepared for a desperate struggle.

So prominently did Napoleon stand forth as the embodiment of all that monarchical Europe detested, so completely did he represent all that England and the Bourbons most dreaded, that a mad determination to kill him took possession of his enemies. The head of the conspiracy was the Count of Artois, afterward king of France under the name of Charles X. The meetings of the conspirators were held in London. The plan adopted was that Pichegru (who had escaped from South America) and Moreau should be brought together to head the malcontents in the army; Georges Cadoudal, and a band of royalists equally resolute, should be landed on the Norman coast, should proceed to Paris, and should kill the First Consul; a royalist revolt should follow, and the Count of Artois should then himself land on the Norman coast to head the insurrection. The English minister to Bavaria, Mr. Drake, was actively at work in the plot, and in one of his letters to a correspondent, wrote: “All plots against the First Consul must be forwarded; for it is a matter of little consequence by whom the animal be stricken down, provided you are all in the hunt.” Among others who were in the background and winding sonorous horns to those who were “in the hunt,” were certain British agents,—Spencer Smith at Stuttgard, Taylor at Cassel, and Wickham at Berne. Directly in communication with the heads of the conspiracy in London was the under secretary of state, Hammond, the same who was so intolerably insolent to the United States during the second term of President Jefferson.

Lavishly supplied with money by the English government, a ship of the royal navy was put at their service,—Captain Wright, an officer of that navy, being in command.

The assassins were landed at the foot of a sea-washed cliff on the coast of Normandy in the night. Using a secret path and the rope-ladder of smugglers, they climbed the precipice and made their way secretly to Paris. Here they spent some weeks in organizing the conspiracy. The danger to Napoleon became so urgent that those who had the care of his personal safety felt that no precautions could be too great. De Ségur, captain of the body-guard, relates how Caulaincourt, Grand Marshal of the palace pro tem, woke him up after twelve o’clock at night toward the end of January, 1804, with: “Get up! Change the parole and the countersign immediately. There is not an instant to lose. The duties must be carried out as if in the presence of the enemy!”

Napoleon himself remained cool, but gradually became very stern. Asked by one of his councillors if he were afraid, he replied: “I, afraid! Ah, if I were afraid, it would be a bad day for France.”

The first great object of the conspirators was to bring Pichegru and Moreau together. It was hoped and believed that this could be readily done. It was remembered that Moreau had concealed the treasonable correspondence of Pichegru which had fallen into his hands in 1796. It was known that Moreau heartily disliked Napoleon. It was known that Moreau, sulking in his tent, and bitterly regretting his share in Napoleon’s elevation to power, was in that frame of mind which leads men into desperate enterprises.

Nevertheless, the conspirators found him very shy. By nature he was irresolute and weak, strong only when in command of an army. He consented to meet Pichegru, and did meet him at night, and have a few words with him in the street. Afterward Pichegru visited Moreau’s house, but the proof that Moreau agreed to take any part in the conspiracy is not satisfactory. It seems that Moreau had no objection to the “removal” of Napoleon and the overthrow of the government. He even spoke vaguely of the support which he and his friends in authority might bring to those who were conspiring; but Moreau was a republican,—one of those ardent young men of 1789 who had left school to fight for the Republic, and he was not ready to aid in the restoration of the Bourbons. Willing to countenance the overthrow of Napoleon, he was not willing to undo the work of the Revolution. According to one account, he himself aspired to succeed Bonaparte. This disgusted Cadoudal, who in scornful anger declared that he preferred Napoleon “to this brainless, heartless Moreau.” Inasmuch as Moreau had already become disgusted with Cadoudal, the conspiracy could not knit itself together.

Meanwhile, repeated conferences were held between the assassins and various royalists of Paris who were in the plot, the most prominent of these being the brothers Polignac and De La Rivière. Napoleon knew in a general way that his life was being threatened, knowing just enough to be convinced that he must learn more or perish. His police seemed powerless, and as a last resort he tried a plan of his own. Causing a list of the suspected persons to be brought to him, his attention became fixed upon the name of a surgeon, Querel. In the belief that this man must be less of a fanatic than the others, he ordered that the surgeon should be brought to trial, and the attempt made to wring a confession from him. Tried accordingly, condemned, sentenced, and about to be shot, Querel broke down and confessed.

Learning from him that the most dangerous of the conspirators were even then in Paris, a cordon of troops was thrown around the city, and a vigilant search begun. Pichegu, after dodging from house to house, was at length betrayed by an old friend with whom he had sought shelter. Georges was taken after a desperate fight in the street. Captain Wright was seized at the coast and sent to Paris. Moreau had already been arrested. Many other of the Georges band were in prison. Napoleon’s fury was extreme, and not unnatural. He had been lenient, liberal, conciliatory to his political foes. He had pushed to the verge of imprudence the policy of reconciliation. Vendeans, royalists, priests—all had felt his kindness. Some of the very men who were now threatening him with assassination were émigrés whom he had relieved from sentence of death and had restored to fortune. What had he done to England or to the Bourbons that they should put him beyond the pale of humanity? Had he not almost gone upon his knees in his efforts to secure peace? Had he ever lifted his hand against a Bourbon save in open war which they themselves had commenced? And now what was he to do to put a stop to these plots hatched in London? To what court could he appeal? With the Bourbons safely housed in England and supplied with British money, ever ready to arm against him the fanatics of royalism, what was he to do to protect his life? Was he to await the attack, living in constant apprehension, never knowing when the blow would fall, uncertain how the attack would be made, ignorant who the assassin might be, and in eternal doubt as to whether he could escape the peril? Can mortal man be placed in a position more trying than that of one who knows that sworn murderers are upon his track, and that some one moment of every day and every night may give the opportunity to the unsleeping vigilance of the assassin?

