The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Life Of Napoleon I by John Holland Rose

"Let my son often read and reflect on history: this is the only true philosophy."—Napoleon's last Instructions for the King of Rome.

THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I

INCLUDING NEW MATERIALS FROM THE BRITISH OFFICIAL RECORDS

BY JOHN HOLLAND ROSE, LITT.D.
LATE SCHOLAR OF CHRIST'S COLLEGE,
CAMBRIDGE

LONDON G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
1910

PREFACE

An apology seems to be called for from anyone who gives to the world a new Life of Napoleon I. My excuse must be that for many years I have sought to revise the traditional story of his career in the light of facts gleaned from the British Archives and of the many valuable materials that have recently been published by continental historians. To explain my manner of dealing with these sources would require an elaborate critical Introduction; but, as the limits of my space absolutely preclude any such attempt, I can only briefly refer to the most important topics.

To deal with the published sources first, I would name as of chief importance the works of MM. Aulard, Chuquet, Houssaye, Sorel, and Vandal in France; of Herren Beer, Delbrück, Fournier, Lehmann, Oncken, and Wertheimer in Germany and Austria; and of Baron Lumbroso in Italy. I have also profited largely by the scholarly monographs or collections of documents due to the labours of the "Société d'Histoire Contemporaine," the General Staff of the French Army, of MM. Bouvier, Caudrillier, Capitaine "J.G.," Lévy, Madelin, Sagnac, Sciout, Zivy, and others in France; and of Herren Bailleu, Demelitsch, Hansing, Klinkowstrom, Luckwaldt, Ulmann, and others in Germany. Some of the recently published French Memoirs dealing with those times are not devoid of value, though this class of literature is to be used with caution. The new letters of Napoleon published by M. Léon Lecestre and M. Léonce de Brotonne [pg.VIII] have also opened up fresh vistas into the life of the great man; and the time seems to have come when we may safely revise our judgments on many of its episodes.

But I should not have ventured on this great undertaking, had I not been able to contribute something new to Napoleonic literature. During a study of this period for an earlier work published in the "Cambridge Historical Series," I ascertained the great value of the British records for the years 1795-1815. It is surely discreditable to our historical research that, apart from the fruitful labours of the Navy Records Society, of Messrs. Oscar Browning and Hereford George, and of Mr. Bowman of Toronto, scarcely any English work has appeared that is based on the official records of this period. Yet they are of great interest and value. Our diplomatic agents then had the knack of getting at State secrets in most foreign capitals, even when we were at war with their Governments; and our War Office and Admiralty Records have also yielded me some interesting "finds." M. Lévy, in the preface to his "Napoléon intime" (1893), has well remarked that "the documentary history of the wars of the Empire has not yet been written. To write it accurately, it will be more important thoroughly to know foreign archives than those of France." Those of Russia, Austria, and Prussia have now for the most part been examined; and I think that I may claim to have searched all the important parts of our Foreign Office Archives for the years in question, as well as for part of the St. Helena period. I have striven to embody the results of this search in the present volumes as far as was compatible with limits of space and with the narrative form at which, in my judgment, history ought always to aim.

On the whole, British policy comes out the better the [pg.IX] more fully it is known. Though often feeble and vacillating, it finally attained to firmness and dignity; and Ministers closed the cycle of war with acts of magnanimity towards the French people which are studiously ignored by those who bid us shed tears over the martyrdom of St. Helena. Nevertheless, the splendour of the finale must not blind us to the flaccid eccentricities that made British statesmanship the laughing stock of Europe in 1801-3, 1806-7, and 1809. Indeed, it is questionable whether the renewal of war between England and Napoleon in 1803 was due more to his innate forcefulness or to the contempt which he felt for the Addington Cabinet. When one also remembers our extraordinary blunders in the war of the Third Coalition, it seems a miracle that the British Empire survived that life and death struggle against a man of superhuman genius who was determined to effect its overthrow. I have called special attention to the extent and pertinacity of Napoleon's schemes for the foundation of a French Colonial Empire in India, Egypt, South Africa, and Australia; and there can be no doubt that the events of the years 1803-13 determined, not only the destinies of Europe and Napoleon, but the general trend of the world's colonization.

As it has been necessary to condense the story of Napoleon's life in some parts, I have chosen to treat with special brevity the years 1809-11, which may be called the constans aetas of his career, in order to have more space for the decisive events that followed; but even in these less eventful years I have striven to show how his Continental System was setting at work mighty economic forces that made for his overthrow, so that after the débâcle of 1812 it came to be a struggle of Napoleon and France contra mundum. [pg.X]

While not neglecting the personal details of the great man's life, I have dwelt mainly on his public career. Apart from his brilliant conversations, his private life has few features of abiding interest, perhaps because he early tired of the shallowness of Josephine and the Corsican angularity of his brothers and sisters. But the cause also lay in his own disposition. He once said to M. Gallois: "Je n'aime pas beaucoup les femmes, ni le jeu—enfin rien: je suis tout à fait un être politique." In dealing with him as a warrior and statesman, and in sparing my readers details as to his bolting his food, sleeping at concerts, and indulging in amours where for him there was no glamour of romance, I am laying stress on what interested him most—in a word, I am taking him at his best.

I could not have accomplished this task, even in the present inadequate way, but for the help generously accorded from many quarters. My heartfelt thanks are due to Lord Acton, Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge, for advice of the highest importance; to Mr. Hubert Hall of the Public Record Office, for guidance in my researches there; to Baron Lumbroso of Rome, editor of the "Bibliografia ragionata dell' Epoca Napoleonica," for hints on Italian and other affairs; to Dr. Luckwaldt, Privat Docent of the University of Bonn, and author of "Oesterreich und die Anfänge des Befreiungs-Krieges," for his very scholarly revision of the chapters on German affairs; to Mr. F.H.E. Cunliffe, M.A., Fellow of All Souls' College, Oxford, for valuable advice on the campaigns of 1800, 1805, and 1806; to Professor Caudrillier of Grenoble, author of "Pichegru," for information respecting the royalist plot; and to Messrs. J.E. Morris, M.A., and E.L.S. Horsburgh, B.A., for detailed communications concerning Waterloo, [pg.XI] The nieces of the late Professor Westwood of Oxford most kindly allowed the facsimile of the new Napoleon letter, printed opposite p. 156 of vol. i., to be made from the original in their possession; and Miss Lowe courteously placed at my disposal the papers of her father relating to the years 1813-15, as well as to the St. Helena period. I wish here to record my grateful obligations for all these friendly courtesies, which have given value to the book, besides saving me from many of the pitfalls with which the subject abounds. That I have escaped them altogether is not to be imagined; but I can honestly say, in the words of the late Bishop of London, that "I have tried to write true history."

[NOTE.—The references to Napoleon's "Correspondence" in the notes are to the official French edition, published under the auspices of Napoleon III. The "New Letters of Napoleon" are those edited by Léon Lecestre, and translated into English by Lady Mary Loyd, except in a very few cases where M. Léonce de Brotonne's still more recent edition is cited under his name. By "F.O.," France, No.——, and "F.O.," Prussia, No.——, are meant the volumes of our Foreign Office despatches relating to France and Prussia. For the sake of brevity I have called Napoleon's Marshals and high officials by their names, not by their titles: but a list of these is given at the close of vol. ii.] [pg.XII]

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION

The demand for this work so far exceeded my expectations that I was unable to make any considerable changes in the second edition, issued in March, 1902; and circumstances again make it impossible for me to give the work that thorough recension which I should desire. I have, however, carefully considered the suggestions offered by critics, and have adopted them in some cases. Professor Fournier of Vienna has most kindly furnished me with details which seem to relegate to the domain of legend the famous ice catastrophe at Austerlitz; and I have added a note to this effect on p. 50 of vol. ii. On the other hand, I may justly claim that the publication of Count Balmain's reports relating to St. Helena has served to corroborate, in all important details, my account of Napoleon's captivity.

It only remains to add that I much regret the omission of Mr. Oman's name from II. 12-13 of page viii of the Preface, an omission rendered all the more conspicuous by the appearance of the first volume of his "History of the Peninsular War" in the spring of this year.

Notes have been added at the end of ch. v., vol. i.; chs. xxii., xxiii., xxviii., xxix., xxxv., vol. ii.; and an Appendix on the Battle of Waterloo has been added on p. 577, vol. ii.

VOLUME I

NOTE ON THE REPUBLICAN CALENDAR

The republican calendar consisted of twelve months of thirty days each, each month being divided into three "decades" of ten days. Five days (in leap years six) were added at the end of the year to bring it into coincidence with the solar year.

The new computation, though reckoned from Sept. 22, 1792, was not introduced until Nov. 26, 1793 (An II). It ceased after Dec. 31, 1805.

In 1796 (leap year) the numbers in the table of months, so far as concerns all dates between Feb. 28 and Sept. 22, will have to be reduced by one, owing to the intercalation of Feb. 29, which is not compensated for until the end of the republican year.

The matter is further complicated by the fact that the republicans reckoned An VIII as a leap year, though it is not one in the Gregorian Calendar. Hence that year ended on Sept. 22, and An IX and succeeding years began on Sept. 23. Consequently in the above table of months the numbers of all days from Vendémiaire 1, An IX (Sept. 23, 1800), to Nivôse 10, An XIV (Dec. 31, 1805), inclusive, will have to be increased by one, except only in the next leap year between Ventôse 9, An XII, and Vendémiaire 1, An XIII (Feb. 28-Sept, 23, 1804), when the two Revolutionary aberrations happen to neutralize each other. [pg.1]

THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I

CHAPTER I

"I was born when my country was perishing. Thirty thousand French vomited upon our coasts, drowning the throne of Liberty in waves of blood, such was the sight which struck my eyes." This passionate utterance, penned by Napoleon Buonaparte at the beginning of the French Revolution, describes the state of Corsica in his natal year. The words are instinct with the vehemence of the youth and the extravagant sentiment of the age: they strike the keynote of his career. His life was one of strain and stress from his cradle to his grave.

