Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected, all other inconsistencies are as in the original. The author's spelling has been maintained.

From the collection of W. C. Crane. Engraved by Langlois

GENERAL BONAPARTE
Drawn by Raffet.

THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

WILLIAM MILLIGAN SLOANE

Ph.D., L.H.D., LL.D.
Professor of History in Columbia University

Revised and Enlarged
WITH PORTRAITS

VOLUME II

New York
THE CENTURY CO.
1916

CHAPTER PAGE

Rescue of the Directory [1]
The Treaty of Campo Formio [15]
Bonaparte and Talleyrand [26]
Commotions in European Politics [36]
The Expedition To Egypt [46]
The Landing in Egypt [55]
The Disaster at Acre [65]
Aboukir and the Great Desertion [77]
"The Return of the Hero" [86]
Bonaparte Seizes His Opportunity [100]
The Overthrow of the Directory [111]
Bonaparte the First Consul [121]
Bonaparte Embodies the Revolution [136]
A Constitutional Despotism [149]
Statesmanship and Strategy [162]
Marengo [174]
The Peace of Lunéville [190]
The Pacification of Europe [203]
The Reorganization of France [213]
The Code and the University [221]
Steps Toward Monarchy [229]
The Life Consulate [239]
The Threshold of Monarchy [250]
Expansion of the Revolutionary System [261]
Tension Between England and France [275]
France and England in Arms [286]
Warnings To Royalists and Republicans [295]
Declaration of the Empire [314]
The Descent Into England [325]
The Coronation of Napoleon I [339]
The Third Coalition [354]
Trafalgar and Austerlitz [370]
Napoleon, War Lord and Emperor [393]
The War With Russia [413]
The Devastation of Prussia [435]
The Continental System [446]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

General Bonaparte [Frontispiece]
Map of Egypt [58]
Napoleon—by Ingres [78]
Napoleon working by the glimmer of the lamp [128]
Map of the Marengo Campaigns [176]
Two Maps of Marengo, 14th July, 1800 [183-184]
Napoleon as First Consul [226]
Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul [276]
Napoleon as First Consul [326]
Napoleon, First Consul—by Ingres [376]
Napoleon Bonaparte as First Consul [426]

LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

CHAPTER I

Rescue of the Directory [1]

Deadlock between the French Executive and the Chambers — Bonaparte's Attitude — The Celebration of July Fourteenth at Milan — Plot of the French Royalists — Attitude of Moreau and Hoche — Bonaparte to the Rescue — The Eighteenth of Fructidor — Effects in Paris — Bonaparte a European Personage — His Statesmanship in Italy — The Ligurian Republic — Sardinia, Switzerland, and Great Britain — Readiness of Italy for War — Strength of Bonaparte's Armies.

1797

The fine charter with which France had presumably closed the revolutionary epoch, in order to live for the first time under a constitutional government, was about to display its fatal weakness in the production of a deadlock. This possibility had been clearly foreseen by acute observers, since there was no provision for the control of one arm of the government by the other, and in any working system supreme control must reside somewhere. For fear of usurpation, anarchy, and tyranny the constitution of the Directorate divided the powers so completely that they could not work at all. The spring elections of 1797 were the first held under this new constitution without any restrictions, and the Jacobin majority in the legislature disappeared. Barthélemy, the new director chosen to replace Letourneur, was a moderate democrat with royalistic leanings, who, like his predecessor, joined his fortunes with those of Carnot. The Five Hundred, therefore, as well as the Ancients, now represented the great majority of the French people, who hated Jacobinism, who were opposed to any republican propaganda in foreign countries, and who, more than anything else, wanted peace, in order to restore their fortunes and to secure leisure for their amusements. An attack on the executive policy which had been dictated by the three radical members of the Directory, sometimes designated the triumvirate, at once began. Nothing escaped: assaults were made on their attitude toward the emigrants and the clergy, on their loss of the colonies, on their financial failures, and, above all, on their conduct of foreign affairs, which appeared to have as its aim the continuance of the war, and the overthrow of monarchy throughout Europe. The leaders of the majority in the two councils frequented a club in the Clichy quarter of Paris, which was the center of royalist intrigue. Though no match in ability for their opponents, these men were quite clever enough to taunt the directors with their impotence to stop royalist agitations. Internal affairs were desperate. Suicides from starvation were sadly frequent among the officers of the navy, while their colleagues in the Army of Italy were not only growing rich on plunder, but defiant as well. The French commander in Italy had first made peace on his own terms, and had then declared war without consulting the chambers, thus not only annihilating friendly commonwealths, but evincing a contempt for the constitution, for the duly elected representatives of the people, and for the popular demand that there should be, not a particular, but a general pacification. On June twenty-third, 1797, in a memorable interpellation of the government by Dumorlard, all these matters were thoroughly ventilated in the Five Hundred. Even Pontécoulant, Bonaparte's former protector, joined in the demand for an explanation. Paris and the country in general were left in a ferment.

The disorders, murmurs, and menaces so rife in Paris had long given food for thought to the proconsul at Montebello. He was meditating upon constitutions and their values, while outwardly devoting himself to fascinating his little court and its visitors. He rode, he danced, he told weird tales at dusk, he played cards and cheated with merry effrontery; in the intervals he slept long and deep, as at irregular hours he worked titanically and efficiently. Was it to maintain the chaos in Paris that he was conquering, administering, negotiating? This he flatly asked of Miot de Melito and Melzi, as they narrate. The directors were meditating a state stroke, and they well knew that Bonaparte was less their man than they were his creatures. So they chose a new ministry which included Talleyrand as minister of state and Hoche as minister of war. The rôle to be played by the latter was so evident that the plan was thwarted on a technicality, as will be seen; and with Talleyrand, Bonaparte was soon to be, if he were not already, in personal correspondence about forms of government. Interested experts will note the various suggestions from the medieval constitutions of Italian republics, which in some measure affected the conceptions of these political theorists.

It was with reference to such conditions that the celebration, in Milan, of July fourteenth was arranged. Each detail was nicely calculated to strengthen the self-esteem of every soldier, to intensify his military pride, and to prejudice him against the conservatives who wanted peace only that they might restore the monarchy. The soldiers of Bonaparte were in their own estimation the soldiers of the same republic which survived in the triumvirate, Barras, Rewbell, and Larévellière; and it was a republican constitution which was menaced by the illegal interference of the legislature with the executive. In such a crisis it was easy to confuse in the minds of plain men the love of military glory with the enthusiasm for liberty. "Soldiers, I know that you are deeply moved by the misfortune which threatens our country"—so ran the proclamation of their idolized general. "But our country is in no real danger. The men who have enabled her to triumph over united Europe are on hand. Mountains separate us from France: you would surmount them with the swiftness of the eagle, if it were needful, in order to maintain the constitution, to defend liberty, to protect the government and the republicans. Soldiers, the government guards the law of which it is the depositary. If royalists show their heads, that moment is their last. Dismiss your fears, and let us swear by the spirit of the heroes who have fallen at our side in defense of liberty—let us swear by our new banners: 'Never-ending war on the enemies of the republic, and of the constitution of the year III.'"

This call had exactly the effect desired. From the divisions of the army, and from the chief garrisons, came addresses declaring the adhesion of the troops to the principles of the Revolution. As for the reproaches heaped upon Bonaparte for the overthrow of Venice, he was little concerned. To pacify the clamor, however, he invented and printed a number of half-true explanations cleverly adapted to the charges brought, but of a sardonic nature. The real bolt, the weapon destined to crush his enemies, was one forged in that very city. On its fall, a leading emigrant—the Comte d'Antraigues—had been captured. Treated with the highest distinction by his captors, he was led to write a confession of all that concerned the hitherto suspected, but unproved, treachery of Pichegru two years before. From his refuge at Blankenburg, in the Hartz Mountains, the pretender—Louis XVIII—had slowly and painfully built up the party which has been mentioned, and from its meeting-place was known as the Clichy faction; he had also bought Pichegru's adhesion to his cause, and had laid the complicated train of a plot whereby, when the fated and foreseen moment should arrive in which the exasperated Directory would employ force with the legislative councils, Pichegru, now president of the Five Hundred, was to appear in his uniform as the conqueror of Holland, and, assuming the chief command, turn the army, the chosen bulwark of the directors, against them. The Paris royalists had talked and behaved so as to betray many details regarding this ingenious scheme; but the possession of such knowledge by the directors did not render the situation any less menacing. To save themselves and the constitution, the radical members felt that they must secure, and that speedily, a capable and devoted general to command in Paris.

They had consulted Moreau, Hoche, and Bonaparte. Moreau showed little zeal: the army on the Rhine, which he commanded and whose fortunes he had retrieved by a signal victory, had not been paid; the men were destitute, and, like their leader, sullen on account of their enforced inaction. So unsympathetic and cold was the general's attitude toward the Directory that although, as appears certain, he had in his possession positive proof of Pichegru's desertion to the enemy, he kept silence, and allowed matters to take their course. The brilliant Hoche was willing to aid the directors. He had worked wonders in quelling rebellion throughout the Vendée, had won the favor of the soldiery, and in 1796 had made a gallant though futile expedition to stir up sedition in Ireland. Having then been transferred to the banks of the Rhine, he had gladly lent himself to execute a plan arranged by Barras for bringing troops to Paris under the pretext of a scheme for the complete transformation of the home and northern armies by a change of stations for the various divisions. To this end the general on July sixteenth had been nominated minister of war. It turned out, however, that, being not yet thirty, he was too young under the constitution, and could not be confirmed. Simultaneously the new dispositions in the army began to excite suspicion; the entire plan was discredited, and Hoche was so closely identified with it that he became an object of distrust to the masses, and therefore unavailable.

There remained only Bonaparte or one of his lieutenants. His very strength was a menace to the executive, and they felt the danger; but a general they must have. Accordingly, bitter as the decision was, they asked Bonaparte to send them such a commander as they needed—one of his own men. Bonaparte was ready for the emergency; he had already sent despatches to Paris promising a new remittance of six hundred thousand dollars, the strongest French army in the field had been used in a brilliant demonstration in favor of the Directory, and now most opportunely the ambitious, blustering, and fearless Augereau asked leave to depart for Paris on his private affairs. To him was entrusted an enthusiastic address to the Directory from the army, which had been prepared as part of the patriotic celebration. No better tool could have been selected. On his arrival in Paris,—"sent," as he boasted, "to kill the royalists,"—he was appointed to command the Army of the Interior; and the confession of d'Antraigues having been communicated to Barras a short time previously, through Bernadotte, the Directory felt ready for the coming crisis. Again they owed everything to Bonaparte; he was free to do as he chose in the further negotiations with Austria, and in the rearrangement of Italy.

With such weapons in hand, the Directory was for the moment invulnerable. But the royalist majority in the councils rushed madly on their fate. Infuriated by the presence so near to Paris of the soldiers brought in from the Army of the Sambre and the Meuse, they put their own guard under a royalist commander, closed the constitutional clubs which had been formed to offset that of Clichy, and in an irregular meeting of September third a proposition of General Willot to rise next day and destroy the government was received with applause. That night Augereau put himself at the head of about twelve thousand troops. With these he mounted guard throughout the city, seized the legislative chambers, and thus ended the first short constitutional régime of his country. The next morning, the eighteenth of Fructidor, the radical triumvirate of the Directory had entire control of the city and of the country. Of course all this was done in the name of public safety. Carnot, who had been kept in ignorance of Barras's dealings with Hoche, and had been reasoning with Bonaparte by letter as if his correspondent were an honest patriot, was rudely awakened from his illusion that others were as honest and sincere as he, and, seeing too late the snare which had been spread, took refuge in flight. Barthélemy was seized and imprisoned.

Two new radicals, Merlin and François de Neufchâteau, were appointed to the vacancies. Barbé-Marbois, the royalist president of the Ancients, with eleven members of that body; Pichegru with forty-two deputies from the Five Hundred, and one hundred and forty-eight other persons, mostly journalists, were proscribed. All these, with the exception of a few who escaped by flight, were sent to languish in the pestilential swamps of Cayenne, where there was already a colony of transported priests. Although the guillotine was not again erected, yet the eighteenth of Fructidor brought in a revolutionary government, an administration resting on force, though under the forms of the constitution. The Fructidorians claimed to be strict constitutionalists, and posed as such before the country. But facts were more convincing than their professions. Their rallying-point was the Directory, and the Directory having twice appealed to the army, the army was now its real support. The liberty of the press was abolished, and martial law was proclaimed wherever the executive thought best. Moreover, Bonaparte had shown the way and furnished the general; he had taken another step toward his eventual appearance as the ruler of the army, and through it of the country. Such a forced relation led to mutual distrust, and finally to hatred.

Augereau, who had fondly hoped to enter the Directory, was made commander, in Moreau's place, of an army whose campaigns were over. The premature death of Hoche about the same time quenched the only military genius in France comparable to that of Bonaparte, and removed a political rival as well. The Army of the Alps was then combined with that of Italy, and with this simplification of the military machine he who until peace was made would be virtually its mover could well say to his enemies: "I speak in the name of eighty thousand men. The time is past when scoundrelly lawyers and mere talkers can guillotine soldiers." Napoleon, in his intimate conversations with Mme. de Rémusat, said that at this time he "became a personage in Europe. On one side, by my orders of the day, I supported the revolutionary system; on the other, I secretly dealt with the emigrants, permitting them to cherish some hope. It is easy to deceive that party, for it always sets out not from what actually is, but from what it wishes there were. I received splendid offers in case I were willing to follow the example of General Monk. The pretender himself wrote to me in his halting, florid style. I conquered the Pope more completely by keeping away from Rome than if I had burned his capital. At last I became influential and strong."

With many men the success of the eighteenth of Fructidor would have been glory enough for a single season. But the indomitable and feverish energy of Bonaparte was not exhausted even by such minute prevision as was needed for this; in fact, the political campaign was only a considerable part of the summer's labor. While mastering France, he was preparing to master Italy, and, after Italy, Europe. Concurrently with the management of French politics went not only the negotiations with the Emperor, but the completion of his contemplated labors in Italy. Two constitutions were needed for new-born states, the republics known thus far as the Transpadane and the Cispadane. Neither was strong enough for their creator's purpose. By the preparation of almost identical charters, based upon the French constitution of the year III, the way for their union had already been prepared. These papers were now most carefully elaborated; and not only that, but an administrator for every post, from the highest to the lowest, was, after a minute scrutiny of his character, selected and then instructed according to his abilities. Most of these new officials were men of integrity and high purpose; but nevertheless they owed their appointment to the dictator, and were in consequence his tools, conscious or unconscious. The combination of the two temporary states into the Cisalpine Republic was thus made ready to be recognized in the final treaty with Austria.

Then there was Genoa. Bonaparte had told the Directory in May that her people were clamoring for liberty. She was destined by him for the same fate which had overtaken Venice. The identical machinery was set to work for a similar result. Faypoult, the diplomatic agent of France, began his agitations very much as Lallemant had done, although in comparison with his Venetian colleague he was but a bungler. The democratic club of Genoa first demanded from the senate that aristocracy should be abolished, and when their request was denied, seized the arsenal and the harbor. The populace rose to the support of the aristocracy, and temporarily triumphed. La Valette, Bonaparte's adjutant, appeared in due time on the floor of the Genoese senate with a peremptory message from his commander like that which in similar dramatic circumstances Junot read to the patricians of Venice. The intervention of the French, it said, was only to protect life and property, while assuring their own communications with France. But within twenty-four hours all political prisoners must be released, the people disarmed, and the enemies of France surrendered; otherwise the senators would answer with their lives. Thus menaced, the government obeyed every command. Then Faypoult repeated his demand for the substitution of a democratic constitution in place of the old one. The senate felt how futile further opposition would be, but sent an embassy to Montebello. The members were courteously received, and were probably not greatly amazed to find Bonaparte already occupied with the details of a constitution which was to reconstruct their commonwealth under the name of the Ligurian Republic. It was soon complete in all its parts, and with its adoption Genoa the Superb was no more.

As for Sardinia, the constant agitation carried on by her radicals kept the King in fear; and propositions from Bonaparte for an alliance, which would increase his army by the full effective force of the excellent Piedmontese troops, were favorably entertained. The health of the Pope had become so feeble that his death could not long be postponed. The opportunity was seized to display further respect for his ecclesiastical power by requesting, on August third, a reconciliation between the French government and the clergy for the common advantage of State and Church. A quarrel between the Valtellina and the Grisons gave the great man at Montebello his first chance to intervene in Switzerland as an arbiter whose word was law, and thus to begin the reconstruction of that country. In England, moreover, Leoben had made a profound impression, and Pitt became more anxious than ever for peace. In July Malmesbury reopened his negotiations, this time at Lille. The proffered terms were far more favorable than before. Belgium might be incorporated in France, and Holland made a dependency, if the French would renounce their claim to the most important among the Dutch colonies which England had conquered, including the Cape of Good Hope. There was no good will on the part of the French commissioners from the beginning, and the new ones who were appointed after the eighteenth of Fructidor proved to be utterly impracticable. The negotiations were marked by caviling over unimportant trifles and a suspicious indifference on both sides to really important concessions. Both parties, as later appeared, were fully aware of the impending revolution at Paris: the British plenipotentiary was confident in the restoration of royalty, the French commission was equally sure that the radical triumvirate would regain their mastery. Naturally it was a dispirited embassy which soon returned to England, when not merely the facts but the meaning and ultimate consequences of that revolution were known. Similar conditions attended the negotiation of Caillard at Berlin with Panine for a peace with Russia; only there, a treaty was signed. In it the French republic renounced its right or privilege of propagandism, and therefore the Directory after Fructidor rejected it. Throwing the responsibility for the coming war on England and Russia, the triumvirate without a moment's loss renewed its agitations in both Holland and Prussia to "fructidorize" both and secure them as allies. This insanity was merely the pendant of that with which they spurred Bonaparte to activity in forcing Austria's prompt surrender, withdrawing their agent from the negotiations and thus delivering themselves and France more and more completely into his hands. The process of "ripening the pear" for his enjoyment could not have been more auspiciously inaugurated.

The season was for Bonaparte, as may well be supposed, just as busy on the military as it had been on the political side. Day and night the soldiers in the conquered Venetian lands wrought with ceaseless labor until the whole territory was in perfect order as a base of military operations. Not a single strategic point there or elsewhere was overlooked. Even the little island of St. Peter in the Mediterranean was taken from Piedmont, and garrisoned with two hundred men. It was generally understood that war might break out at any moment. Every contribution under treaty obligations was exacted to the utmost farthing. As a single illustration of the French dealing, jewels and gems estimated by the Pope as worth ten millions of francs were accepted by the French experts at a valuation of five. Within the previous twelve months Bonaparte had sent to Paris one million four hundred thousand dollars, of which he destined four hundred thousand for the outfit of a fleet. It was but a moiety of what he had raised. During this summer, on the contrary, he kept everything: even the six hundred thousand dollars promised to Barras were not paid. It is therefore likely that he had in hand upward of six million dollars in cash, and commissary stores to the extent of possibly a million more.

The size of his army is difficult to estimate. By the records of the War Office he had in April one hundred and forty-one thousand two hundred and twenty-three effectives, of whom one hundred and twenty-one thousand four hundred and twenty were fit for service. On September third he wrote to Carnot that he had seventy-five thousand effective men, of whom fifteen thousand were in garrison; but a fortnight later he admitted a total of eighty-three thousand eight hundred, of whom he declared, however, that only forty-nine thousand were effective. He likewise admitted that he had one thousand Italians and two thousand Poles. No one can believe that these figures are of the slightest value. Conservative estimates put his fighting force at seventy thousand French soldiers ready for the field, and fifteen thousand Piedmontese, Cisalpines, and Poles in like condition. The French were by this time such veterans as Europe had seldom seen: the others were of medium quality only; excepting, of course, the Piedmontese, who were fine. Bonaparte's correspondence for the period was intended to convey the idea that he was preparing to enforce the terms of Leoben by another appeal to arms, if necessary. In fact, Austria was well-nigh as active as he was, and he had need to be ready. But subsequent events proved that all these preparations were really for another end. An advantageous peace was to be made with Austria, if possible, and Italy was to be properly garrisoned. But, on the old principle, one member of the coalition having been quieted, the other was to be humbled. The goal of his further ambition appears for a time to have been nothing less than the destruction somewhere and somehow of British power, and ultimately the conquest of Great Britain herself.

CHAPTER II

The Treaty of Campo Formio [2]

Bonaparte and the Mediterranean — France and the Orient — Bonaparte's Grand Diplomacy — Importance of Malta — Course of Negotiations with Austria — Novel Tactics of the French Plenipotentiary — The Treaty of Campo Formio — Results of Fructidor — Bonaparte's Interests Conflict with those of the Directory — Europe and the Peace.

Bonaparte was a child of the Mediterranean. The light of its sparkling waters was ever in his eyes, and the fascination of its ancient civilizations was never absent from his dreams of glory. His proclamations ring with classic allusions, his festivals were arranged with classic pomp. In infancy he had known of Genoa, the tyrant of his island, as strong in the splendid commercial enterprises which stretched eastward through the Levant, and beyond into the farther Orient; in childhood he had fed his imagination on the histories of Alexander the Great, and his conquest of Oriental empires; in youth he had thought to find an open door for his ambition, when all others seemed closed, by taking service with England to share the renown of those who were building up her Eastern empire. Disappointed in this, he appears to have turned with the same lack of success to Russia, already England's rival on the continent of Asia. It is perfectly comprehensible that throughout his early manhood his mind should have occasionally reverted to the same ideals. The conqueror of Italy and Austria might hope to realize them. Was he not master of the two great maritime commonwealths which had once shared the mass of Eastern trade between them? England's intrusion upon the Mediterranean basin was a never-ceasing irritation to all the Latin powers. Her commercial prosperity and her mastery of the seas increased the exasperation of France, as threatening even her equality in their ancient rivalry. From the days of the first crusade all Frenchmen had felt that leadership in the reconstruction of Asia belonged to them by virtue of preoccupation. Ardent republicans, moreover, still regarded France's mission as incomplete even in the liberalizing of the Continent; and the Department of Marine under the Directory stamped its paper with the motto, "Liberty of the Seas." Imaginative forces, the revolutionary system, and the national ambition all combined to create ubiquitous enthusiasm for the conquest of the Mediterranean. To this the temperament and training of Bonaparte were as the spark to the tinder. It was with willing ears that the Directory heard his first suggestions about the Venetian isles, and subsequently his plans for the capture of Malta, which was to be followed by a death-blow to England's supremacy in the Levant by the seizure of Egypt and the dismemberment of Turkey.

As early as May fourteenth, 1797, a letter from the conqueror of Italy informed the Directory what naval stores they might hope to secure in the dismemberment of Venice; in the previous year similar estimates had been made with regard to Genoa, Tuscany, and Naples. It was with a Franco-Venetian fleet that Gentili established French administration in the Ionian Isles, whose people, weary of Venetian tyranny, welcomed him as a liberator. The more intelligent among them desired home rule under French protection; the gratitude of the ignorant was shown in the erection of rude shrines where lamps were kept alight before pictures of Bonaparte. About the same time the discontented Greeks on the mainland were given to understand that the great annihilator of tyrants would gladly hear their cries. For months an extensive secret correspondence was carried on between the French headquarters in Italy and the disaffected in Turkey, wherever found. No fewer than three rebellious pashas were ready to seek French assistance; and one of them, he of Janina, had actually twelve thousand men in the field. The archives of the French foreign office abound in careful studies by its diplomatic agents of the revolutionary forces and elements in the Ottoman empire. Ways and means to dissolve the ancient friendship between France and the Porte were discussed; a political program, based on the maltreatment of French merchants in the Levant and the scandals of Mameluke administration in Egypt, was elaborated; and on September thirteenth, 1797, the first formal proposition for the seizure of that country was made by Bonaparte to Talleyrand, now minister of foreign affairs. The government at Paris redoubled its energies, and recruited its powers, for the object in view.

In fact, after Fructidor there is a ring in the words of Bonaparte's letters, especially those to Talleyrand, which shows how risky it would have been to neglect his unexpressed but evident wishes. The sum of four hundred thousand dollars, sent from Italy in the previous year for fitting out the fleet, had been used for another purpose, much to the irritation of Bonaparte, whose language in regard to the upbuilding of a sea power had been vigorous. At last, by his contributions of material from Italy, and the efforts of the administration at home, something had been accomplished. Admiral Brueys was in the Adriatic with a force able, it was believed, to meet even the English. By clever diplomacy the Spaniards and Neapolitans had been set to neutralize each other. With time the latter had grown bold, and were making extortionate demands. The Directory offered to send five thousand French soldiers to reinforce the Spanish army which was contending with Portugal, if an equal number of the Spanish troops in Italy would mingle with the French soldiers to conquer the Papal States. The latter would then be given to the Duke of Parma, in return for his old duchy, which was to form part of the new republic.

In this far-reaching design of Bonaparte's—a plan which comprehended the whole basin of the Mediterranean, and which, by throwing French troops into Spain, opened the way for further interference in that peninsula—lies the germ of all his future dealing with the Castilian monarchy. The focal point of the whole system, he had explained as early as May, was the island of Malta, the citadel of the Mediterranean. The grand master of the Knights was at the point of death; the King of Naples claimed the island as an ancient appanage, but a German was the most prominent of his order among the candidates for the succession. Bonaparte's proposal was that the Maltese should first be bribed to revolt, and that then the French or Spanish fleet should seize Valetta, compel the election of a Spaniard, and thus secure a bulwark in the heart of the Mediterranean against Turkey on one side and England on the other.

Such were some of the summer's avocations; its real business was supposed to be the conclusion of a peace with the empire. But Austria was far from being exhausted, and her agents protracted the negotiations while the Vienna government was recruiting its forces, hoping all the time for a triumph of the royalist party in Paris. Until after the eighteenth of Fructidor this was not entirely distasteful to Bonaparte, in view of the desire of Carnot for peace on the basis of the preliminaries. Nevertheless, a spirited comedy was playing all the time, Bonaparte mystifying both Merveldt, one of the Austrian plenipotentiaries, and Clarke, who had finally been admitted to the negotiations as agent of the Directory, by outbursts of feigned impatience, while, by pretended confidences, he coquetted with Gallo, who, though the second Austrian plenipotentiary, was a Neapolitan, minister from that kingdom to Vienna, and has by some been thought to have been Bonaparte's own creature, and to have accepted his bribes. Attempted bribery and counter-bribery, at any rate, there were; for the conqueror himself received from Francis the offer of a principality in the empire with not less than two hundred and fifty thousand subjects, and an independent income. Had the German emperor known the projects of his opponent he would have reviled himself as an artless simpleton. In May it was agreed that the congress to determine the territorial transfers within the Germanic body should sit, not at Bern, but at Rastadt in Baden. But the demands of the conqueror in amplification of the articles signed at Leoben were then so extortionate that the Austrian minister for foreign affairs doubted the good faith of his representatives, and recalled from Russia Count Cobenzl, his most learned, accomplished, and skilful diplomatist, in order to secure something like equality in the negotiations. This gave a temporary pause to the proceedings, which dragged on without significance until after Fructidor, when Barras wrote from Paris: "Peace, peace, but an honorable and lasting one. No more of Carnot's worthless suggestions."

When, therefore, the negotiations were again renewed in the first days of September, Bonaparte earnestly longed for at least a temporary peace. He arranged that the plenipotentiaries should meet at Udine, not far from his military headquarters at Passariano, so that he might secure the greatest possible advantage from the attitude of a conqueror ready at a moment to resume hostilities. The Directory, suspecting that Clarke had become too facile an instrument in the hands of the ambitious soldier, chose this moment to recall him. For a month the conflict of wits between the formal diplomatists and the determined, unhampered French general was hot and furious. Even the veteran Cobenzl, who did not arrive until September twenty-sixth, was but a toy in Bonaparte's hands. More than once the latter had recourse to his old tactics of barbaric rudeness, and once, toward the close, he wilfully brought on a fit of anger, in which by accident he dashed from its stand a porcelain tray, the gift of Catherine II to Cobenzl. The legend ran that as he caught up his hat, he hissed out the words: "In less than a month I shall have shattered your monarchy like this!" and then flung out of the room, declaring that the truce was ended. In fact, no one seems to have paid any attention to the crash at all. Cobenzl wrote that Bonaparte behaved like a crazy man, and the French officers had difficulty in soothing their general. Whether the nervous attack were real or feigned no one can say: at subsequent crises in diplomacy there recurred others, very similar. Both sides were anxious to make the doubtful language of Leoben as elastic as possible—each, naturally enough, for its own advantage. Proposition and counter-proposition, rejoinder and surrejoinder, followed one another through those weeks so pregnant of consequence to both sides. Twice it appeared as if no conclusion could be reached, and as if a breach were imminent. Once, marching orders for the invading army were actually prepared and in part issued. But the season was inclement and to Marmont his general confided a sense of uneasiness regarding Augereau's appointment on the Rhine. Both parties realized that neither could secure all they claimed without delay, or a possible renewal of warfare. They determined, therefore, to brave their respective governments, and entirely to disregard both Prussian and German feeling as to the Rhine boundary. Finally a compromise was made, and on the seventeenth of October at midnight, after a long social reunion of the plenipotentiaries; in the dark, Bonaparte telling ghost stories, and making the scene generally dramatic and even theatrical, the treaty was engrossed and signed, being dated from Campo Formio, a hamlet neutralized for the purpose. The negotiators parted with the exchange of friendly greetings.

The terms were far more favorable to France than in all probability Bonaparte had hoped to obtain. The Austrian Netherlands with the Rhine frontier from Basel to Andernach were surrendered by the Emperor, and in token of good faith the commanding fortress of Mainz was immediately to be delivered into French hands. In return Bonaparte ceded the Italian lands eastward from the Adige, by the head of the Adriatic, to the frontiers of Dalmatia, including, of course, the city of Venice. France kept the Ionian Islands and the Venetian factories opposite on the mainland. All the Venetian territory to the west of the Adige, together with Mantua, Modena, Lombardy, Massa-e-Carrara, Bologna, Ferrara, and the Romagna, was incorporated into the new Cisalpine Republic; and Genoa, receiving from the Emperor the remnants of his feudal rights in the surrounding country, was transformed into the Ligurian Republic, with a constitution similar to that of the Cisalpine. The various arrangements for the redistribution of German lands necessary to compensate princes who must abandon territories on the left bank of the Rhine were to be made by the congress to be held at Rastadt. French plenipotentiaries, under Bonaparte's leadership, were to be members of the congress; while Rastadt, as a border town, and therefore more favorable to French interests than Bern, was to be further neutralized by the departure of the Emperor's troops from all German lands except his own hereditary dominions. When the news of Campo Formio reached Vienna, the peace party was delighted, and the populace broke out in a jubilee. But Thugut was not deceived. "Peace! Peace!" said he. "Where is it? I cannot recognize it in this treaty."

In Paris the negotiations had produced some uneasiness. It is now generally said that Fructidor was exclusively the work of Bonaparte: or, rather, that the thirteenth of Vendémiaire was the work of Barras, assisted by Bonaparte; that the eighteenth of Fructidor was the work of Bonaparte, assisted by Barras. This is only a half-truth based on an exaggerated estimate of the facts. While, on the whole, Bonaparte was at the moment pleased with the results of this second political stroke, there was much connected with it utterly repugnant to his wishes. The so-called Fructidorians, among them Mme. de Staël and her friends, were still favorable, in the main, to Bonaparte; but they were thorough republicans, and considered the day as the victory, not of a man, but of a cause. Later Bonaparte expressed sorrow that he had taken any share in arranging it, for the cause and its few supporters proved to be hostile. The wholesale proscription which followed the success of the Directory and its friends destroyed their personal popularity, strengthened the adherents of the monarchy, and weakened the prestige of the army, which was the real support of the new revolution. As far as the repression of conservative royalist and moderate republican influence in the Directory and the chambers was concerned, Bonaparte's interests were identical with those of Barras, Rewbell, and the bigoted Larévellière. He would gladly have ended public agitation in a nation the majority of whom had become royalists again. To this end, he would willingly have broken the presses of the newspapers and have closed the Clichy club: he was anxious for any extreme course necessary to preserve the revolutionary model in government until, in his own phrase, "the pear was ripe" for him. The events of Fructidor, on the one hand, confirmed the constitutionalists in the policy of letting other countries alone, and at the same time put an end to all enthusiasm for republican principles even in the radical executive, necessarily substituting in its place the merest self-interest. This new situation, though not inimical to Bonaparte's interests, made the Fructidorians the most determined opponents of his ambitions.

Almost immediately after the events of Fructidor the new Directory had sent instructions to Passariano that Venice was to be preserved from the hands of Austria. The removal of Clarke had followed. At once began a war of words and a conflict of purposes. Bonaparte's despatches depicted the situation of the Italian peoples in the darkest light, so as to set forth their unfitness for independence, while in every letter he dwelt on his own feeble and broken health as a reason for his immediate recall. Meantime he was driving the machinery of negotiation at its utmost speed and capacity. The Directory finally took its stand on the determination that Italy must be free as far eastward as the Isonzo, and the subtle Talleyrand agreed to win or compel Bonaparte's acquiescence. The courier with this ultimatum from Paris reached Passariano exactly twelve hours after Monge and Berthier had carried the treaty of Campo Formio in the opposite direction for the sanction of the directors. It was bitter, indeed, for Barras and his colleagues to surrender, but the logic of their position made resistance impossible. They approved the hateful stipulations with what grace they could muster, and, the warfare on the Continent being over, appointed Bonaparte to command what was significantly entitled the Army of England, but without defining his duties. Thirty thousand soldiers began their march from Milan to Picardy on the English Channel. As for the now distracted Venetians, they asked permission to continue the war against Austria on their own account. Bonaparte imprisoned the deputies who presented the petition, and Sérurier delivered Venice into the Emperor's hands, after destroying the arsenals and such vessels as were no longer useful for war. Among these was the stately barge in which the officials of the commonwealth had from immemorial times been wont to espouse the Adriatic—the famous Bucentaur. Manin, the last doge of Venice, was compelled to swear allegiance to Austria in the name of his compatriots. With a broken heart he made ready for the ceremony, but as he stepped forward at the appointed time to pronounce the fatal words, his strength and his faculties gave way together. He fell senseless at the feet of his foes, and died not long afterward.