Roused as he had never been, Napoleon determined not to wait, not to stand upon literal self-defence. He would strike back, would anticipate his enemies, would paralyze their plans by carrying terror into their own ranks.

The head of the conspiracy, Artois, could not be reached. Expected on the French coast, he had not come. But his cousin, the Duke d’Enghien was at Ettenheim, close to the French border.

What was he doing there? He had borne arms against France, a crime which under the law of nations is treason, and which under the law of all lands is punishable with death. By French law, existing at the time, he had forfeited his life as a traitor. He was in the pay of England, the enemy of France. He was closely related by blood and by interest to the two brothers, Provence and Artois, who were making desperate efforts to recover the crown for the Bourbon family. What was the young Bourbon duke doing so near to the French border at this particular time?

Royalist authors say that he was there to enjoy the pleasures of the chase; also to enjoy the society of the Princess de Rohan, to whom they now say, without evidence, that he was secretly married.

Sir Walter Scott, a most unfriendly witness for Napoleon, admits that d’Enghien “fixed himself on the frontier for the purpose of being ready to put himself at the head of the royalists in East France, or Paris itself.”

That he was on the Rhine awaiting some event, some change in France in which he would have “a part to play,” was confessed, and cannot be denied.

What was the movement at whose head he was waiting to place himself? What other plan did the royalists have in progress at the time other than the Georges-Pichegru plot? If d’Enghien was waiting on the Rhine until they should have dealt the blow in Paris, was he not an accomplice, a principal in the second degree? It does not matter whether he knew the details of the Georges-Pichegru conspiracy or not. If he had been instructed to hold himself in readiness on the French frontier to enter the country and “act a part” therein, his common sense told him that a plot was on foot, and if he did not wish to be treated as an accomplice, he should not have acted as one. The cowardly d’Artois had not left London, and the Duke d’Enghien was to enter France as representative of the Bourbon family after the First Consul should have been killed.

The rule in law and equity is that where one is put upon notice of a transaction, he is to be held as knowing all that he could have learned by reasonable inquiry. The instructions issued to d’Enghien put him upon notice that something unusual was in progress, that it concerned him, and that he had a part to play. Prudent inquiry made by him of his Bourbon relatives in London would have put him in possession of the facts. This inquiry he either made or he did not: if he made it, he learned of the plot; if he did not make it, his was the negligence of being ignorant of the plan in which he was to “act a part.”

It is very improbable that the Count of Artois, who had sent word to the Count of Provence at Warsaw asking his adhesion to the conspiracy, should have given his cousin, d’Enghien, a “part to act” in it without informing him of the nature of the drama itself.

The police reports made to Napoleon led him to believe that the young duke was privy to the plot, and was waiting at Ettenheim ready to take part in it. Here was a Bourbon he could reach. Through this one, he would strike terror into the others. “Neither is my blood ditchwater! I will teach these Bourbons a lesson they will not soon forget. Am I a dog to be shot down in the street?”

After deliberating with his councillors, Talleyrand and all the rest, the First Consul issued his orders. A French squadron rode rapidly to the Rhine, crossed over to Ettenheim, seized the Duke, who had been warned in vain, and hurried him to Paris. Stopped at the barrier, he was sent to Vincennes, tried by court-martial that night, condemned upon his own confession, sentenced to death, shot at daybreak, and buried in the moat of the castle.

This harsh act of retaliation had met the approval of Talleyrand—an approval given in a written paper which he was quick to seize and destroy upon Napoleon’s fall in 1814. During the day upon which the Duke was being taken to Vincennes, Talleyrand was asked, “What is to be done with the Duke d’Enghien?” and had replied to the questioner, “He is to be shot.”

The Consul Cambacérès, who had voted for death at the trial of Louis XVI., opposed the arrest, giving his reasons at length. Napoleon replied: “I know your motive for speaking—your devotion to me. I thank you for it; but I will not allow myself put to death without defending myself. I will make these people tremble, and teach them to keep quiet for all time to come.”

Poor Josephine, who could never meet a member of the old noblesse without a collapse of spirit, a gush of adulation, and a yielding sensation at the knees, made a feeble effort to turn her husband from his purpose; but when Napoleon reminded her that she was a mere child in politics, and had better attend to her own small affairs, she dried her tears, and went into the garden to amuse herself with her flower-beds.

Napoleon himself made a thorough study of the papers, taken with the Duke at Ettenheim, and drew up a series of questions which were to be put to the prisoner by Réal, state councillor. The messenger sent by the First Consul did not see Réal, and the paper was not handed him till five o’clock next morning. Worn out by continuous toil, the councillor had gone to bed the evening before, leaving instructions with his household that he was not to be disturbed. Next morning when he was posting along the highway to Vincennes, he met Savary on his way back to Paris. Savary had already carried out the death-sentence, and the victim was in his grave.

It seems that the young Duke had not realized his danger. A term of imprisonment, at most, was all he feared. In vain the court-martial endeavored to hint at the fatal consequence of the admissions he was making. Unconscious of the fact that he was convicting himself, he repeated the statements that he had borne arms against France, that he had been in the pay of England, that he had tampered with French soldiers on the Rhine, that he had been instructed to place himself near the Rhine where he could enter France, arms in hand, and be ready for the part he was to play; and that he intended to continue to bear arms against the government of France which he regarded as a usurpation.