In his temperament as in the circumstances of his time the young Buonaparte was destined for an extraordinary career. Into a tottering civilization he burst with all the masterful force of an Alaric. But he was an Alaric of the south, uniting the untamed strength of his island kindred with the mental powers of his Italian ancestry. In his personality there is a complex blending of force and grace, of animal passion and mental clearness, of northern common sense with the promptings of an oriental imagination; and this union in his nature of seeming opposites explains many of the mysteries of his life. Fortunately for lovers of romance, genius cannot be wholly analyzed, even by the most [pg.2] adroit historical philosophizer or the most exacting champion of heredity. But in so far as the sources of Napoleon's power can be measured, they may be traced to the unexampled needs of mankind in the revolutionary epoch and to his own exceptional endowments. Evidently, then, the characteristics of his family claim some attention from all who would understand the man and the influence which he was to wield over modern Europe.

It has been the fortune of his House to be the subject of dispute from first to last. Some writers have endeavoured to trace its descent back to the Cæsars of Rome, others to the Byzantine Emperors; one genealogical explorer has tracked the family to Majorca, and, altering its name to Bonpart, has discovered its progenitor in the Man of the Iron Mask; while the Duchesse d'Abrantès, voyaging eastwards in quest of its ancestors, has confidently claimed for the family a Greek origin. Painstaking research has dispelled these romancings of historical trouveurs, and has connected this enigmatic stock with a Florentine named "William, who in the year 1261 took the surname of Bonaparte or Buonaparte. The name seems to have been assumed when, amidst the unceasing strifes between Guelfs and Ghibellines that rent the civic life of Florence, William's party, the Ghibellines, for a brief space gained the ascendancy. But perpetuity was not to be found in Florentine politics; and in a short time he was a fugitive at a Tuscan village, Sarzana, beyond the reach of the victorious Guelfs. Here the family seems to have lived for wellnigh three centuries, maintaining its Ghibelline and aristocratic principles with surprising tenacity. The age was not remarkable for the virtue of constancy, or any other virtue. Politics and private life were alike demoralized by unceasing intrigues; and amidst strifes of Pope and Emperor, duchies and republics, cities and autocrats, there was formed that type of Italian character which is delineated in the pages of Macchiavelli. From the depths of debasement of that cynical age the Buonapartes were saved by their poverty, and by the isolation [pg.3] of their life at Sarzana. Yet the embassies discharged at intervals by the more talented members of the family showed that the gifts for intrigue were only dormant; and they were certainly transmitted in their intensity to the greatest scion of the race.

In the year 1529 Francis Buonaparte, whether pressed by poverty or distracted by despair at the misfortunes which then overwhelmed Italy, migrated to Corsica. There the family was grafted upon a tougher branch of the Italian race. To the vulpine characteristics developed under the shadow of the Medici there were now added qualities of a more virile stamp. Though dominated in turn by the masters of the Mediterranean, by Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, by the men of Pisa, and finally by the Genoese Republic, the islanders retained a striking individuality. The rock-bound coast and mountainous interior helped to preserve the essential features of primitive life. Foreign Powers might affect the towns on the sea-board, but they left the clans of the interior comparatively untouched. Their life centred around the family. The Government counted for little or nothing; for was it not the symbol of the detested foreign rule? Its laws were therefore as naught when they conflicted with the unwritten but omnipotent code of family honour. A slight inflicted on a neighbour would call forth the warning words—"Guard thyself: I am on my guard." Forthwith there began a blood feud, a vendetta, which frequently dragged on its dreary course through generations of conspiracy and murder, until, the principals having vanished, the collateral branches of the families were involved. No Corsican was so loathed as the laggard who shrank from avenging the family honour, even on a distant relative of the first offender. The murder of the Duc d'Enghien by Napoleon in 1834 sent a thrill of horror through the Continent. To the Corsicans it seemed little more than an autocratic version of the vendetta traversale ^[1]. [pg.4]

The vendetta was the chief law of Corsican society up to comparatively recent times; and its effects are still visible in the life of the stern islanders. In his charming romance, "Colomba," M. Prosper Mérimée has depicted the typical Corsican, even of the towns, as preoccupied, gloomy, suspicious, ever on the alert, hovering about his dwelling, like a falcon over his nest, seemingly in preparation for attack or defence. Laughter, the song, the dance, were rarely heard in the streets; for the women, after acting as the drudges of the household, were kept jealously at home, while their lords smoked and watched. If a game at hazard were ventured upon, it ran its course in silence, which not seldom was broken by the shot or the stab—first warning that there had been underhand play. The deed always preceded the word.

In such a life, where commerce and agriculture were despised, where woman was mainly a drudge and man a conspirator, there grew up the typical Corsican temperament, moody and exacting, but withal keen, brave, and constant, which looked on the world as a fencing-school for the glorification of the family and the clan ^[2]. Of this[pg.5] type Napoleon was to be the supreme exemplar; and the fates granted him as an arena a chaotic France and a distracted Europe.

Amidst that grim Corsican existence the Buonapartes passed their lives during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Occupied as advocates and lawyers with such details of the law as were of any practical importance, they must have been involved in family feuds and the oft-recurring disputes between Corsica and the suzerain Power, Genoa. As became dignitaries in the municipality of Ajaccio, several of the Buonapartes espoused the Genoese side; and the Genoese Senate in a document of the year 1652 styled one of them, Jérome, "Egregius Hieronimus di Buonaparte, procurator Nobilium." These distinctions they seem to have little coveted. Very few families belonged to the Corsican noblesse, and their fiefs were unimportant. In Corsica, as in the Forest Cantons of Switzerland and the Highlands of Scotland, class distinctions were by no means so coveted as in lands that had been thoroughly feudalized; and the Buonapartes, content with their civic dignities at Ajaccio and the attachment of their partisans on their country estates, seem rarely to have used the prefix which implied nobility. Their life was not unlike that of many an old Scottish laird, who, though possibly bourgeois in origin, yet by courtesy ranked as chieftain among his tenants, and was ennobled by the parlance of the countryside, perhaps all the more readily because he refused to wear the honours that came from over the Border.

But a new influence was now to call forth all the powers of this tough stock. In the middle of the eighteenth century we find the head of the family, Charles Marie Buonaparte, aglow with the flame of Corsican patriotism then being kindled by the noble career of Paoli. This gifted patriot, the champion of the islanders, first against the Genoese and later against the French, desired to cement by education the framework of the Corsican Commonwealth and founded a university. It [pg.6] was here that the father of the future French Emperor received a training in law, and a mental stimulus which was to lift his family above the level of the caporali and attorneys with whom its lot had for centuries been cast. His ambition is seen in the endeavour, successfully carried out by his uncle, Lucien, Archdeacon of Ajaccio, to obtain recognition of kinship with the Buonapartes of Tuscany who had been ennobled by the Grand Duke. His patriotism is evinced in his ardent support of Paoli, by whose valour and energy the Genoese were finally driven from the island. Amidst these patriotic triumphs Charles confronted his destiny in the person of Letizia Ramolino, a beautiful girl, descended from an honourable Florentine family which had for centuries been settled in Corsica. The wedding took place in 1764, the bridegroom being then eighteen, and the bride fifteen years of age. The union, if rashly undertaken in the midst of civil strifes, was yet well assorted. Both parties to it were of patrician, if not definitely noble descent, and came of families which combined the intellectual gifts of Tuscany with the vigour of their later island home ^[3]. From her mother's race, the Pietra Santa family, Letizia imbibed the habits of the most backward and savage part of Corsica, where vendettas were rife and education was almost unknown. Left in ignorance in her early days, she yet was accustomed to hardships, and often showed the fertility of resource which such a life always develops. Hence, at the time of her marriage, she possessed a firmness of will far beyond her years; and her strength and fortitude enabled her to survive the terrible adversities of her early days, as also to meet with quiet matronly dignity the extraordinary honours showered on her as the mother of the French[pg.7] Emperor. She was inured to habits of frugality, which reappeared in the personal tastes of her son. In fact, she so far retained her old parsimonious habits, even amidst the splendours of the French Imperial Court, as to expose herself to the charge of avarice. But there is a touching side to all this. She seems ever to have felt that after the splendour there would come again the old days of adversity, and her instincts were in one sense correct. She lived on to the advanced age of eighty-six, and died twenty-one years after the break-up of her son's empire—a striking proof of the vitality and tenacity of her powers.

A kindly Providence veiled the future from the young couple. Troubles fell swiftly upon them both in private and in public life. Their first two children died in infancy. The third, Joseph, was born in 1768, when the Corsican patriots were making their last successful efforts against their new French oppressors: the fourth, the famous Napoleon, saw the light on August 15th, 1769, when the liberties of Corsica were being finally extinguished. Nine other children were born before the outbreak of the French Revolution reawakened civil strifes, amidst which the then fatherless family was tossed to and fro and finally whirled away to France.