The effect of Bonaparte's success in forcing such a peace upon Austria was profound throughout Europe. The war party in Great Britain was materially strengthened by the treatment which Malmesbury had received. While the treaty made a pretense of upholding the integrity of the empire as a principle, yet Prussia and all Germany knew that that integrity was quickly to be violated. Paul I of Russia remembered that as guarantor of the peace of Teschen, he too was deeply concerned in that integrity, and displayed uneasiness. The British had on October eleventh annihilated the Dutch fleet at Camperdown: their sea power was again assured and with it the replenishing of their treasury. These elements of the second coalition have been repeatedly described, but for all that, events would have been otherwise than they were, had there been anywhere in Europe a statesman with moral and material power at his bidding, who could have propagated a moderate, enlightened liberalism in the countries of the north. As a sorry radicalism had full play for some years in France, a blind reactionary conservatism prevailed among all the Teutonic peoples. The struggle of two extremes made the chaos. England was determined on war to destruction or exhaustion: France likewise. The system of national assassinations and territorial compensations begun in the partition of Poland was exemplified in the peace of Campo Formio. Then it was three to one against a nation with neither political nor military strength, and the decision was against nationality. Hereafter it was to be all absolute Europe against a nation with some political and immense military aptitudes. The struggle was to last fifteen years and be decided this time for, not against, nationality as a fact and a principle.

CHAPTER III

Bonaparte and Talleyrand [3]

Bonaparte in Switzerland — Arrival at Rastadt — A Royalist Portrait of Him — His Affectation of Simplicity — Reception by the Directory — First Threat of Invading England — Career of Talleyrand — His Relations with Bonaparte — Men and Parties in Paris.

In the complications of his far-reaching designs, the return of Bonaparte to Paris was a matter of consequence to him, an affair to be managed with diplomacy and an eye to dramatic effect. To appease the Directory, the insubordinate plenipotentiary explained in his despatches that he had acted as he did because Austria had made herself stronger than ever in the long interval, which was probably true; and that the possibility of further successful warfare had been jeopardized by the early arrival of winter, which had left him no choice in hastening the conclusion. This was not flatly untrue, for Marmont noted in his diary that it was October thirteenth when the first new snow fell on the mountain peaks, and that he had marked his general's surprise at the fact: the treaty was signed on the seventeenth. Nevertheless, the season was later than usual, and the plea of weather was a pretext to hide the negotiator's own purposes. In his rôle as an Italian deliverer, Bonaparte remained until the middle of November to consolidate the new republics and await the assembling of delegates at Rastadt. Then, traveling sedately by Turin and the Mont Cenis pass through Chambéry, he reached Geneva. Switzerland was ripe for his presence. The first step was to arrest Bontemps, a Genevese banker who had assisted Carnot in his flight to Nyon, where he was still in concealment. The second was to focus the revolutionary movement in the district of Vaud, and to strengthen its preparations for throwing off the Bernese dominion by organizing an ovation for himself at Lausanne: a democrat must be fêted only by democrats.

"Nothing too far" being manifestly his motto at this period, he then passed by easy stages to Rastadt, where he arrived on November twenty-fifth, and immediately asserted for himself a nominal supervision of the arrangements. The King of Sweden had claimed representation both as Duke of Pomerania and as a guarantor of the peace of Westphalia; for that reason he had sent as his delegate Count Fersen, a shrewd agent, once Swedish ambassador in Paris, the friend of Marie Antoinette, and known everywhere as an intimate counselor of the Bourbons. Bonaparte, outraged at such effrontery, summoned the envoy to his presence, and, trampling on the forms of a hollow politeness, informed him with a few biting words that his presence was not desired. The envoy tarried long enough to assure himself that Austria was quite as hostile as France, and returned to Stockholm. It annoyed Bonaparte even more to find that the imperial delegates had not yet arrived. But he passed the interval with considerable satisfaction in an exchange of pleasantries with the various personages who were on the ground. "How," said he to Stadion, garbed as a canon of Würzburg, "can the station of an ecclesiastical prince of the empire, a man who is both warrior and spiritual minister, accord with the precepts of the Scriptures, with the poverty and the lowliness of early Christianity?" "Where will your master live?" he said to the agent from the Bishop of Mainz, "when he loses his present residence?" The hollow shells of worn-out institutions rattled wherever this innovator stepped. At last Cobenzl arrived, and the urgent affair of the transfer of Mainz was promptly concluded. That fortress was to be occupied by French troops on the thirtieth, the day in which Austria was to take possession of Venice. Then, leaving Treilhard and Bonnier, the rude and insolent French plenipotentiaries, in a position of arrogant superiority to their colleagues, he set out for Paris, and after a triumphal progress throughout northern France, a region not before familiar to him, arrived, on December fifth, at his residence on Chantereine street. With its usual facility in that line, the Paris municipality soon after dubbed this rather insignificant byway the Street of Victory. Mme. Bonaparte, who had been visiting Rome, where her brother-in-law Joseph was now French minister, rejoined her husband at Christmas.

In the papers of the Comte d'Antraigues was found a pen-portrait of Bonaparte as he appeared at Venice, and it will no doubt, with due allowances, stand for the few months later when he became the idol of Paris. Sucy, a government commissioner of much sense, overpowered by the importance of passing events, wrote in August to a friend that he could not enter upon such voluminous details as would be necessary to depict Bonaparte, but warned his correspondent against supposing that the general had attained the height of his ambition, using the words previously quoted in another connection, "I can even add that I know no other end for him but the throne or the scaffold." But Antraigues was fortunately more communicative: "Bonaparte is a man of small stature, of sickly hue, with piercing eyes, and something in his look and mouth which is cruel, covert, and treacherous; speaking little, but very talkative when his vanity is engaged or thwarted; of very poor health because of violent humors in his blood. He is covered with tetter, a disease of such a sort as to increase his vehemence and his activity. He is always full of his projects, and gives himself no recreation. He sleeps but three hours every night, and takes no medicine except when his sufferings are unendurable. This man wishes to master France, and, through France, Europe. Everything else, even in his present successes, seems but a means to the end. Thus he steals without concealment, plunders everything, is accumulating an enormous treasure of gold, silver, jewels, and precious stones. But he cares for it only as a means. This same man, who will rob a community to the last sou, will without a thought give a million francs to any person who can assist him. If such a person has hate or vengeance to gratify, he will afford every opportunity to do so. Nothing stands in the way of his prevailing with a man he thinks will be useful; and with him a bargain is made in two words and two minutes, so great is his seductive power. The reverse side of his methods is this: the service rendered, he demands a complete servility, or he becomes an implacable enemy; and when he has bought traitors, their service rendered, he observes but little secrecy concerning them. This man abhors royalty: he hates the Bourbons, and neglects no means to wean his army from them. If there were a king in France other than himself, he would like to have been his maker, and would desire royal authority to rest on the tip of his own sword; that sword he would never surrender, but would plunge it into the king's heart, should the monarch cease for a moment to be subservient."

On Bonaparte's passage through Chambéry, he had been visibly affected by a shout from the multitude hailing him as the father of his soldiers. There were countless homes in France into which the letters of absent sons had sent the same epithet, and the nation at large thought of him in that rôle as a simple, benevolent man, devoted to his country and to her liberties. His histrionic talents, like his other gifts, were of the highest order, and for the moment this ideal must not be shattered. He therefore appeared to the French public as devoted to the principle of equality, which the Revolution considered the guarantee of free institutions. In the "Moniteur," the official journal of the time, may be read every detail of his conduct. Instead of waiting for visits from those in place, he made the advances. His clothes were plain, his manners were simple, his dignity was moderated to a proper respect for himself and others. The carriage in which he drove had but two horses, and there was no suite in attendance, either abroad or at home. Often the passers-by saw him walking alone in the small garden of his unostentatious dwelling, apparently resting from the fatigues of his campaigns. In short, there was nothing recognizable of the conquering potentate who had kept such state at Milan, except the affected simplicity of his personal life and conduct. "At first sight," wrote Talleyrand, whose acquaintance Bonaparte sought immediately on reaching Paris, "he struck me as a charming figure; the laurels of twenty victories are so becoming to youth, a handsome eye, a pale complexion, and a certain tired look."

There were a few proper assumptions of great dignity, as for instance when, on December tenth, 1797, a grand festival was celebrated in the classic style for the formal reception by the Directory of the treaty of Campo Formio from the hands of its negotiator. Talleyrand pronounced a glowing eulogium. Bonaparte, with impressive mien, replied in a few short, terse sentences, which closed with the significant utterance: "When the happiness of the French people shall rest upon the best organic laws, all Europe will become free." Barras closed with a long, dreary tribute to the Directory, and at the end imprinted the kiss of fraternity on the young general's brow. The other members of the executive hurried to display a feigned cordiality in following his example. The two councils united in a banquet to the hero of the hour. The public was overpowered by the harmony of its rulers. Bonaparte's studied modesty might have shown the directors how false was their position. As had been said long before to Pepin, the title of king belongs to him who has the power. In private the skilful minister of foreign affairs was no less adroit than the young conqueror, and lavished his courtier arts in the preservation of apparent unity.

The greatest danger to Bonaparte's ambitions was that he should by some mishap become identified with a party. Thus far, chiefly by absence from the seat of government, he had successfully avoided that pitfall. The Parisian populace did not even identify him with the Fructidorians; and, though not entirely forgetful of the Day of the Sections, they flocked to see him wherever it was known he would be. When asked if their interest did not gratify him, he replied that it meant nothing; they would crowd in the same way to stare if he were on his way to the scaffold. He appears to have felt that long residence would diminish his prestige, which for his purposes would be a disaster, and consequently he seems carefully to have conveyed the impression that he was but a visitor. Sandoz-Rollin, the Prussian minister in Paris, believed that the soldiers sent into France from Italy were intended for use in the capital. Exactly what was planned he did not know, for Bonaparte was not yet thirty, and therefore ineligible, at least under the constitution, to the Directory. Others believed that, Austria having been vanquished, England was to be struck—first through a fight between the two fleets, and then by the landing on her shores of a large body of veterans from the Army of Italy, under their victorious commander. In fact, Monge had formally stated, on December tenth, that "the government of England and the French republic cannot both continue to exist"; and during the winter Thomas Paine exercised his powers as a pamphleteer on the theme of England's approaching bankruptcy, while the public crowded one of the theaters to stare at stage pictures representing the invasion of England. As Bonaparte's almost superhuman diligence had ever open and ready two or more possibilities, this direct invasion may already have been a third choice. In the report which he made in February of the following year after a visit to Dunkirk, he distinctly set forth the studied policy of his whole career; viz., to keep three possibilities in working order, a pretense of invasion, a system of barring England from continental commerce, and a blow at the trade of Great Britain in the Orient. Otherwise there is nothing for it but a peace. But his dealings with every Italian power and with Austria had shown a definite policy of striking, not at the heart to produce desperation, but at the limbs, where the blow would be quite as deadly and resistance less furious. All the natural and successive steps of preparation for such an enterprise had been taken by the government during the summer of 1797. Corfu and Zante, and with them the possessions of Venice in the Levant, were secured and kept; a fleet was collected and equipped from the spoils of northern Italy; Naples was temporarily neutralized; and plans had then been carefully elaborated with experts, among whom was Monge, for the seizure of Malta and the disruption of Turkey by an attack on Egypt.

In all this Talleyrand had been a brilliant and unscrupulous agent. Born of a noble family, his lameness closed other careers and drove him for distinction into the Church, where, under the old régime, the traditions of ecclesiastical feudalism still lingered. In his youth he was the friend of the infamous Mme. du Barry, and owed his early promotion to her influence. When he was treasurer of the French clergy and bishop of Autun, Mirabeau said of him that he would "offer his very soul at a price, and he would do well, for he would exchange dung for gold." During the first years of the Revolution he led the liberal clergy; finally he went to such extremes in secularizing the Church that the Pope excommunicated him. His private life had been scandalous from the first, and he was avowedly a passionate gambler. It was with a sense of relief that he abandoned the Church to become the most unscrupulous statesman and the most adroit diplomatist of his time. It was he who in 1791 laid before the Legislative Assembly the dazzling scheme of national education which afterward was modified and adopted by Napoleon. He forecast the years of radical excess, and had himself sent in 1792 as a secret diplomatic agent to London, where, with occasional visits to Paris, he resided in the main for two years. The English could not endure his duplicity, and finally drove him from their country. The Convention having declared him an emigrant, he sailed for America, and spent some time in the United States, where, being coldly treated in political and social circles, he devoted himself to an analytical study of the people and their institutions. The revocation in 1796 of the decree pronouncing him an emigrant was obtained by Mme. de Staël's influence, and he immediately returned to France. It is characteristic of him that during these years he was successively a representative of the King, of Danton, and of the Directory.

To the Institute of France, of which learned body he had been made a member during his absence, he presented on his return his brilliant studies of colonization in general, and of the respective relations between the United States and the rival powers of France and England. But politics, not literature, was his trade. At once he began to study the situation of his own land, and observed with profound penetration both the instability of the government and the straits of the Directory. Accordingly, though nominally their man, and accepting from them the ministry of foreign affairs, he attached himself at once to Bonaparte, in the hope, as he explains in his memoirs, of using the conqueror to restore the monarchy. The latter had the perspicacity to encourage the relation, and from that moment possessed in the very center of affairs an able and congenial representative. It is known that Talleyrand's public letters to Bonaparte were accompanied with private supplements which often ran in a sense quite opposite to that of the main sheet. For instance, nothing could be more satisfactory to the directors than his open account of Fructidor; but it is known that the private letter mercilessly analyzed the situation as impossible and unstable. Attempting a corrupt bargain with the American envoys, Pinckney, Marshall, and Gerry, in regard to the protection of American commerce, he was mercilessly exposed by the indignant ministers, and finally compelled by public opinion to resign from his office. But even in disgrace he continued in Paris as the unscrupulous prime mover of French politics, until restored to power by Bonaparte, when he again accepted the position from which he had been driven, and successfully elaborated in practice the schemes of his superior.

There were, however, two other men, Barras and Sieyès, who, after the eighteenth of Fructidor, were left in an unendurable position. Both these men were also boundlessly venal. The former was Bonaparte's "ancient friend"; Fructidor made him the general's creature. Like Talleyrand, both were for the present the devoted satraps of a master who could pay not only with prospective power, but with present cash; ultimately they also hoped to use him for their own ends in the restoration of monarchy. Sieyès, now president of the Ancients, was both weak and vain. But, posing as an oracular constitution-maker, he was admitted as such to the councils of Talleyrand and Barras. Both his pride and his interests being thus engaged, he had apparently become as ardent a follower of Bonaparte as were the other two. Rewbell was so occupied with the foreign policy of the Revolution, and Merlin with the internal administration on Jacobin lines, that neither one nor the other gave any thought to the ulterior consequences of Fructidor. François de Neufchâteau was posing as the wit of the epoch, Larévellière was its prophet; neither was of even the slightest importance. Augereau, seeing himself duped by the disbanding of the Rhine army, had been disenchanted, and was for a while the relentless enemy of his old chief. A few mediocrities both in the army and in politics were in sympathy with Augereau; but as England was the one foe left, the general of the Army of England was virtually the commander of the whole. Not one of the division generals disobeyed his orders.

CHAPTER IV

Commotions in European Politics

The Directory and the Legislature — Motives of the French Army — Augereau's Blunders — Humiliation of the Batavian Republic — Seizure of Piedmont — Proclamation of the Roman Republic — Swiss Territory Remodeled — Antagonism of Prussia and Austria — Bernadotte's Mission to Vienna — Prussian Neutrality — Unstable Equilibrium of Europe.

During the winter of 1797-98 it was the custom of Bonaparte, as the constructive commander-in-chief of the French forces, to share in the deliberations of the various civil authorities; sometimes they seemed uneasy under his influence, but a threat of retirement generally brought them to terms. They yielded because every faction believed that the unrelenting attitude of the Directory toward royalists, emigrants, and ecclesiastics would revive in the country the hatred of Jacobinism and give its enemies a victory in the spring elections of 1798. Animosity was all the more fierce since the press had been virtually throttled by closing during the winter the offices of some sixteen papers, in addition to many already silenced. Should the chambers be hostile to the executive, they would certainly attempt a civil revolution, and Bonaparte with his troops would be the arbitrator. The royalists, therefore, made approaches to him once more, this time through Mme. Bonaparte, who diplomatically procrastinated, and kept the suitors in expectancy. But while all was movement and plot under the surface, the Parisian populace only occasionally had evidence of aught but perfect harmony in all parts of the government. They were fond of contrasting the brilliant results of Campo Formio with the unostentatious demeanor of the great general who had humbled Austria, and, as he himself had said in his festival speech, had brought two centers of light, "the finest parts of Europe,"—Italy and the Netherlands,—under the brighter rays of French illumination.

In later years the unexampled capability of Bonaparte for scheming and machination unfolded itself to such unheard-of limits that it is customary in our day to attribute every detail of European history in those times to his manipulation. This is the more natural because the events of that winter, beyond the boundaries of France, contributed in the highest degree to that political conflagration which preceded the ascendancy of Napoleon and the complete rebuilding of the European state system. And yet the most acute historians often overlook the evident causes in their search for hidden ones; in this case the former are sufficient to account for the results. With the Italian campaign republican armies ceased to fight either for the integrity of France, for her "natural" frontiers, or for the revolutionary system. They were often self-deceived, and thought themselves to be propagating liberal ideas; but glory and plunder were thenceforward the mainsprings of action in the majority of both officers and men.

1797—98

Accordingly, what might have been foreseen actually occurred. Augereau, during the autumn of 1797, sought to emulate in southwestern Germany the political policy initiated by Bonaparte in Italy. But his rude blundering compelled his recall, a step which was softened by his transfer to the Pyrenees, where an army stood ready to intervene in Spain whenever opportunity should be ripe. The movement in Germany spent itself in shameless plundering both east and west of the Rhine—a double disgrace in view of the fact that the war was ended, that Mainz was surrendered, that the whole left bank, though not yet formally ceded, was in French control; and that the Congress of Rastadt was discussing how the princes who had surrendered their possessions to France should be compensated within the boundaries of the empire.

The course of affairs in the Low Countries was equally disastrous to the prestige of the Revolution. Holland had not only lost all her colonies, including the Cape of Good Hope, by her compulsory enrolment in the republican system, but at Camperdown on October eleventh, 1797, the fleet of the Batavian Republic was battered to pieces by that of England under Duncan. The new commonwealth was thus rendered contemptible, and made entirely dependent on France. Twenty-five thousand soldiers were already quartered on the Dutch, and now they were held to enormous contributions of ships, money, and men for the proposed landing in England. Delacroix and Joubert were the respective civil and military agents in these exactions.

Bonaparte's departure from Italy made no change in French policy or conduct with regard to her. The Venetian possessions had been literally stripped by Berthier of every valuable article before their definitive surrender to Austria. Formal negotiations for a treaty of offensive and defensive alliance with the Cisalpine Republic were opened as soon as the new state was recognized, but the same pillage continued as during its conquest. By that treaty, which was not concluded until March, 1798, the new "free" state was bound to support twenty-five thousand French troops, and to raise nearly four million dollars a year to pay them. As to the new Ligurian Republic, its boundaries were incomplete without Piedmont. Before the end of June, 1798, revolutionary fires having been kindled in Turin by the old efficient methods, two French armies under Jacobin generals seized Piedmont, and incorporated it with the other "free" state, which was then bound to France in the same terms as Cisalpina. Charles Emmanuel, having thus lost all his possessions on the mainland, retired to Sardinia, where he was destined to become, under protection of the English fleet, the focus of a new coalition against France.

Rome had called to her service, for the reorganization of her army, Provera, one of the Austrian generals who had been active in the last campaign. Joseph Bonaparte demanded his dismissal. This spark fired the revolutionary spirit of the few determined liberals at the capital, and a rising took place in which General Duphot, who was expecting soon to become Joseph's brother-in-law, was killed. The insurgents were defeated, and sought refuge in the French Embassy. The papal authorities humbled themselves to make restitution, but Joseph would not be appeased, and demanded his passports. Within a month, on February tenth, 1798, Berthier and his soldiers entered the Eternal City, and proclaimed the Roman Republic. With no consideration for his estimable personal character, the French agents stripped Pius VI, the aged and feeble Pope, of all his jewels: his very rings were drawn from his fingers by their hands. The papal government was declared at an end, and the cardinals were forbidden to elect a successor. The Pope himself was allowed to withdraw to Siena; but disappointing his captors' expectations of his speedy demise, he was removed at their convenience from place to place, until at last he died in the following year at Valence. Naples, of course, was in an agony of fear, but her hour had not yet struck.

Finally the flames caught in Switzerland, where the democratic district of Vaud declared its independence of the Bernese aristocracy. The fire was fanned by Bonaparte's agent, Peter Ochs, the liberal burgomaster of Basel. France intervened, nominally in order to compel Bern to liberate all her political prisoners and to emancipate Vaud, but really to plunder and remodel the whole country. The entering army pillaged friend and foe alike. The desperate resistance of Bern, in which even women and children shared, was of no avail. At its close the Helvetian Republic was constituted under a new charter, like those of Cisalpina and Batavia; it likewise entered at once into an offensive and defensive alliance with France. Bern's indemnity was the surrender of her "treasure," or cash reserve—a sum of one million three hundred thousand dollars. Swiss historians state that besides the cash there were nearly two and a half million dollars in bonds. A fifth of this was sent at once to Toulon, where the fleet was fitting out; the rest went to the army and its commander, General Brune. Fribourg, Solothurn, and Zurich were likewise stripped for the benefit of the military chest. It is thought that from all the enormous sums seized during the winter nothing reached the national treasury. Napoleon in exile declared that Paris knew nothing of all this. But more serious still were the contemplated changes of territory. The Valtellina had already been incorporated with the Cisalpine Republic; the Frick valley was soon to be delivered to Austria along with the Inn Quarter; and eventually Geneva, with the upper Rhone valley, was to become a part of France itself, in order that the Simplon, another gateway into Italy, might be assured to her armies in case the difficult passes on the Mediterranean shore should ever be closed.[4]

The effect of all this upon the politics of Europe was like that of a torch in dead stubble. The German-Roman Empire was an antiquated institution. Prussia had risen to importance as the representative of a new Protestant German nationality. Frederick the Great, inheriting his shrewd father's army and policy, thoroughly understood that for the attainment of this end Roman Catholic Austria must be humbled and reduced to a secondary position. His success was only partial, but it was so far effective. The relations between these two great rivals in the Germanic body, therefore, were so strained that Prussia, in her antagonism to Austria, naturally leaned toward France. But the seizure of German lands not only on the west bank of the Rhine, but of some even on the eastern side, together with the behavior of the French armies not only in southwestern Germany, but again in Bern, created consternation at Berlin. Sieyès was sent to allay, if possible, the fears of Frederick William III, and to woo him to the French alliance. Meantime, the radical Directory, looking on the ecclesiastical principalities of the empire as anachronisms, had been planning their entire secularization. This would indemnify the secular powers; and the sentiment of both Prussia and Austria favored this solution of the problem. But Bonaparte, foreseeing that temporarily it would also unify public opinion in Germany, and give France no ground for meddling, had declared in Italy that if the Germanic body were non-existent, France should create it for her own purposes; and he impressed upon the French plenipotentiaries at Rastadt how important it was that they should at least prevent a complete secularization of the great bishoprics.

This was the first bone of contention thrown into that Congress; and Austria soon began to see that the treaty of Campo Formio was to be not merely an armistice, but a very short one. Bonaparte had formed in Italy a legion of five thousand Poles. They were still under arms, awaiting the event. It was notorious that French agents were fomenting discontent in both Poland and Hungary. The Army of Italy had carefully spared the hereditary dominions of the Emperor while hurrying toward Leoben, and Bonaparte, repressing pillage with relentless severity, had explained that France made war not with the good people of Europe, but with their tyrannical dynasties. Even in Carinthia some enthusiasm for revolutionary principles had been created. Thugut had cleverly prevented Clarke from entering Vienna, because he feared the presence of a republican among the inflammable elements of that city. Francis had refused, on the conclusion of peace, to send a diplomatic agent to Paris, because he did not wish for reciprocity, and was anxious lest a French minister, if received at Vienna, might there create such a focus of revolutionary agitation as existed wherever a French embassy had been established. But now it was suddenly announced that the French republic had accredited Bernadotte to his court. The report was true, instructions having been given that the envoy suggest a dismemberment of Turkey in lieu of the further indemnity Francis expected, and ascertain how the reconstruction of Poland would be regarded. He was to prevent Austria's interference in behalf of Rome, and to insist on being treated with the same punctilio as had been shown to the royal ambassadors of France. On the other hand, for the sake of the radicals among the Fructidorians, he was to be conciliatory, because it was of vital importance that France should learn the inner workings of the court of Vienna before war broke out again, especially if the directors were to forestall Bonaparte's complete ascendancy. There is not a scintilla of evidence that, as some have suggested, Barras, Sieyès, or Talleyrand tampered with Bernadotte. He was still a rude soldier, and not the adroit man of affairs he afterward became. They could rely upon his making a mess of his mission, and he did so. In a haughty tone he at once demanded, as he had been instructed to do, the suppression of the Bourbon orders in Austria, and likewise the omission from the royal almanac of that family as reigning sovereigns of France. At the same time he made such an undue display of the tricolor and the republican cockade as to arouse all latent antagonisms to the Revolution. These and other similar indiscretions were successful in agitating the populace to such a degree that finally the embassy was attacked by a mob. Thoroughly frightened, and knowing that his mission regarding Poland and Turkey was in vain, Bernadotte demanded his recall. He returned to Paris, having, as was expected, brought the relations of France and Austria to the verge of rupture. Arriving in April, 1798, he was married soon afterward to Joseph Bonaparte's sister-in-law, who quickly comforted herself after the death of Duphot.[5]

By that time Prussia had been virtually checkmated; for although Sieyès could not bring the court of Berlin to make an alliance with the Directory, yet he had prevented her adhesion to its enemies, promising that revolutionary propaganda should cease in Germany. In return she agreed to observe the old strict neutrality, and to recognize the Cisalpine Republic. This decision has been severely criticized in recent years as a virtual delivery of herself to Napoleon after he should have devoured Austria. It has even been suggested that her statesmen ought to have looked a hundred years ahead, and should have anticipated by a century the Prussian alliance with the house of Savoy, which was at this later date the only liberal monarchy in Europe. As Europe was in 1798, such a conception was impossible.

In the spring of that year, therefore, everything presaged the general outbreak which was soon to occur. It may be that Bonaparte had foreordained it, and to the minutest detail had regulated events as they took place. Taking each division of them into separate consideration, a credulous admirer might believe that so much was within the ability of a single man; but the complexity of the whole makes the demoniac power to produce a crash in this way seem beyond the capacities of even a Bonaparte, although he may have cherished the desire for one. It is clear that he rode triumphant in the swift rush of the times, and took every possible advantage from the instability of European institutions in their moribund condition. To complete the picture of Europe in 1798, we must recall that Augereau was in the Pyrenees with forty thousand men, ready, when French agents should have done their work of agitation, to cross the border at a moment's notice, and liberate Spain from her Bourbon rulers. Such arbitrary emancipation was possible elsewhere. Why did it eventually fail in Spain? The answer is that there were no favorable antecedent conditions beyond the Pyrenees. All the strange story of transformation in Italy, in western and in northern Europe, would seem a lying fiction except for the memory of a still more thorough antecedent transformation in the spirit of their inhabitants by the intellectual ferment of the century. This spiritual and rationalizing movement had left Spain, Russia, and eastern Europe almost untouched. It was for this reason that the schemes of Bonaparte as to Poland and Turkey at once healed the breach between Russia and Austria, neither of which was deeply influenced by the idealism of the age, and both of which were prompted only by dynastic motives. Elsewhere Napoleon seemed like a magician; in those lands his spell was vain. In culture and intelligence England was an age ahead of him, as the others were an age behind him; and the two opposing forces of ignorance and enlightenment crushed him in the end like the upper and the nether millstone.

CHAPTER V

The Expedition to Egypt [6]

French Policy Regarding Egypt — Bonaparte's Use of It — His Military Dispositions and Expectations — His "Complete Code of Politics" — The Alternatives He Saw — Friction Between Bonaparte and the Directory — The Fleet and the Army — The Departure.

Taken in its largest sense, the social life of the world has been due to the relations of commerce, thought, and religion between the Orient and the Occident. The short road from one to the other is by way of the Red Sea, the Isthmus, and the Mediterranean. The controlling site on that thoroughfare is Egypt. From the crusades onward the domination of the countries and lands in that great basin was the prize for which France and England were always contending. Pierre du Bois proposed the seizure of Egypt to Philip le Bel in the fourteenth century; Leibnitz sought to draw Louis XIV out of Germany by explaining to him the dazzling advantage of the same enterprise; d'Argenson suggested the Suez Canal in 1738; and Choiseul kept alive the plan of occupying Egypt. The republic had inherited the notion of world conquest which had occupied both Philip le Bel and Louis XIV, although in another form. Bonaparte, in the double rôle of Raynal´s disciple and supplanter of the Revolution, was full of the same idea. It was his early study of the "Philosophical and Political History of the Two Indies" which made him, in one of his conversations before Campo Formio, designate Europe as a mole-hill when compared with the six hundred millions of men in the East. In these same pages, as in Plutarch, he had read of Alexander the Great, and had learned to admire his example; there, too, he was told that with a proper population and a firm administration Alexandria would rise to greater eminence than London, Paris, Constantinople, or Rome. These opinions he imbibed and never changed, reiterating them even at St. Helena, where he confessed that but for the repulse at Acre he would have founded an Oriental empire. The policy of the Directory was no doubt partly his; but to a far greater extent it mirrored the feeling abroad in the entire nation, and among all its agents, that the times were ripe for the seizure of Egypt. Talleyrand had called the attention of the Institute to its feasibility, and Magallon, the French consul at Cairo, filled his despatches with suggestions as to ways and means. By the spring of 1798 the plan of the Directory was formed and their preparations were finished. Under Talleyrand's supervision a statement of policy, with its historical justification, had been made ready for publication, while the secret outfit of ships and men at Toulon and other points was complete.

1798

The justification of the expedition to the Sultan and to Europe was the plea that Egypt no longer belonged to Turkey. Mameluke usurpers were holding it in disgraceful bondage; France would liberate it. To enforce this view with the Porte, every insurgent of the steadily disintegrating Ottoman empire had for months been receiving encouragement from Bonaparte's letters and agents, and now the grand vizir was given to understand that if an attempt were made to interfere with the French forces, these rebels would be unchained in his rear; on the other hand, he was encouraged to regard the invaders as auxiliaries to suppress rebellion both on the Danube and on the Nile. Bonaparte was playing for high stakes; he probably hoped to win Turkey as an ally, and thus draw Russia and Austria away from France, but was determined in case of failure to hold Egypt as the French share when ultimately the expected partition of the Sultan's domains should be made.

Otherwise it is impossible to explain why he so managed as to leave France helpless against her Continental enemies; why all the gathered treasures of Italy and Switzerland were spent in his own preparations; why almost every general of ability and every regiment of prowess was destined for Egypt, while in the face of an impending European crash the national treasury was depleted, the inferior troops at his own disposal were left at home, and the remaining veterans of Hoche and Moreau were scattered in various divisions between the Rhine and the Pyrenees. The Army of England assembled in the north was temporarily in a state of atrophy. It was kept at Boulogne with depleted ranks, but ready to be recruited for a landing in England as a subordinate move, if the British should be overpowered in the Levant and compelled to divide their fleet. Otherwise, as Bonaparte thought and said after a visit in February to the shores of the Channel, it would be too hazardous to attempt a landing in face of the tremendous armament afloat under the English flag. "To invade England without the mastery of the seas is an enterprise the boldest and most difficult that has been undertaken. If it be possible, it is only by a surprise passage (of the Channel)." He felt that in any case it would be best to spend the summer in fitting out the fleet at Brest for an invasion of Ireland during the autumn. Two questions which present themselves in this connection cannot be answered categorically: Was it of his own free will that Bonaparte accepted the command of the Egyptian expedition, or did the directors force it on him? What was the ultimate design of the great schemer if the imminent war broke out while the best French troops were in Africa?

In considering the probabilities as to both these queries, it appears as if Bonaparte had convinced himself that the open assumption of authority was for the moment impossible. He could not be a director: candidates for that office must be forty years old. He dared not take Barras's suggestion and seize the dictatorship, even temporarily, because the Jacobin members of the Directory made it plain, in certain very disorderly sessions of that body, that they would not tolerate such a plan and were strong enough to thwart it. These scenes, which were not kept secret, and were described in the coffee-houses, led the Paris populace to suspect Bonaparte. They were enjoying a temporary repose which it would have been dangerous at the moment for any aspirant to disturb. It must have seemed plain that a change in the constitution was essential to anything like the speedy realization of his personal ambition, which had already taken definite form. As early as September nineteenth, 1797, Bonaparte wrote Talleyrand a letter containing what he called his complete code of politics. His sphinx-like demeanor and the mysterious allusions already quoted from the festival speech, taken in connection with that outline, confirm the notion that Talleyrand, Barras, and Sieyès were preparing for a new constitution, which should be ready for use when the spring elections had increased the number of royalist delegates, as they were sure to do, and had thus produced a clash between the executive and the legislature.

The "complete code of politics" expresses the same contempt for all antecedent French political speculation as that felt by Sieyès. Even Montesquieu had but arranged and analyzed the results of his reading and travels; though doubtless capable, he had done nothing really constructive. The English had confused the respective functions of the various powers in government. In view of their history, it was easy to see why the taxing power was in the House of Commons. But why should that body also declare war or make peace? Great Britain, being a state whose constitution was compounded of privileges, "a black ceiling with a gilt edge," was quite different from France, where these had been abolished, and all power proceeded directly from the sovereign people. Why, then, as under the present constitution, should the French legislature alone have rights which belonged to government in its totality? This sovereign power, he continued, "naturally falls, I think, into two magistracies quite distinct: one supervises, but does not act, and to this what we now call the executive power should be compelled to submit important measures—the legislation of execution, so to speak. This great magistracy would be truly the chief council of the nation; it would have all that part of administration or of execution which is by our constitution intrusted to the legislative." This assembly should be numerous, and composed only of men who had already held positions of public trust. The legislative should make and change the organic laws, but not in two to three days, as at present; for after an organic law has once been made operative, it should not be changed without four or five months of discussion. "This legislative power, without rank in the Republic, impassive, without eyes or ears for what is about it, would have no ambition, and would not inundate us with more than a thousand specific statutes which, by their absurdity, destroy their own validity, and make us, with three hundred tomes of laws, a nation without laws." Is this effusion a recurrence to youthful crudities of ideal politics, or does it hint at the exercise by that upper magistracy of its unchecked powers through a single executive agent like himself? Certain it is, this very concept, though sensibly changed, had a direct influence on the institutions of the empire.

In the absence of sufficient evidence as to the facts, there is but one complex theory which explains subsequent occurrences. The Egyptian expedition, as its commander publicly said in leaving Toulon, was the right wing of the Army of England; at the same time it was consonant with the ancient French policy, and appealed to the romantic, Oriental side of Bonaparte's own temperament; finally, as a practical measure it gave him a chance to await with distinction the outcome of affairs in Paris, whether it should be, as he said to Bourrienne, "for a few months or for six years." At the same time it was an anchor to windward. In consequence of the Bernadotte incident, the Austrian plenipotentiaries at Rastadt had refused even the entire left bank of the Rhine to France, and European sentiment was apparently consolidating for another coalition. "I go to the Orient," Napoleon said to Joseph, "with every means to guarantee success. If France needs me; if the number of those who think like Talleyrand, Sieyès, and Roederer increases; if war breaks out, and is unlucky for France, then I shall return, more certain of public opinion than now. If, on the other hand, the Republic is successful in war; if a political general like me appears and centers the hopes of the people in himself, good; then still in the Orient I shall perhaps do greater service to the world than he."

Everything indicates that in the months immediately preceding his departure there was friction between Bonaparte and the Directory. It is said that in one of their sessions, called to consider the situation, Bonaparte proposed to reknit the negotiations of Rastadt by himself returning thither, but that François was designated to go in his stead. Thereupon the worn-out scene of threatening resignation was rehearsed by him once more. "Here is a pen," said Rewbell; "you need rest." But Merlin snatched it; and as the furious aspirant, seeing his supremacy jeopardized, left the room, the others heard the words, "The pear is not yet ripe." "Believe me, it is good advice I give you," said Barras, in a private interview immediately after: "leave the country as soon as you can." There was abundant room for such scenes in a committee which considered as its own the policy of indirect attack on England through the East, while all its members were chafing under the dictatorial presence of an embodied and dissatisfied ambition which Talleyrand declares had really devised the scheme, but was now uncertain as to which was the best to take of not two or three, but half a dozen courses. The cast of the die decided for Egypt. The secrecy of preparation had kept even the French in doubt. England for a time was entirely misled, and made the nearly fatal blunder of concentrating her naval force in the Channel, and of guarding the entrance to the Mediterranean with only the few ships she could spare, while on the waters of that sea itself she had virtually no force.

Meantime the great fleet at Toulon, nearly the equal of any which France had ever launched, was entirely ready. To convoy the four hundred overloaded transports, there were fifteen ships of the line, fifteen frigates, seven corvettes, and thirty minor armed vessels. It was a surprise even to the initiated that at the last moment the soldiers were found to number not twenty-five thousand, as originally proposed, but forty thousand, comprising the flower of the republican armies. Of division generals there were D'Hilliers, Vaubois, Desaix, Kléber, Menou, Reynier, and Dugua; of brigade generals, Lannes, Davout, Murat, and Andréossy; of colonels, Marmont, Junot, Lefebvre-Desnouettes, and Bessières. The most novel feature of all was a carefully organized and equipped expedition of a hundred or more scholars, who, according to what was then the fashion, were destined to gather the treasures of the Pharaohs and of the Ptolemies for the collections of Paris. Their apparatus for discovery was the best obtainable, their learning was at least respectable, and their library was a mixture of the ancient classics with those of the modern romanticism, of medieval lore with modern atheism. There were of course the great military memoirs, of Turenne, Condé, Luxembourg, Eugene, and Charles XII; more interesting is the inclusion of fifteen volumes of geography and discovery. Whither bound? Was this another Alexander? Homer and Vergil jostled Ossian, Ariosto, and Tasso, while Rousseau's "Héloïse" stood neighbor to Goethe's "Werther." Among other "political" works were Montesquieu, the Vedas, the Koran, and the Bible. Caroline Bonaparte gave her brother as a farewell gift a little pocket library, among the volumes of which were Bacon's "Essays," Mme. de Staël's "Influence of the Passions," and Mercier's "Philosophic Visions." The curious have examined these volumes, and found in their well-worn pages a few passages specially marked. In his hours of solitude the great solitary read in Bacon how he who dominates others loses his own liberty; in Mme. de Staël how hard it is to keep the acquisitions of ambition; in Mercier of an Oriental visionary who, after the glories of temporary success, ended his days in exile and forgetfulness.

It was on April twelfth that Bonaparte received his final instructions from the executive. He was to seize Malta, drive the British from all their Oriental possessions which he could hope to capture, destroy their factories on the Red Sea, pierce the Isthmus of Suez, improve the condition of all the native populations, and keep a good understanding with the Sultan. Meantime from twenty-five to thirty thousand men were to be assembled at some point on the Channel as a feint against Great Britain so that her attention should be withdrawn for the time being from the Mediterranean. The very next day the departing general deposited with the Directory his secret plan for the camp at Boulogne and a scheme for the surprise passage. The scholar troop was ordered to Toulon and the commander-in-chief prepared to follow. But the Bernadotte incident at Vienna raised the war cloud and he waited a month until it disappeared from the horizon. Throughout that period Bonaparte kept the directors on tenterhooks by repeated offers to return to Rastadt, where he alone could secure reparation for the insult to the republic in the person of her ambassador. But the Austrians were unready for another appeal to arms, Thugut offered reparation, and the dangerous marplot of the Directory was at last free to remove his troublesome presence from Europe. He left Paris on the night of May third.

CHAPTER VI

The Landing in Egypt [7]

Visions of Oriental Conquest — The Surrender of Malta — Nelson Deceived — The Mamelukes — The Skirmishes at Shebreket and the Pyramids — The Emptiness of Success — Plans for Conquering Asia — The Battle of the Nile — Effects on European Policies.

The departure of the Egyptian expedition from Toulon, on May nineteenth, 1798, was thus far the greatest occasion of Bonaparte's life. Josephine, apparently no longer the light Creole, but seemingly transformed by the successes and responsibilities of the last two years into a fond and outwardly judicious helpmate, bade him a tender farewell. There had been checks in his brilliant career, but so far they had been temporary; as for the present hour, he believed, as he afterward told Mme. de Rémusat, that it might be his last in France. Mental fabrics of an Oriental splendor, visions of an empire bestriding three continents, dreams of potentates and powers far eclipsing those of western Europe—license like this intoxicates the imagination and disorders common minds. Such plans seem fantastic to the multitude, but what else than their realization is in sober reality the British empire of to-day? The rank and file of Bonaparte's army might not see a reward for this hazardous expedition in sentimental or distant returns, but they understood perfectly the words of a harangue delivered at Toulon before embarking, which, besides being a reminder of the plunder they had taken in Italy, contained the blunt promise that this time every man should return with money enough to buy seven acres of land. Sailors and soldiers alike were thrilled by the call to establish liberty on the plains of the ocean, as they had on the plains of Lombardy. They even dimly apprehended the meaning of a proclamation, issued at sea, in which their destination was finally revealed, and certain success was foretold, if they would respect the women, the goods, and the faith of the Mohammedans.

Yes; it was a sanguine expedition which, relying on an apparent relaxation of England's vigilance, set sail for Malta. The geographical situation of that island makes it in proper hands the citadel of the Mediterranean, the bulwark of Christendom against heathendom. But the military monks to whom it had been intrusted were grown corrupt and licentious. The Maltese loathed their masters. French agents had already been among them, winning thousands of the people and some of the French knights; and such was the internal disorder at the approach of Bonaparte that after the merest show of resistance to his demands, the gates of an almost impregnable fortress were dishonorably opened to the French republic without a blow. The order, neither monastic nor military in any true sense, was virtually annihilated by the sequestration of its goods, though nominally it survived as vassal to the crown of Naples under the protection of Russia. The spoils of the treasury and the Church were quickly seized, a goodly treasure, and added to the French war chest. Waiting only to garrison his easy conquest, and to establish a French administration, Bonaparte hastened on, and the entire fleet in good condition anchored off Alexandria on June thirtieth. With a few casualties the troops were landed.

News of the great preparations at Toulon had finally convinced the English admiralty that their supremacy in the Mediterranean was endangered. Nelson, with a small squadron, sailed in due time from Cadiz, and arrived off the French coast before the departure of Bonaparte's expedition. Driven from his position by a storm, he took refuge in the lee of Sardinia, where he remained until reinforced. Such was the overcharge of the French ships in troops and stores that even with a few active vessels Nelson could have crippled, if not entirely disabled, his enemy's great armament. With a new force which in the mean time he had received, he was prepared to dispute their passage wherever found, and his orders were stringent to destroy the enemy's fleet at any hazard. Returning to Toulon only to find that the French had escaped him, he sailed thence to Sicily, and perceiving at last the destination of the foe to be Egypt, passed swiftly to the south of Crete, and arrived off Alexandria to be disappointed in finding its roadstead empty. Supposing that he had been deceived, he hastened away toward Syria. In the desire to find his foe, he had passed him. Bonaparte, learning off Crete that he was pursued, sailed northward through the Candian Sea, while Nelson took the direct line on the other side. So it happened that thus far the good fortune of the invaders had not deserted them.

Map of Egypt.

The denizens of the great Egyptian towns were not a warlike people; the great mass of the population, the down-trodden agricultural workers, or fellaheen, were even less so. Their strongest weapon was that Oriental stolidity which, like a fortress of mud, closes over hostile missiles without crumbling under their blows. Accordingly, the city of Alexandria, after a feeble and ineffectual resistance, yielded. Bonaparte, ever conciliatory, issued a proclamation to the people, which was translated by one of his savants into the vernacular. It was clear and concise, but had little influence on the populace. The condition of Egypt at the time seeks in vain a parallel in history. Saladin had followed a tradition of Eastern despotism in the formation of a body-guard destitute of all ties except those which bound them to his person. Purchased as infants in Georgia or Circassia, its members were, like the janizaries at Constantinople, trained to arms as an exclusive profession, and, mounted on the finest steeds of Arabia, they became the elite of his army. In time this force of acute and powerful men transformed itself into a warrior caste, was divided into twenty-four companies, and obeyed no authority except that of its captains. These were known in Oriental phrase as Beys, the subordinates were themselves what we call the Mamelukes; the whole, in number about eight thousand, formed a kind of chivalry which, though reduced to nominal submission in 1517, still governed the land with despotic power, and bade defiance to the Sultan's shaky authority. The first portion of Bonaparte's proclamation sketched the evils of Mameluke tyranny, the second called on the populace to aid their liberators. "We, too, are true Mussulmans. Is it not we who have destroyed the Pope that said war must be made on the Mussulmans? Is it not we who have destroyed the Knights of Malta because those insensate chevaliers believed God wanted them to make war on the Mussulmans? Thrice happy they who are on our side! They shall prosper in their fortune and in their place. Happy those who are neutral! They shall have time to understand us, and shall array themselves with us. But woe, thrice woe, to those who shall take up arms for the Mamelukes and fight against us! There shall be no hope left for them; they shall perish." The contrast between this language and that which its author had used in Italy concerning the Church shows how much sincerity there was in either case. Here as there he used religion as a political expedient.

The capture of Alexandria was a bitter disillusionment to the French soldiery, for the once rich and famous city had shrunk into poverty and insignificance. There was no booty and the squalor was repellent. With this unpropitious start their struggle on to Cairo was an awful trial. The sky was brass, their feet sank in the dry, hot soil, and mounted skirmishers tormented them from behind the low hillocks on each side of their line of march. No enemy more redoubtable than a few half-naked fellaheen really disputed their progress; but even when, on July tenth, they came within sight of the Nile and their sufferings were about to be mitigated, it was in vain that their general sought to silence their bitter cries of disheartened anger. Three days later they were attacked at Shebreket by the outposts of the Mamelukes, under Murad, chief Bey of the force. The irregular and individual attacks of the well-armed and gorgeously equipped cavalry broke harmlessly against the serried ranks of the French veterans, and the desultory firing of the Turkish artillery was quickly silenced; the rusty cannon, though aimed point-blank at the gunboat flotilla which was ascending the river, did little or no damage. The enemy withdrew, and concentrated their forces for a final stand at Om Dinar before Cairo, behind the lines of Embabeh. On July twenty-first Bonaparte ordered his troops in squares six men deep, as before. They were to advance so as to cut off the enemy's retreat southward, and were to halt only to receive a charge. "Soldiers," cried the general, "forty centuries look down upon you from the summit of the Pyramids!" The resistance was scarcely worthy of the name. Five thousand horsemen and as many fellaheen were behind the weak ramparts. Murad and his men dashed forward with desperate courage against the phalanx of Desaix, but only to rebound from its iron sides against the equally impassive lines of Reynier and Dugua. Ibrahim, the other Mameluke leader, fled eastward across the river, and Murad retreated toward the south; the undisciplined infantry scattered and ran like frightened sheep. Many of the Mamelukes were drowned in the Nile. It was their custom to carry their wealth on their persons, and the French soldiers, bending their bayonets into grappling-hooks, spent much time in fishing for the corpses. It was estimated that each body thus recovered would afford about ten thousand francs to the lucky finder.

The so-called battle of the Pyramids will ever have a fictitious and romantic fame, largely due, of course, to the quality of Bonaparte's wonderful proclamations, which long after he admitted to Gourgaud were "un peu charlatan." Its results, however, were temporarily very important. Cairo was delivered by it into French hands, and the possession of Egypt's capital seemed of the first importance both to the soldiers and to their friends at home. The idea that East and West were fighting under the shadow of those monuments which, now hoary with age, were among the first achievements of civilized human intelligence, thrilled the "great nation," and added new luster to Bonaparte's laurels in the minds of a people wont to revel in great conceptions. Yet but thirty French soldiers were killed, and only one hundred and twenty were wounded. It was a skirmish; much more decisive than that at Shebreket, to be sure, and somewhat more bloody, but only a skirmish. Both were represented to the Directory as great battles, the five Mamelukes killed in the first being magnified to three hundred. The camp at Embabeh furnished rich spoils to the victorious leaders, but the fabled wealth of Cairo, destined for the soldiery, proved to be like apples of Sodom. The army had been angry and disheartened; deprived of its accustomed booty, it became sullen and mutinous. There was no news from home. Oriental apathy long defied even Bonaparte's administrative powers. Egypt was subdued, but the situation of the general and of his troops was apparently desperate. Long afterwards the Emperor said to Gourgaud that, horrible as was the confession, he believed it fortunate that the French fleet was destroyed at Aboukir, "otherwise the army would have reëmbarked." If he had commanded Mamelukes, he would have been master of the East, he added.

Nothing daunted by what would have broken a feebler spirit, the disillusioned conqueror turned to the conquest of another world. Africa had failed him, but Asia was near, and a revolution might be effected there. The maltreatment of French merchants in Syria had been one of the Directory's original grounds of complaint; it must serve another turn, and if the Sultan were sufficiently humbled, he might be compelled to an alliance against the menacing league of Russia and Austria. The need for carrying out this plan was further confirmed by the awful news which soon came from Alexandria. Nelson, having scoured in vain the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, had returned first to Sicily, then to Greece, and finally to Egypt. Bonaparte had left instructions for Admiral Brueys to work the fleet into the old port of the Ptolemies; but if the anchorage or water-draft should prove insufficient, he was to sail for Corfu. It was believed that with his splendid new eighty-gun ships, and unhampered by the transports, he was more than a match for the inferior squadron of Nelson, whose largest vessels had but seventy-four guns. But Brueys, finding it impossible to enter the harbor with his warships, and fearing to sail for Corfu without the provisions promised by the general, disobeyed his orders, and took up what he believed to be an impregnable position near by in the bay of Aboukir, his line being parallel with the shoaling beach, and his van protected by insufficient batteries on Aboukir island to the northwest. The strongest ships in the center and van were those stationed seaward.

Nelson descried the anchored fleet on August first, about midday; before evening his daring scheme was formed and carried out. The English ships advanced in two divisions, one attacking the enemy's center and rear from the sea side, while the other, performing by skilful steering what Brueys had believed an impossible feat, entered the shoal waters, and, cutting off the shore defense, simultaneously attacked on that side. The French van, like the rest of the fleet, was at anchor, and could not come to the assistance of its sister ships. Thus entrapped, the French sailors fought with desperate courage, but they were out-manœuvered, and the English cross-fire was deadly. Moreover, with Nelson a new temper had entered the British navy. At Bastia he had determined the result by his personal daring, for the men of the Agamemnon, when led by him, "minded shot as little as peas"; at Calvi he had lost an eye in a desperate venture; at Cape St. Vincent he had boarded two opposing Spanish ships at the head of his own Captain's crew, with the cry, "Westminster Abbey or victory!" and now, in the battle of the Nile, his greatest fight, he inspired the whole fleet with such audacious bravery that to this day his countrymen sing the proud boast of the ballad-writer, "At the battle of the Nile, I was there all the while." Though he had as many vessels as the French, they were of inferior quality and strength; but the result was never doubtful. The brave Brueys went down in his own Orient as the dauntless crew shouted, "Long live the Republic!" and Rear-Admiral Villeneuve barely escaped with two ships of the line and two frigates. Two other vessels of the latter class had been towed into the harbor; all the rest were destroyed. From that awful day the modern maritime ascendancy of England was considered a menace by continental Europe. France had struck Great Britain deadly blows in the annihilation of her allies ashore, and was to do so again. England, however, on her own chosen element, seemed thenceforward indomitable.

Any plan which Bonaparte may have entertained for the use of fleets to transport himself or his armies either on the Mediterranean or on the Atlantic during the expected Continental convulsion had to be abandoned. As was explained in a despatch from the Directory, which he did not receive until long after, he must either make Egypt self-sufficient without aid from France, or march on Constantinople to intimidate or wheedle the Grand Turk, or invade India, collect all the elements hostile to British rule, and establish himself there. Any thought of immediate return to France must be abandoned, however disposed he might be to pluck his "pear." On the other hand, France without Bonaparte was a different subject for European consideration, military or political. The wild schemes of her government for aiding the Irish rebels or invading British soil were necessarily either futile in their inception or never tried; the coalition was shaping itself, and with Bonaparte and Hoche both removed from the scene, the statesmen and generals of the other great powers were only too ready to try conclusions with France.

CHAPTER VII

The Disaster at Acre [8]

Islam and the French — Plans to Revolutionize the East — The News from Europe — Bonaparte's Recommendations to the Directory — The Invasion of Syria — Murder of Turkish Prisoners — Importance of Acre — The Battle of Mount Tabor — The Siege of Acre — Desperate Courage of Besiegers and Besieged — Defeat of Bonaparte — His Estimate of Human Life — The Retreat to Egypt.

1798—99

"This is the moment," said Bonaparte, on hearing how Brueys's splendid fleet had been annihilated, and the line of retreat to France cut off, "when characters of a superior order assert themselves." "The English," he cried on another occasion, "will compel us to do greater things than we intended." So far from his activity being diminished in the isolation of Egypt, it was redoubled. To preserve the fiction of his mission as the restorer of Ottoman power, the tricolor and the crescent floated everywhere side by side, while prayers were said for both France and Turkey in the mosques. The utmost respect was paid to the Koran and its precepts. Menou and a number of others made an open profession of Islam. To soothe all popular apprehension, existing institutions were changed only to strengthen them, while contemplated reforms were to follow in proportion as increasing public enlightenment demanded them. In particular, the utmost respect was paid to marriage customs, and no license among the common soldiers was tolerated. In marked contrast was Bonaparte's own conduct. An intercepted letter written from Alexandria to his brother Joseph expressed jealous doubts of Josephine's fidelity—or, rather, a certainty of her infidelity. From that instant his own licentiousness became a scandal even to the loose notions of his train. But outwardly he affected the inflated speech of a semi-divine messenger; once, while visiting the burial crypt in the pyramid of Cheops, he pretended to a mufti that he was a proselyte, and pronounced with an air of conviction the Mohammedan creed. Every element in the population, however,—Copts, Turks, Greeks, and Arabs,—was courted, and made to share in the administration. Printing-presses were established, and the French scholars, though surprised and disenchanted by what they found, united into an institute, and began the study of every possible improvement in political, social, and domestic economy. Nor was the army forgotten: the captured Mamelukes and other available youth were enrolled in the French battalions, and taught the drill and discipline of war. Even the scattered Bedouin received the conqueror's flattering attentions with ever lessening distrust.

All this was part of a plan to effect a religious and political revolution in the East, the two to move hand in hand, by an appeal to Mohammedan zeal for coöperation with those who had already destroyed Christianity in Europe. Talleyrand was to have been the representative in Constantinople of the same idea. But in disregard of his promise he stayed at home, and neither the Sultan, as the political and religious head of Islam, nor its devotees, were for a moment deceived. On the well-known principle that offers of peace come best while war is hottest, Bonaparte's iron hand was shown in certain most stringent regulations, and one determined insurrection was put down with merciless rigor. The domestic relations of the people were sacred, but they must buy indemnity with the payment of all their cash; and treasure, wherever found, was seized for the army chest. The old city barriers of Cairo were broken down, and fortified turrets were built in their places. Resistance of any kind met with quick punishment, and heads fell throughout the land with such regularity and frequency as to force from the natives a recognition of Bonaparte as el Kebir, the Exalted.

The utter isolation of summer, autumn, and winter would have been intolerable but for such occupations. Only a single official despatch, and that a most insignificant one, reached Egypt from France during this interval; and the rush of events in Europe was for months utterly unknown to the castaway army. In fact, but two efforts were made to forward news—an astounding proof of the feeling in Paris. The Directory had failed in their attempts to cajole the Sultan, and a message from Bonaparte arrived too late to influence him; for, on receipt of news from Nelson's victorious fleet, the Turkish monarch hesitated no longer, and accepted the proffered alliance of Russia. The only certain news from Europe which was generally disseminated in Cairo was contained in a package of Italian newspapers brought into Alexandria by a blockade-runner. Through them it was known that the invasion of Ireland, having been precipitated by a misunderstanding between the secret society of United Irishmen and the Directory, had failed; that Malta and Corfu were blockaded; that the Spanish fleet was significantly inactive; and that all Europe was arming for the renewal of hostilities in the spring. Bonaparte made every effort to communicate with Paris. Some of his frequent despatches certainly reached their destination; but, going by circuitous routes, they were belated. This very fact, however, went far in France to surround him with a halo of romance, and to glorify the legend, never eradicated from French imaginations, that the national arms had subjugated the land of the Pharaohs. As every day revealed the incapacity of the Directory in the face of an exasperated and united Europe, the fancied splendor of Bonaparte's feats neutralized any remnants of suspicion remaining in the minds of the people regarding their absent victor. The conquering republic was over the sea; it was a spurious one which had remained at home to be humiliated.

Disquieting rumors of Bonaparte's death, said to have been spread by English and Russian agents, were prevalent during a part of December; but while at their height they were allayed by the arrival, direct from the seat of war, of a budget dated October seventh. The condition of the colony was described in glowing terms, but the gist of the despatches was that the Spanish admiral must be goaded to activity, and that the fleet from Brest must be sent to coöperate with him in the Mediterranean, in order to restore the prestige of France in the East. As for the writer himself, he hoped, should war break out again in Europe, to return in the spring. Meantime, the Neapolitans were marching on Rome, a fact which inclined the vacillating and harassed directors to act on the suggestions of their real master, although they kept his recommendations secret.

It was, therefore, not entirely without a coördination of plans that the Army of Egypt, strengthened and refreshed, made ready to move in February. The Turks, under the viceroy, Achmet, styled Jezzar, the Butcher, were mustering in Syria, and it was necessary to anticipate them. Kléber was put at the head of twelve thousand men, and, after dispersing the eight hundred Mamelukes who had retreated in the direction of Rahmaniyeh, he advanced some days' march to El Arish, which was at once beset. Bonaparte tarried at Cairo for a few days, and then having learned that the congress at Rastadt was still sitting, and that war, though imminent, was not yet declared, set out, reaching El Arish on February seventeenth, 1799. Three days later the Turkish garrison, composed largely of volunteers, surrendered. They were paroled, and ordered to march toward Damascus. Gaza fell with the exchange of a few musket-balls, and important munitions of war were delivered into the hands of the French. On March fourth the invaders were before Jaffa, which had a garrison of four thousand men, a part of Jezzar's army. After three days' bombardment a breach was made in the walls, and two thousand troops who had taken refuge behind caravansary walls surrendered under promise of their lives; the rest, it is said, had been killed in a massacre which immediately followed the assault.

No French victory was ever marked by more unbridled license than that which the victorious troops practised at Jaffa. But what followed was worse. Although the prisoners of war were too numerous for the ordinary usage, yet they should have been treated according to the terms of quarter they had exacted. On the seventh a council of war unanimously voted that the old rule under which no quarter is given to defenders in an assault should be applied to them. For two days Bonaparte hesitated, but on the ninth his decision was taken. A few Egyptians were sent home, and the remainder of the prisoners, together with the eight hundred militia from El Arish, were marched to the beach, and shot. In the report to the Directory the total number was put at twelve hundred. Two eye-witnesses estimated it—one at three thousand, the other at four thousand. "I have been severe with those of your troops who violated the laws of war," wrote the author of the deed to Jezzar. No mention of the fact or excuse for it was made in any other portion of his correspondence at the time. All winter long he had been dealing as an Oriental with Orientals, and this was but a piece of the same conduct. The code of Christian morality was far from his mind. In January, for instance, he had ordered Murat to kill all the prisoners of a hostile tribe in the desert, whom he could not bring away; and in the same month identical orders were issued to Berthier concerning another horde. The plea which is made by the eulogists of Napoleon, and by some recent military writers, for this wholesale execution, is that among these slaughtered men the garrison of El Arish, which had surrendered, had been found again with arms in their hands; that they were deserving of death according to all the laws of war; and that, as to the rest, there were no French prisoners for whom to exchange them, and no provisions to support them; consequently their presence with the army would jeopardize its success, and it was therefore justifiable to diminish the enemy's resisting power by their execution. Those who believe that in any war, whether just or unjust, the practice of barbarity is excusable if it lead to speedy victory will agree with that opinion.

Bonaparte had foreseen that of all the Syrian towns the Pasha's capital, St. Jean d'Acre, which was on the shore, and not inland like the places so easily taken, would make the strongest resistance. Accordingly he had provided a siege-train, and had despatched it by sea from Alexandria. The English squadron in those waters, now in command of Sir Sidney Smith, was in the offing when the French army arrived on the coast. Approaching in order to open fire, the English admiral became aware after a few shots that his enemy had no artillery. Divining the reason, he swiftly put to sea, and easily captured their transports. Phélippeaux, a French emigrant who had graduated from the military school at Paris only two days before Bonaparte, was sent by Smith to superintend the fortification of the city with the very guns destined for its destruction. The siege of Acre thus became a task quite different from any hitherto imposed on the French. Supported by an English fleet, and easily provisioned under protection of their guns, the city might have made a determined stand even against an enemy with cannon; but to one without artillery it was likely that its resistance would be effectual. And so it proved; for under the ancient Gothic walls of a city whose name recalled the fleeting dominion of the Frank crusaders, Bonaparte's dreams of an Oriental empire vanished forever. On March nineteenth he sat down before them, with really no dependence except on fate. In spite of discouragements, however, a breach was effected on the twenty-eighth by means of a mine, but the assault was repulsed.

Day followed day without an important incident, until in the third week an army of twenty-five thousand men, under Abdullah, approached from Damascus to relieve Jezzar. Kléber set out to check their march, and the first skirmish of advance-guards occurred at Nazareth. For eight hours Junot, in the van with a few hundred men, stood firm against a tenfold force; and even when the whole French division arrived the overwhelming superiority of the Turkish numbers was not perceptibly diminished. Bonaparte was not far behind. Leaving a respectable array before the town to keep up appearances, he hurried away with the rest, and by a forced march debouched on April sixteenth into the plain of Esdraelon. In the distance, at the foot of Mount Tabor, he could see a cloud of dust and smoke, in the midst of which the ranks of Kléber's division seemed buried beneath the masses of his foe. Throwing his fine cavalry on the Turkish flanks, the commander-in-chief, at the head of the infantry, caught his enemy unawares from behind the whirling sand which had concealed his presence. The result was an utter rout of the Turks, who fled by the mountain passes in complete disorder.

Bonaparte returned victorious to Acre, and resumed the siege with a grim determination such as even he had not often felt. He had good cause. Another messenger from the Directory, traveling with comparative directness by way of Genoa, had arrived with despatches and newspapers dated as late as February. Two Austrian generals, Mack and Sachsen, had put themselves at the head of the Neapolitan army, and were about to march on Rome. An Austrian army division had already begun hostilities by entering the Grisons, thus violating the neutrality of the allied Helvetian Republic. Russia, Turkey, and Austria were in coalition: Russia would despatch troops to defend the Turkish capital and to aid in conquering Italy. Two new French armies were in the field. Moreau, the only first-rate general in France, was still under suspicion of complicity with Pichegru, and although permitted to accompany the Army of Italy as a volunteer, had been passed over in the choice of commanders. Jourdan, whose consistent democracy as a member of the Five Hundred had restored him to favor and rank, was to command the Army of the Danube; Joubert was to succeed Bonaparte in Italy. As for himself, he was left unhampered by instructions, but three alternatives had suggested themselves to the Directory—that he should either remain in Egypt and complete his colonial organization, or else press on to India and there supplant the English power, or, finally, march straight to Constantinople and attack the Russians. The tone of the despatches was one of anxiety. From earliest times Acre had been the key of Palestine; if Bonaparte should secure it, he would become the arbiter of his own destiny and of the world's. With Palestine, Egypt, and India at his feet, the tricontinental monarchy of his dreams was realizable; or else, in the same case, he could return to Paris with laurels unknown since the crusades, and put the copestone on the nearly completed structure of military domination in France and Europe. To the end of his days he imagined, or represented himself as imagining, that he would have altered the world's career by choosing the part of Oriental conqueror. We may call these notions dreams, or fancies, or visions, or what we will; they were sane conceptions in themselves, although it is not likely that England would have been conquered in the loss of India. She had been vigorous without it; she could have survived even that blow. For the moment the fall of Acre appeared to be an antecedent condition to either of the courses which were in the mind of Bonaparte.

But the siege was not prosperous. The assault and the defense during the attack in March had been alike desperate, and French valor had been futile. A fleet was now on its way from Constantinople to throw additional men and provisions into the town. At the same time Phélippeaux had constructed a new girdle of forts inside the walls, and had barricaded the streets. In the interval, however, the French had brought up some heavy guns from Jaffa, and were making preparations to renew operations. A breach was easily effected, and a few gallant fellows seized the tower which controlled the outworks and curtain; but the storming party was repulsed, and the men in the tower, though they held it for two days, were finally so reduced in numbers that they succumbed. This exasperated the French soldiers intensely. For the first two weeks of May there was scarcely a break in the succession of assaults. The fierce struggles which occurred in the breaches, on the barricades, even in the streets, to which the French once or twice penetrated, resulted in an appalling loss of life; but neither party quailed. Before long a pestilence broke out in the French camp, and the hospitals established at Jaffa and elsewhere were crowded with sick and dying.