Destiny had already linked the fortunes of the young Napoleon Buonaparte with those of France. After the downfall of Genoese rule in Corsica, France had taken over, for empty promises, the claims of the hard-pressed Italian republic to its troublesome island possession. It was a cheap and practical way of restoring, at least in the Mediterranean the shattered prestige of the French Bourbons. They had previously intervened in Corsican affairs on the side of the Genoese. Yet in 1764 Paoli appealed to Louis XV. for protection. It was granted, in the form of troops that proceeded quietly to occupy the coast towns of the island under cover of friendly assurances. In 1768, before the expiration of an informal truce, Marbeuf, the French commander, [pg.8] commenced hostilities against the patriots ^[4]. In vain did Rousseau and many other champions of popular liberty protest against this bartering away of insular freedom: in vain did Paoli rouse his compatriots to another and more unequal struggle, and seek to hold the mountainous interior. Poor, badly equipped, rent by family feuds and clan schisms, his followers were no match for the French troops; and after the utter break-up of his forces Paoli fled to England, taking with him three hundred and forty of the most determined patriots. With these irreconcilables Charles Buonaparte did not cast in his lot, but accepted the pardon offered to those who should recognize the French sway. With his wife and their little child Joseph he returned to Ajaccio; and there, shortly afterwards, Napoleon was born. As the patriotic historian, Jacobi, has finely said, "The Corsican people, when exhausted by producing martyrs to the cause of liberty, produced Napoleon Buonaparte ^[5]."

Seeing that Charles Buonaparte had been an ardent adherent of Paoli, his sudden change of front has exposed him to keen censure. He certainly had not the grit of which heroes are made. His seems to have been an ill-balanced nature, soon buoyed up by enthusiasms,[pg.9] and as speedily depressed by their evaporation; endowed with enough of learning and culture to be a Voltairean and write second-rate verses; and with a talent for intrigue which sufficed to embarrass his never very affluent fortunes. Napoleon certainly derived no world-compelling qualities from his father: for these he was indebted to the wilder strain which ran in his mother's blood. The father doubtless saw in the French connection a chance of worldly advancement and of liberation from pecuniary difficulties; for the new rulers now sought to gain over the patrician families of the island. Many of them had resented the dictatorship of Paoli; and they now gladly accepted the connection with France, which promised to enrich their country and to open up a brilliant career in the French army, where commissions were limited to the scions of nobility.

Much may be said in excuse of Charles Buonaparte's decision, and no one can deny that Corsica has ultimately gained much by her connection with France. But his change of front was open to the charge that it was prompted by self-interest rather than by philosophic foresight. At any rate, his second son throughout his boyhood nursed a deep resentment against his father for his desertion of the patriots' cause. The youth's sympathies were with the peasants, whose allegiance was not to be bought by baubles, whose constancy and bravery long held out against the French in a hopeless guerilla warfare. His hot Corsican blood boiled at the stories of oppression and insult which he heard from his humbler compatriots. When, at eleven years of age, he saw in the military college at Brienne the portrait of Choiseul, the French Minister who had urged on the conquest of Corsica, his passion burst forth in a torrent of imprecations against the traitor; and, even after the death of his father in 1785, he exclaimed that he could never forgive him for not following Paoli into exile.

What trifles seem, at times, to alter the current of human affairs! Had his father acted thus, the young Napoleon would in all probability have entered the [pg.10] military or naval service of Great Britain; he might have shared Paoli's enthusiasm for the land of his adoption, and have followed the Corsican hero in his enterprises against the French Revolution, thenceforth figuring in history merely as a greater Marlborough, crushing the military efforts of democratic France, and luring England into a career of Continental conquest. Monarchy and aristocracy would have gone unchallenged, except within the "natural limits" of France; and the other nations, never shaken to their inmost depths, would have dragged on their old inert fragmentary existence.

The decision of Charles Buonaparte altered the destiny of Europe. He determined that his eldest boy, Joseph, should enter the Church, and that Napoleon should be a soldier. His perception of the characters of his boys was correct. An anecdote, for which the elder brother is responsible, throws a flood of light on their temperaments. The master of their school arranged a mimic combat for his pupils—Romans against Carthaginians. Joseph, as the elder was ranged under the banner of Rome, while Napoleon was told off among the Carthaginians; but, piqued at being chosen for the losing side, the child fretted, begged, and stormed until the less bellicose Joseph agreed to change places with his exacting junior. The incident is prophetic of much in the later history of the family.

Its imperial future was opened up by the deft complaisance now shown by Charles Buonaparte. The reward for his speedy submission to France was soon forthcoming. The French commander in Corsica used his influence to secure the admission of the young Napoleon to the military school of Brienne in Champagne; and as the father was able to satisfy the authorities not only that he was without fortune, but also that his family had been noble for four generations, Napoleon was admitted to this school to be educated at the charges of the King of France (April, 1779). He was now, at the tender age of nine, a stranger in a strange land, among a people whom he detested as the oppressors of his countrymen. [pg.11] Worst of all, he had to endure the taunt of belonging to a subject race. What a position for a proud and exacting child! Little wonder that the official report represented him as silent and obstinate; but, strange to say, it added the word "imperious." It was a tough character which could defy repression amidst such surroundings. As to his studies, little need be said. In his French history he read of the glories of the distant past (when "Germany was part of the French Empire"), the splendours of the reign of Louis XIV., the disasters of France in the Seven Years' War, and the "prodigious conquests of the English in India." But his imagination was kindled from other sources. Boys of pronounced character have always owed far more to their private reading than to their set studies; and the young Buonaparte, while grudgingly learning Latin and French grammar, was feeding his mind on Plutarch's "Lives"—in a French translation. The artful intermingling of the actual and the romantic, the historic and the personal, in those vivid sketches of ancient worthies and heroes, has endeared them to many minds. Rousseau derived unceasing profit from their perusal; and Madame Roland found in them "the pasture of great souls." It was so with the lonely Corsican youth. Holding aloof from his comrades in gloomy isolation, he caught in the exploits of Greeks and Romans a distant echo of the tragic romance of his beloved island home. The librarian of the school asserted that even then the young soldier had modelled his future career on that of the heroes of antiquity; and we may well believe that, in reading of the exploits of Leonidas, Curtius, and Cincinnatus, he saw the figure of his own antique republican hero, Paoli. To fight side by side with Paoli against the French was his constant dream. "Paoli will return," he once exclaimed, "and as soon as I have strength, I will go to help him: and perhaps together we shall be able to shake the odious yoke from off the neck of Corsica."

But there was another work which exercised a great influence on his young mind—the "Gallic War" of [pg.12] Cæsar. To the young Italian the conquest of Gaul by a man of his own race must have been a congenial topic, and in Cæsar himself the future conqueror may dimly have recognized a kindred spirit. The masterful energy and all-conquering will of the old Roman, his keen insight into the heart of a problem, the wide sweep of his mental vision, ranging over the intrigues of the Roman Senate, the shifting politics of a score of tribes, and the myriad administrative details of a great army and a mighty province—these were the qualities that furnished the chief mental training to the young cadet. Indeed, the career of Cæsar was destined to exert a singular fascination over the Napoleonic dynasty, not only on its founder, but also on Napoleon III.; and the change in the character and career of Napoleon the Great may be registered mentally in the effacement of the portraits of Leonidas and Paoli by those of Cæsar and Alexander. Later on, during his sojourn at Ajaccio in 1790, when the first shadows were flitting across his hitherto unclouded love for Paoli, we hear that he spent whole nights poring over Cæsar's history, committing many passages to memory in his passionate admiration of those wondrous exploits. Eagerly he took Cæsar's side as against Pompey, and no less warmly defended him from the charge of plotting against the liberties of the commonwealth ^[6]. It was a perilous study for a republican youth in whom the military instincts were as ingrained as the genius for rule.

Concerning the young Buonaparte's life at Brienne there exist few authentic records and many questionable anecdotes. Of these last, that which is the most credible and suggestive relates his proposal to his schoolfellows to construct ramparts of snow during the sharp winter of 1783-4. According to his schoolfellow, Bourrienne, these mimic fortifications were planned by Buonaparte, who also directed the methods of attack and defence: or, as others say, he reconstructed the walls according to the needs of modern war. In either case, the incident [pg.13] bespeaks for him great power of organization and control. But there were in general few outlets for his originality and vigour. He seems to have disliked all his comrades, except Bourrienne, as much as they detested him for his moody humours and fierce outbreaks of temper. He is even reported to have vowed that he would do as much harm as possible to the French people; but the remark smacks of the story-book. Equally doubtful are the two letters in which he prays to be removed from the indignities to which he was subjected at Brienne ^[7]. In other letters which are undoubtedly genuine, he refers to his future career with ardour, and writes not a word as to the bullying to which his Corsican zeal subjected him. Particularly noteworthy is the letter to his uncle begging him to intervene so as to prevent Joseph Buonaparte from taking up a military career. Joseph, writes the younger brother, would make a good garrison officer, as he was well formed and clever at frivolous compliments—"good therefore for society, but for a fight——?"

Napoleon's determination had been noticed by his teachers. They had failed to bend his will, at least on important points. In lesser details his Italian adroitness seems to have been of service; for the officer who inspected the school reported of him: "Constitution, health excellent: character submissive, sweet, honest, grateful: conduct very regular: has always distinguished himself by his application to mathematics: knows history and geography passably: very weak in accomplishments. He will be an excellent seaman: is worthy to enter the School at Paris." To the military school at Paris he was accordingly sent in due course, entering there in October, 1784. The change from the semi-monastic life at Brienne to the splendid edifice which fronts the Champ de Mars had less effect than might[pg.14] have been expected in a youth of fifteen years. Not yet did he become French in sympathy. His love of Corsica and hatred of the French monarchy steeled him against the luxuries of his new surroundings. Perhaps it was an added sting that he was educated at the expense of the monarchy which had conquered his kith and kin. He nevertheless applied himself with energy to his favourite studies, especially mathematics. Defective in languages he still was, and ever remained; for his critical acumen in literature ever fastened on the matter rather than on style. To the end of his days he could never write Italian, much less French, with accuracy; and his tutor at Paris not inaptly described his boyish composition as resembling molten granite. The same qualities of directness and impetuosity were also fatal to his efforts at mastering the movements of the dance. In spite of lessons at Paris and private lessons which he afterwards took at Valence, he was never a dancer: his bent was obviously for the exact sciences rather than the arts, for the geometrical rather than the rhythmical: he thought, as he moved, in straight lines, never in curves.