On May seventh Kléber's division was called in for a conclusive onslaught, and in the face of a double fire from Sir Sidney Smith's cannon and the guns on the walls, both the first and second works were scaled and taken. All was in vain. Every house rained bullets from embrasures made for the purpose, and the entering columns retreated on the very threshold of their goal. Three days later a second equally desperate attempt likewise failed. In all, the siege lasted sixty-two days; the French assaulted forty times, and twenty-six sallies were made by the garrison; four thousand soldiers and four good generals from his splendid army were the sacrifice of human life which Bonaparte offered at Acre to his ambition. Finally, the squadron from Constantinople having safely arrived, news came that another was fitting out at Rhodes to retake Egypt itself. Nothing was left but to draw off, and on the seventeenth the siege was abandoned. The retreat began on the twentieth. At Jaffa Bonaparte passed through the hospital wards calling out in a loud voice: "The Turks will be here in a few hours. Whoever feels strong enough, let him rise and follow us."

As a votary at the shrine of science he believed, both then and later, in the lawfulness of suicide; and he now coldly suggested murder to his surgeon-general, hinting that an overdose of opium would end the sufferings of those plague-stricken men who would have to be abandoned. It was long believed that such a dose actually had been administered to the sixty or more who were left behind. But the conclusive evidence that the report was false is in the fact that when Sir Sidney Smith occupied Jaffa the sufferers were still alive. Napoleon to the last defended the suggestion as proper, though he falsely denied having made it himself, and untruthfully declared at St. Helena that he had delayed three days to protect the dying patients. With cynical good nature, he told the fine story of how the noble French army surgeon Desgenettes had rejected the criminal suggestion, replying that a physician's profession was to save, not to destroy, human life. The rebuke was particularly scathing because the heroic doctor, in spite of his conviction that the plague was contagious, had already inoculated himself with the disease in order to allay the panic of the terror-stricken soldiers. The army was reduced to eight thousand. After a nine days' march through the burning sands, the exhausted columns of the French reached Cairo. Such was the unparalleled vigor of the survivors that a few days' rest and proper food sufficed to recuperate their strength.

More wonderful still, they soon believed themselves to have returned with crowns of victory. Their crafty general explained that but for the terrible heats of Syria, the pest, and the expedition from Rhodes, which threatened their rear, they would have leveled the walls of Acre and destroyed Jezzar's palace, returning with standards and spoils to confirm France's dominion in the hearts and fears of the Egyptians. The volatile and sanguine soldiery, unwilling to admit defeat even to themselves, half believed this was true, and soon by an easy transition came to hold the mere suggestions as actual facts. Berthier was instructed that the native authorities at Cairo were to be so informed by an advance agent, General Boyer. The few important prisoners whose lives had been spared were to be conveyed, with due display of captured standards, to the citadel of Cairo, and there imprisoned with the public announcement "that a great number of such were coming." The litters of the wounded French officers Lannes, Duroc, Croizier, and Arrighi were to be quietly carried in on different days. In one emphatic paragraph are the instructions for Boyer: "He is to write, to say, to do everything which may secure a triumphal entry." So adroitly were truth and fiction intermingled and confused by Bonaparte and his agents, that in spite of various attempted risings the country as a whole remained quiet. Murad, however, who had fled to Nubia, and had there remained in concealment until informed of the proposed Turkish expedition, soon reappeared with the remnants of his cavalry, for the purpose of coöperating with the Sultan's forces. For weeks he came and went among the people so mysteriously that the French guards could never seize him. Bonaparte's superstition was awakened by the stealthy and uncanny movements of his enemy, and in July he gave vent to his nervous irritation in a request to one of his subordinates either to kill or worry to death the object of his dread. "Let him die one way or another, I shall be equally obliged," were his words.

CHAPTER VIII

Aboukir and the Great Desertion [9]

The Last of the Mamelukes — Aboukir — The News from Paris — An Adventurer's Decision — Preparations for Departure — His Plans Concealed — The Last Visit to Corsica — A Narrow Escape — Reception in France — Conjugal Estrangement.

1799

The Turkish army which had sailed from Rhodes numbered about twelve thousand men. The fleet which transported them appeared off Alexandria on July twentieth, and a landing was attempted. Repulsed by the forts, the ships drew off to Aboukir, where the effort was successful. The force was composed of infantry, and as nothing further could be done without cavalry, they began immediately to throw up breastworks, hoping to make a successful stand until the arrival of Murad. But this romantic personage, the last of the Mamelukes to enjoy undisputed sway, was able to come no farther than the Pyramids; the land at which he gazed from the summit of Cheops was never again to be his. Before he could reach his allies they had been overwhelmed, and before the evacuation of Egypt by its invaders he fell a victim to the plague. Mehemet Ali and the Albanians were to inherit his power. By July twenty-fourth the Turks had strongly fortified the peninsula of Aboukir with a double line of works. Not only did they hear nothing from Murad, but Ibrahim, who was expected from Syria, also failed them, and the lack of cavalry threw them on the defensive. But their presence, they hoped, would be sufficient to fan the rebellious spirit of the country, and they might maintain themselves until reinforcements should come by sea, or the belated cavalry arrive by land.

With his accustomed rapidity Bonaparte made ready to strike. Ibrahim was checked, Murad was finally driven back, and Desaix was called in from upper Egypt to keep order below while the contest was going on in the Delta. With six thousand men in the main army, and two thousand reserves under Kléber, Bonaparte set out. On July twenty-fifth the battle was joined. It was short and murderous. The enemy was first outflanked on the left, and that wing driven into the sea; then the right was caught in the same manner, and suffered a like fate. Finally, with a rush the infantry of Lannes surmounted a redoubt in the center. What was their surprise to find Murat with his cavalry already on the other side! The dashing riders had madly circumvented the line of intrenchment. There were but three thousand Turks now left, and these took refuge in a citadel which they had constructed at the apex of the peninsula. On August first, 1799, the anniversary of the battle of the Nile, the entire force surrendered. Bonaparte told the Directory that twelve thousand Turks were drowned. As he said in his despatch to Cairo, "Not a single man of the hostile army which had landed escaped." The French troops were now convinced that their general had always been invincible, and that somehow he would open the doors of their prison-house, and find a way for their return.

Napoleon Exposition, 1895

NAPOLEON—BY INGRES
(Belonging to Germain Bapst).

It was nearly six months since the date of the latest authentic news from Paris. At least so thought the general's adjutants and companions, and they were possibly right. They knew that he had been constantly forwarding news of their enterprise, and probably regular instructions, to the authorities at Paris. Bonaparte mentions in his correspondence the despatch of sixty vessels of various kinds with his letters, and some of them, at least, reached their destination. This certainty, with the wise adaptation of his subsequent course to his ultimate ends, has led to the supposition that he was in constant receipt of secret information from his brothers, by way of Genoa and Tunis. This he never explicitly denied, although he said at St. Helena that newspapers were sent ashore from the English fleet after the battle of Aboukir, adding, as a kind of ingenuous generalization, that, besides, news did not come from France by way of Tunis. Joseph declares in his memoirs that he himself sent a messenger to tell the sorry tale of French affairs to Napoleon. But there is no proof and no likelihood that this courier ever reached his destination. It is certain that Bonaparte learned at Acre of the new coalition against France from Phélippeaux in a parley held across the trenches; it is probable that his private news came by way of the Barbary States; it is unquestioned that his best information was obtained through the English fleet, which was now off Alexandria, negotiating for exchanges on behalf of Turkey. According to Marmont, Sir Sidney Smith, hoping to discourage his enemy, sent a packet of papers ashore, and declared that if the French army should strive to escape, in accordance with the desire of the Directory, he would endeavor to give an account himself to the fugitives.

In any case, what was now definitely made known to Bonaparte was not unwelcome information. He was assured that war had broken out, as he expected and perhaps knew; that the French arms had suffered disgrace in Italy; and that a fleet under Admiral Bruix had been despatched to conquer the Mediterranean and to bring home the Army of Egypt. No doubt he guessed that the Directory was showing hopeless incapacity. What he could not know was that on May twenty-sixth they had actually despatched a special courier to express the hope that he himself would return to take command of the armies of the republic. This messenger, we know, never landed in Egypt, but his services were not required; for no sooner was Bonaparte convinced that the crisis he had long foreseen was actually occurring than the resolution he had twice foreshadowed in his letters to Paris was finally taken. He told Marmont that the state of things in Europe compelled him to return: the French armies defeated, all the fruits of his hard-earned victories in Italy lost! Of what use were these incapables who were at the head of affairs? With them all was hesitation, stupidity, and corruption. "I—I alone have borne the burden, and by constant victory have given strength to this administration, which without me would never have lifted its head. On my departure everything had, of necessity, to crumble. Let us not wait until the destruction is complete; the evil would be irremediable.... The news of my return will be heard in France simultaneously with that of the destruction of the Turkish army at Aboukir. My presence will elevate men's spirits, restore to the army its lost confidence, and to the good people the hope of a prosperous future." No commentary could make this language clearer.

His arrangements were quickly made. A few trusted men were confidentially informed of the situation, and Kléber was appointed to the chief command of the army, which was so dishonorably to be abandoned in a most critical situation, reduced as it was to half its original numbers, destitute of provisions and ammunition, surrounded by a hostile, fanatical population, and confronted by the powerful fleet of its most unrelenting enemy. Secretly, and by night, the two frigates in the harbor of Alexandria were prepared, and anchored off a remote point of the shore. In the early hours of August twenty-second the fugitive general embarked, accompanied by a few devoted and choice friends—capable generals like Murat, Lannes, Marmont, Berthier, Duroc, Bessières, Lavalette, Ganteaume, and Andréossy; equally fine political scholars like Monge, Denon, and Berthollet. It was arranged that Junot and Desaix should come later.

The great deserter could easily persuade himself that this was an act of heroism—risking his life on hostile waters in order to save France. It was not hard to reason speciously that it was a colony which had been intended, and a colony which had been planted; that in his return he was using the discretion granted by the Directory, and carrying out a plan announced from the outset. But it needed no verdict of posterity to declare that it would have been more heroic to remain and share the consequences of a scheme so largely his own. His conscience asserted as much, for he deceived the brilliant and acute Kléber in an appointment to say farewell, which was not kept; while the Grand Council of Cairo was told that he had gone to take command of his fleet, and would return in three months. Orders were left that if fifteen hundred soldiers should die of the pest, Kléber should open negotiations for evacuating the country. An angry and emphatic protest was written by the victimized general; but it was intercepted by the English cruisers, and did not fall into the hands of his betrayer until after he had become First Consul. At St. Helena, Napoleon declared that the failure of the expedition was clear to him from the moment of Nelson's victory; for any force which cannot be recruited must melt away and eventually surrender.

Sir Sidney Smith, not thinking either that a general would abandon his army, or that vessels would sail for Europe against the adverse winds of that season, had made for Cyprus to renew his supply of water. In this interval the two French frigates gained the open sea, their captains entertaining the vague hope of reaching Toulon direct, by some reversal of nature's laws. But the prevalent breezes continued, and compelled them to coast along the African shore. It was three weeks before they even sighted the headlands of Tunis. At last a favoring wind began to blow. With lights extinguished, they passed at night the strait which separates Africa from Sicily, escaping the observation of the English cruisers sent from Nelson's fleet to patrol those waters. Skirting Sardinia, the flotilla reached Corsica early in October. Though, as Bonaparte declared, he was "deeply moved by the sight of his native town," no remnant of his early enthusiasm could sweeten for him the enforced delay of several days in the harbor of Ajaccio. He had left far behind the emotions of that primitive society, and, evidently fretting to be gone, was rather impatient at the abounding caresses of all the friends who thronged the town when he was ashore and crowded the decks when he was afloat. Some deeds have been recorded to his credit: all the money he had by him, about forty thousand francs, he distributed to the garrison, which had not been paid for over a year and a half; his features, it is also said, relaxed with evident joy as he tenderly returned the greeting of the old woman who had been his earliest attendant. It was his last visit to the island of his birth, but not the last time the accents of its dialect fell on his ears, for it was a Corsican who troubled his dying hours at St. Helena.

What moved him really and deeply was the news of French disasters on the Trebbia and at Novi, of Joubert's death, of the dissolution of the Italian republics, and of Moreau's last stand in the Piedmont fortresses. What probably moved him most was the further news that the old Directory had virtually fallen on the thirtieth of Prairial, and that Sieyès, who had returned but partly successful from Berlin, had been chosen as a member of the new one, to preserve at least a semblance of respect for the institution. Finally, the favoring breeze sprang up, and on October eighth sail was made again, not for Italy, to restore the fortunes of the army, as Bourrienne says had been planned during the voyage, but direct for France. Suddenly, at sunset, a British squadron loomed on the horizon. Was Fortune at last to desert her child? It seemed so. The captain of Bonaparte's vessel gave orders to make again for Ajaccio, and prepared a long-boat for the solitary landing of his passenger on the wild shores of the island in case of extremity. But a dark night revived his courage. The English, deceived by the apparent angle of their enemy's yards, mistook his course, and sailed in a wrong direction. The French kept directly on. Next morning the adventurer set foot once more on French soil near Fréjus. A few nights later news of Bonaparte's landing was brought to his sisters in their box at the theater. They received it with exultation, but apparently with no manifestation of surprise.

How was he received, this thwarted leader of a costly fiasco, this general who for nothing had left the bones of thousands to whiten upon Eastern deserts, who had deserted in a plague-stricken land many thousands more of the finest troops which France could furnish? With a passion of delight! From Fréjus through Lyons to Paris, along the old familiar route, the people knew nothing of their hero's failures. They had not forgotten his Italian victories, which only a short year before had made them masters where now their armies were in disgrace and their name was execrated; they knew only too well the widespread legends of the same man's triumphs in the romantic East, before Cairo and at the feet of the Pyramids. With all this they contrasted the valley of humiliation through which the republic had been dragged by the incapacity of their leaders. Was it wonderful that at Lyons the fêtes were like a jubilee, through which Bonaparte, aware that his goal was near, moved like one already elevated among his fellows—conciliating, deprecating, mysterious?

It was on October sixteenth that he arrived at his house on Victory street, in Paris. Mme. Bonaparte was not there to give him a welcome. During the absence of her husband she had made her house the center of a brilliant society which numbered among its members the ablest men of the time. This circle was untiring in its devotion to Bonaparte's interests, making friends for him at home, plotting in his behalf abroad, turning every political incident to his advantage, and building up a strong party which believed that he was the only possible savior of France. In conduct the associates were gay and even dissolute; occasionally a select inner coterie withdrew to Plombières, nominally for repose, but probably for a seclusion not altogether innocent. Into this loyal but licentious company the sudden announcement of Bonaparte's approach brought something like consternation. Josephine, in particular, having been recklessly unfaithful during his absence, was now over-anxious to display a feigned devotion to her husband. Doubtless she had heard of his desperate licentiousness in Egypt; she must have recalled her own orgies of faithlessness during his absence, in Italy first and now again in Egypt; she may have learned that his family were already hinting divorce and that his ears were only too attentive to the suggestion. But she knew her powers and resolved to stake all on another cast. Learning of his approach, she went out some distance to meet him, but took the wrong road, and passed him unawares. Hurrying back, she found the door of his chamber barred, her absence being of course a confirmation of the general's jealous suspicions. For hours her entreaties and tears were vain. At last Eugène and Hortense joined theirs with their mother's, and the door was opened. The breach was apparently healed, but rather to avoid a scandal than from sincere forgiveness.

CHAPTER IX

"The Return of the Hero"[10]

The Second Coalition — Failures and Defeats of the Directory — The Rastadt Congress — Murder of the French Plenipotentiaries — The Crisis in France — The Revolution of Prairial — The Conscription — The Schemes of the Directors — The Successes of the Bonapartists — The Attitude of Paris — "The Return of the Hero" — The Man of Destiny.

The situation of affairs in Europe at the close of 1799 was, as Bonaparte had anticipated, by no means simple. England having been scorned in the propositions for peace which she made in 1797 at Lille, a second coalition of France's enemies was formed in 1798, largely through the efforts of Paul I, the new Czar of Russia. The organization of the Helvetian Republic in Switzerland had brought the Revolution into the very heart of central Europe, and thus had further estranged the trembling dynasties of both Austria and Prussia. The organization on February eighteenth, 1798, of the Roman Republic had brought the Revolution to the frontiers of Naples; when her king, having joined the coalition, renewed hostilities and inaugurated a general war by throwing an army into Rome, the French troops in Italy were divided, and a portion of them, under Championnet, overturned the Neapolitan throne in a kind of pleasure excursion. In January, 1799, the Parthenopean Republic was proclaimed. By a skilfully devised complot in which Lucien Bonaparte was active, the Directory charged the feeble King of Sardinia with unfriendliness, the Cisalpine Republic picked a quarrel with him, Tuscany became involved in the ensuing disorders, and Charles Emmanuel IV was compelled on December ninth, 1798, to abandon all his territories on the mainland, while the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinand III, fled shortly after, in 1799, to his relatives in the court of Vienna, leaving his dominions temporarily at the disposal of France.

It was doubtless a pleasant delusion for sincere republicans to imagine that in these events free governments were rising on the wreck of absolutism; but unfortunately the fact was otherwise: every one of these so-called free states was founded, not in the hearts of its people, but in the power of French arms. With the waning of this military ascendancy, they must of necessity lose all vitality. Bonaparte had stated to the Directory, in defense of his own conduct, and of course both repeatedly and emphatically, that to divide the Army of Italy and leave the Austrians on the Adige would be to lose Italy. And yet this was precisely the blunder the directors made in sending Championnet to Naples. Angered by the unexpected renewal of hostilities, their preparations for the coming war, though vigorous and energetic, were made unadvisedly and in haste. Brune was sent to command in Holland, Bernadotte to the middle Rhine, Jourdan into central Germany, Masséna to Switzerland, Macdonald to Naples, and Schérer to upper Italy. Two hundred thousand men were raised under the new conscription law, and these conscripts-a word then used in that sense for the first time-were sent to fill the depleted ranks of the respective armies. Brune and Masséna were destined to show ability and win success; the others were marked for overwhelming defeat: the crowning example of folly was the appointment of the incapable Schérer to the post of greatest importance. He had once before shown his inability to master the rudiments of warfare in Italy, and this time his command was as inefficient as might have been expected. Jourdan, having been defeated toward the close of March, by the Archduke Charles, both at Ostrach and at Stockach, was succeeded by Lenouf, who was at once compelled to retreat behind the Rhine. On the heels of this disaster, Schérer was driven first behind the Mincio, then to the Oglio; he was shamefully beaten at Magnano in April, and then voluntarily made way for Moreau, laying down his command amid the jeers of his disgusted troops.

Meantime the congress at Rastadt had been keeping up the forms of negotiation, its proceedings being in the main perfunctory, and its sessions deriving their interest mainly from the attempts of the French plenipotentiaries to overawe their colleagues. In this they were largely successful, because they had in their possession the clearest evidence of Austria's earlier determination to secure her importance by the dismemberment of Bavaria. They were now three in number: two of them, Roberjot and Bonnier, were honest supporters of the Directory; the third, Debry, was an old friend of Bonaparte's, and had never swerved from his allegiance. As chief of the embassy he had attracted great attention, and having displayed a spirit far from conciliatory, he gave some cause for the special dislike in which he was held, not only by the other delegates, but even by his own colleagues. There was the utmost tension in the congress when hostilities were renewed. With the successes of Charles, Austria grew so bold that she determined to break off all negotiation. Already one imperial representative had withdrawn in dudgeon; the others were ready to follow. Aware that war was imminent, both French and Austrian troops had begun early in 1799 to scour the suburbs of Rastadt, and had in frequent forays not merely attacked each other, but had molested the citizens and even the ambassadors. Finally, in April, the imperial troops beset the town, and ordered the remaining members of the congress to leave within a term which, according to usage, was to be fixed by the assembly itself.

The French ministers, in obedience to orders received from Paris, waited until the very last, leaving with their train only at nightfall on April twenty-eighth. In a few moments, and almost before the gates, they were surrounded and hustled, by whom is not altogether certain, though at the time some were believed to be Austrian hussars. In the ensuing tumult the three plenipotentiaries were dragged from their carriages and furiously assaulted; Roberjot and Bonnier were killed, Debry escaped. Next morning he appeared in Rastadt wounded and bloody, but not seriously injured. This murder has become one of the standing historical puzzles. Some have attributed its instigation to the British cabinet, some to Bonaparte, some again to Caroline of Naples, and some to the French émigrés. Many claim that the blows were struck by Debry himself, who, it is thought, was one of those Bonapartist agents, like Garat in Naples and Ginguené in Turin, whose business, as is claimed, was to bring on anarchy at any price, and discredit the Directory. The royalists, supported by the declarations of Mme. Roberjot, who was in the carriage with her husband, asserted this at the time, and the numerous hewers at the greatness of Napoleon have again repeated it in our day. There are circumstances which could be twisted into corroborative evidence if even the slightest positive proof existed; but no satisfactory testimony has ever been offered from Austrian sources to prove that these attacks, like others of the time and in other lands, were not instigated by the authorities, and made both to conceal inconvenient shortcomings, and to bring on the war for which Austria was now thoroughly prepared.[11]

The second coalition was stronger than the first, because, although Prussia remained neutral for reasons already mentioned, it included not only England and Austria, but also both Turkey and Russia, with Portugal and Naples. The long frontier, from Holland to Naples, which France was called on to defend in the absence of her best troops and generals in Egypt, made her weak and vulnerable as never before. England appeared in Holland with an Anglo-Russian army; the Russians poured into Switzerland and Italy; the Austrians were again on the Rhine and the Adige; while Turkey was showing unexpected energy in repelling the invaders from lands which, slack as was the tie, she still considered her own. Worse than all, the false position of the French republic and the Church with reference to each other had kept alive smoldering coals of discontent, and as a result civil war again broke out in Brittany and Vendée. To meet this appalling emergency there was needed either a capable, homogeneous administration heartily supported by the nation, or else a military despotism such as was the logical result of Vendémiaire and Fructidor. The former did not exist. Instead of gaining strength by wise self-denial, the Directory had grown steadily weaker, usurping authority of every kind, and actually seating in the councils of 1798, by the basest arts, creatures of their own as representatives of no less than forty-nine departments. The May elections of 1799 expressed the popular discontent in an uprising of extreme Jacobinism, which sent an opposition delegation into the councils too strong to be thus supplanted or overthrown.

The new legislature met the executive, and at once, with their own weapons. Aided by public clamor, and by the influence of a widely read pamphlet which Carnot had written in justification of his course, they obtained in June a virtual reconstruction of the Directory. Barras, who had become known as a weak trimmer, was suffered to remain. Rewbell, as a supporter of the unsuccessful Schérer and the pertinacious associate of Rapinat, a dishonest contractor connected with the Army of Italy, had been himself suspected of peculation, although unjustly, and his time having expired, he was not reëlected. The others went as a matter of course; Merlin and Larévellière were permitted to resign because, although troublesome, they were nonentities; Treilhard, though honest and able, could not make himself felt, and a flaw in his election was used as a pretext to replace him by Gohier, who, though he had been formerly minister of justice, was a feeble creature. Sieyès was put in Rewbell's place in order to secure a better constitution. He carried into his new sphere the same habits of supercilious mystery which he had always had, continuing likewise the scheming for radical change which he had so long carried on. He looked to Joubert as the popular general most likely to become an easy tool, and formed an intimacy with him. The two other places were filled by utter mediocrities: Roger-Ducos, a moderate, and Moulins, a radical. This revolution of the thirtieth of Prairial, another "day," was held to be a Jacobin counterstroke to that of the eighteenth of Fructidor. The legislature had shown itself as lawless as the Directory; the constitution was proved to be worthless: another must be enacted. With Fouché at the head of the police, and other Robespierrians restored to office, it appeared to the majority of the nation as if all constitutional government were jeopardized, as if the Terror were to be revived, as if such madness could be repressed only by military force.

But where was the general? Championnet had disgraced himself by permitting unbridled license among his soldiery after the capture of Naples on January twenty-third, 1799, and his army fell into a state of disreputable disorganization. Macdonald had gathered together and reorganized the remnants, but only to be defeated by Suvoroff with his Russians on the Trebbia. The army of Joubert, who succeeded Moreau, had been overwhelmed, and its leader killed, by an Austro-Russian force at Novi, on August fifteenth. Mantua was already lost. Moreau, having saved some remnants of Joubert's troops, made a successful stand in the Apennines, where his army still was. Masséna was defeated at Zurich, in June, by the Austrians under the archduke Charles; but on September twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth he routed the Russians under Korsakoff at the same place. Brune had defeated on September nineteenth, at Bergen, an Anglo-Russian army under the Duke of York, who was forced to capitulate at Alkmaar on October tenth, and to evacuate the Batavian Republic. Bernadotte was the new secretary of war, more successful in that office than as a diplomat. Although he was Joseph Bonaparte's brother-in-law, he was not a Bonapartist, being first, last, and always a Bernadottist. Under his administration Jourdan had devised and carried out the new conscription measure which filled once more the empty army lists. This sweeping measure was the extreme development of the system introduced by Carnot, whereby all able-bodied French citizens were declared liable to military service, and drafts were made only when voluntary enlistment failed. The conscription law was passed on September fifth, 1798, and compelled the service of all young men, or at least of as many as the government saw fit to draw, between the ages of twenty and twenty-five. This procedure differed but little from that now universal in modern Europe, and created the Napoleonic armies as distinguished from those of the republic. Organized into divisions, brigades, and half-brigades as before, the new ranks appear to have been quite as enthusiastic as the old, for the young of the nation now looked to war as the quickest road to glory. Bernadotte expressed the common conviction of all ambitious young men when he said: "Children, there are certainly great captains among you." The treasury was replenished by a forced loan disguised under the form of an arbitrary tariff. Besides all this, a frightful measure had been passed, known as the Hostage Law, which made the innocent relatives of every Chouan or emigrant responsible for his conduct.

These measures were indicative of a dangerous and rising tide of the new Jacobinism, which was represented by a majority in the Five Hundred, in the Directory by Gohier and Moulins, and outside by a recognized club of terrorists, which began to sit in the famous riding-school where the Convention had held its sessions. The well-to-do men like Talleyrand, Regnault de St.-Jean-d'Angély, and Roederer, the philosophers Cambacérès, Sémonville, Benjamin Constant, and even Daunou, were outraged at the thought of a new Terror, and looked to Sieyès and Barras to prevent it. In view of these disturbing circumstances, many also asked, Where is the statesman? The Jacobins, as of old, had perfect faith that the chapter of accidents would reveal a statesman; a general they had either in the calm Jourdan or in the hotspur Augereau. Their policy was to repeat republican victories, and fortify democracy in the coming constitution, whatever shape it should take. Sieyès and his friends naturally would have turned to the conqueror of Italy, with whom they had already plotted; but he was absent, and, besides, they wanted a tool, not a master. They actually tried Moreau with the offer of a dictatorship to be equally shared with Bonaparte; but he was already under the spell of royalism, and proved coy. It has been suggested that but for the arrival of Bonaparte himself, Masséna, who much resembled Monk in character, might have repeated that general's rôle in France. Certainly the advocates of a limited monarchy would, in the extremity, have welcomed even the Bourbons as a constitutional dynasty, and this although they were so distrustful that Sieyès, when ambassador in Prussia, had dreamed of choosing a foreign royal house for that purpose, selecting as his own preference that of Brunswick.

Such, then, was the complicated web of defeat and victory in war, of plot and counterplot in politics, of cross-purposes everywhere, which was displayed to Bonaparte on his return to the capital. Should he, the hitherto avowed republican whose devoted soldiers still believed themselves to be fighting for freedom's cause, continue the farce still further, and throw in his fate with the Jacobins? Or should he put down the mask? It soon became clear to him that Paris and the people would never again tolerate a Terror, and that success in the long run lay in an alliance with them. If they would accept his leadership, the game was won. But was this possible? The cool heads, like Baron de Pasquier, had noted the real character of the Egyptian and Syrian campaigns; but even they had an admiration for an adventurer's effrontery, and they were too few to make much impression upon the masses. By large numbers of the hitherto indifferent it was now believed that Bonaparte and his army had been deported to Egypt from jealousy on the part of the Directory; and to some of the conservatives he was a martyr returning from exile, yet bringing new trophies to his country. This rumor was not only never contradicted, but was rather increased by the significant hints of those among the Bonaparte family who were now in the thick of events. Joseph, having three years previously been elected to the Five Hundred, had risen high in the public esteem; and Lucien for two years past had likewise been one of the most influential members. Both were changed men. Polished, at least superficially, and apparently devoted to letters, they were known as solid citizens. Their social gifts had made their homes, like that of Mme. Bonaparte herself, centers of influence among many important people of the capital. Hers, however, was far more exclusive, and affected a lofty superiority to all others. Between it and the other two there existed intense jealousy concerning the general's favor, but all were heartily united in furthering his interests.

The people of Paris did not, like those of Lyons, run to meet Bonaparte as if he were already a sovereign; but they received him warmly. In particular the malcontents who were plotting in his behalf, as if under his personal direction, welcomed him with effusion. Without a moment's delay he took charge of their councils. Sieyès had lost his mainstay in Joubert, and his prestige by the defeat at Novi. With the help of Talleyrand and Roederer he was soon brought to terms, and under Bonaparte's immediate direction the careful, daring plan for a complete change both in the constitution and in the administration which had been already discussed by Sieyès and his followers, the so-called reformists, was revised and finished. It was on its face a determined attempt to remedy the radical defects of the constitution of the year III, and to organize a strong constitutional government. In fact, its author had already shown a certain executive ability in preparing the way. Waving the red signal of the Terror, he had by a series of arbitrary measures suppressed the Jacobin papers and banished their editors. Jourdan at this crisis demanded from the assemblies a vote that the "country was in danger," but his appeal fell flat. Then came the stirring news that under Masséna and Brune the armies of France were renewing their pristine glories, and that the Rhine and the Alps at least were safe. A few days later a messenger from the executive read to the councils, in solemn state, the despatch, composed by Bonaparte for the purpose, containing his exaggerated narrative of the battle of Aboukir. Tremendous enthusiasm swept over both chambers. Gohier, who had fallen a victim to the charms of Josephine in her frequent visits to his flattered wife, was the president of the Directory. To him Bonaparte had paid his first official visit, and on the following day the Directory received in formal audience the general, who, as he himself declared to Gohier, had "left his army to come and share the national perils," reports of which had so disquieted him in Egypt.

The official and the popular good will were therefore before long alike intense: Paris was within a few days as much dazzled by Bonaparte's return as the country had been. The "Return of the Hero" was the catchword of the nation. Recent events had shattered parties into fragments: here was a leader who had never been identified with any one of them. The newspapers took up the pæan of his virtues. Meanness and mediocrity were to disappear; the French people, avid of great things, had found again the favorite of fortune who alone could accomplish them. First Talleyrand, then Sieyès, then all the other well-known men, from Gohier down, openly joined in the train of admirers. The shifty course of large numbers who, like Roederer, were opportunists at heart had become wearisome to the moneyed classes, and they also soon arrayed themselves under Bonaparte's banner. Doubtful or distant persons of influence were courted, and, as in the case of Moreau, were by consummate art often won. Roederer thought the revolution virtually completed by October thirtieth; the work, he said, was three quarters done. Next day Lucien Bonaparte was elected president of the Five Hundred, among whom, though the majority were vacillating and uncomprehending, there was a strong minority of unreconstructed Jacobins. Within the fortnight the defeated general had drawn together at Paris a court more powerful than that which he had had at Montebello in the hour of victory. His personal demeanor was much the same as then—quiet and reserved, but conciliatory, simple, and frank. He affected the simple garb of the civilian, sometimes wearing an Oriental scarf with a small scimitar; frequented the Institute, of which he had been made a member; and associated by preference with men like Volney, discussing questions of philosophy and science. Soon it was whispered that his plans were maturing. What could they be? The answer was not long in suspense. The pear was ripe.

We felt ourselves the associates of an all-powerful destiny, wrote Marmont, concerning the voyage from Egypt. Bonaparte himself was the author of this sentiment, which for long was to be the controlling thought of millions. The Orient had quickened in him a latent conviction as to the value of a destiny and a star. When, in threatening crises, others forgot it, the great adventurer reminded them of it, meaning thereby his own clear vision, unclouded by adversity, penetrating in the confusion of circumstances. In no sense was he an Oriental fatalist; on the contrary, his destiny was the power to discern and to dare which resided in himself. It was his presence in France which was to dispel doubts, restore confidence, control events. "My presence," he had said on shipboard, "by raising their spirits will restore to the army its lacking self-reliance, and to good citizens the hope of a better future. There will be a movement of opinion to the benefit of France. We must struggle to arrive, and we shall arrive." To Kléber, the ablest of his generals, he had left the command and with it a masterly set of directions for the guidance of affairs. He could not be charged with failure, for the end was not yet; disaster could not be retrieved in Egypt: he had hastened to the scene where alone succor could be found, and he had arrived with a heart ready for the decision, under conditions the most favorable, with a definite goal and a clear, simple plan for its attainment. To outsiders and to posterity the result has appeared a happy chance. It was not so, though unforeseen circumstances contributed. It was a foregone conclusion.

CHAPTER X [12]

Bonaparte Seizes his Opportunity

The Banquet to Bonaparte and Moreau — Plans of the Bonapartists — Terrors of Bonaparte and Talleyrand — The Rôle of the Ancients — The Generals at Bonaparte's House — His Address to the Ancients — The Five Hundred — Sieyès and Roger-Ducos Resign from the Directory — Barras Intimidated — Gohier and Moulins Imprisoned — Bernadotte's Counterplot.