The death of his father during the year which the youth spent at Paris sharpened his sense of responsibility towards his seven younger brothers and sisters. His own poverty must have inspired him with disgust at the luxury which he saw around him; but there are good reasons for doubting the genuineness of the memorial which he is alleged to have sent from Paris to the second master at Brienne on this subject. The letters of the scholars at Paris were subject to strict surveillance; and, if he had taken the trouble to draw up a list of criticisms on his present training, most assuredly it would have been destroyed. Undoubtedly, however, he would have sympathized with the unknown critic in his complaint of the unsuitableness of sumptuous meals to youths who were destined for the hardships of the camp. At Brienne he had been dubbed "the Spartan," an instance of that almost uncanny faculty of schoolboys [pg.15] to dash off in a nickname the salient features of character. The phrase was correct, almost for Napoleon's whole life. At any rate, the pomp of Paris served but to root his youthful affections more tenaciously in the rocks of Corsica.

In September, 1785, that is, at the age of sixteen, Buonaparte was nominated for a commision as junior lieutenant in La Fère regiment of artillery quartered at Valence on the Rhone. This was his first close contact with real life. The rules of the service required him to spend three months of rigorous drill before he was admitted to his commission. The work was exacting: the pay was small, viz., 1,120 francs, or less than £45, a year; but all reports agree as to his keen zest for his profession and the recognition of his transcendent abilities by his superior officers.^[8] There it was that he mastered the rudiments of war, for lack of which many generals of noble birth have quickly closed in disaster careers that began with promise: there, too, he learnt that hardest and best of all lessons, prompt obedience. "To learn obeying is the fundamental art of governing," says Carlyle. It was so with Napoleon: at Valence he served his apprenticeship in the art of conquering and the art of governing.

This spring-time of his life is of interest and importance in many ways: it reveals many amiable qualities, which had hitherto been blighted by the real or fancied scorn of the wealthy cadets. At Valence, while shrinking from his brother officers, he sought society more congenial to his simple tastes and restrained demeanour. In a few of the best bourgeois families of Valence he found happiness. There, too, blossomed the tenderest, purest idyll of his life. At the country house of a cultured lady who had befriended him in his solitude, he saw his first love, Caroline de Colombier. It was a passing fancy; but to her all the passion of his southern nature welled forth. She seems[pg.16] to have returned his love; for in the stormy sunset of his life at St. Helena he recalled some delicious walks at dawn when Caroline and he had—eaten cherries together. One lingers fondly over these scenes of his otherwise stern career, for they reveal his capacity for social joys and for deep and tender affection, had his lot been otherwise cast. How different might have been his life, had France never conquered Corsica, and had the Revolution never burst forth! But Corsica was still his dominant passion. When he was called away from Valence to repress a riot at Lyons, his feelings, distracted for a time by Caroline, swerved back towards his island home; and in September, 1786, he had the joy of revisiting the scenes of his childhood. Warmly though he greeted his mother, brothers and sisters, after an absence of nearly eight years, his chief delight was in the rocky shores, the verdant dales and mountain heights of Corsica. The odour of the forests, the setting of the sun in the sea "as in the bosom of the infinite," the quiet proud independence of the mountaineers themselves, all enchanted him. His delight reveals almost Wertherian powers of "sensibility." Even the family troubles could not damp his ardour. His father had embarked on questionable speculations, which now threatened the Buonapartes with bankruptcy, unless the French Government proved to be complacent and generous. With the hope of pressing one of the family claims on the royal exchequer, the second son procured an extension of furlough and sped to Paris. There at the close of 1787 he spent several weeks, hopefully endeavouring to extract money from the bankrupt Government. It was a season of disillusionment in more senses than one; for there he saw for himself the seamy side of Parisian life, and drifted for a brief space about the giddy vortex of the Palais Royal. What a contrast to the limpid life of Corsica was that turbid frothy existence—already swirling towards its mighty plunge!

After a furlough of twenty-one months he rejoined his regiment, now at Auxonne. There his health suffered [pg.17] considerably, not only from the miasma of the marshes of the river Saône, but also from family anxieties and arduous literary toils. To these last it is now needful to refer. Indeed, the external events of his early life are of value only as they reveal the many-sidedness of his nature and the growth of his mental powers.

How came he to outgrow the insular patriotism of his early years? The foregoing recital of facts must have already suggested one obvious explanation. Nature had dowered him so prodigally with diverse gifts, mainly of an imperious order, that he could scarcely have limited his sphere of action to Corsica. Profoundly as he loved his island, it offered no sphere commensurate with his varied powers and masterful will. It was no empty vaunt which his father had uttered on his deathbed that his Napoleon would one day overthrow the old monarchies and conquer Europe.^[9] Neither did the great commander himself overstate the peculiarity of his temperament, when he confessed that his instincts had ever prompted him that his will must prevail, and that what pleased him must of necessity belong to him. Most spoilt children harbour the same illusion, for a brief space. But all the buffetings of fortune failed to drive it from the young Buonaparte; and when despair as to his future might have impaired the vigour of his domineering instincts, his mind and will acquired a fresh rigidity by coming under the spell of that philosophizing doctrinaire, Rousseau.

There was every reason why he should early be attracted by this fantastic thinker. In that notable work, "Le Contrat Social" (1762), Rousseau called attention to the antique energy shown by the Corsicans in defence of their liberties, and in a startlingly prophetic phrase he exclaimed that the little island would one day astonish Europe. The source of this predilection of Rousseau for Corsica is patent. Born and reared at Geneva, he felt a Switzer's love for a people which was[pg.18] "neither rich nor poor but self-sufficing "; and in the simple life and fierce love of liberty of the hardy islanders he saw traces of that social contract which he postulated as the basis of society. According to him, the beginnings of all social and political institutions are to be found in some agreement or contract between men. Thus arise the clan, the tribe, the nation. The nation may delegate many of its powers to a ruler; but if he abuse such powers, the contract between him and his people is at an end, and they may return to the primitive state, which is founded on an agreement of equals with equals. Herein lay the attractiveness of Rousseau for all who were discontented with their surroundings. He seemed infallibly to demonstrate the absurdity of tyranny and the need of returning to the primitive bliss of the social contract. It mattered not that the said contract was utterly unhistorical and that his argument teemed with fallacies. He inspired a whole generation with detestation of the present and with longings for the golden age. Poets had sung of it, but Rousseau seemed to bring it within the grasp of long-suffering mortals.

The first extant manuscript of Napoleon, written at Valence in April, 1786, shows that he sought in Rousseau's armoury the logical weapons for demonstrating the "right" of the Corsicans to rebel against the French. The young hero-worshipper begins by noting that it is the birthday of Paoli. He plunges into a panegyric on the Corsican patriots, when he is arrested by the thought that many censure them for rebelling at all. "The divine laws forbid revolt. But what have divine laws to do with a purely human affair? Just think of the absurdity—divine laws universally forbidding the casting off of a usurping yoke!... As for human laws, there cannot be any after the prince violates them." He then postulates two origins for government as alone possible. Either the people has established laws and submitted itself to the prince, or the prince has established laws. In the first case, the prince is engaged by the very nature of his office to execute the covenants. In the second [pg.19] case, the laws tend, or do not tend, to the welfare of the people, which is the aim of all government: if they do not, the contract with the prince dissolves of itself, for the people then enters again into its primitive state. Having thus proved the sovereignty of the people, Buonaparte uses his doctrine to justify Corsican revolt against France, and thus concludes his curious medley: "The Corsicans, following all the laws of justice, have been able to shake off the yoke of the Genoese, and may do the same with that of the French. Amen."

Five days later he again gives the reins to his melancholy. "Always alone, though in the midst of men," he faces the thought of suicide. With an innate power of summarizing and balancing thoughts and sensations, he draws up arguments for and against this act. He is in the dawn of his days and in four months' time he will see "la patrie," which he has not seen since childhood. What joy! And yet—how men have fallen away from nature: how cringing are his compatriots to their conquerors: they are no longer the enemies of tyrants, of luxury, of vile courtiers: the French have corrupted their morals, and when "la patrie" no longer survives, a good patriot ought to die. Life among the French is odious: their modes of life differ from his as much as the light of the moon differs from that of the sun.—A strange effusion this for a youth of seventeen living amidst the full glories of the spring in Dauphiné. It was only a few weeks before the ripening of cherries. Did that cherry-idyll with Mdlle. de Colombier lure him back to life? Or did the hope of striking a blow for Corsica stay his suicidal hand? Probably the latter; for we find him shortly afterwards tilting against a Protestant minister of Geneva who had ventured to criticise one of the dogmas of Rousseau's evangel.

The Genevan philosopher had asserted that Christianity, by enthroning in the hearts of Christians the idea of a Kingdom not of this world, broke the unity of civil society, because it detached the hearts of its converts from the State, as from all earthly things. To this the [pg.20] Genevan minister had successfully replied by quoting Christian teachings on the subject at issue. But Buonaparte fiercely accuses the pastor of neither having understood, nor even read, "Le Contrat Social": he hurls at his opponent texts of Scripture which enjoin obedience to the laws: he accuses Christianity of rendering men slaves to an anti-social tyranny, because its priests set up an authority in opposition to civil laws; and as for Protestantism, it propagated discords between its followers, and thereby violated civic unity. Christianity, he argues, is a foe to civil government, for it aims at making men happy in this life by inspiring them with hope of a future life; while the aim of civil government is "to lend assistance to the feeble against the strong, and by this means to allow everyone to enjoy a sweet tranquillity, the road of happiness." He therefore concludes that Christianity and civil government are diametrically opposed.