On November first, 1799, Sieyès formally surrendered all control. By agreeing, as he did in a conference with Bonaparte, that the outline of the "perfect" constitution which he had written—it was his own epithet—should not be laid directly before the councils, but should be submitted to a committee, he abdicated the public leadership, and became the dupe of his colleagues. On the sixth a banquet was given to Bonaparte in the church of St. Sulpice. It had originally been intended that the tribute should come from both chambers; in reality the affair was arranged entirely by a few of the Ancients, who were now almost to a man Bonapartists. Moreau was present as a guest. Embittered against the Directory by the impossible labors they had assigned to him, he had entered Paris cautiously and quietly; Bonaparte, equally embittered, but by his own failures, had come amid the plaudits of a nation; but the two were for all that justly ranked together as the great captains of the hour. The occasion, however, fell flat; for both Jourdan and Augereau, the Jacobin generals, remained away, and they were the intimates of Bernadotte. Moreau himself was sullen, and the only incident of importance was Bonaparte's toast to the "harmony of all the French." He drank it in wine that was brought in a bottle by Duroc, his aide-de-camp; for his guilty conscience made him suspicious that the meat and drink provided in his honor were poisoned.

Immediately after the close of the gloomy ovation he had a meeting with Sieyès, who produced his draft for three measures, the general tenor of which had been previously agreed upon. In the revolutionary movement now arranged, the Council of the Ancients, in which a majority was certain, were, at the proper time, to take the initiative according to constitutional provision, and pass all three as preliminary to the overthrow of the constitution. They were first to declare the existence of a plot, the nature and size of which were not to be mentioned; then to ordain the session of both councils at St. Cloud; and lastly to appoint Bonaparte commander of the troops in Paris. When assembled next day at St. Cloud, they were to accept the resignations from the Directory of Sieyès and Roger-Ducos, the latter having been persuaded to join the new movement. Finally Gohier, Barras, and Moulins were to be cowed into resigning, and thereupon a provisional consulate, consisting of Bonaparte, Sieyès, and Roger-Ducos, was to be intrusted with the work of reconstruction.

A sufficient military force having been made ready, it was determined at a secret meeting of the Bonapartists, held on the fifteenth of Brumaire (November seventh), that the blow should be struck three days later. To that end the Ancients were to meet, according to the program, on the seventeenth of Brumaire in the morning, and summon both assemblies to hold a session on the eighteenth at St. Cloud. Under a provision of the constitution, whenever an amendment to that document was to be considered, the bodies were to sit outside the walls of Paris. This move would naturally excite considerable suspicion among the uninitiated; and although there might be no disorder, there would certainly be much heated discussion in the streets. Still greater was the danger which lay in the temper of the troops. Enthusiastic for what they felt to be still the republic, every appearance of offering violence to any and all avowed republicans like those who sat among the Five Hundred must be avoided. The solution of this latter problem was really the key to the whole combination. Success would depend entirely on the momentary instinct of plain, honest republican soldiers taken unawares. Minor troubles there were also. Sieyès, sensitive under the evident determination of Bonaparte to use him only so long as he was necessary, became restive, and it required the nicest balancing of interests to keep him temporarily in the traces. It was a time of terrible anxiety to the conspirators. Talleyrand never forgot a scene which took place at his house in the Rue Taitbout a few nights before the crisis. He and Bonaparte were still deep in conversation at about one in the morning, when they heard the rumbling of carriage-wheels and the ring of cavalry hoofs in the street. Suddenly both ceased; the cavalcade had stopped at the door. Bonaparte turned pale, and Talleyrand also, as they paused and listened, fully convinced that both were to be arrested. The latter blew out the candles, and hurried through a passageway to gain a view of the street. After some delay he discovered that the carriage of a gambling-house keeper, returning under police escort from the Palais Royal with his spoils, had broken down. His fears relieved, he returned to joke with Bonaparte about the scare. Before the appointed day, however, everything which master-schemers could foresee was carefully adjusted. The apparent resurrection of Jacobinism was actually the last appearance of its ghost; for the Directory, shorn of all prestige, was divided and shaky; the army, republican to the core, was weary with its inefficiency and furious with its bankruptcy; the mass of the nation, conservative and royalist, despaired of a restoration, and, sick of war, were for the moment in a humor to accept any strong government. The majority of the administration, the nation, and the army were, therefore, in readiness, while the numerous malcontents in each were at least temporarily silenced. Every little hidden wire of private interest was in hand, and plans were ripe to coerce those who could not be cajoled.

All night long, from the sixteenth to the seventeenth of Brumaire, a committee of the Ancients was in session, minutely perfecting its plans. Next morning at seven the faithful majority, having been summoned according to form, convened as the council; the doubtful members had either not been summoned at all, or had received notice of a later hour. As soon as a quorum was present, Cornet, a well-known butt for the wits, rose and denounced the terrible conspiracy which was menacing them. Regnier then moved that according to articles one hundred and two, three and four of the constitution both branches of the legislature should meet next day at noon, and not before, in the palace of St. Cloud; that General Bonaparte should be intrusted with the execution of their decree, and that to that end he be appointed commander of the Paris garrison, of their own special guard, and of the National Guard; that he therefore appear and take the oath; and that these resolutions be duly communicated to the Directory, to the Five Hundred, and also to the public by printed proclamation. The motion was carried unanimously.

During these proceedings, all the generals present in Paris except Jourdan and Augereau, who had not been invited, but including the stanch republican Lefebvre, commander of the garrison, had gathered in and before Bonaparte's house. They had been requested to come in uniform in order to arrange for a review. It was noticed that Bernadotte, though present, was not in uniform. He had so far yielded to the blandishments of his brother-in-law as to come, but declared that he would obey only what was at that moment the chief authority in the state. Lefebvre was in uniform, but having met on the way bodies of troops moving without his orders, and not being initiated, he was naturally startled. But Bonaparte knew his man. "Would you, a supporter of the republic, leave it to perish in the hands of these lawyers?" was his greeting. "See, here is the sword I carried at the Pyramids. I give it to you as a mark of my esteem and confidence." "Let us throw the lawyers into the river," came the expected answer.

A few moments later arrived the authoritative summons from the Ancients. Bonaparte stepped out on the porch, and read their proceedings aloud. By a united impulse the officers flourished their swords in response. It was but an instant before they were mounted, and with Bonaparte in front, the cavalcade, headed by men either already famous or destined to become so,—Macdonald, Sérurier, Murat, Lannes, Andréossy, Berthier, and Lefebvre,—proceeded to the council-chamber. It needed but a hasty glance, as they passed through the city, to see that preconcerted orders had already been carefully executed. The troops were all under arms and at their stations in commanding places throughout the town. Arrived at the Tuileries, the general and his glittering escort entered the chamber. "Citizen delegates," he said, "the republic was falling. You understood the situation; your course has saved it. Woe to them who cause disorder or disturbance! With the help of General Lefebvre, of General Berthier, and my other brethren in arms, I will arrest them. Let no man look for precedents in the past. Nothing in history is comparable to the end of the eighteenth century, nothing to the present moment. Your wisdom passed this motion, our arms will execute it. We desire a republic founded in true liberty, in civil liberty, in popular representation. We are going to have it. I swear it in my own name and in that of my brethren in arms!" "We swear it!" was the antiphonal response of the assembled generals. Some one indiscreetly suggested that Bonaparte had sworn, but not the oath of allegiance to the constitution required by their previous action. At once the president hurriedly declared all further proceedings out of order, the assembly having adjourned by its own act.

By this time it was eleven o'clock, and the members of the Five Hundred were gathering. Their meeting was soon called to order, with Lucien in the chair. The recent action of the Ancients was announced amid a deep silence, broken only at the conclusion by numerous calls for an explanation. In strict legality, and according to the letter of the constitution, the lower house had on such an occasion no function but to listen, and the president pronounced the session ended. Amid cheers for the constitution of the year III the representatives then dispersed. A more impressive and dramatic scene was the reception of Bonaparte a few seconds later by the soldiers who had been assembled in the courtyard below for the purpose. Their cheers rang out in volleys as he mounted and rode away, the hero of the hour. A few moments later he reached his headquarters to find all his chosen subordinates assembled. Fouché, the Jacobin minister of police, having seen how the weathercock was veering, was there likewise, conciliatory, obsequious, and superserviceable.

In fact, the incidents of that day were all uncommon. The "Moniteur" published an article hinting that the Jacobins contemplated merging the two councils into a convention. The populace, far from being uneasy and riotous, seemed dazzled by the military display, and were not alarmed by the movements of the soldiery. It was only with languid interest that they read a pamphlet scattered everywhere, which had been written by Roederer to prove the need for renewing the constitution. Bonaparte as commandant, and therefore temporary dictator, received according to prearrangement the resignations of Sieyès and Roger-Ducos, to be presented on the morrow at St. Cloud. The Gohiers had been invited to breakfast with Mme. Bonaparte that morning at the unusual hour of eight o'clock. Pleading official duties, the director himself did not go; his wife, amazed by the dazzling assemblage of generals which she found before the Bonapartes' door, hurried back to announce what she had seen. We may surmise that had Gohier accompanied his wife, both might have been won to the support of the movement in hand; in the other event, perhaps, both might have been forcibly detained.

As it was, Gohier's first instinct was to consult Barras, and he hurried in search of his colleague; but the fallen statesman was in his bath, and could see nobody. He sent word to Gohier to count on him; but before his toilet was complete he was forced to receive Bruix and Talleyrand, who had come as emissaries from Bonaparte. A guilty conscience made him like wax in the hands of Talleyrand, who successfully pleaded with him to resign, and secured his signature to a form, prepared in advance by Roederer under Bonaparte's supervision, which declared that all danger to freedom was past, thanks to the illustrious warrior for whom he had had the honor to open the way to glory. Such was the haste that even before Moulins, the remaining director, could reach the Tuileries, where Bonaparte had established an office, this paper of Barras had been delivered, and the Directory had ceased to exist. "What have you done," said the dictator to Barras's messenger—"what have you done with the France I made so brilliant? I left you victory: I find nothing but defeat. I left you the millions from Italy: I find plundering laws and misery. Where are the hundred thousand warriors who have disappeared from the soil of France? They are dead, and they were my comrades! Such conditions cannot last; in three years anarchy will land us in despotism. We want a republic founded on the basis of equality, of morality, of civil liberty, of political long-suffering." It is needless to say that a reporter was present, the poet Arnault, who printed this fine language next day in the newspapers.

Finally Moulins and Gohier were admitted. Welcomed as if they, too, were about to join in the movement "to save the commonwealth," it was with feigned astonishment that Bonaparte heard them plead for the laws, for the constitution, for the sanctity of oaths, and for good faith to the republican armies, once again victorious. Their adversary was of course immovable. With Gohier he tried argument; to Moulins he menacingly remarked that if Santerre, the notorious demagogue and his relative, should this time make a move to raise the populace, his fate would be death. To a point-blank demand for their resignation both firmly answered, "No," and withdrew to the Luxembourg, where the now defunct Directory had had its seat. With no knowledge or intention on their part, they were to serve as a means for the immolation of Bonaparte's last victim and most dangerous rival. In the military dispositions of that day, Lannes had been put in command at the Tuileries, Sérurier at the Point-du-Jour, Marmont at the military school, Macdonald at Versailles, and Murat at St. Cloud. To the central point, the seat of government, the home of the Directory, Moreau had been assigned. If Bonaparte became the statesman of the impending revolution, Moreau reasoned that he himself would of necessity become the general of the new government, and, regarding his selection for this post as a distinction, he accepted. By the order of his temporary superior, Gohier and Moulins, the two unyielding and incorruptible members of the executive, though not shamefully treated, were yet deprived of their liberty. With the proverbial fickleness of humanity, the agent was held by the public solely responsible for this conduct, and was harshly judged. To him was imputed the stain of arbitrarily applying force at the critical moment, and his influence disappeared like a mirage. During these closing hours of the day, Augereau, too, appeared to make his peace, asking with perplexed jocularity, and with the use of the familiar "thou," if Bonaparte could count no more on his "little Augereau." His fears were scarcely allayed by the brusque advice that both he and Jourdan should keep the peace.

All afternoon the bill-posters were busy, according to the time-honored French custom, covering the blank walls with a carefully worded announcement that the Revolution, having gone astray through incompetence, was to be concluded by its friends. There was a conspiracy: it must be met by united action to secure civil liberty, equality, victory, peace; by a last supreme effort the people must come to its own. The counter-revolution would be the real one. Meantime the papers were printing for their morning issue of the nineteenth the program of the new government. Away with the hostage law, forced loans, the proscription of emigrants: enter peace, an enduring peace, secured if needs be by a new series of victories over the enemies of France, but a peace, solid and permanent. Did ever the wheels of conspiracy run so smoothly? The officious Fouché had closed the city barriers. Bonaparte was so secure that he ordered them thrown wide open. The night was apparently as serene as his spirit. In reality there was a counterplot, and that in a dangerous quarter. Bernadotte met with a little junta, comprising a few members of the Five Hundred, at Salicetti's house, and planned, with himself in uniform as commander, to reach St. Cloud next day in advance of all others, and to install himself, with his supporters, in charge of the palace, so as to control events in his favor. But Salicetti was a traitor in the camp. He had long been double-faced with Bonaparte; but, having at last recognized where lay the mastery, had made his peace, and had been pardoned for the unforgotten imprisonment. Fouché was duly informed by him of the counterplot, and without exciting suspicion, every member of the Bernadotte junta was delayed in the morning far beyond the time appointed, and their scheme failed. Besides the slight danger in this fiasco there appeared a division of opinion among Bonaparte's own friends, some of the more timid recommending in the early morning hours that Bonaparte should accept a seat in the Directory. "There is no Directory," was his reply; and it was determined, after a number had withdrawn, that they should adhere to the original plan, which was to demand an adjournment of the councils until the first of Ventose (February nineteenth, 1800), and that in the long interval Bonaparte should be intrusted with the administration. Unfortunately, the conspirators overlooked two important points. Nothing was prearranged as to who should act in case the Five Hundred proved refractory, and no preparations were made in the palace of St. Cloud for the reception of the deputies. It was a strange fatality that Bonaparte, who elsewhere and at other times had always two strings to his bow, should, in the heart of France and at the very nick of his fortunes, have provided only one. It was a rash satisfaction with the day's events which he expressed to Bourrienne on retiring for a few hours' rest.

CHAPTER XI

The Overthrow of the Directory

The Councils at St. Cloud — Bonaparte's Poor Appearance as a Conspirator — His Attack on the Constitution — Uneasiness of the Five Hundred — Bonaparte Overawed by their Fury — The Day Saved by His Brother Lucien — A Semblance of Constitutional Government Restored — Bonaparte Master of the Situation — Paris Delighted.

Next morning there was much coming and going in the city, much discussion in the streets, but no disorder. Toward noon, the hour appointed for their meeting, the delegates to the two houses of the legislature, accompanied by many of the people, moved in the direction of St. Cloud. Bonaparte, with a few thousand troops, was already there. Nothing was ready for the reception of the councils, and during the almost fatal interval of hasty preparation the Jacobins gathered in groups to discuss the situation, suspecting for the first time that what confronted them was not reform of the constitution, however radical, but its overthrow. It was long after the appointed time, nearly two o'clock, before the rooms of the palace were ready and the members of the councils were called to order—the Five Hundred in the Orangery on the ground floor of one wing, the Ancients upstairs in the other wing, occupying the Hall of Apollo. Bonaparte and the half-hearted, timid Sieyès were closeted in one of the downstairs chambers, awaiting events. A six-horse carriage had been stationed by the latter at the gate, for his own use in case of mishap. Soldiers stood guard at all the approaches, and the reception-rooms were filled with men and officers, friends of the arch-conspirator. Disquieting news soon began to arrive from the assemblies. Upstairs the Ancients, amid intense excitement, had voted a series of routine motions and adjourned for an interval, a course tending to postpone consideration of the proposition to intrust Bonaparte with the conduct of affairs. They wished to ascertain through a message from the Five Hundred, as the law required, if the executive were duly constituted, and all the directors present; for in that case only would their action be legal. The delay was to them unaccountable and seemed interminable as they strolled about in pairs and groups, uneasy and vacillating. At last the rumor spread that the general was coming to their hall and they hurried to their seats. When they were at last reassembled anarchy broke loose; for the secretary announced, falsely, of course, that four directors had resigned, and that the fifth was in restraint.

At that moment Bonaparte, with his staff, appeared at the door and a sudden silence fell upon the place. The scene appalled him. The bravery of the general is different from the personal courage of the soldier in the face of physical danger, and both are unlike the pluck of him who defies the law. The latter Bonaparte never had. For a moment he was pale; but, gathering resolution by a mighty effort, he spoke in disjointed but rudely eloquent phrase. They were on a volcano, he said. He was no Cæsar or Cromwell, but a plain soldier living quietly in Paris, who had been called unawares to save his country. If he had been a usurper, he would have called not on the legislature, but on the soldiers of Italy. It was the duty of those present to save liberty and equality—"and the constitution," cried a voice. "The constitution!" was his answer. "You violated it on the eighteenth of Fructidor; you violated it on the twenty-second of Floréal; you violated it on the thirtieth of Prairial. The constitution! All factions invoke it, and it has been violated by all. It is despised by everybody; it can no longer save us, because it commands the respect of nobody." He then proceeded to ask for the powers necessary in the emergency, promising to lay them down when his work was done. "What are the pressing dangers?" said some one. What were they, indeed? If he must speak, he would. "I declare," he cried, "that Barras and Moulins have invited me to head a party in order to overthrow all men of liberal ideas." The clumsy falsehood produced a storm. Was this the Jacobin conspiracy they had been told of—Barras the aristocrat and Moulins the democrat conspiring together! They wanted details.

In the interval of speaking, the orator had found his cue again, and at once launched out, not into the asked-for details, but into a tornado of language, abusing the constitution and the Five Hundred, and at the same time adroitly threatening that if the old cry of outlaw were raised against him, he would call on the grenadiers whose caps he saw, on the soldiers whose bayonets were in view. "Remember that I walk with the goddess of fortune, accompanied by the god of war!" "General," whispered Bourrienne in his ear, "you no longer know what you are saying." The president of the Ancients was at his wit's end. How could the council, eager as they were to do so, grant the general's demands on such a showing as this? A third time came calls from the benches for details of the plot which made necessary the contemplated measures. And a third time Bonaparte's gift of specious prevarication failed. He could think of nothing but Barras and Moulins; but now, in mentioning their names once more, he added that what made them dangerous was that they had expressed what was almost universally desired; otherwise they would be no worse than a very large number of others who were at heart of the same mind. "If liberty perish," he cried, "you will be responsible to the universe, to posterity, to France, and to your families." It sounded like an anti-climax and left his auditors perfectly cold. Therewith he was virtually dragged from the room by his dismayed companions. The preconcerted program was then carried out, and a vote of confidence in Bonaparte was passed. To retrieve the blunders of his speech, a revised version, of the same general tenor, but more as it should have been, was next day printed by "authority."

Downstairs the uproar was terrific. Lucien had expected the Ancients to act swiftly and remit their decree at once to the Five Hundred. He hoped to put and carry a motion to sanction it without giving time for deliberation. The opening formalities of the session passed quietly, and the assembly listened without interruption to a short, vague, and feeble speech in which a Bonapartist deputy professed to announce the pretended plot. The delay of two hours in meeting had, however, given the Jacobins time to consider; there was no business before the house, the resignations of the directors had not been presented to them, and, apparently to pass the time, it was proposed that the delegates present should solemnly, one by one, renew each his oath to the constitution. This was done by all but Bergoëng, a single recalcitrant who resigned his seat. Lucien himself performed the solemn rite. But in the tedious process lasting over two hours desultory cries began to be uttered: "No dictation!" "Down with dictators!" "We are all free here!" Finally the shouts swelled in volume so as to reach the sympathetic ears of the guards outside. In this critical moment arrived Barras's resignation. It was read in full, including the passage which declared that with the return of the illustrious warrior for whom he had had the honor to open the way, and amid the striking marks of confidence which the legislature had shown in their general, he felt sure that liberty was no longer in danger, and that he was therefore glad to return to the walks of private life.

The delegates, most of them at least, were unaware of the fact that Sieyès and Roger-Ducos had already handed their resignations to Bonaparte, and did not know that Gohier and Moulins were in duress. This language, read between the lines, made it evident that the Directory was on the verge of dissolution, or already dissolved, and confirmed their suspicions of impending revolution. The Jacobin majority was utterly disconcerted. Some proposed the immediate election of a new Directory; others insisted on the constitutional term of delay, and called for an adjournment. The most clear-sighted saw the trap into which they had fallen, and began to speak of what the circumstances meant. "I believe," said Grandmaison, "that among those present some know whence we have come, and whither we are going." At that critical instant the doors opened, and Bonaparte, surrounded by grenadiers, appeared on the threshold. Chaos ensued. The delegates rose from their seats, some made for the windows, some rushed with menacing gestures toward the intruder, some shouted, "Outlaw him!" "Outlaw him!" and demanded that a motion to that effect be put. This redoubled the disorder. "Put him out!" "Outlaw the dictator!" cried the multitude. "Begone, rash man!" said one near by. "You are violating the sanctuary of the law." "Was it for this," said another, "that you were victorious?" In the heat of passion the unavoidable collision occurred, and the angry representatives laid rude hands on Bonaparte. It was said next day that a grenadier whose name was Thomé threw himself in front of Bonaparte, and received in his own coat-sleeve a dagger-thrust of Arena, an old Corsican foe, which had been intended for his general; but no credible witness ever professed to have seen the deed or any wound. Overpowered by excitement and the mortal agony of one who has staked his all on a doubtful event, the leader turned pale and lost consciousness. The soldiers caught him in their arms, and dragged him downstairs into the office which he had occupied, where he soon regained his self-command. The cries of the now frenzied soldiery served as a complete restorative and he demanded a horse. His own horse was not at hand and he made but a sorry figure in mounting and curbing a restive steed, the first which offered. But at last he found his seat and his voice. Bounding to the open terrace, he harangued the troops and met with a quick response in their hearty acclaim; they promptly formed in line.

The decisive moment had arrived. Would the soldiers, enthusiastic as they seemed, really obey if ordered to take violent measures? Among the generals were many anxious, troubled faces. After his incursion upon the Ancients, Bonaparte had rushed into the antechamber where his commanders sat, exclaiming, "There must be an end to this." During his second absence, Sérurier took the cue, and marched up and down, declaiming, "They were going to kill your general, but be calm!" In the Orangery Lucien accomplished a miracle, calmed the assemblage, steadily refused to put the motion for outlawry, and demanded a hearing for his brother. His plea being of no avail, he finally left the chair, and with the despairing cry, "There is no liberty here!" rushed from the room. The dreary honors of the day were to be his. Bonaparte despatched a file of soldiers to escort him through the throng. The drums rolled for silence, and a horse was brought, which he mounted. Presenting himself then to the troops, he declared, as president of the Five Hundred, that the majority of the legislature were honorable men, but that in the room from which he had come were a few assassins, English hirelings, who held the rest in terror. "Hurrah for Bonaparte!" cried the soldiers; but they made no motion to clear the Orangery, and Napoleon uttered no command. This was the historic moment. Lucien, seizing the drawn sword of a bystander, and pointing it at Napoleon's breast, exclaimed: "I swear I would strike down my own brother should he ever endanger the liberties of the French!" There was at last a movement in the lines. "Shall we enter the hall?" said Murat to Bonaparte. "Yes," was the reply; "and if they resist, kill, kill! Yes; follow me! I am the god of the day!" Fortunately, these hysterical words were heard only by a few. "Keep still!" said Lucien. "Do you think you are talking to the Mamelukes?" With that the order rang out, the rolling drums drowned the roar of talk, action began, and with the brothers on horseback at their head, the grenadiers advanced. There was no resistance, the deputies fled swiftly through doors and windows into the dark, and in a few moments the disordered room was empty.

If Bonaparte were to be neither a Cæsar nor a Cromwell, it was Sieyès, as the civilian and the constitution-maker, who should have swayed the legislative councils in behalf of reform; but his heart was no more engaged in Bonaparte's support now than it had ever been. Anxious to be a leader, and to impose on France a constitution which by its "perfection" should command authority, he had ever been relegated to a second place. Instead of seizing this, his greatest opportunity as a lawgiver, he and Roger-Ducos had softly withdrawn to their carriage. The "perfect" constitution he had prepared would, in view of what had just happened, consequently rest, like the one overthrown, upon military force. Nevertheless, he thoroughly understood that Bonaparte had gone too far, and that his mistake must be retrieved. The country was not ripe for a military despot who, like Charles XII of Sweden, would send his boot to preside over the representatives of the people, or else turn them out of doors without a qualm. Accordingly, the few Bonapartist delegates, who had fled with the rest and had found refuge in the taverns or private houses of the neighborhood, were by his advice, but with some difficulty, found and summoned by Lucien to meet, late as it was, in their respective places, cold and uncomfortable as these were. Upward of fifty out of the Five Hundred—some impartial witnesses have put the number as high as one hundred and twenty—ventured to come, and the semblance of representative government was restored. To them the new, impossible, and clumsy constitution made by Sieyès was presented for consideration.

Meantime Bonaparte had thoroughly recovered his self-control. He declared at St. Helena that all the conspiracies of the time were alike without a head because they needed a "sword"; and that, possessing one, he alone could choose what pleased him best. To Mme. de Rémusat he said: "It was one of the epochs in my life when I was most skilful. I saw the Abbé Sieyès, and promised to put his wordy constitution into operation. I received the Jacobin leaders, and the agents of the Bourbons. I refused no one's advice, but I gave only such as was in the interest of my plans. I withdrew from the people's observation because I knew that when the time arrived curiosity to see me would throw them under my feet. Every one fell into my toils, and when I became head of the state there was not a party in France which did not cherish some hope for my success." Mme. de Staël, returning on the eighteenth of Brumaire from Switzerland to Paris, saw Barras driving to his country-seat of Grosbois. On her arrival men talked no longer of abstractions, of the Constituent Assembly, of the people, or of the Convention: it was all of a person—of what General Bonaparte had done. Her own feelings, she says, were mixed. If the battle were joined, and the Jacobins victorious, she might turn about and fly, for blood would flow once more. Still, at the thought of Bonaparte's triumph she felt a prophetic sadness. She could not mourn for liberty, for liberty had never existed in France. This was the voice of the dispirited and disheartened constitutional republicans, who knew and proposed no remedy. The royalists were fully aware of what they desired. They had been sighing for a despot in France, for another Richelieu, a fierce, intractable master, wielding a rod of iron, without which the inhabitants could never be reconstructed into a nation. In the words of a letter written somewhat earlier from Coblentz, their city of refuge on the Rhine, they desired "the union of powers in the hands of an imperious master, ... who, by a splendid and brilliant Cromwellism, would hold in awe the people whom he forced to respect and bless their own servitude." The mass of the nation were tired of war and eager for a peace that would bring prosperity, pleasure, and glory. The few honest and austere radicals went down with their greedy and noisy fellows; the Jacobin party was no more. There had been a complete rearrangement of factors in the French problem.

For this reason the escaped legislators who reached Paris that night found little or no comfort as they told their dreary tale. Everywhere there was perfect calm, here and there signs of great satisfaction with what was likely to happen or had happened. The great city went about its affairs as usual, and when late in the evening Fouché issued a manifesto to the effect that Bonaparte in his effort to denounce "counter-revolutionary" measures before the Five Hundred had barely escaped assassination, the paper was read on the stage of all the theaters to eager audiences which in every instance applauded with almost frenzied enthusiasm. Paris and all France was weary of the Directory, it was eager for new things, for authority, for order, for foreign and home policies which would safely anchor the civil liberties won by the Revolution but jeopardized by the violence, self-seeking, and incapacity of the adventurers who had been holding the helm of state.

CHAPTER XII [13]

Bonaparte the First Consul

Bonaparte's Position — The Absence of Enthusiasm — The Provisional Consulate — Measures of Security — The New Constitution — An Autocratic Executive — The Plebiscite — Bonaparte the First Consul — New Officials — Efforts to Appease the Church — The Feeling in France — Confidence Restored — Financial Stability.

When Bonaparte returned to Paris on the evening of the eighteenth of Brumaire he was the arbiter of French destiny; for the great powers of government, both executive and legislative, were in the hands of himself and his creatures. To the multitude it was not, perhaps, much of a feat to disperse by force a legislature which rested on force, and by means of the army to turn the tables on the very Jacobins who had themselves been ever ready to appeal to the army. Moreover, in their minds another constitution more or less was of small importance: the next one would doubtless be only a rearrangement of the old devices. The Revolution was in the hands of its friends, and the world must go its way. Talleyrand and the royalists understood that the day's work had turned the oligarchy of the Directory into a powerful monarchy of some kind: a temporary one, they hoped, which would enable them eventually to bring back the Bourbons.

But Napoleon Bonaparte was, as ever, wise in his generation, and, as he understood himself, knew that though both these notions were illusory, he must proceed cautiously. As a gambler he had staked everything, and had won: he meant to pocket the stakes. But yet how narrowly had he won! The shouts of "traitor" and "outlaw" were still in his ears; no doubt the terrible alternative to his perilous escape was in his mind. Though determined to go on, he was nevertheless sobered. There was temporary exultation in the army and the people. He knew that among the latter it would soon die out, as it did. Already it was rumored that although Mme. Bonaparte had been in pecuniary straits, her husband had thirty millions on deposit in various banks. This was certainly untrue, because the general had recourse to the brokers of Paris for the funds needed to reward his abettors. The merciless extortion of the lenders engendered in him a bitterness against their class which he entertained to the latest day of his life. It was estimated that the day had cost him one and a half millions; every man under his command had received a new uniform, twelve francs in cash, and a drink of spirits; the rest was spent in rewarding his generals and political supporters. The constitutional and moderate republicans felt that their cause and the fate of the nation were in the balance. The royalists were the only faction which would have been glad to see Bonaparte usurp the power at once. He and his friends understood that a nation still infatuated with the Revolution in theory must be led by a parade of constitutional measures.

The mutilated chambers began work on the very night of their reassembling at St. Cloud. Lucien harangued them on the familiar theme of Roman liberties, recalling the commonwealth in which the consular fasces had been the symbol of freedom. The country would approve and its enemies would be disarmed if these insignia should again be displayed. Boulay de la Meurthe presented the temporary plan: a provisional consulate composed of Bonaparte, Sieyès, and Roger-Ducos; the adjournment of the legislature until February twentieth, 1800; the appointment of two committees of twenty-five, one from each council, to aid the consuls in the proposed renovation; the proscription of fifty-seven delegates who had made themselves obnoxious. To preserve the appearance of legality and historic continuity, the committee from the Five Hundred was to propose, that of the Ancients to adopt; the new constitution must uphold the one and indivisible republic, respect popular sovereignty, and secure representative government with the division of powers, while property, liberty, and equality must be guaranteed beyond a peradventure. After a formal declaration that the Directory had ceased to exist, each of these measures was duly adopted by both houses in turn, and the consuls were sworn in, promising unswerving fidelity to popular sovereignty, to the French republic one and indivisible, to liberty and equality, and to representative government. With a resolution that Bonaparte had that day deserved well of his country, the chambers adjourned at an early hour in the morning. When the sun rose over Paris and France, the land had found its despot; to all appearances he was to be a beneficent despot. The consuls met that very day in the Luxembourg palace: the general's name came first in alphabetical order, and on the suggestion of Roger-Ducos he took the presidency and the executive for the twenty-four hours, the others to follow in turn. Their first work was the construction of a provisional ministry: three of the old members were without discussion retained: Cambacérès for justice, Bourdon for the navy, and Reinhard for foreign affairs. Dubois-Crancé was replaced by Berthier for war, Robert Lindet by Gaudin for finance, Quinette by Laplace for the interior. There was much debate concerning Fouché as minister of police, but on Bonaparte's urgent representations he was reappointed. It was rumored that the Jacobins intended to rally at Toulouse, and Lannes was ordered to take command in that city at once. To the public a simple and safe announcement was issued, promising better days for the republic.

The men and measures worked well. A treasury absolutely depleted was slowly replenished by the practice of simple honesty; a disintegrated military force was cautiously reassembled and brought into order, but the garrison of Paris was not enlarged above nine thousand men, and there was no show of force. The Bonaparte family moved into the Luxembourg, but its head appeared always in civilian garb. He was much abroad, visiting and conversing with men of science, letters, and finance. Thoroughly restored in balance of mind, he did and said kind things, joking about the scenes of St. Cloud, and explaining away the unhappy words he had uttered. His sayings were repeated far and near, and within a few days there were throngs of influential visitors in his parlors. It may well be believed that shrewd observers noted his appearance and manners, his hollow cheeks, pale face, stern brow; his insatiate, all-embracing curiosity, keen questionings, and tactful rejoinders, the irresistible magnetism of his vigor, his mind, and his youth. The family connections were not in evidence; Lucien especially was kept in the background. There were no oracular statements, no boastful professions, yet every one felt profoundly that the consuls were a force, an active force, saying little, toiling to exhaustion, and that results of importance would emerge in due time. Indeed the ameliorations of administration were in evidence from the very first.