In this tirade we see the youth's spirit of revolt flinging him not only against French law, but against the religion which sanctions it. He sees none of the beauty of the Gospels which Rousseau had admitted. His views are more rigid than those of his teacher. Scarcely can he conceive of two influences, the spiritual and the governmental, working on parallel lines, on different parts of man's nature. His conception of human society is that of an indivisible, indistinguishable whole, wherein materialism, tinged now and again by religious sentiment and personal honour, is the sole noteworthy influence. He finds no worth in a religion which seeks to work from within to without, which aims at transforming character, and thus transforming the world. In its headlong quest of tangible results his eager spirit scorns so tardy a method: he will "compel men to be happy," and for this result there is but one practicable means, the Social Contract, the State. Everything which mars the unity of the Social Contract shall be shattered, so that the State may have a clear field for the exercise of its beneficent despotism. Such is Buonaparte's political and religious creed at the age of seventeen, and such it [pg.21] remained (with many reservations suggested by maturer thought and self-interest) to the end of his days. It reappears in his policy anent the Concordat of 18222, by which religion was reduced to the level of handmaid to the State, as also in his frequent assertions that he would never have quite the same power as the Czar and the Sultan, because he had not undivided sway over the consciences of his people.^[10] In this boyish essay we may perhaps discern the fundamental reason of his later failures. He never completely understood religion, or the enthusiasm which it can evoke; neither did he ever fully realize the complexity of human nature, the many-sidedness of social life, and the limitations that beset the action even of the most intelligent law-maker.^[11]

His reading of Rousseau having equipped him for the[pg.22] study of human society and government, he now, during his first sojourn at Auxonne (June, 1788—September, 1789), proceeds to ransack the records of the ancient and modern world. Despite ill-health, family troubles, and the outbreak of the French Revolution, he grapples with this portentous task. The history, geography, religion, and social customs of the ancient Persians, Scythians, Thracians, Athenians, Spartans, Egyptians, and Carthaginians—all furnished materials for his encyclopædic note-books. Nothing came amiss to his summarizing genius. Here it was that he gained that knowledge of the past which was to astonish his contemporaries. Side by side with suggestions on regimental discipline and improvements in artillery, we find notes on the opening episodes of Plato's "Republic," and a systematic summary of English history from the earliest times down to the Revolution of 1688. This last event inspired him with special interest, because the Whigs and their philosophic champion, Locke, maintained that James II. had violated the original contract between prince and people. Everywhere in his notes Napoleon emphasizes the incidents which led to conflicts between dynasties or between rival principles. In fact, through all these voracious studies there appear signs of his determination to write a history of Corsica; and, while inspiriting his kinsmen by recalling the glorious past, he sought to weaken the French monarchy by inditing a "Dissertation sur l'Autorité Royale." His first sketch of this work runs as follows:

"23 October, 1788. Auxonne.

"This work will begin with general ideas as to the origin and the enhanced prestige of the name of king. Military rule is favourable to it: this work will afterwards enter into the details of the usurped authority enjoyed by the Kings of the twelve Kingdoms of Europe.

"There are very few Kings who have not deserved dethronement ^[12]."

This curt pronouncement is all that remains of the[pg.23] projected work. It sufficiently indicates, however, the aim of Napoleon's studies. One and all they were designed to equip him for the great task of re-awakening the spirit of the Corsicans and of sapping the base of the French monarchy.

But these reams of manuscript notes and crude literary efforts have an even wider source of interest. They show how narrow was his outlook on life. It all turned on the regeneration of Corsica by methods which he himself prescribed. We are therefore able to understand why, when his own methods of salvation for Corsica were rejected, he tore himself away and threw his undivided energies into the Revolution.

Yet the records of his early life show that in his character there was a strain of true sentiment and affection. In him Nature carved out a character of rock-like firmness, but she adorned it with flowers of human sympathy and tendrils of family love. At his first parting from his brother Joseph at Autun, when the elder brother was weeping passionately, the little Napoleon dropped a tear: but that, said the tutor, meant as much as the flood of tears from Joseph. Love of his relatives was a potent factor of his policy in later life; and slander has never been able wholly to blacken the character of a man who loved and honoured his mother, who asserted that her advice had often been of the highest service to him, and that her justice and firmness of spirit marked her out as a natural ruler of men. But when these admissions are freely granted, it still remains true that his character was naturally hard; that his sense of personal superiority made him, even as a child, exacting and domineering; and the sequel was to show that even the strongest passion of his youth, his determination to free Corsica from France, could be abjured if occasion demanded, all the force of his nature being thenceforth concentrated on vaster adventures. [pg.24]

CHAPTER II

"They seek to destroy the Revolution by attacking my person: I will defend it, for I am the Revolution." Such were the words uttered by Buonaparte after the failure of the royalist plot of 1804. They are a daring transcript of Louis XIV.'s "L'état, c'est moi." That was a bold claim, even for an age attuned to the whims of autocrats: but this of the young Corsican is even more daring, for he thereby equated himself with a movement which claimed to be wide as humanity and infinite as truth. And yet when he spoke these words, they were not scouted as presumptuous folly: to most Frenchmen they seemed sober truth and practical good sense. How came it, one asks in wonder, that after the short space of fifteen years a world-wide movement depended on a single life, that the infinitudes of 1789 lived on only in the form, and by the pleasure, of the First Consul? Here surely is a political incarnation unparalleled in the whole course of human history. The riddle cannot be solved by history alone. It belongs in part to the domain of psychology, when that science shall undertake the study, not merely of man as a unit, but of the aspirations, moods, and whims of communities and nations. Meanwhile it will be our far humbler task to strive to point out the relation of Buonaparte to the Revolution, and to show how the mighty force of his will dragged it to earth.

The first questions that confront us are obviously these. Were the lofty aims and aspirations of the [pg.25] Revolution attainable? And, if so, did the men of 1789 follow them by practical methods? To the former of these questions the present chapter will, in part at least, serve as an answer. On the latter part of the problem the events described in later chapters will throw some light: in them we shall see that the great popular upheaval let loose mighty forces that bore Buonaparte on to fortune.

Here we may notice that the Revolution was not a simple and therefore solid movement. It was complex and contained the seeds of discord which lurk in many-sided and militant creeds. The theories of its intellectual champions were as diverse as the motives which spurred on their followers to the attack on the outworn abuses of the age.

Discontent and faith were the ultimate motive powers of the Revolution. Faith prepared the Revolution and discontent accomplished it. Idealists who, in varied planes of thought, preached the doctrine of human perfectibility, succeeded in slowly permeating the dull toiling masses of France with hope. Omitting here any notice of philosophic speculation as such, we may briefly notice the teachings of three writers whose influence on revolutionary politics was to be definite and practical. These were Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau. The first was by no means a revolutionist, for he decided in favour of a mixed form of government, like that of England, which guaranteed the State against the dangers of autocracy, oligarchy, and mob-rule. Only by a ricochet did he assail the French monarchy. But he re-awakened critical inquiry; and any inquiry was certain to sap the base of the ancien régime in France. Montesquieu's teaching inspired the group of moderate reformers who in 1789 desired to re-fashion the institutions of France on the model of those of England. But popular sentiment speedily swept past these Anglophils towards the more attractive aims set forth by Voltaire.

This keen thinker subjected the privileged classes, especially the titled clergy, to a searching fire of [pg.26] philosophic bombs and barbed witticisms. Never was there a more dazzling succession of literary triumphs over a tottering system. The satirized classes winced and laughed, and the intellect of France was conquered, for the Revolution. Thenceforth it was impossible that peasants who were nominally free should toil to satisfy the exacting needs of the State, and to support the brilliant bevy of nobles who flitted gaily round the monarch at Versailles. The young King Louis XVI., it is true, carried through several reforms, but he had not enough strength of will to abolish the absurd immunities from taxation which freed the nobles and titled clergy from the burdens of the State. Thus, down to 1789, the middle classes and peasants bore nearly all the weight of taxation, while the peasants were also encumbered by feudal dues and tolls. These were the crying grievances which united in a solid phalanx both thinkers and practical men, and thereby gave an immense impetus to the levelling doctrines of Rousseau.

Two only of his political teachings concern us here, namely, social equality and the unquestioned supremacy of the State; for to these dogmas, when they seemed doomed to political bankruptcy, Napoleon Buonaparte was to act as residuary legatee. According to Rousseau, society and government originated in a social contract, whereby all members of the community have equal rights. It matters not that the spirit of the contract may have evaporated amidst the miasma of luxury. That is a violation of civil society; and members are justified in reverting at once to the primitive ideal. If the existence of the body politic be endangered, force may be used: "Whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be constrained to do so by the whole body; which means nothing else than that he shall be forced to be free." Equally plausible and dangerous was his teaching as to the indivisibility of the general will. Deriving every public power from his social contract, he finds it easy to prove that the sovereign power, [pg.27] vested in all the citizens, must be incorruptible, inalienable, unrepresentable, indivisible, and indestructible. Englishmen may now find it difficult to understand the enthusiasm called forth by this quintessence of negations; but to Frenchman recently escaped from the age of privilege and warring against the coalition of kings, the cry of the Republic one and indivisible was a trumpet call to death or victory. Any shifts, even that of a dictatorship, were to be borne, provided that social equality could be saved. As republican Rome had saved her early liberties by intrusting unlimited powers to a temporary dictator, so, claimed Rousseau, a young commonwealth must by a similar device consult Nature's first law of self-preservation. The dictator saves liberty by temporarily abrogating it: by momentary gagging of the legislative power he renders it truly vocal.

The events of the French Revolution form a tragic commentary on these theories. In the first stage of that great movement we see the followers of Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau marching in an undivided host against the ramparts of privilege. The walls of the Bastille fall down even at the blast of their trumpets. Odious feudal privileges disappear in a single sitting of the National Assembly; and the Parlements, or supreme law courts of the provinces, are swept away. The old provinces themselves are abolished, and at the beginning of 1790 France gains social and political unity by her new system of Departments, which grants full freedom of action in local affairs, though in all national concerns it binds France closely to the new popular government at Paris. But discords soon begin to divide the reformers: hatred of clerical privilege and the desire to fill the empty coffers of the State dictate the first acts of spoliation. Tithes are abolished: the lands of the Church are confiscated to the service of the State; monastic orders are suppressed; and the Government undertakes to pay the stipends of bishops and priests. Furthermore, their subjection to the State is definitely secured by the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (July, [pg.28] 1790) which invalidates their allegiance to the Pope. Most of the clergy refuse: these are termed non-jurors or orthodox priests, while their more complaisant colleagues are known as constitutional priests. Hence arises a serious schism in the Church, which distracts the religious life of the land, and separates the friends of liberty from the champions of the rigorous equality preached by Rousseau.

The new constitution of 1791 was also a source of discord. In its jealousy of the royal authority, the National Assembly seized very many of the executive functions of government. The results were disastrous. Laws remained without force, taxes went uncollected, the army was distracted by mutinies, and the monarchy sank slowly into the gulf of bankruptcy and anarchy. Thus, in the course of three years, the revolutionists goaded the clergy to desperation, they were about to overthrow the monarchy, every month was proving their local self-government to be unworkable, and they themselves split into factions that plunged France into war and drenched her soil by organized massacres.

We know very little about the impression made on the young Buonaparte by the first events of the Revolution. His note-book seems even to show that he regarded them as an inconvenient interference with his plans for Corsica. But gradually the Revolution excites his interest. In September, 1789, we find him on furlough in Corsica sharing the hopes of the islanders that their representatives in the French National Assembly will obtain the boon of independence. He exhorts his compatriots to favour the democratic cause, which promises a speedy deliverance from official abuses. He urges them to don the new tricolour cockade, symbol of Parisian triumph over the old monarchy; to form a club; above all, to organize a National Guard. The young officer knew that military power was passing from the royal army, now honeycombed with discontent, to the National Guard. Here surely was Corsica's means of [pg.29] salvation. But the French governor of Corsica intervenes. The club is closed, and the National Guard is dispersed. Thereupon Buonaparte launches a vigorous protest against the tyranny of the governor and appeals to the National Assembly of France for some guarantee of civil liberty. His name is at the head of this petition, a sufficiently daring step for a junior lieutenant on furlough. But his patriotism and audacity carry him still further. He journeys to Bastia, the official capital of his island, and is concerned in an affray between the populace and the royal troops (November 5th, 1789). The French authorities, fortunately for him, are nearly powerless: he is merely requested to return to Ajaccio; and there he organizes anew the civic force, and sets the dissident islanders an example of good discipline by mounting guard outside the house of a personal opponent.

Other events now transpired which began to assuage his opposition to France. Thanks to the eloquent efforts of Mirabeau, the Corsican patriots who had remained in exile since 1768 were allowed to return and enjoy the full rights of citizenship. Little could the friends of liberty at Paris, or even the statesman himself, have foreseen all the consequences of this action: it softened the feelings of many Corsicans towards their conquerors; above all, it caused the heart of Napoleon Buonaparte for the first time to throb in accord with that of the French nation. His feelings towards Paoli also began to cool. The conduct of this illustrious exile exposed him to the charge of ingratitude towards France. The decree of the French National Assembly, which restored him to Corsican citizenship, was graced by acts of courtesy such as the generous French nature can so winningly dispense. Louis XVI. and the National Assembly warmly greeted him, and recognized him as head of the National Guard of the island. Yet, amidst all the congratulations, Paoli saw the approach of anarchy, and behaved with some reserve. Outwardly, however, concord seemed to be assured, when on July 14th, 1790, he landed in Corsica; but the hatred long [pg.30] nursed by the mountaineers and fisherfolk against France was not to be exorcised by a few demonstrations. In truth, the island was deeply agitated. The priests were rousing the people against the newly decreed Civil Constitution of the Clergy; and one of these disturbances endangered the life of Napoleon himself. He and his brother Joseph chanced to pass by when one of the processions of priests and devotees was exciting the pity and indignation of the townsfolk. The two brothers, who were now well known as partisans of the Revolution, were threatened with violence, and were saved only by their own firm demeanour and the intervention of peacemakers.

Then again, the concession of local self-government to the island, as one of the Departments of France, revealed unexpected difficulties. Bastia and Ajaccio struggled hard for the honour of being the official capital. Paoli favoured the claims of Bastia, thereby annoying the champions of Ajaccio, among whom the Buonapartes were prominent. The schism was widened by the dictatorial tone of Paoli, a demeanour which ill became the chief of a civic force. In fact, it soon became apparent that Corsica was too small a sphere for natures so able and masterful as those of Paoli and Napoleon Buonaparte.

The first meeting of these two men must have been a scene of deep interest. It was on the fatal field of Ponte Nuovo. Napoleon doubtless came there in the spirit of true hero-worship. But hero-worship which can stand the strain of actual converse is rare indeed, especially when the expectant devotee is endowed with keen insight and habits of trenchant expression. One phrase has come down to us as a result of the interview; but this phrase contains a volume of meaning. After Paoli had explained the disposition of his troops against the French at Ponte Nuovo, Buonaparte drily remarked to his brother Joseph, "The result of these dispositions was what was inevitable."^[13][pg.31]

For the present, Buonaparte and other Corsican democrats were closely concerned with the delinquencies of the Comte de Buttafuoco, the deputy for the twelve nobles of the island to the National Assembly of France. In a letter written on January 23rd, 1791, Buonaparte overwhelms this man with a torrent of invective.—He it was who had betrayed his country to France in 1768. Self-interest and that alone prompted his action then, and always. French rule was a cloak for his design of subjecting Corsica to "the absurd feudal régime" of the barons. In his selfish royalism he had protested against the new French constitution as being unsuited to Corsica, "though it was exactly the same as that which brought us so much good and was wrested from us only amidst streams of blood."—The letter is remarkable for the southern intensity of its passion, and for a certain hardening of tone towards Paoli. Buonaparte writes of Paoli as having been ever "surrounded by enthusiasts, and as failing to understand in a man any other passion than fanaticism for liberty and independence," and as duped by Buttafuoco in 1768.^[14] The phrase has an obvious reference to the Paoli of 1791, surrounded by men who had shared his long exile and regarded the English constitution as their model. Buonaparte, on the contrary, is the accredited champion of French democracy, his furious epistle being printed by the Jacobin Club of Ajaccio. [pg.32]

After firing off this tirade Buonaparte returned to his regiment at Auxonne (February, 1791). It was high time; for his furlough, though prolonged on the plea of ill-health, had expired in the preceding October, and he was therefore liable to six months' imprisonment. But the young officer rightly gauged the weakness of the moribund monarchy; and the officers of his almost mutinous regiment were glad to get him back on any terms. Everywhere in his journey through Provence and Dauphiné, Buonaparte saw the triumph of revolutionary principles. He notes that the peasants are to a man for the Revolution; so are the rank and file of the regiment. The officers are aristocrats, along with three-fourths of those who belong to "good society": so are all the women, for "Liberty is fairer than they, and eclipses them." The Revolution was evidently gaining completer hold over his mind and was somewhat blurring his insular sentiments, when a rebuff from Paoli further weakened his ties to Corsica. Buonaparte had dedicated to him his work on Corsica, and had sent him the manuscript for his approval. After keeping it an unconscionable time, the old man now coldly replied that he did not desire the honour of Buonaparte's panegyric, though he thanked him heartily for it; that the consciousness of having done his duty sufficed for him in his old age; and, for the rest, history should not be written in youth. A further request from Joseph Buonaparte for the return of the slighted manuscript brought the answer that he, Paoli, had no time to search his papers. After this, how could hero-worship subsist?

The four months spent by Buonaparte at Auxonne were, indeed, a time of disappointment and hardship. Out of his slender funds he paid for the education of his younger brother, Louis, who shared his otherwise desolate lodging. A room almost bare but for a curtainless bed, a table heaped with books and papers, and two chairs—such were the surroundings of the lieutenant in the spring of 1791. He lived on bread that he might rear his brother for the army, and that he might buy [pg.33] books, overjoyed when his savings mounted to the price of some coveted volume.