The industry of Sieyès and Bonaparte was indeed unexampled. There was friction, but one was indispensable to the other; they must work together, and the supple Talleyrand was then to keep the peace. Sieyès's "perfect" constitution propounded a singularly cumbersome plan of government, but it contained much that was Bonaparte's own, and therefore suited to Bonaparte's purposes. It was accordingly taken as a starting-point. In the end, the document actually adopted and promulgated proved to be outwardly similar but inwardly antipodal to that of Sieyès. While skilfully blinding all classes to its possibilities as an instrument for controlling the nation by a central power, its provisions were perfectly adapted to conciliate every faction except that of the Jacobins, who were by flight or conversion to all intents annihilated. Sixty-two members of the Five Hundred were deposed. The rest, as a reward for their late complacency, were invited in the name of the public welfare to accept office as foreign ministers, or diplomatic agents, and, in some cases, as government representatives in the provinces; their position as delegates was not to be jeopardized by acceptance. The purpose of this was to remove the majority of the old republican politicians from Paris, under the guise of compensating them for past service. Sieyès's great fundamental notion was to secure the form of popular representation without its substance,—"confidence coming from below," as he expressed it, "power coming from above." In order to secure this he had devised a plan nearly identical with that laid down to Talleyrand by Bonaparte three years before. It was adopted for the new constitution. Every one of the five million citizens of France was to have a vote. From among them one in every ten was to be chosen by universal suffrage to be a candidate for local office; this formed the "communal list." These "notables of the communes" were then to choose one in ten of their number as a "notable of the department," a candidate for departmental office, thus constituting the "departmental list"; and these, in turn, one in every ten of their number as "notables of France," candidates for the national legislature and the higher offices of state, thus forming the "national list." From among these last the administration and the senate, by the exercise of the appointing power, were to select the great officers of state. This was Bonaparte's popular representation, "without eyes, ears, or power."

The legislative was also to be silent and powerless. It was divided into council, tribunate, legislature, and senate. The first, chosen at will by the executive, had the initiative; in the second three speakers might discuss the measures proposed, but no vote could be taken; in the third there was no discussion, but the members voted; the fourth was also mute, but it had the veto power. All except the senate were to sit with closed doors, and publicity was to be controlled by the administration. Sieyès had a plan whereby a chief magistrate, to be called the "great elector," should be chosen by the senators, since they also chose the representatives of the people from the elected candidates. This titled personage was to appoint all civil and military functionaries, together with two consuls to overlook the administration. Bonaparte contemptuously wondered how any man "of some talent and a little honor would consent to play the part of a hog to be fatted on so and so many millions." He called on Daunou for suggestions, but that ardent republican desired both a strong executive and a strong direct expression of the popular will. The new autocrat felt that the latter must be avoided at any cost, and proposed, through one of his creatures, an executive of three consuls, of whom the first should serve for ten years and be the head of the state. His should be the right to execute the laws, and his alone the appointing power. Since he was to nominate the members of the council of state, he should also have the power to initiate legislation. In case of need he might act by administrative process; that is, he might legalize any regulation whatsoever as an administrative necessity. He might rule by decree. This centralizing engine of despotism was made complete by a system of prefects modeled on that of the royal intendants, and intended to be the copestone of the structure. It was adopted, and still prevails in republican France. In every administrative division of town or country the local councils, under stringent regulations as to the scope of their deliberations and decisions, were intrusted to the charge of a prefect. This petty dictator was the sworn servant of the central power, appointed or removed by it at pleasure. Through these men the hand of the First Consul was on every hamlet, village, town, and city. In fact, even the mayors of the great towns were his appointees.

Napoleon Exposition, 1895

NAPOLEON WORKING BY THE GLIMMER OF THE LAMP
From sketch by Ingres, belonging to M. Germain Bapst.

This monstrous but marvelous charter, though nominally prepared by them, was offered for discussion neither to the two committees nor to the councils themselves. During the weeks spent in its elaboration, the nation was skilfully prepared for its reception. In the capital a proscription list drawn up by the wily Fouché, as police minister, was by a studied inadvertence put into reporters' hands. It contained a jumble of names, gentle and simple, criminal and innocent, friend and foe, and was absurd on its face. No one would assume the responsibility, though it was said to have emanated from the police prematurely and irregularly. The consuls, especially Bonaparte, displayed a most engaging activity in erasing one name after another, until nothing of importance remained. By the ordinary course of criminal procedure a few notorious characters were removed from the scene; the persons of importance who were menaced made grateful submission and joined the ranks of the trusty, notably Jourdan. As news came in from the departments it became clear that Jacobinism was everywhere discomfited and could be neglected. The scanty garrisons and the administrative functionaries were all with the new government, the people of the cities and towns were enthusiastic. The horrors and terrors of the passing régime had moderated for the time the frenzies of the royalist party. Indeed, moderation became the watchword. France, in the parlance of the hour, was to drink the waters of Lethe. The example was given in Paris and twenty-four choice men were sent one into each of the military departments to exhibit and emphasize the fact, to study and mold public opinion. They were mostly men of the older régime, who had heartily accepted the consular idea. They worked faithfully and successfully. None knew as yet the provisions of the new constitution, though all approved its provisions, whatever they were, because they must be better than those of the old. On December fifteenth, 1799, six weeks after the completion of the document, it was presented directly to the nation at large, under the proposal of a national or popular decree—a plebiscite. Those then living were amazed at the general apathy, only about three million votes having been cast. To us it appears as if the whole people were in a plague of Egyptian darkness. As each voter could but adhere to or dissent from the proposition for the adoption of the constitution as offered, the result was an overwhelming approval, the negative votes being only one thousand five hundred and sixty-seven in number.

On December twenty-second, before the result of the plebiscite was known, the new charter was put in operation. It is difficult to determine exactly the composition of the assembly which met at the Luxembourg palace to determine who should be the permanent consuls. According to an anecdote of the time, Sieyès opened its proceedings by explaining the dangers of a military despotism should the First Consul be a soldier. Bonaparte impressively whispered to his supporters that they should scatter themselves throughout the room, and that when they saw him take Sieyès's hand they should shout, "Bravo—Bonaparte!" Then, stepping forward at the close of Sieyès's address, he assumed an air of generous friendliness, and said, "Let us have no difference of opinion, my friend; for my part, I vote for the Abbé Sieyès. For whom do you vote?" Taken all aback, Sieyès murmured, "I vote for General Bonaparte." Instantly the latter put out his hand, and the speaker grasped it. "Bravo—Bonaparte!" rang from all sides, and Sieyès's supporters joined in the shout. Thus, apparently by general consent, the shrewd intriguer, as the story runs, was acclaimed First Consul. At all events, Bonaparte took the office to himself without a question on the part of the public. His two colleagues were to be chosen by the constitutional committee. They named Daunou as one, but Bonaparte threw the ballots into the fire. Sieyès obligingly presented two other names,—"the right men," as he assured the committee,—Cambacérès and Lebrun. The former was an eminent jurist, the latter the ablest financier of his time. Both were appointed, and both rendered excellent service to the Consulate. Sieyès had already been made "keeper" of the Directory's secret funds,—six hundred thousand francs,—which he called "une poire pour la soif." Soon afterward he accepted from the First Consul the great estate of Crôsne, and was then relegated to obscurity as chief of the senate. The other great officials were all appointed in much the same way. "The pike is eating the two other fish," said Mme. Permon to the First Consul's mother soon after.

The safeguard of so-called popular adhesion having been secured, the next step was to adopt and execute a comprehensive policy of conciliation. The royalist emigrants were encouraged to return, provided they would accept the new power and lend it the grace of their presence and manners. Amnesty was likewise proclaimed for the victims of Fructidor. Gaudin, who had been an experienced financier under the Bourbons, and had shown his mettle as provisional minister, was put permanently in charge of the treasury. The moderate and able Cambacérès became minister of justice, and Forfait undertook the navy. Carnot, whose castigation of the Directory in his widely read defense had done so much to undermine their prestige and hasten their fall, was recalled and made minister of war. Talleyrand was forgiven for his base desertion on the eve of the Egyptian expedition. As will be recalled, it had been arranged that as the fleet left Toulon for Alexandria he was to start for Constantinople in order to hoodwink the Sultan and prevent the very resistance which afterward proved so disastrous. But at the last moment he refused. In consequence of his scandalous attempt to extort a bribe from the American envoys he was forced to resign his office soon afterward, and he then sought retirement to await results. There never was greed more dishonest than his, a life more licentious, nor a deceit more subtle; but at the same time he was the most adroit diplomat of an age devoted to diplomacy as a political power, and more familiar with the intrigues of courts and the aspirations of European dynasties than were any of his contemporaries, unless possibly Metternich, who did not become prominent until later. He was therefore indispensable, and was reappointed minister of foreign affairs. The great Laplace had been provisionally appointed minister of the interior; but so marked was his unfitness for the post that he soon was transferred to the senate and made way for Lucien Bonaparte.

But all this was little compared with the contemplated reconciliation with the Church for which the way was now carefully prepared. Pius VI had died a prisoner on French soil, and had been buried without honor. Befitting memorial ceremonies having been performed, the priesthood were released from the ban which the Jacobins had laid upon them. No oath in support of the new charter was required from the many priests who could not accept the civil constitution of the clergy, enacted in 1790; they could minister to their adherents without fear of persecution; they at once returned from exile or emerged from their hiding-places in large numbers. In the rôle of philosopher the First Consul professed to see the necessity of the Church as the main prop of a strong social organism and good government. As a far-seeing schemer he clearly felt that military power was a stanch support, but that in the end a firm moral foundation would likewise be needed in the hearts of hundreds of thousands in Europe, who would bless the man that should restore to them the institution which was the visible sign of their hopes for eternity. This desirable affection and approbation Bonaparte meant from the outset to secure. Had the scoffer, the worshiper of science, the would-be Mohammedan prophet, himself experienced a change of heart? Perhaps. Responsibility often breaks down indifference.

This policy of tolerance was well understood to be an interim measure, to be succeeded by a permanent settlement satisfactory to all the faithful. Furthermore, the ban having been removed from the exiled royalists as well, a number of emigrants had likewise returned: these and their clergy soon conceived the idea that Bonaparte was preparing a restoration of the monarchy, and would consider propositions for reëstablishing the close alliance of church and state, the identity almost, which had been the one outstanding feature of French absolutism. For this reason the insurrectionary West made overtures to the First Consul, and emissaries were passed through the lines, admitted to an audience, and permitted to state their case. Bonaparte gave heed and attention. Andigné proved exacting and impossible, Hyde was smooth and uncertain; it was only later that in Bernier, a simple village priest, he found a man to his liking, shrewd and scheming, but reasonable and efficient. He soon became an important agent in resolving the knotty problem of restoring the West to French nationality. Hitherto the rebels of lower Normandy and Brittany had followed either the resident nobility, of whom Andigné and Frotté were types, or peasant reactionaries like Georges Cadoudal, bold, desperate, irreconcilable men who demanded either war or their king. Bonaparte determined to ignore alike the high and the low, the desperate men with everything to gain and little to lose; he therefore appealed to the middle sort of gentle and simple through the intermediation of Hédouville for the government and Bernier for the people. The latter, accompanied by Count Bourmont, finally came to Paris, and both were won, Bourmont to the undoing of Napoleon, as it turned out. A method of pacification was arranged and soon put into successful operation, largely through the superlative adroitness of Bernier. Frotté was captured and executed, Cadoudal fled to England. The royalist agitation of the West was ended for a time: the efforts of the party in Provence, though carefully studied and widely exerted, proved ineffectual, and the internal reforms of administration were there, as throughout all France, efficiently put in operation. The policy of tolerance and moderation won over thousands upon thousands, and reduced the sullen minority to inactivity.

The upheaval of Brumaire is unique in French history. When consummated, there appeared among the people no remnant of fear or distrust. The radical side of the Revolution had ceased to exist. Its ideals of civil liberty were embodied in Bonaparte, the national spirit was invigorated, and hopes ran high. Such was the testimony of all the most disinterested observers. Brinkmann, a Swede of great ability, wrote on November eighteenth that no legitimate monarch had ever found on his accession a people more submissive than Bonaparte had found. "It is literally true," runs his letter: "France will perform the impossible to help him. Excepting the despicable horde of anarchists, the people are so weary, so disgusted with revolutionary horrors and follies, that they are sure any change will be for the better. Every class in society makes fun of the heroism of the demagogues, and from all sides comes a call for their expulsion rather than for the realization of their ideal visions. Even the royalists of every shade are honestly devoted to Bonaparte; for they attribute to him the intention of gradually restoring the old order. The indifferent are attached to him as being the man best fitted to give peace to France; and enlightened republicans, though trembling for their institutions, prefer to see a single man of talent, rather than a club of intriguers, seize and hold the public power."

None of Bonaparte's measures was more masterly than the financial policy whereby he won the devotion of the capitalists. If the country had been exhausted by the old régime, what had the recklessness of the Jacobins done for it? Bankruptcy, disorder, and utter distrust—chaos, in short—held sway in all departments of finance. The new order restored public confidence to such an extent that the revival of credit seemed miraculous. After the events of Brumaire the five per cents., which had fallen to one and a half per cent. of their par value, immediately rose to twelve per cent.; and on the final, satisfactory fulfilment of what the day appeared to foreshadow, they advanced to seventeen. The disgraceful laws for enforcing compulsory loans which had been passed under the Directory disappeared, with their companion the Hostage Law. Instantaneously order was brought into the system of direct taxation, and regularity into the collection of the taxes. The mysterious anti-Jacobin measures, promulgated as a warning, and then modified so as to paralyze and drive away the worthless spendthrifts of the Directory, while sobering and retaining for public use the able and sensible men like Jourdan, worked as a charm; they were a notification that the irregularities of all visionaries whatsoever were ended, and that waste of capacity as well as of money was to be succeeded by wholesome economy. For measures of temporary relief the new constitution permanently substituted a financial system of far-sighted regulations which completely revived general confidence, and with it the public credit, thereby restoring the producing capacity of the country. The Bank of France, organized in January, 1800, fixed a norm for the rates of discount, gave a sound currency to the country, and was the visible sign of a new era.

CHAPTER XIII

Bonaparte Embodies the Revolution [14]

End of the Revolution — The Alternatives — French Glory — Bonaparte as an Idealist — Reconstruction of the Army — Russia and the Great Powers — Slackness of the Coalition — The Policy of England — Debates in Parliament — Canning's Influence — Austrian Schemes — French Opinion and the Press — Consolidation of French Power — Bonaparte in the Tuileries — The Washington Festival.

No one understood better than Bonaparte the connection in a state between external and internal affairs. The second coalition, so far as Russia, Austria, England, and Turkey were concerned, was very loosely cemented indeed. They were united in their determination to subdue revolutionary France, but they had not an interest in common beyond that. Such was their jealousy as regarded the control of the Mediterranean that a strong government at Paris might hope to create discord among them. When, therefore, on December fifteenth, 1799, the provisional consulate came to an end, and the new constitution, known in French history as that of the twenty-second of Frimaire, year VIII, came into operation, the government entered upon life, as was most essential for French interests, not as an empty scheme, but as a full-fledged organism, with every office filled, the machinery actually in motion, and the administration ready for intercourse with the other governments of Europe. The words of Bonaparte's proclamation were: "Citizens, the Revolution is planted on the principles from which it proceeded. It is ended." As regarded the internal life of France, no truer words could have been written. There had never been true liberty nor true brotherhood under its banners; the leveling had been more successful, and equality in the matter of civil rights might be considered as won. What was left of those principles, as the event proved, was embodied for France herself in the First Consul and in his beneficent measures. To Europe at large this embodiment of the Revolution in the new sovereign was soon made equally evident. France had adopted him. Would the surviving dynasties admit him, as the representative of French nationality, to a seat on their Olympus? Nothing but an imperative necessity would compel them to do so, and then only for the moment.

1799—1800

Two courses were therefore open to the new power: first, to extort an acquiescence, however distasteful, by consolidating France as the nation and the homogeneous people which the Revolution had made it, by increasing her prosperity, by fostering her genius, by showing an example to the world of what the people of a peaceful, enlightened, industrious state could be in contrast to the case-hardened, unreceptive, and sullen populations who still remained passive under dynastic rule; or, second, to restore the expansive anti-national character of the Revolution, and, using the magnificent military system created in that epoch as a destroying power, to menace the dynasties in their very existence, and thus make them first respectful neutrals and then subservient tools both in their own reconstruction and in the liberation of their subjects. These seemed, in this emergency, the two alternatives at the First Consul's command. Choosing neither permanently, but one or the other at will, as each rising question made it expedient, the result was an interference which brought first this and then that policy into prominence, made both partly successful, but neither entirely so, and ended in the ruin of the schemer.

The responsibility was not his own: he so behaved under the compulsion of the national spirit. The revolutionary tyrannies, one after the other, had adopted the foreign policies of Richelieu and Louis XIV. Nothing could be more definite, nothing more ingrained as the fiber of French existence. France itself must have the boundaries of ancient Gaul, and the Mediterranean must be a French lake. To this end the dynasties must be indemnified: Spain might have Portugal, Prussia the hegemony of North Germany, Austria might expand in Bavaria and Italy. For a bulwark of defence the land frontier must be girt with little buffer states, semi-autonomous but dependent: Batavia, Helvetia, Cisalpina. The still more important sea frontier must be fortified by the exclusion of Great Britain absolutely from the Continent; Italy was to be rearranged, with Piedmont and Tuscany occupied and subdued, the States of the Church distributed among the secular powers of which Roman and Neapolitan republics were to be the chief. It was a stupendous task, but ideals have no physical limits. Glory is the circumambient ether of the French spirit. Repose, order, material prosperity, domestic life, religion—these must be the preëstablished basis of existence, but life is triumph, splendor, power. It was not, therefore, as inheritor and incarnation of the Revolution, but as the embodiment of France and her immemorial policies, that Bonaparte became a student of foreign affairs. With the prospect of peace must be envisaged the prospect of war: war for the frontiers, the heritage of the Gauls; for propagating French thought and influence; for the invasion of irreconcilable lands. The voluminous and careful studies of foreign affairs which he caused to be made by able councilors still exist to show his painstaking zeal in the perpetuation of time-honored and sacred policies, which no man aspiring to capture the heart of the French dared neglect or permit to lapse into oblivion.

Taking advantage of the temporary abdication of all power, and of the momentary renunciation of all activities, even of interest, by the people, the unconscious idealist began his work. Never was a man more practical in his own eyes, or, from his own point of view, more concrete and direct in his motives or conduct. Seizing every opportunity as it arose, he was the type of what is to-day called in France an opportunist. But for all that, not the least element of his supernal greatness was an ever-present idealism. In view of his birth and early training, it is easy to see that if, as Mme. de Staël first suggested, nature had brought that quality down in his line from some far-off Italian of the early Renascence, it would develop under Rousseau's and Raynal's influence. Whencesoever it came, it is not least among the causes of the later political renascence which saw the creation of a new and modern society, the completion of a process which began with the English revolution. It is this quality alone which makes Napoleon an element of the first importance in universal history. Other traits make him so in the epoch now called by his name.

His first thought was for the army. It is probable that Moreau's participation in the latest political stroke—a fact to which, in the initial stages, it owed its success—was due to personal ambition; he probably thought that when Bonaparte had once become a civilian, his only military rival would be disposed of. Accordingly, when the plan for the coming campaign was published, it was found that Moreau was to command a great central European force composed of the recruited armies of the Rhine and of Helvetia, to be called by the name of the former. Masséna, whose brilliant victories in Switzerland had moderated the gloom occasioned by the disasters of the previous year in Italy, was to have supreme command of the forces which were still to be called the Army of Italy—the name made so glorious at Lodi, at Arcola, at Castiglione, and at Rivoli. It seemed, indeed, as if the First Consul had himself renounced all ambition as a soldier in order to become entirely a statesman. The imperious and jealous but prudent Moreau was to have full scope for his powers, the brilliant Masséna was to wear his old commander's laurels. But there was a reserve army, not talked of nor paraded, which was quietly, silently, and unostentatiously formed, under Berthier's master-hand, from new conscripts skilfully intermingled with selected veterans. The divisions were gathered in different places, apparently with no unity, and thus were drilled, trained, and organized without observation. While most of it was kept within the French borders, ready for instant mobilization, and with headquarters ostensibly at Dijon, a part was sent under the nominal command of the devoted adjutant to Geneva in order to maintain the French honor in Switzerland.

The French people, however, desired not war, but peace. The list of competent and admirable administrators chosen by the government was sufficient proof that public affairs were to be carefully transacted. The reconstruction of the army gave evidence that peace was to be made with honor. The next step was so to behave that France should think her new chief magistrate eager for a general pacification. Since Bonaparte's return from Egypt there had been a combination of circumstances which pointed to an easy solution of this problem. The Czar of Russia was much exasperated with George III because the Russian soldiers included in the capitulation of Alkmaar were coolly received when transported to England, and then virtually imprisoned in the island of Guernsey. When, soon afterward, the English laid siege to Malta, of which he yearned to be grand master, he was ready to accuse Great Britain of treachery. But he was still more incensed with Austria. As has been told, a portion of his army, under Korsakoff, was overwhelmed by Masséna at Zurich on September twenty-fifth, 1799. Suvoroff, with the other wing, was at the time in full possession of Piedmont; and in accordance with his master's instructions he had invited the fugitive Charles Emmanuel IV to return from Sardinia and reinstate himself at Turin.

The Austrian archduke Charles had withdrawn, after his defeat of Masséna by the first battle of Zurich in June, 1799, to take command in central Germany. Francis, being fully determined to keep all northern Italy for himself, and therefore to prevent the reëstablishment of the house of Savoy on the mainland, speciously ordered Suvoroff to the assistance of his fellow-countrymen north of the Alps. The Russian general found nothing prepared for his passage of the St. Gotthard; on the contrary, he was so hindered at every turn by the absence of mules for his baggage-train, and so harassed by the attacks of the French, that his expedition was one long disaster. He attributed his misfortunes to Austrian indifference or worse. Driven from valley to valley, over icy peaks and barren passes, his troops perished in great numbers, and their panic was complete when they heard of Korsakoff's terrible defeat. Before a junction could be effected with the remnants of that army, Masséna turned and attacked Suvoroff himself, compelling him to flee eastward as best he could until he reached the confines of Bavaria. This put a climax to the Czar's fury; he demanded that the Italian princes should be restored to their governments, and that Thugut should be dismissed, as a guarantee of good faith. Finally he heard that when Ancona fell before the combined attacks of Austrians, Russians, and Turks, his own standard had been taken down, and only the Austrian left flying. To a gloomy enthusiast, claiming to be the mirror of chivalry and magnanimity, this was a crowning insult; and he determined, in December, 1799, to withdraw from the coalition. This was Bonaparte's opportunity, and he began at once a series of the most flattering attentions to Paul, which made the Czar for the rest of his short life a passionate admirer of the schemes and person of the First Consul. England and Austria were thus the only formidable opponents left in the coalition against France.

With ostentatious simplicity, Bonaparte wrote both to George III and to Francis II, as man to man, announcing his accession to power, and pleading, in the interest of commerce, of national well-being, and of domestic happiness, for a cessation of hostilities after eight years of warfare. The French people, who looked upon the First Consul as a ruler made by themselves, were delighted with this simple straightforwardness, and gratified by the notion of their representative treating on equal terms with the divine-right monarchs of Europe. Pitt mistakenly thought that Bonaparte still personified Jacobinism, and labored under the delusion that France was completely exhausted. An English army was ready and about to disembark on the west coast of France. Kléber in Egypt, having maintained himself superbly thus far, was about to yield to pitiless fate, and accept humiliating terms for evacuating the country. Could the flames of the civil war which was once more raging in France be further fanned, and the control of the Levant secured in English hands, the great English premier would be able in a few months to make terms far more advantageous than any he could hope for at the moment. Lord Grenville therefore wrote a brusque letter to Talleyrand, refusing negotiation with a government the stability of which was not assured, and suggesting in a weak, impolitic way that while the French had a right to choose their own government, the return of the Bourbons would be the best guarantee of a permanent and settled administration. This clause afforded the opportunity for a smart reply by Bonaparte, denouncing England as the author of the war which had raged through 1799 and was about to be renewed, and reminding the King that he himself ruled by consent of his people.

The debate which ensued in Parliament was most instructive, because the First Consul was entirely right. Great Britain was the mainspring of the coalition. The wits of London said in public that England had contracted half of her national debt to destroy the Bourbons and the other half to restore them to power. This was the key-note of the Liberal opposition. Lord Holland was willing to be sponsor for Bonaparte's sincerity, but the Lords laughed at him. In the Commons Whitbread charged the excesses of the French Revolution to the unwarrantable interference of other powers; England owed it to herself to make peace when she could, even with a usurper. Erskine could see in England's course nothing but a blind obstinacy which had overwhelmed the nation with debt and disaster. "What would you say," said Tierney, "if Bonaparte victorious should refuse to treat except with the Stuarts?" But the temper of Parliament and the people was for continuing the war. Grenville, in the upper house, declared that Bonaparte was merely a new exponent of the revolutionary wickedness of the Directory. He had made treaties or armistices with Sardinia, Tuscany, Modena, and the minor Italian states, only to violate them; he had scorned the neutrality of Parma; he had dragged Venice into war for her own destruction; he had trampled Genoa underfoot; and he had destroyed the liberty of Switzerland while uttering false promises of peace and friendship. His hearers sustained him by an overwhelming majority.

In the lower house Canning denounced the First Consul as a usurper who, like a specter, wore on his head something which resembled a crown. Pitt rose to the height of his majestic powers in one of the great orations of his life. Minor political considerations must be waived. Bonaparte was the destroyer of Europe. The sole refuge from the calamities with which he was about to flood the nations was England. He himself had unwillingly consented to the negotiations at Lille; it was Fructidor which had broken them off, and it was Bonaparte who was the author of Fructidor. He might be reproached for desiring the restoration of the ancient monarchy to France, but an exhausted and desperate country could not find the long repose essential for recuperation except under the Bourbons. The success of his plea was even greater than Grenville's. Thus by an appeal to the old detestation of revolutionary excess which was so deep-seated in the English masses, and by an adroit insinuation that it was this for which Bonaparte stood,—a fact which seemed to be shown by his career,—the ministry gained a new lease of life, and men believed that a few months would see France fall in utter exhaustion before the coalition.

Bonaparte's personal letter to the Emperor was, as the writer doubtless foresaw it would be, equally unsuccessful. Austria, thanks to her double-dealings with Russia in the last campaign, was now occupying Lombardy, Piedmont, and the Papal States; she meant to keep them, and moderately but firmly refused to treat on the basis proposed, which was that of Campo Formio.

Among other unfortunate surrenders which France under the Directory had made for the sake of quiet and security was that of freedom for the press. A consular decree of January seventeenth, 1800, further emphasized this undemocratic policy, and suppressed all but thirteen political journals. This was nominally a measure to be enforced only during the war. For its justification there was the plea of necessity. The serious indiscretions which a free and enterprising press always has committed, and is sure to commit, during hostilities, uniformly call out the angry denunciations of military writers. The "spurred and booted ruler" of whom Napoleon spoke at St. Helena could not well be expected to act otherwise than he did. Unfortunately, the only papers which continued to be published became at once mere administrative organs. When, therefore, with a skilful display of facts the course of negotiations in both England and Austria was laid before the public, the people of Paris and the provinces were easily roused to warlike ardor. The clever and witty pasquinades, the abusive and scathing paragraphs, in which all the papers indulged, from the "Moniteur" downward, increased the excitement. It pleased the French fancy to read a supposed summons to George, inviting him, as a convert to legitimacy, to abdicate in favor of the surviving Stuart heir. Forgetful of the immediate past, the nation was ready to maintain French honor at any cost against its embittered and inveterate foe. The Pactolus streams of English gold could not, the French felt sure, much longer subsidize the Continental powers; for it was Great Britain, and not France, which was really exhausted.

Led by a man whose genius was believed to be as fertile in political, administrative, and fiscal expedients as it had always been in military measures, with an admirable machinery of government and a general confidence in their ruler, the French people became ever more certain that they might now and finally conquer in the struggle with England for mastery. This opinion was further strengthened because the inveterate rancor of civil conflict in the west was again quieted, temporarily at least, perhaps permanently. The devastator of Egypt and Syria still held out with one hand the mildest offers of conciliation to the malcontent communities of that district, with the other he displayed his powerful sword, while in his proclamations he threatened measures as severe as those he had practised against the rebellious Bedouin. This course had the desired effect, and, having brought the French rebels to terms, seemed likely to soothe them into habits of submission. The Army of the West could therefore be reduced in numbers; and as at the same time the Batavian Republic was in a fervor of enthusiastic loyalty, so also could the Army of Holland. In this way more than thirty thousand excellent soldiers were freed for use elsewhere.

Simultaneously with these events the most careful preparation was made for a step which might redound to Bonaparte's credit if properly taken, but could easily be detrimental to the complete success of his schemes. Under the new constitution every department of government had an assigned dwelling-place. That of the consuls was to be the Tuileries. How could an absolute dictator install his penates in the sometime home of absolute royalty without inspiring general distrust? The first step was to rechristen the pile as "the palace of the government," the next to consecrate it to glory. From far and near the statues of the great were gathered to adorn its halls. The choice of these displayed in significant confusion the generals and statesmen of all times in all places. Alexander, Cæsar, Frederick; Cato, Cicero, Brutus; Mirabeau, Marceau, and Joubert; and many others of lesser note, were assembled in effigy. But highest of all was set the image of Washington, the news of whose death had just reached Europe. His example was to be held up as the real inspiration of the new ruler. In order both to arouse the imagination of the people and to convince their understanding, the army was put into mourning for the great American, and a festival was instituted in his honor. To exalt the man who was universally considered as the typical and ideal republican of the age was a conspicuously effective idea, since it accorded thoroughly with the approved traditions of the Revolution.

The celebration was set for February ninth, 1800, and proved a great success. It had already been decided to reawaken public enthusiasm by instituting great military ceremonies when the captured standards from Aboukir were finally deposited in the Hospital of the Invalides. These and the Washington festival were interwoven with consummate art: while the First Consul's victories were recalled in the imposing parade, the simple and impressive words of an able orator, M. de Fontanes, reminded the nation that the immortal Washington had shown as a general more strength than brilliancy, and had awakened little enthusiasm but great confidence; that he was one of the men inspired to rule who appear from time to time in the world; that he was neither partizan nor demagogue; and that when peace had once been signed he had laid down his arms to become the wisest of constructive legislators. "Yes, Washington! thy counsels shall be heard—thou warrior, legislator, administrator! He who in his youth surpassed thee in battle, like thee shall close with conquering hands the wounds of his country." Minds less quick than those of the Parisians would have discovered the moral of the address even without the peroration. When the official journal next day published the glowing words and described the brilliant ceremony, the coming monarch was already lodged under the roof of the Bourbons. Since Bonaparte had made the liberation of Lafayette an indispensable condition of the treaty ratified at Campo Formio, it might have been expected that this name, so long used elsewhere in a natural juxtaposition, would on such an occasion have been mentioned in connection with that of Washington; but the honors of that day were to be shared with the dead foreigner, not with the living Frenchman.

CHAPTER XIV [15]

A Constitutional Despotism

Policy of the First Consul — His Family — The New Officials — The Council of State — Bonaparte's Ubiquity — Foreign Affairs — France and Russia — The Mistake of Prussia — Peace Impossible — Bonaparte's Plans — His Aims — The Temper of Great Britain — Bonaparte's Appeal to the Army — The Military Situation.

1800

The makers of a paper constitution cannot foresee every detail in the working of its provisions; and contrary to the expectation at least of Sieyès, the form which the new government took at the outset was largely personal. The Consulate and the ministry were entirely so, their members being chosen with a keen business instinct, like that of a great industrial or commercial master, for personal character, integrity, capacity, and devotion. "What revolutionary," said Napoleon to his brother Joseph, "would not have confidence in an order of things where Fouché is minister? What gentleman would not expect to find existence possible under the former Bishop of Autun? One keeps my left, the other my right. I open a broad path where all may walk." This was so far true, but such nice discrimination could not be exercised in filling the hundreds of minor offices. France is second to no land in the ambition of its people for office-holding, and among the thousands of greedy claimants it was not easy to choose. There were many mistakes made in selecting the petty officials, and the disappointed formed a large class of embittered malcontents from the very inauguration of the consular system. There were the senate, the legislature, the council of state, the tribunate, the whole judicial administration, all to be filled. It was understood that the official emoluments would not be niggardly. When finally fixed, the salary of a senator was twenty-five thousand francs; that of a tribune, fifteen thousand; that of a legislator, ten thousand. As a measure of relative importance it is interesting to note that the First Consul had five hundred thousand a year, and each of his colleagues one hundred and fifty thousand.

So swiftly and thoroughly did Paris and France absorb the concept of monarchy in the Consulate, that the powers and fortunes of the First Consul were scarcely considered in relation to those of the other two, who, far from parity, were barely coadjutant. What the nation felt and accepted, but scarcely whispered, the Bonaparte family discussed with shameless greediness. How far soever Napoleon removed himself in other respects from the primitive institutions of Corsican barbarism, in one he never so far had varied: the sense of clanship. His brothers and sisters were men and women of parts, but they were undisciplined in language and behavior: their natural appetites were never concealed, nor their tongues bridled. Napoleon acknowledged the fraternal bond in the tribal sense; for every one of them he desired to provide handsomely in money and honor, and he expected the return of affection and loyalty. Behind his back they discussed his death and the succession, formed cabals of supporters, wrangled for influence and power. Of this their brother was not unaware, and the danger of their irregular conduct was ever present to him. But he could not bring himself to check them. At this moment when their activities were most pernicious, he intended Lucien to be the master politician, Joseph the master negotiator, Louis a general, and Jerome an admiral. Their intercourse with official France might make or mar the fortunes not only of their brother but also of themselves.

The new officials were selected from every walk of life, from every shade of opinion, from every stratum of society. The intention was that they should have no bond but a common interest in the new order. The senate became a high place for the successful among the old, the men whose day was over. Monge, Berthollet, Volney, and the like were found on its benches. The silent legislature was filled with the majority of those whose ardent and uninstructed ambitions were easily muzzled by the tenure of place, and found a sufficient vent in casting a voiceless vote. The tribunes, "legislative eunuchs," as they have been called, were men such as Daunou, Benjamin Constant, and J. B. Say—the elect among the able and intelligent of the day. Their duty was to debate the nature and utility of all bills with the proposers, the council of state; and it was expected that the fiery logic and merciless criticism which they were sure to employ would rebound harmlessly from the benches on which their opponents sat. If freedom of debate and liberty of speech became too dangerous even in such remoteness from action, the superfluous institution could be suppressed without a jar in the machinery of state. There was possibly a hint of this in the fact that the tribunes found shelter in the Palais Royal, then the haunt of prostitutes and the refuge of the great gambling-hells which were so numerous. To the end of its days the tribunate was the one asylum of liberty under the constitution of the year VIII. It was supposed, as has just been said, that the impotence of the tribunes would be offset by the independence of the council of state.

In this last body, therefore, were assembled three important classes: sincere Bonapartists like Roederer, Regnault de St.-Jean-d'Angély, and Boulay de la Meurthe; clever specialists like Ganteaume, Chaptal, and Fourcroy, who were quite willing to serve the First Consul; and a number of proselytes from among the royalists and other factions. For the most part these were men of great ability, and for a time they found in the First Consul a disinterestedness in serving France which made them his devoted servants. The personality of the council was Bonaparte's, and whatever independence it possessed was his. The court of appeals was duly organized by the senate, which had this right as being the guardian of the constitution. The justices and councilors of a supreme court, the copestone of the judiciary, were nominated by the same body. The other courts were also ably manned with officials who, though not servile, were stanch supporters of the new government.

Before the time when the campaign could open in the spring of 1800, all these parts were intended to be, and actually were, running smoothly; but they were running by the inspiration and activity of a single man. The council of state was his greater self, the senate his instrument of governing; the legislative body was as silent as the tribunate was noisy—neither was a serious check on his plans. Legislation of the greatest importance was under way; it was all devised for purposes of centralization, and was studied in detail by the First Consul. Administration was proceeding with scarcely any friction whatsoever; but this was because Bonaparte kept his eye on each separate office, and carefully superintended its working. By special arrangement foreign relations were considered and settled in secret consultation by the chief of state and Talleyrand; but the latter dared not pretend that in unraveling the threads of so tangled a web, or in their skilful rearrangement, the initiative was his. Carnot, at his old work, with his old genius unimpaired, needed little encouragement; but even in his department every corps, every battalion, every regiment, every company of all the arms,—cavalry, infantry, and artillery of every class, conscript, soldier, reserve, and home guard,—each and all were known to the First Consul. Incredible and exaggerated as such statements must appear, the testimony to their truth is so abundant and unimpeachable that it seems to the reader as if at this crisis there had appeared in Europe a being neither human, demoniac, nor celestial, but a man with superhuman powers of endurance, apprehension, and labor, an angel without perfection, a demon without malevolence. For, on the whole, Bonaparte's work, while replete with dangerous expedients, and, as the future conclusively proved, inspired by self-seeking, was beneficent, constructive, and permanent in regard not merely to France, but to Europe and the world.

In the opening months of 1800 the Continental situation was even more peculiar than usual. In 1799 the Directory had, as a financial measure, incorporated Belgium with France, and her provinces, like all other parts of the country, paid heavy taxes. This could not be changed; and in regard to the minor states still nominally independent, but really under French control, the old policy of the Directory could likewise not immediately be dropped. Masséna had just made a forced levy in Switzerland. Genoa was laid under a fresh contribution of two million francs, and menaced with a forced levy. It was arranged that Holland should pay forty million francs for the restitution of Flushing; and Amsterdam was invited to lend ten more, but refused. Hamburg was secretly held out to Prussia as the price of an alliance with France. Publicly the Hohenzollern monarchy was praised for its refusal to surrender some important political refugees to the coalition, and was offered the friendship of France at the price of four to six millions of francs. It was determined that Portugal, which, having been exhausted by a long alliance with England, now earnestly desired peace, should be told informally by Talleyrand that it could be purchased by a contribution of from eight to ten millions for the Army of Italy. Paul I of Russia, already angry with Austria, was confirmed in his friendship for France by many acts of courtesy. The Russian prisoners of war received new clothes, and were released; the First Consul, recognizing the Czar's quixotic interest in the Knights of Malta, sent to him the sword of Valetta, captured on the seizure of the island. A treaty of peace between France and Russia speedily ensued.

This of course effectually checked Turkey, and soon afterward competent experts were appointed by Paul to consider the details of a combined Franco-Russian expedition for the invasion of India by land, and to parcel out Asia between the two powers. The scheme originated with an agent of the Directory, named Guttin, who after a sojourn in Russia had boldly suggested that as Russia could never be even touched by modern ideas, and as the international propaganda of cosmopolitan republicanism must needs stop at her frontiers, there was but one course open: to seek her alliance. Bonaparte carefully studied the long and persuasive report, began his preparations to realize the policy in the far future, was mindful of it at Tilsit, and, thwarted in his hope of keeping Russia an eastern power, found his first serious check in the campaign fought to coerce her. The expedition planned by him and Paul, as a side thrust at Great Britain, embraced both India and Persia in its details. Should it succeed, even the island kingdom might one day find itself a tamed and trained unit in the federation of western and central Europe under the ægis of a new western emperor, dividing the world with him who claimed to be the eastern; the heir and successor of those Romans who had reigned from Byzantium.

The center of gravity on the Continent remained in Prussia. As the land of Frederick, and the rival of Austria, she supposed herself to represent the liberal side of German life. In fact, there was a strong French party at Berlin, which felt that the republic had been fighting Prussia's battle in weakening the house of Austria. But Frederick William III, the young King, was timid, cautious, and full of self-esteem. He was overmastered by the specious idea, also cherished by his prime minister, that a firm neutrality would recuperate the strength of his country and people while internecine warfare was exhausting the rest of Europe. On this ground he had so far stood unshaken; and though the sympathies of his house had always been, in the main, on the side of absolutism, he refused the alliance of the absolutist coalition, and remained obstinate between the two alternatives. Nor did he falter until he destroyed his own prestige. The country itself would have been sacrificed but for the national uprising which some years later compelled him to take a decided stand. The Directory had longed to secure Prussia as part of the French system in Europe, and finally sent Sieyès to engage her as an ally. But the envoy spent more energy in intriguing against his employers, and in devising schemes for the monarchical system which was to supplant them in France, than in his proper work, and succeeded only in confirming the King of Prussia in his policy. Bonaparte sent two representatives, Duroc and Beurnonville, to renew the negotiation and obtain Prussia's active assistance. They were received with much show of kindness, and the hopes of the latter envoy rose high, but only to be shattered. Privately the King notified Sandoz, his minister in Paris, that if France were defeated in the inevitable impending conflict, Prussia would reclaim her territories on the left bank of the Rhine, and declare war to secure them. The treaties in which she had renounced them were waste paper in this case; but until the event were decided she would stir neither hand nor foot.

With Prussia persistently neutral, and all the minor states exasperated not only by the continued billeting of French troops upon them, but by new demands for money, France was virtually left alone against Austria and England in the coming campaign. This situation was perfectly clear to the French people; but in view of all that had happened since the change of government, it appeared to every one not only as if reasonable offers of peace on the part of the First Consul had been refused, but as if French honor were inseparably united with the policy of war forced upon him. Though not proved, it is reiterated that this was what Bonaparte wanted. Subsequent events support the hypothesis; and if it be true, no schemer ever met with such perfect success. A career of aggressive extension was apparently forced upon him.

Three great revolutionary concepts of foreign policy were therefore the outcome of Bonaparte's studies in the exhibition of Austrian and British policy, of French temperament and personal ambition: the mastery of the Mediterranean basin and thereby of the Orient; the extension of a revolutionary liberal system in Europe by the conquest and protectorate of the Continent; and the leadership of the world for the French nation, still as ever enthusiastic for lofty ideals and great deeds. Similar notions had not been foreign to the ancient régime, but England had prevented their fulfilment. The republic, having vaguely enlarged them, had fought for them as France had never fought before, because these things were not to be achieved for a dynasty, and were now illuminated by visions of human regeneration. Still England stood in the way. Bonaparte had given them new shape and new intensity with new definition; logically his success would stand for that most splendid of ideals which has ever dazzled poets, theologians, and kings—the universality of empire for peace and its arts, and the consequent elevation of all mankind. By the conquests of Alexander, Cæsar, and Charles the Great, animated as was each in turn by ambition and fiery zeal, nations, tribes, and institutions had been melted in one crucible. Each of those heroes had done a wondrous work in the advance of civilization, but their gains had been indirect. The experiment was to be tried for a fourth time. Would England again and finally dash the French Utopia into ruins?

For the moment Great Britain might be well content. India was safer for the overthrow of Tippoo, Ceylon was conquered, Egypt blockaded, and supremacy regained in the West Indies as well. Malta was in her hands, the Dutch fleet had been destroyed, the French and Spanish fleets were imprisoned at Brest. It is true the liberal agitations inaugurated and kept alive by the discontent of her middle and lower classes were hard to repress; but they were mercilessly crushed as they came to the surface, and on the whole, public opinion supported the policy. That Grenville was subsidizing Georges Cadoudal with half a million francs to reorganize the Chouannerie of western France, and strike the "essential blow," was barely suspected. The proof has only come to light a century later. Assassination is an ugly word: it was not used, but it was contemplated. If this were the temper of Great Britain, that of Austria, her ally, was even more irreconcilable. Expansion in Italy was the focal concept of her policy. There was no expense of money and men she would refuse to consider for erasing the blot of Campo Formio. She had recruited her treasury and her army by British aid, and was defiant. The letter to her Emperor from the First Consul, as of equal to equal, was a crowning insult.

The first four months of the Consulate had not left the First Consul without enemies at home both numerous and bitter; moreover, many narrow minds—men who, like Talleyrand, were ignorant of how impossible the permanent return of the Bourbons had become—considered Bonaparte's tenure of power only as a transition to the old order. But at the critical instant, in April of the last year of the eighteenth century, France as a whole, including even the factions which had hoped to use him as a tool, felt that her doctrines, her aspirations, and her fate were personified in the great Corsican. His own motives may properly be stigmatized as those of personal ambition; but they were much more. Half educated and half barbarous as he was in his disdain of human limitations, there was in his heart a clear conception that good can come only of good, and therefore he had a definite purpose to do the most possible in order to illuminate his own rise by the regeneration of society. Himself a man without a country,—for all his patriotic aspirations perished in Corsica's desperate failure,—he cared little for territorial limits, and utterly failed to comprehend the strength of national ties. Without sincere ecclesiastical feeling or an earnest faith, he partly understood the value of religious sentiment in the individual, but underrated utterly its moral preponderance in the social organism. The church to him was little more than a "white" police force. A consummate actor, he estimated at its full the influence of the dramatic word and situation on the common mind, but was often self-deceived while believing others misled or beguiled by his acting.

It is not at all inconsistent with a possible sincerity in the ostensibly pacific foreign policy he was pursuing that, even before the decision to fight had apparently been forced upon him, two manifestoes rang out to the troops. To the Army of the Rhine he said: "You have conquered Holland, the Rhine, and Italy, and have dictated peace under the walls of terrified Vienna. Now it is not a question of defending your borders, but of overpowering hostile states." To the Army of Italy in particular he said, with reference to a too notorious instance in which during the previous year a half-brigade had shown the white feather: "Are they all dead, the brave men of Castiglione, of Rivoli, and of Neumarkt? They would rather have perished than have been untrue to their colors; and they surely would have dragged their younger comrades on to honor and to duty. Soldiers, you say your rations are not regularly distributed. What would you have done if, like Four and Twenty-two of the light infantry, like Eighteen and Thirty-two of the line, you had found yourselves in the midst of the desert, without bread, without water, with nothing to eat but the flesh of horses and mules? 'Victory will give us bread,' said they; and you—you desert your standards!" Such words, from such a man, could leave no soldier of any nation unmoved. The Frenchmen in the ranks were thrilled by them; the general who wrote them understood that peace without glory was a broken reed for an aspiring ruler. He had proffered the olive-branch, but he must, in order completely to win his people, chastise those who had spurned it. Austria, in particular, must get another lesson in humility.

On the eve of active operations in the first months of 1800 the military situation was as follows: The Italian line stretched from Genoa around by Savona to the Col di Tenda. On it were thirty thousand men, under Masséna, while ten thousand more guarded the passes of the Alps. Confronting it was an Austrian force of eighty thousand men, under Melas, a general of the old formal school, hampered by tradition and by the machinery of the Aulic Council in Vienna. In Tuscany, in the Papal States, and in Piedmont were twenty thousand Austrian soldiers in garrison. On the Rhine stood Moreau, with a hundred and twenty thousand men, facing a less able antagonist than Melas in the person of Kray, whose army was about equal in number to his own. The Austrian lines stretched from the falls of the Rhine northward by their headquarters at Donaueschingen to Kinzig. The greatest of the Austrian generals, the Archduke Charles, was not in the field. A sensitive epileptic, he had been wounded by the incessant and meddling interference of the Vienna bureaucrats, and had temporarily withdrawn from service. The plan of Francis and his ministry was to drive back Masséna's inferior force; then, with the aid of the English fleet, which arrived in March, under Keith, to reduce Genoa, where Masséna was sure to make a stand; then to cross the Var, and increase the numerical superiority of the Austrians still further by a union with the royalists of Provence, who were organizing under Pichegru, just escaped from Guiana; and finally to carry the war into the heart of France, while Kray held Moreau in check.

CHAPTER XV

Statesmanship and Strategy [16]

Bonaparte's Plan of Campaign — His Relation to Moreau — The Reserve Army — The Movements of Moreau — The Austrians Defeated — Further Advance of Moreau — Bonaparte with the Army — The Italian Campaign — Position of the Austrians — The St. Bernard — Passage of the Alps — Military Problems — Grand Strategy — Bonaparte's Preparation.

By an article of the new French constitution the First Consul might not be also commander-in-chief of the forces; but, as he said to Miot de Melito, nothing forbade him to be present with the army. Nevertheless, his military greatness was now for the first time to display its stupendous proportions. Hitherto, superb as had been his achievements, they had been won as a subordinate carrying out one part of a large plan, and securing prominence for his own ideas only by disregarding those of nominal superiors. Now he had charge of a great war in its entirety. There was but one obstacle—Moreau's ability and jealousy. With the superiority of true greatness, Bonaparte at once took in the military situation, and, disregarding all the vexing details which would pass for essentials with men of less ability, analyzed it into its large and simple elements. If Kray were beaten, the French army could reach Vienna, and dictate peace before Melas could produce an effect in Italy. His plan, therefore, was to unite near Schaffhausen the various portions of the reserve army which he had quietly been organizing, and, covered by the Rhine, to effect a junction with Moreau; then by overwhelming superiority of numbers to turn Kray's left flank, cut off his connections, and, taking his army in the rear, either capture or annihilate it. Moreover, a detachment of this victorious force could then cross the easy lower passes of the Alps, and attack the Austrian army in Italy from the rear, even if in the interval that force should have been victorious. In this one great combination lies the proof of its author's genius. Its five great strategic principles are these: one line of operation, with one offensive; the massing of the army as the first aim; the line of operation on the enemy's flank verging toward his rear; the surrounding of the enemy's wing so as to jeopardize his connections; and lastly, the defense of your own connections. Standing in sharpest contrast with those of his great predecessor Frederick, these principles have not yet been overthrown even by modern science, nor by the revolutionary change which has taken place in the material of war and in the number of men engaged in modern conflicts.

But the idea was too great for the conditions. Moreau would not serve as second in command, and Bonaparte was perfectly aware that he himself was not yet sufficiently firm in his political seat to alienate a rival so influential. In fact, on March sixteenth, he wrote a private letter to Moreau, in which he said: "General Dessoles will tell you that no one is more interested than I am in your personal glory and in your happiness. The English are embarking in force. What do they want? I am to-day a sort of manikin which has lost its liberty and its happiness. Greatness is fine, but only in memory and in imagination. I envy your happy lot. You are going to do great things with brave men. I would gladly exchange my consular purple for the epaulets of a brigade commander under your orders." All the First Consul's military conceptions had to be carefully propounded; that for a campaign in central Germany was not carried out until several years later. Moreau, conscious of his own powers, would not even accept Bonaparte's suggestions for conducting the passage of the Rhine. He was therefore left perforce to act independently except for instructions from Paris that he should take the offensive at once, and drive the enemy into Bavaria behind the Lech, so as to intercept his direct communication with Milan by way of Lake Constance and the Grisons. Lecourbe, with twenty thousand men, was to watch the higher Alpine passes. The dangerous rival was then left entirely to himself, and the destination of the reserve army was changed to Italy. This, of course, was done in order that such success as Moreau would certainly have won with its aid might not endanger the political situation in Paris. He must not be permitted to retrieve a reputation sullied both by his suspected connection with Pichegru's conspiracy, and by his participation, contrary to lifelong professions, in the revolution of Brumaire.

Early in March the existence of the hitherto hidden army was revealed by an order for its advance toward Zurich to prepare for crossing the Alps. Switzerland, having fallen into French hands through Masséna's operations of the previous year, and being therefore no longer neutral, its territory was open for use in offensive operations against the foe. Masséna had received his first instructions a few days earlier. They were to concentrate the Army of Italy in order to defend Genoa and the entrance to France. Melas would surely follow the well-worn Austrian plan of advancing in three columns for a concentric attack. The French general was to avoid two, and meet the third with all his strength. In April, however, he was informed of the new combination, and told to stand on the defensive until the reserve army had crossed the Alps. "The art of war," Bonaparte always said, "is to gain time when your strength is inferior." This Masséna, with brilliant capacity, undertook to do when, on April sixth, the brave and veteran Melas attacked him with sixty thousand men. But in spite of repeated successes against superior numbers, before the end of the month active resistance became impossible, and the whole French center was compelled to withdraw on April twenty-first behind the walls of Genoa, the situation of which now became precarious, for it was blockaded by the English fleet, and provisions were growing very scanty, not more than sufficient stores for a month being available. Suchet, with the left of Masséna's army, ten thousand strong, retreated along the coast, pursued by Melas with twenty-eight thousand, until on May fourteenth the former crossed the Var. Ott, with twenty-four thousand men, was left to beleaguer Genoa, in which Masséna held out until June fourth—a siege considered one of the most stubborn in history.

Such had been the wretched management of the previous year in the department of war at Paris that Moreau's force was not properly supplied in any particular, and he would not move until a month after the time arranged. It was not until April twenty-fifth, after an urgent request from Bonaparte, that he ventured to carry out his own cautious plan for the passage of the Rhine in four divisions instead of in one united body, as the First Consul had suggested. Less was risked, and probably less was won; but the complicated movement was prosperous. Making a feint as if to occupy the Black Forest, he completely misled Kray as to his real intentions, and induced him to abandon his strong position at Donaueschingen. By a series of clever countermarches, in which the Rhine was crossed and recrossed several times by various French corps, the whole of Moreau's command was finally united beyond the Black Forest, having successfully outflanked not only that dangerous mountain-range, but also the enemy, which was still occupied in guarding its eastern exits.

The movement was brought to a fortunate conclusion by the French advance, before which the Austrians withdrew to secure a position. In the last days of April Moreau found himself with only twenty-five thousand men facing the mass of the Austrians under Kray at Engen. In the rear, on his left, but beyond reach, was a division of his own army under Saint-Cyr. On May second, expecting their speedy arrival, he joined battle with his inadequate force. The reinforcements did not arrive; but after a desperate fight, with serious loss, he defeated the enemy. Next day Saint-Cyr came in, and the Austrians, having learned that Stockach with its abundant stores had fallen into the hands of the French division under Lecourbe, withdrew northeastward toward the Danube. Moreau's success was unqualified. Kray could no longer retreat toward the Tyrol by Switzerland and the Vorarlberg; he had also lost a large supply of munitions most precious to their captors, besides five thousand prisoners and three thousand killed.

Nevertheless, he was still undismayed, and two days later made a stand at Messkirch. After an embittered and sanguinary conflict on May fifth he was again defeated. The victory of Moreau would have been overwhelming but for a second inexplicable failure of Saint-Cyr to bring his division into action. Investigation revealed that while that division general had displayed no zeal and had evinced no good will in the interpretation of orders, he had strictly obeyed their letter. His laxity was therefore overlooked. It was soon found that the Austrians were again gathered to defend their depots at Biberach. This time Saint-Cyr was ardent, and with conspicuous fire he led his inferior numbers against the enemy's center, driving them from their position. Still aglow with victory, he then called in a second division under Richepanse, and attacking again the main body of the enemy's army, which was drawn up on the slopes of the Mettenberg, dislodged them from that position also. Two days later Lecourbe captured Memmingen with eighteen hundred prisoners, and on the tenth the Austrians withdrew to make a determined stand on a fortified camp at Ulm. It is probable that in two days Moreau would have driven them from that position if his force had been left intact; but Carnot had come in person to ask for the detachment of Lecourbe's corps to serve in Italy, and a request from such a man could not well be denied.

The First Consul had studied the situation of France as carefully as he had analyzed that of Europe. Bernadotte was chief in command of all the soldiers within the confines of the republic. He was bound in the most solemn way to treat every faction with the utmost consideration and gentleness far and near throughout the land; above all, to lull the West into repose. To the judicious Cambacérès was intrusted the supreme power at Paris: "during the absence of the First Consul," his orders ran. His duty was to repress without pity every symptom of disturbance by the aid of the police under Fouché and the soldiery under Dubois. The news was carefully spread about that Bonaparte would soon return, very shortly in fact; there was uneasiness among the best-disposed at the thought of his absence, of his carefully balanced machinery left to the care of others. His departure was carefully arranged. The partizans of Masséna were alert that the fortunes of their hero should not be sacrificed. The news, true though inaccurate, that Kléber had capitulated in Egypt made little stir, but the fact was rather ugly. "Have it understood," were Bonaparte's later instructions to Talleyrand, "that had I remained in Egypt that superb colony would have been ours, just as, had I remained in France, we would not have lost Italy." Desaix, of whose eminent ability and vigorous character Bonaparte had formed the highest opinion, was already on the way, and for him a letter was left urging his presence at the earliest moment in Italy. The glorious news of Moreau's brilliant successes was read from the stage of the opera, where the First Consul led the enthusiastic cheering, and that very night, having sent a message of congratulation to the conqueror, "glory and thrice glory," he departed for Dijon. Next day Paris was reassured, gay and brilliant. It so continued until his own triumphant return. Resting for a short day at Dijon, he hurried on to Geneva, where he remained for three days in consultation with Necker. Thence he passed to Lausanne, where Carnot arrived with the news of his successful mission. Moreau had been flattered by the great consideration implied in such an embassy. From every side the news was satisfactory. Berthier's work of organization was thorough and complete: the raw recruits were drilled to efficiency. The generals were resplendent in health, spirits, and fine uniforms. The First Consul, clad in the blue frock of his civil office, wearing at times his rather shabby gray overcoat, with a slim sword at his side and a soft cocked hat on his head, was a very inconspicuous figure indeed. He was with the army, but not apparently in formal command.

Bonaparte's earlier plan for using the reserve army was that it should take up the division of Lecourbe, cross from Zurich by the Splügen into Italy, where, absorbing Masséna's force, it would finally number over a hundred thousand, and be sufficiently strong to conquer Melas. But the latter's immense superiority of numbers throughout April had enabled him in the mean while to cut off all communication with Masséna, and the worst was feared. It was determined, therefore, to cross the Alps much farther to the westward; and Berthier was ordered to study first the St. Gotthard and the Simplon, then both the Great and Little St. Bernard passes, the former of which was still erroneously held to be Hannibal's route. This easy adaptation to changing conditions was another sign of the First Consul's military greatness. The idea of a march to Milan was likewise quickly abandoned in order to relieve Masséna the sooner by way of Tortona. By May ninth all was in order. By "general's reckoning, not that of the office," as Berthier's words were, there were forty-two thousand men on or near the Lake of Geneva. When Bonaparte arrived at Lausanne on the tenth, Lannes was at the foot of the Great St. Bernard, with eight thousand infantry; four other divisions, comprising twenty-five thousand men, stood between Lausanne and the head of the lake; another, of five thousand men, under Chabran, was in Savoy at the foot of the Little St. Bernard. Besides these, Turreau, with five thousand men who had originally formed part of Masséna's left wing, was at the southern end of the Mont Cenis pass; and the fifteen thousand men detached from Moreau were already marching under Moncey toward the northern entrance of the St. Gotthard.

The situation of the Austrians and the French in Italy had not materially changed on May thirteenth, and was of course still to the advantage of the former. Masséna was in Genoa with twelve thousand available troops and sixteen thousand sick or wounded. Ott was conducting the siege with twenty-four thousand men. Melas, with his twenty-eight thousand men, was still on the Var, firmly convinced that the French reserve army would unite with Suchet's ten thousand in Provence and attack from the front. Five days later he was informed of the truth, and leaving a corps of seventeen thousand to guard the Riviera, hurried with the rest back to Turin, which he reached on the twenty-fifth. Ten thousand Austrians were watching the St. Gotthard at Bellinzona, three thousand were in the valley of the Dora Baltea to observe the southern exit from the St. Bernard range, while five thousand were on the Dora Riparia and one thousand on the Stura for similar purposes regarding the Mont Cenis. Six thousand were marching from Tuscany to reinforce Melas, and three thousand remained there; while in the Romagna, in Istria, and in various garrisons of upper Italy, were sixteen thousand more.

On May fourteenth began what has been justly considered one of Bonaparte's most daring and brilliant moves. Even at the present day and after extensive improvement of grade, the road over the Great St. Bernard is for a long stretch barely passable for wheeled vehicles; it was then a wretched mule-track, more like the bed of a mountain torrent than a highway, and at that season of the year storms of snow and sleet often rage about the hospice and on the higher reaches of the path. The First Consul had carefully considered the great outlines of his strategy; the detail had wisely been left to able lieutenants. One by one the successive divisions, with that of Lannes at the front, climbed the steeps, crossed the yoke, and passed down on the other side to Aosta. There was, of course, some snow, and there was in any case no track for the gun-carriages; the cannon were therefore dismounted, laid in sledges of hollowed logs, and dragged by sheer human force along the rough highway.

The passage into the upper vale of Aosta was commonplace enough, and on the sixteenth the head of Chabran's column also arrived there safely by way of the Little St. Bernard. But every enterprise has its crisis. Lower down, on an abrupt and perpendicular rock, was Fort Bard, which entirely controlled the valley. It proved to be impregnable. Lannes hesitated for a day. Berthier wrote him that the fate of Italy, perhaps of the republic, hung upon its capture. This proved to be a pardonable exaggeration. The French van took a rude mountain-path which lay to the northward over Monte Albaredo, and, leaving their artillery behind, advanced, or rather climbed across, toward Ivrea. Bonaparte himself came up two days later, and, hearing that Melas had now left the Var, ordered the path to be improved. Lannes, in the interval, attacked Ivrea, but failed for want of cannon. Marmont, the chief of artillery, could not wait for the engineers to complete the new road, but, wrapping all his wheels in hay, and strewing the streets of the hamlet at the foot of Fort Bard with dung, carried all the guns safely past under cover of night. The Austrians could not fire in a plumb-line downward, and, though aware of the movement, they were helpless. The garrison held out for a time, but surrendered on June first. Ivrea fell at once; the three thousand Austrians in the valley were scattered; and the Italian plains lay open to the daring adventurers, many of whom, having once outflanked the Alps under the same leader, had now attacked and surmounted them. Their enemy was first incredulous, then surprised and undecided; his forces were so scattered that it seemed as if he could no longer hold Tortona. Should that fortress fall into French hands, Genoa could be promptly relieved.

Bonaparte at once became perfectly aware not only of the Austrian position, but also of the favorable opportunity it opened for him. His ideas began immediately to expand and change. Why not take advantage of the time which must intervene before the Austrians could concentrate for a decisive action, leave Masséna to hold Genoa a few days longer, himself march to Milan and secure Lombardy, then cross the Po, and, after having cut off all Melas's connections, offer him battle? That a single battle might decide the fate of Italy was the conception of a strategist. The inverse order of defeating Melas, relieving Genoa, taking Milan, and driving the enemy behind the Adda, would have meant a long campaign. This was the first appearance of this keen conception, which recurs twice more in Napoleon's life—in 1809 and in 1813.

Before the end of the month every portion of the army had done its work. Turreau was over Mont Cenis, and had driven in the Austrian guards. Moncey had passed the St. Gotthard in safety, and was ready at Bellinzona. A side column under Bethencourt had crossed the Simplon and was near Domo d'Ossola. On June second the united French force had crossed the Ticino in safety, and the vanguard entered Milan as the Austrian garrison withdrew first to Lodi and then to Crema. Murat was despatched with his cavalry to drive the retreating columns so far that they could not interfere with the next serious operation, the crossing of the Po. Bonaparte celebrated his return not only by the reëstablishment of the Cisalpine Republic and by great civic festivals, but by a religious solemnity at which he declared his respect for the Holy Father and his attachment to the faith. The great cathedral was his special charge. Among the statues of saints which adorn its myriad pinnacles, one of the best is his own portrait.

CHAPTER XVI [17]

Marengo

Surrender of Genoa — Bonaparte's Strategy — Politics at Milan — His Over-confidence — The Chosen Battle-field — Victor at Marengo — The French Overpowered — Defeat Retrieved — Desaix and Kléber — A Pattern Campaign — Plots in Paris — France Conquered in Italy — Significance of Marengo — Bonaparte Returns to Paris — His Bid for Peace — Austria Disavows the Negotiations — Conferences at Lunéville — Hostilities Renewed.

The news of all these movements reached Melas at Turin, where, with the ordinary perspicacity of a good army general, he had expected the battle. With Suchet to the westward on the Var, and Bonaparte in front, his situation was critical. His first intention was to advance by Vercelli, and fall on Bonaparte's rear; but learning how great the force was which had crossed the St. Gotthard, he chose as a rallying-point for his army the town, of Alessandria, the situation of which amid lowlands and sluggish streams resembles that of Mantua, and made it in those days of short range and weak projectiles a powerful fortress. It was his daring intention to break through the French center. Meantime Masséna, having conducted the defense of Genoa with heroism and persistency until the last, had been forced to open negotiations for surrender. He was embittered, charging that he was both deserted and sacrificed: a glance at the map will show how utterly impossible it would have been for the French forces from the north to have crossed and recrossed the Apennines for his relief, and moreover the strategic moves did not and could not foresee the ill-advised Austrian tenacity in the siege of Genoa, at a time when Melas's necessity required every man within reach to rally at Alessandria as swiftly as possible. Could the French general have held out for three days longer, Ott would have been compelled to raise the siege in order to release his own troops for the greater struggle soon to take place. As it was, the terms offered were the best possible, and on June fourth the French marched out with eight thousand men under no conditions, leaving the scene by water, however, instead of joining Suchet to strengthen the army at once: a move which Bonaparte savagely condemned in his latter days. On the sixth Ott left with his army for the Austrian rendezvous. Had he renounced the capture of Genoa, he might have joined the force of Melas with his army unharmed. The sequel showed that some one had made a serious mistake; and that some one was not the French commander-in-chief.

Simultaneously Bonaparte was directing from Milan the slow passage of the great river at three points between Piacenza and Pavia, and bringing in from all around the scattered companies which had been clearing the country in various skirmishes. He left a fortified camp at Stradella and five available bridges over the Po, in case he should be beaten and compelled to retreat. On the eighth one of Melas's couriers to Vienna was captured, and his despatches, which told of the disaster at Genoa, also put the First Consul in full possession of his antagonist's movements and plans. The French and Austrians began their advance about the same time; the former, however, in closer formation and less widely separated from one another. Ott and Lannes met at Casteggio, near Montebello. Bonaparte's orders were to destroy, if possible, the first Austrian column which appeared, "as it must of necessity be weak." In the first struggle the French, who were much inferior in numbers, were worsted; but reinforcements coming up quickly under Victor, their rout was speedily turned into victory, and the enemy was driven back upon the Scrivia, with the loss of four thousand men.

The short week in Milan, from June second onward, was a fine exhibition of Bonaparte's concentrated energy. There were a triumphal entry, most impressive, a series of eloquent bulletins, soul-stirring and illuminating, and a political reorganization of the Cisalpine Republic, object-lesson to France of what she had to expect. The horrors of Austrian rule were exhibited and execrated. What else could be expected from the kings of Europe? As to religion, the people want their worship, let the priests perform the desired rites. From Genoa, when it fell into French hands, as it did within a few days, the proclamation went forth announcing the policy of the Consulate. In the exercise of its power the government would completely restore the Roman Catholic cult, first because religion is essential to and in man, second because that of Rome is the best form, and lends itself best to democratic republican institutions. What had already happened in France was sufficient evidence that the First Consul would arrange matters with the new Pope, and recognize him, irregular as his election had been.

Map of the Marengo Campaign.