Perhaps the depressing conditions of his life at Auxonne may account for the acrid tone of an essay which he there wrote in competition for a prize offered by the Academy of Lyons on the subject—"What truths and sentiments ought to be inculcated to men for their happiness." It was unsuccessful; and modern readers will agree with the verdict of one of the judges that it was incongruous in arrangement and of a bad and ragged style. The thoughts are set forth in jerky, vehement clauses; and, in place of the sensibilité of some of his earlier effusions, we feel here the icy breath of materialism. He regards an ideal human society as a geometrical structure based on certain well-defined postulates. All men ought to be able to satisfy certain elementary needs of their nature; but all that is beyond is questionable or harmful. The ideal legislator will curtail wealth so as to restore the wealthy to their true nature—and so forth. Of any generous outlook on the wider possibilities of human life there is scarcely a trace. His essay is the apotheosis of social mediocrity. By Procrustean methods he would have forced mankind back to the dull levels of Sparta: the opalescent glow of Athenian life was beyond his ken. But perhaps the most curious passage is that in which he preaches against the sin and folly of ambition. He pictures Ambition as a figure with pallid cheeks, wild eyes, hasty step, jerky movements and sardonic smile, for whom crimes are a sport, while lies and calumnies are merely arguments and figures of speech. Then, in words that recall Juvenal's satire on Hannibal's career, he continues: "What is Alexander doing when he rushes from Thebes into Persia and thence into India? He is ever restless, he loses his wits, he believes himself God. What is the end of Cromwell? He governs England. But is he not tormented by all the daggers of the furies?"—The words ring false, even for this period of Buonaparte's life; and one can readily [pg.34] understand his keen wish in later years to burn every copy of these youthful essays. But they have nearly all survived; and the diatribe against ambition itself supplies the feather wherewith history may wing her shaft at the towering flight of the imperial eagle.^[15]

At midsummer he is transferred, as first lieutenant, to another regiment which happened to be quartered at Valence; but his second sojourn there is remarkable only for signs of increasing devotion to the revolutionary cause. In the autumn of 1791 he is again in Corsica on furlough, and remains there until the month of May following. He finds the island rent by strifes which it would be tedious to describe. Suffice it to say that the breach between Paoli and the Buonapartes gradually widened owing to the dictator's suspicion of all who favoured the French Revolution. The young officer certainly did nothing to close the breach. Determined to secure his own election as lieutenant-colonel in the new Corsican National Guard, he spent much time in gaining recruits who would vote for him. He further assured his success by having one of the commissioners, who was acting in Paoli's interest, carried off from his friends and detained at the Buonapartes' house in Ajaccio—his first coup^[16] Stranger events were to follow. At Easter, when the people were excited by the persecuting edicts against the clergy and the closing of a monastery, there was sharp fighting between the populace and[pg.35] Buonaparte's companies of National Guards. Originating in a petty quarrel, which was taken up by eager partisans, it embroiled the whole of the town and gave the ardent young Jacobin the chance of overthrowing his enemies. His plans even extended to the seizure of the citadel, where he tried to seduce the French regiment from its duty to officers whom he dubbed aristocrats. The attempt was a failure. The whole truth can, perhaps, scarcely be discerned amidst the tissue of lies which speedily enveloped the affair; but there can be no doubt that on the second day of strife Buonaparte's National Guards began the fight and subsequently menaced the regular troops in the citadel. The conflict was finally stopped by commissioners sent by Paoli; and the volunteers were sent away from the town.

Buonaparte's position now seemed desperate. His conduct exposed him to the hatred of most of his fellow-citizens and to the rebukes of the French War Department. In fact, he had doubly sinned: he had actually exceeded his furlough by four months: he was technically guilty, first of desertion, and secondly of treason. In ordinary times he would have been shot, but the times were extraordinary, and he rightly judged that when a Continental war was brewing, the most daring course was also the most prudent, namely, to go to Paris. Thither Paoli allowed him to proceed, doubtless on the principle of giving the young madcap a rope wherewith to hang himself.

On his arrival at Marseilles, he hears that war has been declared by France against Austria; for the republican Ministry, which Louis XVI. had recently been compelled to accept, believed that war against an absolute monarch would intensify revolutionary fervour in France and hasten the advent of the Republic. Their surmises were correct. Buonaparte, on his arrival at Paris, witnessed the closing scenes of the reign of Louis XVI. On June 20th he saw the crowd burst into the Tuileries, when for some hours it insulted the king and queen. Warmly though he had espoused the principles of the [pg.36] Revolution, his patrician blood boiled at the sight of these vulgar outrages, and he exclaimed: "Why don't they sweep off four or five hundred of that canaille with cannon? The rest would then run away fast enough." The remark is significant. If his brain approved the Jacobin creed, his instincts were always with monarchy. His career was to reconcile his reason with his instincts, and to impose on weary France the curious compromise of a revolutionary Imperialism.

On August 10th, from the window of a shop near the Tuileries, he looked down on the strange events which dealt the coup de grâce to the dying monarchy. Again the chieftain within him sided against the vulture rabble and with the well-meaning monarch who kept his troops to a tame defensive. "If Louis XVI." (so wrote Buonaparte to his brother Joseph) "had mounted his horse, the victory would have been his—so I judge from the spirit which prevailed in the morning." When all was over, when Louis sheathed his sword and went for shelter to the National Assembly, when the fierce Marseillais were slaughtering the Swiss Guards and bodyguards of the king, Buonaparte dashed forward to save one of these unfortunates from a southern sabre. "Southern comrade, let us save this poor wretch.—Are you of the south?—Yes.—Well, we will save him."

Altogether, what a time of disillusionment this was to the young officer. What depths of cruelty and obscenity it revealed in the Parisian rabble. What folly to treat them with the Christian forbearance shown by Louis XVI. How much more suitable was grapeshot than the beatitudes. The lesson was stored up for future use at a somewhat similar crisis on this very spot.

During the few days when victorious Paris left Louis with the sham title of king, Buonaparte received his captain's commission, which was signed for the king by Servan, the War Minister. Thus did the revolutionary Government pass over his double breach of military discipline at Ajaccio. The revolutionary motto, "La carrière ouverte aux talents," was never more conspicuously illustrated[pg.37] than in the facile condoning of his offences and in this rapid promotion. It was indeed a time fraught with vast possibilities for all republican or Jacobinical officers. Their monarchist colleagues were streaming over the frontiers to join the Austrian and Prussian invaders. But National Guards were enrolling by tens of thousands to drive out the Prussian and Austrian invaders; and when Europe looked to see France fall for ever, it saw with wonder her strength renewed as by enchantment. Later on it learnt that that strength was the strength of Antæus, of a peasantry that stood firmly rooted in their native soil. Organization and good leadership alone were needed to transform these ardent masses into the most formidable soldiery; and the brilliant military prospects now opened up certainly knit Buonaparte's feelings more closely with the cause of France. Thus, on September 21st, when the new National Assembly, known as the Convention, proclaimed the Republic, we may well believe that sincere convictions no less than astute calculations moved him to do and dare all things for the sake of the new democratic commonwealth.^[17]

For the present, however, a family duty urges him to return to Corsica. He obtains permission to escort home his sister Elise, and for the third time we find him on furlough in Corsica. This laxity of military discipline at such a crisis is explicable only on the supposition that the revolutionary chiefs knew of his devotion to their cause and believed that his influence in the island would render his informal services there more valuable than his regimental duties in the army then invading Savoy. For the word Republic, which fired his imagination, was an offence to Paoli and to most of the islanders; and the[pg.38] phrase "Republic one and indivisible," ever on the lips of the French, seemed to promise that the island must become a petty replica of France—France that was now dominated by the authors of the vile September massacres. The French party in the island was therefore rapidly declining, and Paoli was preparing to sever the union with France. For this he has been bitterly assailed as a traitor. But, from Paoli's point of view, the acquisition of the island by France was a piece of rank treachery; and his allegiance to France was technically at an end when the king was forcibly dethroned and the Republic was proclaimed. The use of the appellation "traitor" in such a case is merely a piece of childish abuse. It can be justified neither by reference to law, equity, nor to the popular sentiment of the time. Facts were soon to show that the islanders were bitterly opposed to the party then dominant in France. This hostility of a clannish, religious, and conservative populace against the bloodthirsty and atheistical innovators who then lorded it over France was not diminished by the action of some six thousand French volunteers, the off-scourings of the southern ports, who were landed at Ajaccio for an expedition against Sardinia. In their zeal for Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, these bonnets rouges came to blows with the men of Ajaccio, three of whom they hanged. So fierce was the resentment caused by this outrage that the plan of a joint expedition for the liberation of Sardinia from monarchical tyranny had to be modified; and Buonaparte, who was again in command of a battalion of Corsican guards, proposed that the islanders alone should proceed to attack the Madalena Isles.

These islands, situated between Corsica and Sardinia, have a double interest to the historical student. One of them, Caprera, was destined to shelter another Italian hero at the close of his career, the noble self-denying Garibaldi: the chief island of the group was the objective of Buonaparte's first essay in regular warfare. After some delays the little force set sail under the [pg.39] command of Cesari-Colonna, the nephew of Paoli. According to Buonaparte's own official statement at the close of the affair, he had successfully landed his men near the town to be assailed, and had thrown the Sardinian defences into confusion, when a treacherous order from his chief bade him to cease firing and return to the vessels. It has also been stated that this retreat was the outcome of a secret understanding between Paoli and Cesari-Colonna that the expedition should miscarry. This seems highly probable. A mutiny on board the chief ship of the flotilla was assigned by Cesari-Colonna as the cause of his order for a retreat; but there are mutinies and mutinies, and this one may have been a trick of the Paolists for thwarting Buonaparte's plan and leaving him a prisoner. In any case, the young officer only saved himself and his men by a hasty retreat to the boats, tumbling into the sea a mortar and four cannon. Such was the ending to the great captain's first military enterprise.

On his return to Ajaccio (March 3rd, 1793), Buonaparte found affairs in utter confusion. News had recently arrived of the declaration of war by the French Republic against England and Holland. Moreover, Napoleon's young brother, Lucien, had secretly denounced Paoli to the French authorities at Toulon; and three commissioners were now sent from Paris charged with orders to disband the Corsican National Guards, and to place the Corsican dictator under the orders of the French general commanding the army of Italy.^[18]

A game of truly Macchiavellian skill is now played. The French commissioners, among whom the Corsican deputy, Salicetti, is by far the most able, invite Paoli to repair to Toulon, there to concert measures for the defence of Corsica. Paoli, seeing through the ruse and discerning a guillotine, pleads that his age makes the journey impossible; but with his friends he quietly[pg.40] prepares for resistance and holds the citadel of Ajaccio. Meanwhile the commissioners make friendly overtures to the old chief; in these Napoleon participates, being ignorant of Lucien's action at Toulon. The sincerity of these overtures may well be called in question, though Buonaparte still used the language of affection to his former idol. However this may be, all hope of compromise is dashed by the zealots who are in power at Paris. On April 2nd they order the French commissioners to secure Paoli's person, by whatever means, and bring him to the French capital. At once a cry of indignation goes up from all parts of Corsica; and Buonaparte draws up a declaration, vindicating Paoli's conduct and begging the French Convention to revoke its decree.^[19] Again, one cannot but suspect that this declaration was intended mainly, if not solely, for local consumption. In any case, it failed to cool the resentment of the populace; and the partisans of France soon came to blows with the Paolists.