Melas was still west of Alessandria, at a distance of two days' march. Bonaparte, after leaving Milan for headquarters, remained in the rear, gathering and ordering the advancing army, but giving no sign, by a personal appearance on the front, until all was in readiness, of where the decision would be taken. It was a maxim ever on his lips to prepare for a decisive action by bringing in every available man; no one could tell when the result might turn on the presence of a few men more or less. In this instance he was apparently untrue to his own principle; for no less than twenty-three thousand men had been sent so far out of reach—some to cut off all chance of Austrian escape to the north, east, and south, and some for various other purposes—that he now had only thirty-four thousand men available. His over-confidence was in a sense justified by the enemy's mistakes, but it came near to costing dearly. It went so far that Loison, with six thousand soldiers more, was left behind at Piacenza. By the twelfth Melas had joined Ott at Alessandria, which, in view of Bonaparte's grand strategy, was inevitable. Desaix, in obedience to the urgent summons he had received from the First Consul, had finally reached the French headquarters at Stradella on the eleventh, and was immediately put in command of one of the three corps, his colleagues being Victor and Lannes.

The flat land about Tortona and Alessandria is watered by two small rivers, the Scrivia and the Bormida, which flow parallel to each other northward toward the Po. Irrigating canals and minor tributary streams, all bordered by pollard willows and other low trees, separate the fields, which are themselves planted with orchards, or yield rich crops of cereals. It was customary for Bonaparte to select an open plain for his battles, if possible. He could then, without fear of being hampered, use his favorite arm, the artillery, which he frequently massed with terrible effect on the wings, while his effective cavalry were sent in repeated onsets to break his enemy's center, and deliver the opposing ranks in broken masses to the musket-fire and bayonet charge of his infantry. Such fields were, of course, numerous between Tortona on the Scrivia and Alessandria on the Tanaro just west of its confluence with the Bormida. The best was near the great highway which, coming from the east, connects these two towns, and goes on, due westward, by Asti to Turin. Two roads of importance lead southerly, one from each town, to Novi, where they unite, and then proceed to Genoa. On the northern side of the triangle thus formed, and only three miles eastward from Alessandria, lies the hamlet of Marengo, where Victor was posted on June thirteenth, awaiting the attack of Melas when he should sally from the fortress. Lannes was about three miles behind at San Giuliano. Desaix had been sent southward toward Novi, lest Melas should swerve in that direction to try a flank movement. Bonaparte, with the consular guard,—a picked corps of twelve hundred trusted veterans which he had developed from that formed for personal protection in his first Italian campaign,—stood at Tortona. He could hardly trust himself to believe that the Austrians would be bold enough to make a direct attack, and had therefore disposed his troops in this scattered way.

But Melas, though slow and old-fashioned, was intrepid, and the Austrians were daring fighters. On the morning of the fourteenth he began to cross the Bormida, and as his van drove the French outposts to Marengo, he was able to deploy east of the stream. Victor received orders to hold the village at any cost, in order to gain time for concentrating the scattered French columns to the right and left of his position, which was to be the center. On a level battle-field the solid brick or stone walls of a village, of a churchyard, or of great farm-courts like those of Lombardy, afford the most desirable shelter, and oftentimes, as at Marengo, Aspern, and even Waterloo, the loss or gain of such a position turns the tide of battle; for an army equipped with flint-lock muskets and small unrifled field-pieces, though victorious in the open, dares not leave a considerable portion of their enemy thus ensconced in the rear. Hence the ever-recurring and enormous importance of farmsteads and hamlets in the Napoleonic battle-fields. Lannes was to deploy on the right, and Murat was sent with his cavalry in part to support the forming line, and in part to prevent a flank movement along the slow, willow-bordered current of the Bormida. If Desaix could come up in time, he would form the left; in the mean time the younger Kellermann was stationed with his dragoons to guard Victor's open flank.

The first attacks of the Austrians were repulsed, but with loss and difficulty. At ten in the morning Ott came up, and attacked Lannes's flank. The fighting grew ever hotter and more desperate, and the news from Desaix was that it would be four in the afternoon before he could arrive. Bonaparte called in his small reserve, under Monnier, to strengthen Lannes; but it was of no avail. By midday the French were driven out of Marengo, their front was broken, and their columns were in full retreat to the eastward toward San Giuliano. The First Consul was in despair, and as a last resource sent in eight hundred of the consular guard. For the first hour of the afternoon the retreat was stayed. But the French were soon outflanked on their left by Austrian cavalry, and again began to withdraw. Bonaparte sat by the roadside, and, swishing his riding-whip, called to the flying men to stand and wait for the reserve, a body of troops which did not exist. Seven thousand soldiers—a fifth of his entire available force—had, it is estimated, already fallen. Desaix was not yet within reach. Melas believed he had won the day. Perhaps if the weight of seventy years, and a slight wound, had left the Austrian commander personally less exhausted, he would, in spite of having long endured the heat, fatigue, and dust, have carried his victorious columns onward until he had utterly scattered his enemy. As it was, he deputed the final discomfiture of the disorganized yet slowly, stubbornly retreating Frenchmen to Zach, his chief of staff, and returned to Alessandria. His command, ordered in single main column, followed directly on, while Ott, with a minor one, deviated toward the left to seek a parallel line of pursuit.

At this juncture, about five in the afternoon, Desaix appeared at the head of his hurrying line. In an instant Bonaparte had despatched riders in every direction, who were instructed to declare that "the French line is forming again." The discouraged men who were still in the ranks took fresh courage, many stragglers were gathered in, and the line was really formed once more. Marmont even collected a battery of eighteen guns, and Kellermann, with the brigade of dragoons which had so long covered Victor's left flank, suddenly reappeared in good condition on Desaix's right. In a moment all was changed. Desaix and Kellermann threw themselves with fury on the head and left of the main Austrian column. The first half was soon in confusion; six thousand men laid down their arms. The second half was demoralized, and took to flight. Their officers rallied the flying lines with difficulty, but sufficiently to hold a bridge over the Bormida until Ott had joined the retreat and safely passed. Before dark a portion of Melas's army, about twenty thousand of the thirty he had collected at Alessandria, were all behind the stream, and the French were again in full possession of Marengo. But the gallant Desaix had perished in the moment of victory. "Of all the generals of the Revolution," said Napoleon to Gourgaud, "I only know Hoche and Desaix who could have gone further." Of the latter he said, during the voyage to St. Helena, that he was the best general he had ever known.

There were, however, two others he might have recalled. It is true that among all the purely French generals of the republic and the Directory, the name of Hoche, so prematurely cut off by death, stands highest. But there was another of similar renown: second only to his is that of Kléber. The latter, recognizing the desperate situation of the French colony in Egypt, early in the year 1800 concluded with Sir Sidney Smith, at El Arish, a treaty for honorable withdrawal. But there was delay in accepting it at London, and no preparations to fulfil the terms were made. In the interval Kléber, alarmed by the gathering force of Turkish troops, turned on the Turkish pasha—who now stood at Heliopolis with seventy thousand men—with the sadly diminished army of twelve thousand French, and on March twentieth, 1800, in the most amazing fight ever seen by an Egyptian sun, swept the horde out of existence. It was his admirable administration during the ensuing months which, together with the achievements of its scholars, gave all the luster to the ill-starred expedition which was ever shed upon it. On the very day on which, at Marengo, Desaix received in his heart the fatal ball, Kléber fell a victim to the dagger of a Mohammedan fanatic. The French humiliation in Egypt was completed a year later by the surrender of his successor, Menou. Moreau, therefore, was now the solitary able survivor of Revolutionary traditions in warfare.

MARENGO 14 June 1800.

A distance of about three and a half miles separates the field of the morning battle at Marengo from the field of the evening battle near San Giuliano; the Austrians retreated across the Bormida to Alessandria; the French bivouacked near Marengo.

Exactly a month after the passage of the St. Bernard had begun, the Austrians opened negotiations, and their general agreed to evacuate all northern Italy, with its strong places, as far as the river Mincio. The only Italian lands to be left in Austrian occupation were Tuscany and Ancona. The strategical lesson which Bonaparte drew from the victory at Marengo is often repeated by writers on military science; namely, that the art of war is the art of combinations. His detractors claim the honors of the day for Desaix and Kellermann. The judgment of posterity must be that of his contemporary critics. To plan is already to manœuver; but in war, as elsewhere, to will is one thing, to do is another. A successful battle disorganizes an opposing army, but successful strategy entirely destroys its power. When will and deed accompany each other the result is conclusive. The victory at Marengo was such a decision. Bonaparte the army commander lost it; Bonaparte the general-in-chief won it, exactly as it was. But even if Desaix had not appeared, success would have been gained elsewhere. The road to Stradella was open, the French connections were unbroken. Although such later explanations have little value, Napoleon was probably right when he said to Gourgaud: The French army was in an abnormal position with its rear toward Mantua and Austria. Its only line of retreat was by the left bank of the Po, and to leave that line of communication without defense was not permissible. In an ordinary position all the detachments should be drawn in for battle. Here this was impossible without losing all the advantage of the campaign. Had we been defeated, this fault would have been no reproach, though properly enough the loss of the battle would have been attributed to it; in that case the strength of the positions held by the troops would have been manifest, since to it the army would have owed its safety, together with the chance to await reinforcements from Switzerland and France, and to reassemble at Mentz, for thus we could have maintained ourselves on the left bank of the Po, while Melas could hope only to withdraw to Mantua and take his normal position. This was Napoleon's commentary at the close of his life: likewise he had declared, as Antommarchi asserts, that he would have crossed the Po on one of his five bridges covered by his batteries, would have combined his first division with those he had left behind, and then would have attacked and destroyed each successive Austrian corps as it crossed the stream in pursuit. In any case Marengo was the pattern of an offensive campaign organized, not to win battles and spare the lives of soldiers, but to destroy an enemy. In a just cause this policy is great and humane; in an unjust cause any warfare is butchery. To assert, as many do, that Marengo was superb, but unpatriotic, is simply to renounce the cause in which it was fought. As to the strategy of the campaign, the final judgment must be that of Napoleon himself: To be a good general you must know mathematics; that serves in a thousand circumstances to clarify your ideas. Perhaps I owe my success to my mathematical ideas: a general should never make pictures, this is the worst of all. Because a partizan has captured a position, you need not think the whole army was there; my great talent, my chief distinction, is to see clear in everything, it is even the style of my eloquence to see beneath all its appearances the root of the question. It is the perpendicular, shorter than the oblique. The great art of battle is during the action to change the line of operations: my own idea, entirely new. That made me the victor at Marengo: the enemy moved against my line of operations to cut it; I had changed it and he then found himself cut off.

Throughout his absence from Paris, Bonaparte's mind was almost as much absorbed in home as in foreign affairs. His correspondence, packed as it is with details, gives only a faint idea of the multiplicity of his cares in regard to his family, the army, and the nation. The capital was full of conspiracies, machinations, complots, and intrigues: it could not be otherwise, and he felt it. There were the British and the Chouans combining to rekindle the flames of civil war, and rid the earth of the man who would not restore the Bourbons. The Institute was embroiled over the restoration of the Fructidorians it had expelled. There was Fouché to be cajoled and bribed with promises, if only the police would repress the cabals forming everywhere like mushrooms. There were Bernadotte and all the touchy generals, aspirants to power, who must be flattered and soothed. There were the newspapers to be inspired and fed by a carefully organized news bureau. There was Josephine clamoring for money, and his brothers to be appeased. There were the consuls to be guided and the wheels of government to be kept oiled. All these matters received his attention.

But in spite of such comprehensive care, things went wrong. On June nineteenth Cadoudal wrote to Grenville that everything was arranged, insurrection would break out in the west and south: the royalists were certain of success if only the sixty men selected should remove the "personage" from the scene. Fouché warned his chief that the baser radicals, a group composed of red Jacobins and disgruntled half-pay soldiery, had despatched an agent to dog his footsteps. The purpose may be imagined. Royalists and anarchists considered the First Consul vermin. Talleyrand was carrying water on both shoulders: the insiders of the administration styled him and Sieyès with their adherents the Orleanist party, scheming to put some member of that line on an ineffectual throne as a creature of the other monarchies. Lucien and the Bonaparte family began to discuss heredity and talk of a succession in the Consulate as in a kingdom. They gathered many adherents: Orleanists and Bonapartists alike counted on the possibility of the First Consul's death, either by assassination or in battle, on the still higher probability of his defeat. Death and defeat they considered were for him synonymous, all the plotters of every sort and condition forming plans to share in the contingent legacy of his overthrow. Victory alone could save the First Consul and his personal rule: to conquer in Italy was to reign supreme in France. The plain folk seem never to have doubted for a moment, and their instinct was true.

Heretofore we have seen in Bonaparte the general and the politician commingled, with the former preponderating; now we have carefully to distinguish not one but almost two men in the First Consul, as afterward in the Emperor—the statesman and the general. The former is henceforward always prominent, always in evidence; the latter often hides himself, and does his great work, in the service of the former. The conflict at Marengo was the first of the statesman's four decisive battles, and he knew it. It gave him the undisputed mastery of France. There never was a fight more carefully explained to a nation, both at the time and subsequently, than this one. There was real danger that the temporary check might obscure in the common mind the true greatness of the main conception and its execution. To prevent such a mishap was essential. In the form of bulletins, of inspired articles in the obsequious press, in conversations, by hints, innuendos, and every other known channel, such reports were put in circulation as insured the full value of a great success to the chief magistrate of France. Combined with the victories of Moreau, it restored the finances of the country; for that general, who had in the interval occupied Munich, levied forty millions of francs in a lump on South Germany, while Piedmont and the reorganized Ligurian and Cisalpine republics were now each to pay monthly tribute amounting annually to a similar sum.

Leaving Masséna to command the Army of Italy, the First Consul hastened to Milan, where he tarried only long enough to despatch a peace commissioner to Vienna. He then hurried on to Paris. The public had not at first understood that the chief magistrate would so daringly violate the constitution. When his intention to assume military command became clear, there was no audible discontent; the only effect was to create a coterie about Talleyrand which discussed the consequences if the daring adventurer were to be killed. While deliberating whether Carnot or Lafayette should be the coming man, their session was indefinitely adjourned by receipt of the news and by the speedy return of Bonaparte. His journey through the provinces was a continuous ovation; every town had its triumphal arch. By his command the reception which Paris gave to the man whom victory was fast making her idol was ostentatiously kept within moderate limits, but on the evening of his return—July third, 1800—the entire city burst into one great illumination. Every one was talking of Hannibal and the Alps, of the army climbing like chamois and toiling like oxen, of the hospice of St. Bernard with its devoted brothers and their sagacious dogs, of precipices and avalanches, and of the climax to all these toils in the plains of Italy, not forgetting the touching loss of the gallant and handsome Desaix.

The hour for display was past, the time for solid achievement had arrived. First, if possible, the peace so ardently desired must be secured. In a letter from Milan to the Emperor Francis, explaining why it was Austria's interest to abandon England, and become the friend of France, on the old terms of Campo Formio, Bonaparte wrote: "Let us give peace and quiet to the present generation. If future generations are foolish enough to fight, very well; they will learn after a few years of warfare how to grow wise and live in peace." But Austria, having just bargained for a new subsidy from the apparently inexhaustible coffers of England, could not consider a separate peace, and the cabinet sent an agent with very limited powers to see whether France might not be brought to make some concessions which would be useful toward a general pacification. The personage chosen was one of those who seem by accident to enter now and then the solemn councils of history in order to enliven their gravity by blunders and mock heroism. The Count of St. Julien, an Austrian diplomatist attached after the fall of Genoa to the army, had been chosen by Bonaparte to carry his proposition for a general armistice to Vienna. It was he who was sent back to Milan with an Austrian counter-proposition, accepting the armistice, but suggesting clearer definition of the terms on which peace was to be negotiated than could be found in the treaty of Campo Formio, a document which intervening circumstances and new engagements had rendered impossible of execution.

The luckless diplomat, finding in Milan that Bonaparte was already in Paris, transcended his instructions, and followed. Arrived on the banks of the Seine, he was welcomed with ostentatious heartiness, and intrusted to the wiles of Talleyrand, who intended so to use his victim as to convince the French people that peace was within easy reach since they had a living plenipotentiary among them. Accepting the French minister's large interpretation of his powers, the flattered ignoramus made his first misstep, and began negotiations. Within a week he had actually signed preliminaries the execution of which would have definitely sundered Austria and England. When St. Julien reached Vienna, in August, Thugut was infuriated, and passed sleepless nights at the mere thought of a formal negotiation having taken place without the knowledge of Great Britain, his master's ally and indispensable support. In order to undo the mischief as far as possible, an account of the facts was promptly sent to England, Talleyrand's preliminaries were utterly rejected, and St. Julien himself was disavowed and imprisoned.

The Austrian strength was nearly worn out, but new troops were raised. The Archduke John, still a mere boy, but with talents vaunted as superior to those of the Archduke Charles, was put in Kray's place. Melas was removed to make way for Bellegarde, a younger but less able man. The former had eighty thousand men and a reserve under Klenau; General Iller, with thirty thousand, was in the Tyrol; and Bellegarde was on the Mincio, with ninety thousand. The tried and skilful Cobenzl was sent to reopen negotiations. Joseph Bonaparte was appointed French plenipotentiary to meet him. Their conferences were held chiefly at Lunéville, a frontier town southeast of Nancy. The prolongation of the armistice necessary for these arrangements was bought by the cession of three fortresses to Moreau, and was the more easily secured because Bonaparte, though furious at his failure to secure peace in consequence of Marengo, still felt that peace was imperative. Soon afterward court intrigue at Vienna overthrew Thugut, and Cobenzl was forced to betray the inherent weakness of his position. In order to conceal Austria's exhaustion, he had been instructed to make a bold demand for an English associate, and to plead urgency for a general peace; but he secretly gave Talleyrand to understand that sufficient concession in Italy would secure a separate peace with Austria. Bonaparte had no intention either of suing for peace with England, or of granting more than he had originally offered to Austria. Finally, in November, he determined to renew hostilities, declaring that the state of the nation and Austria's procrastination justified the prosecution of the war. Joseph Bonaparte and the Austrian plenipotentiary continued their parleyings at Lunéville, but the armistice was ended.

CHAPTER XVII

The Peace of Lunéville [18]

Hostilities in Germany — Moreau's Position — Battle of Hohenlinden Moreau's Renown — The Peace of Lunéville — The Czar Withdraws from the Coalition — The Temper of France Bonaparte and the Plain People — His Capacity for Work His Social Defects — His Strength and Independence The Emigrant Nobility — Their Return — Their Treatment.

On the opening of hostilities in Germany, the Austrians held a position of great strength behind the Inn. Moreau's line was near Munich, skirting the forests on the Isar. To strengthen his force, troops enough were sent to raise his numbers to about a hundred thousand men, and twenty-five thousand were stationed under Augereau on the Main. Masséna, whose ever more pronounced republicanism had not passed unnoticed at Paris, was found guilty of bad administration in Italy, and was replaced by Brune. This eclipse was, as it was intended to be, only temporary. Murat was stationed in central Italy to watch Naples; Macdonald stood in the Grisons with fifteen thousand troops, ready to turn north or south at a moment's notice, as exigency should demand. The time had come for the conclusive blow where alone it could be delivered, in Bavaria.

The defensive position of the Archduke John was very strong. Moreau had carefully studied the advantages for battle of the high plain on which he himself stood, and in the raw, damp days of early winter reluctantly began to prepare for an advance. His enemy, with the over-confidence of youth, made ready simultaneously to abandon all the strength of his position, and likewise moved forward. The French could hardly believe their senses when, on December first, their left was checked in its advance and driven back by what was evidently the main army of their enemy. Moreau made ready to receive the Austrians on familiar ground. The evening of the next day found his army arrayed near Hohenlinden, eighteen miles east of Munich, so that every avenue of approach by the neighboring forests was in their hands, and every road to Munich closed.

1800—01

The famous battle began on the morning of December fourth. It opened at half-past seven, the main attack being on the center. Moreau, supported by Grenier, Ney, and Grouchy, easily sustained the onset, while right and left the wings began to infold the Austrians, who were now blundering through the unknown woodland paths. When all was ready, Ney and Grouchy were suddenly detached to break through and join their forces to those of Richepanse, which had reached the Austrian rear. The manœuver was successfully accomplished, and by three in the afternoon the day was won for the French, with a loss that was slight in comparison with that of the Austrians, which was upward of twenty thousand killed and wounded, besides much artillery and immense stores. The flight was a rout, and even the Archduke narrowly escaped capture. Moreau's pursuit was sharp, and a fortnight later he was within easy reach of Vienna, where confusion and terror would have reigned supreme had not the Archduke Charles been persuaded to resume the chief command in the extremity. Fortunately also for Francis, this rapidity had left Augereau's corps in danger from the possible advance of Klenau, and, much as Moreau would have liked to eclipse his rival in Paris, he dared go no further, and was compelled to rest content with having won a victory greater than any Bonaparte had gained. The campaign was of course ended, and to release Augereau from all menace an armistice was signed at Steyer on Christmas day. In Italy, Brune had with difficulty advanced to Trent on the Adige. He was there to join Macdonald, whose feat of leading fifteen thousand men across the Splügen in the heart of winter had scarcely attracted the attention it deserved.

The sober judgment of posterity in the light of the fullest information is that well-nigh every movement of both the Austrian and French armies at Hohenlinden was haphazard and bungling, the former ignorant, the latter lucky. But what with an open road to Vienna on the north and the prompt successes of the French forces south of the Alps, the consequences were decisive. Moreau enjoyed a renown in France that was, though fictitious, of enormous political value. The First Consul must be the first in generous recognition so as not to alienate an important group of republican supporters; he was quick to see it and to use the fruits of victory.

Hohenlinden brought matters at Lunéville to a speedy conclusion. A separate peace for Austria was signed on February ninth, 1801, which virtually shattered the time-honored Hapsburg policy of territorial expansion. Her line in northern Italy was fixed at the Adige; the Grand Duke of Tuscany lost his land, and, like him of Modena, received no other compensation except a grant from the Breisgau in Germany; the Rhine, from source to mouth, was to be the French boundary; and the temporal princes so maimed were to be indemnified by the secularization of the ecclesiastical lands on the right bank. Austria was thus not only left insignificant in Italy, she was deprived of her independent station as a great power in Europe; she was even threatened in her Germanic ascendancy, for the spiritual princes of the empire were her main support in the Diet, and the diminution of their numbers meant the supremacy of Prussia in Germany. The treaty was negotiated for France by Joseph Bonaparte; it was signed by Austria, not only for herself, but for the Germanic body, in which, according to its terms, the First Consul might, if necessary, intervene in order to secure the execution of the stipulations made in the document.

Such provisions could only mean either the permanent humiliation of Austria, or the resumption of hostilities whenever recruited strength would permit. It is doubtful whether they would have been accepted even then had not the First Consul finally succeeded in winning the Czar to his cause. It will be remembered that in the previous year the cession of Malta to Russia had been suggested by the French envoy at St. Petersburg. This was, of course, another step in the process of widening the dissension already created in the coalition. The proposition had been received by the Czar with great delight; and when, on September fifth, 1800, the English compelled the French garrison of that fortress to capitulate, and, careless of the Grand Master's rights, entered on full possession of the island, Paul, openly accusing England and Austria of treachery, entered an "armed neutrality" with Sweden, Denmark, and Prussia to check English aggression at sea. The real motive of Frederick William III in joining this movement was to repress Austria's aspirations for the annexation of Bavarian lands. He persisted in his neutrality, and would make no alliance with Bonaparte; but he was glad to see his rival weakened. The Czar believed that by diminishing Austria's power in Italy that state would be impotent to restrain Russia's ambition in the Orient. One authority declares that the Czar had been assured by the First Consul that he was about to restore the Bourbons, and would himself be content with an Italian principality; but this is doubtful. So ardent was the Russian autocrat, however, that he urged forward the preparation of plans for the projected Franco-Russian expedition, which was to march by way of Khiva and Herat, and strike at the heart of England's power by the conquest of India. This was the first of those sportive tricks which for years to come Bonaparte was so triumphantly to play with the old dynasties of Europe. The success of this combination temporarily secured the peace of the Continent on terms most advantageous to himself.

The people of France were tired of the awful earnestness which had characterized the philosophical and political upheavals of the eighteenth century, and were ever more and more eager for glory and for pleasure. This was true of all political schools, excepting only a very few men of serious minds. The masses had come to loathe royalty. They were living under what was called a republic, and when an expression was needed for the national life as a whole they and their writers employed the common classical term "empire." The word "citizen," used in both genders as a form of address, recalled the days of rude leveling. It had lasted through the Directory; with the Consulate it disappeared, first from official documents, and then, in spite of resistance by a few radicals, it soon gave place everywhere to the old "monsieur" and "madame." In like manner the former habits of polite society quietly reasserted themselves with the return to prominence of those who had been trained in them. Liberty could no longer be endangered by admirable usages whose connection with monarchy was forgotten. Such incidents were significant of the movement which, with the assured stability of the Consulate, brought immediately to its service those persons who represented, not exactly the greatness, but the capacity of France. Excepting that which was resident in a few royalists and in a few radicals, the power of the nation rallied to the support of the new order. When Daunou, Cabanis, Grégoire, Carnot, and Lafayette were identified with the Consulate, the Jacobinism which had turned the early nobility of the Revolution into baseness might well hide its head. For a time, at least, the majority believed that the highest aims of the Revolution were to be attained under the new government.

The Bonapartes resided in the Luxembourg from November, 1799, to February, 1800. In that short time a little coterie of visitors, with many royalists in its number, had been regular in attendance; but the republican side was studiously kept prominent, and thence the First Consul had married his sister Caroline to Murat, the son of an innkeeper at Cahors. During that period the anniversary of the death of Louis XVI was stricken from the list of public festivals, but those of July fourteenth, the storming of the Bastille, and of September twenty-second, the founding of the republic, were kept. After the installation of the family at the Tuileries, in February, 1800, there was little change, except that a clever beginning was made in ceremonial and etiquette, which augured further changes, and the bearers of noble names became more and more prominent. "It is not exactly a court," said the Princess Dolgoruki of the receptions, "but it is no longer a camp." Toward those who aspired to the familiar address of equality the First Consul grew more forbidding; to the plain people in civil and military life he was always accessible, and with them he was simple, even confidential, in his manner and tone. "I have your letter, my gallant comrade," he wrote to a sergeant. "I know your services: ... you are one of the brave grenadiers of the army. You are included in the list for one of a hundred presentation swords which I have ordered distributed. Every soldier in your corps thought you deserved it most. I wish much to see you again. The minister of war is sending you an order to come to Paris." After the battle of Montebello, the affair fought by Lannes five days before Marengo, when Coignet, a common soldier who could neither read nor write, but who had performed several daring deeds in that, his first engagement, was by Berthier's orders presented at ten in the evening to the Consul, the latter playfully caught his visitor by the ear, and held him thus during a short catechism. At the close, the delighted peasant, entranced by such familiarity, saw his services noted in a mysterious book, and was dismissed with the remark that no doubt, eventually, he would merit service in the guard, the members of which must be veterans of four campaigns. The effect of such incidents was to turn the popular admiration into a passion.

No one ever declared that Napoleon Bonaparte was a gentleman animated by trained self-respect and consideration for others. Many thought his accesses of feverish sensitiveness, which now began to be noted, were due to a hysterical temperament: in society he often sat in forbidding silence; sometimes he wept tears which the world would consider unmanly, and appeared to be temporarily disordered in his mind. But he had much rude good nature and considerable wholesome sensibility. He worked regularly from twelve to fifteen hours a day, evolving schemes which paralyzed his secretaries by their magnitude. The hours which such a man of affairs spent in the companionship of women were not marked by that quick appreciation and attention which gratify the great lady. No one has suffered more at the hands of women than Bonaparte. Mme. Junot and Mme. de Rémusat forgot nothing which would place his rude passions in glaring contrast with their own chastity, or even with the polished laxity of that notoriously immoral society which scorned old-fashioned restraints. The long struggle for recognition and attention which that "femme incomprise," Mme. de Staël, waged with Bonaparte ended in her defeat, and she then turned against her antagonist the weapon of her clever pen.

It is certain that with all his genius the great statesman and the great general failed to understand the power of woman. His youth gave him no due share in the society of those mothers, sweethearts, and female friends who, in the routine of daily life, by instinct, training, and ability, mold every generation as it rises to its place. The years of nonage were absorbed in political intrigue, and those of early manhood in tasks not laid upon most men until middle life. Amid the storms of the Revolution was formed a general without experience in those social forces of peace which finally overpower all others. His married life began in passion and ambition; the relation was checked in its normal development by ensuing hurricanes of alternating jealousy and physical attraction. The social power of his wife was great, but superficial; and while she powerfully supported her husband's ambitions, and often captivated his senses, she failed in creating any companionship with him in noble enterprise. The innate coarseness of a giant was, therefore, never diminished, and the society of those who turned pleasing and pleasure into a fine art, who regarded entertainment as the chief concern of life, was generally irksome to a man who looked upon many over-ready women as instruments for gratifying physical passion; to a general who saw in all women the possible mothers of soldiers; to a "scientific" politician who looked on the family and on children as inert factors in a mathematical problem; to a wilful dictator ignorant of the unalterable supremacy of woman in her own sphere. But even Mme. de Rémusat admits that there were times and places when serious women with earnest notions of duty received at his hands the most gracious and considerate treatment. In the main, Napoleon's nature was so dominated by his gigantic schemes that he was impervious to the feminine fascinations by which men are so often ruled. He would tolerate neither Egerias nor Hypatias, neither Cleopatras nor Messalinas, although the times might easily have furnished him with examples of each type.

The Consulate is the period of Bonaparte's greatest and most enduring renown. In what he did the new France was heartily sympathetic; the old France, with all its vices, spite, and bitterness, though existent, was in abeyance, and remained so for some years to come. The multitudinous memoirs concerning the time were for the most part written in the days of the Restoration, when the revulsion of feeling created a passion for the basest defamation, and unduly magnified the small defects of etiquette, behavior, and dress in the preceding régime. The scraps of evidence which these writings afford ought to be carefully examined, and viewed from the standpoint of the circumstances which produced them. Such a task being well-nigh hopeless, the deeds of the First Consul must speak for him rather than the statements about them and him which he himself and others have made. He was not in touch with the polite society of Paris; he certainly did most arbitrarily banish from its precincts Mme. de Staël, the brilliant woman whose writings many praise but few now read, and whose home was the focus for the discontented ability of the time; he never appreciated the spirit of true liberty, and he often misapprehended the gentler spirits who in its name sought his powerful protection and patronage; he was not sensitive to the finer sentiments of the mind, often mocking at the "ideologues"; and while he enjoyed the society of Josephine and her friends, he repelled their interference with his plans, and apparently never forgot that her jealous devotion had grown with his power and reputation. All this must be admitted in characterizing Bonaparte at the height of his greatness; but the vile innuendos, insinuations, and imputations of sordid traits, which so abound in the diaries of the time, must be considered in relation to the murky natures of those who recorded them, and, with allowances for the time and the training of the man, may be consigned to the limbo of malice from which they came.

The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Vol. 2 (of 4)

THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

WILLIAM MILLIGAN SLOANE

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

CHAPTER I

Rescue of the Directory [1]

CHAPTER II

The Treaty of Campo Formio [2]

CHAPTER III

Bonaparte and Talleyrand [3]

CHAPTER IV

Commotions in European Politics

CHAPTER V

The Expedition to Egypt [6]

CHAPTER VI

The Landing in Egypt [7]

CHAPTER VII

The Disaster at Acre [8]

CHAPTER VIII

Aboukir and the Great Desertion [9]

CHAPTER IX

"The Return of the Hero"[10]

CHAPTER X [12]

Bonaparte Seizes his Opportunity

CHAPTER XI

The Overthrow of the Directory

CHAPTER XII [13]

Bonaparte the First Consul

CHAPTER XIII

Bonaparte Embodies the Revolution [14]

CHAPTER XIV [15]

A Constitutional Despotism

CHAPTER XV

Statesmanship and Strategy [16]

CHAPTER XVI [17]

Marengo

CHAPTER XVII

The Peace of Lunéville [18]

The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Vol. 2 (of 4)

THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

WILLIAM MILLIGAN SLOANE

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

CHAPTER I

Rescue of the Directory[1]

CHAPTER II

The Treaty of Campo Formio[2]

CHAPTER III

Bonaparte and Talleyrand[3]

CHAPTER IV

Commotions in European Politics

CHAPTER V

The Expedition to Egypt[6]

CHAPTER VI

The Landing in Egypt[7]

CHAPTER VII

The Disaster at Acre[8]

CHAPTER VIII

Aboukir and the Great Desertion[9]

CHAPTER IX

"The Return of the Hero"[10]

CHAPTER X[12]

Bonaparte Seizes his Opportunity

CHAPTER XI

The Overthrow of the Directory

CHAPTER XII[13]

Bonaparte the First Consul

CHAPTER XIII

Bonaparte Embodies the Revolution[14]

CHAPTER XIV[15]

A Constitutional Despotism

CHAPTER XV

Statesmanship and Strategy[16]

CHAPTER XVI[17]

Marengo

CHAPTER XVII

The Peace of Lunéville[18]

Rescue of the Directory [1]

The Treaty of Campo Formio [2]

Bonaparte and Talleyrand [3]

The Expedition to Egypt [6]

The Landing in Egypt [7]

The Disaster at Acre [8]

Aboukir and the Great Desertion [9]

CHAPTER X [12]

CHAPTER XII [13]

Bonaparte Embodies the Revolution [14]

CHAPTER XIV [15]

Statesmanship and Strategy [16]

CHAPTER XVI [17]

The Peace of Lunéville [18]