Salicetti and Buonaparte now plan by various artifices to gain the citadel of Ajaccio from the Paolists, but guile is three times foiled by guile equally astute. Failing here, the young captain seeks to communicate with the French commissioners at Bastia. He sets out secretly, with a trusty shepherd as companion, to cross the island: but at the village of Bocognano he is recognized and imprisoned by the partisans of Paoli. Some of the villagers, however, retain their old affection to the Buonaparte family, which here has an ancestral estate, and secretly set him free. He returns to Ajaccio, only to find an order for his arrest issued by the Corsican patriots. This time he escapes by timely concealment in the grotto of a friend's garden; and from the grounds of another family connection he finally glides away in a vessel to a point of safety, whence he reaches Bastia.[pg.41] Still, though a fugitive, he persists in believing that Ajaccio is French at heart, and urges the sending of a liberating force. The French commissioners agree, and the expedition sails—only to meet with utter failure. Ajaccio, as one man, repels the partisans of France; and, a gale of wind springing up, Buonaparte and his men regain their boats with the utmost difficulty. At a place hard by, he finds his mother, uncle, brothers and sisters. Madame Buonaparte, with the extraordinary tenacity of will that characterized her famous son, had wished to defend her house at Ajaccio against the hostile populace; but, yielding to the urgent warnings of friends, finally fled to the nearest place of safety, and left the house to the fury of the populace, by whom it was nearly wrecked.

For a brief space Buonaparte clung to the hope of regaining Corsica for the Republic, but now only by the aid of French troops. For the islanders, stung by the demand of the French Convention that Paoli should go to Paris, had rallied to the dictator's side; and the aged chief made overtures to England for alliance. The partisans of France, now menaced by England's naval power, were in an utterly untenable position. Even the steel-like will of Buonaparte was bent. His career in Corsica was at an end for the present; and with his kith and kin he set sail for France.

The interest of the events above described lies, not in their intrinsic importance, but in the signal proof which they afford of Buonaparte's wondrous endowments of mind and will. In a losing cause and in a petty sphere he displays all the qualities which, when the omens were favourable, impelled him to the domination of a Continent. He fights every inch of ground tenaciously; at each emergency he evinces a truly Italian fertility of resource, gliding round obstacles or striving to shatter them by sheer audacity, seeing through men, cajoling them by his insinuations or overawing them by his mental superiority, ever determined to try the fickle jade Fortune to the very utmost, and retreating only before[pg.42] the inevitable. The sole weakness discoverable in this nature, otherwise compact of strength, is an excess of will-power over all the faculties that make for prudence. His vivid imagination only serves to fire him with the full assurance that he must prevail over all obstacles.

And yet, if he had now stopped to weigh well the lessons of the past, hitherto fertile only in failures and contradictions, he must have seen the powerlessness of his own will when in conflict with the forces of the age; for he had now severed his connection with the Corsican patriots, of whose cause he had only two years before been the most passionate champion. It is evident that the schism which finally separated Buonaparte and Paoli originated in their divergence of views regarding the French Revolution. Paoli accepted revolutionary principles only in so far as they promised to base freedom on a due balance of class interests. He was a follower of Montesquieu. He longed to see in Corsica a constitution similar to that of England or to that of 1791 in France. That hope vanished alike for France and Corsica after the fall of the monarchy; and towards the Jacobinical Republic, which banished orthodox priests and guillotined the amiable Louis, Paoli thenceforth felt naught but loathing: "We have been the enemies of kings," he said to Joseph Buonaparte; "let us never be their executioners." Thenceforth he drifted inevitably into alliance with England.

Buonaparte, on the other hand, was a follower of Rousseau, whose ideas leaped to power at the downfall of the monarchy. Despite the excesses which he ever deplored, this second Revolution appeared to him to be the dawn of a new and intelligent age. The clear-cut definitions of the new political creed dovetailed in with his own rigid views of life. Mankind was to be saved by law, society being levelled down and levelled up until the ideals of Lycurgus were attained. Consequently he regarded the Republic as a mighty agency for the social regeneration not only of France, but of all peoples. His insular sentiments were gradually merged in these vaster [pg.43] schemes. Self-interest and the differentiating effects of party strifes undoubtedly assisted the mental transformation; but it is clear that the study of the "Social Contract" was the touchstone of his early intellectual growth. He had gone to Rousseau's work to deepen his Corsican patriotism: he there imbibed doctrines which drew him irresistibly into the vortex of the French Revolution, and of its wars of propaganda and conquest. [pg.44]

CHAPTER III

When Buonaparte left Corsica for the coast of Provence, his career had been remarkable only for the strange contrast between the brilliance of his gifts and the utter failure of all his enterprises. His French partisanship had, as it seemed, been the ruin of his own and his family's fortunes. At the age of twenty-four he was known only as the unlucky leader of forlorn hopes and an outcast from the island around which his fondest longings had been entwined. His land-fall on the French coast seemed no more promising; for at that time Provence was on the verge of revolt against the revolutionary Government. Even towns like Marseilles and Toulon, which a year earlier had been noted for their republican fervour, were now disgusted with the course of events at Paris. In the third climax of revolutionary fury, that of June 2nd, 1793, the more enlightened of the two republican factions, the Girondins, had been overthrown by their opponents, the men of the Mountain, who, aided by the Parisian rabble, seized on power. Most of the Departments of France resented this violence and took up arms. But the men of the Mountain acted with extraordinary energy: they proclaimed the Girondins to be in league with the invaders, and blasted their opponents with the charge of conspiring to divide France into federal republics. The Committee of Public Safety, now installed in power at Paris, decreed a levée enmasse of able-bodied patriots to defend the sacred soil of the Republic, and the "organizer of victory," Carnot, soon drilled into a terrible efficiency the hosts that sprang[pg.45] from the soil. On their side the Girondins had no organization whatever, and were embarrassed by the adhesion of very many royalists. Consequently their wavering groups speedily gave way before the impact of the new, solid, central power.

A movement so wanting in definiteness as that of the Girondins was destined to slide into absolute opposition to the men of the Mountain: it was doomed to become royalist. Certainly it did not command the adhesion of Napoleon. His inclinations are seen in his pamphlet, "Le Souper de Beaucaire," which he published in August, 1793. He wrote it in the intervals of some regimental work which had come to hand: and his passage through the little town of Beaucaire seems to have suggested the scenic setting of this little dialogue. It purports to record a discussion between an officer—Buonaparte himself—two merchants of Marseilles, and citizens of Nîmes and Montpellier. It urges the need of united action under the lead of the Jacobins. The officer reminds the Marseillais of the great services which their city has rendered to the cause of liberty. Let Marseilles never disgrace herself by calling in the Spanish fleet as a protection against Frenchmen. Let her remember that this civil strife was part of a fight to the death between French patriots and the despots of Europe. That was, indeed, the practical point at issue; the stern logic of facts ranged on the Jacobin side all clear-sighted men who were determined that the Revolution should not be stamped out by the foreign invaders. On the ground of mere expediency, men must rally to the cause of the Jacobinical Republic. Every crime might be condoned, provided that the men now in power at Paris saved the country. Better their tyranny than the vengeance of the emigrant noblesse. Such was the instinct of most Frenchmen, and it saved France.

As an exposé of keen policy and all-dominating opportunism, "Le Souper de Beaucaire" is admirable. In a national crisis anything that saves the State is justifiable—that is its argument. The men of the Mountain are [pg.46] abler and stronger than the Girondins: therefore the Marseillais are foolish not to bow to the men of the Mountain. The author feels no sympathy with the generous young Girondins, who, under the inspiration of Madame Roland, sought to establish a republic of the virtues even while they converted monarchical Europe by the sword. Few men can now peruse with undimmed eyes the tragic story of their fall. But the scenes of 1793 had transformed the Corsican youth into a dry-eyed opportunist who rejects the Girondins as he would have thrown aside a defective tool: nay, he blames them as "guilty of the greatest of crimes."^[20]

Nevertheless Buonaparte was alive to the miseries of the situation. He was weary of civil strifes, in which it seemed that no glory could be won. He must hew his way to fortune, if only in order to support his family, which was now drifting about from village to village of Provence and subsisting on the slender sums doled out by the Republic to Corsican exiles.

He therefore applied, though without success, for a regimental exchange to the army of the Rhine. But while toiling through his administrative drudgery in Provence, his duties brought him near to Toulon, where the Republic was face to face with triumphant royalism. The hour had struck: the man now appeared.

In July, 1793, Toulon joined other towns of the south in declaring against Jacobin tyranny; and the royalists of the town, despairing of making headway against the troops of the Convention, admitted English and Spanish squadrons to the harbour to hold the town for Louis XVII, (August 28th). This event shot an electric thrill through France. It was the climax of a long series of disasters. Lyons had hoisted the white flag of the Bourbons, and was making a desperate defence against the forces of the[pg.47] Convention: the royalist peasants of La Vendée had several times scattered the National Guards in utter rout: the Spaniards were crossing the Eastern Pyrenees: the Piedmontese were before the gates of Grenoble; and in the north and on the Rhine a doubtful contest was raging.

Such was the condition of France when Buonaparte drew near to the republican forces encamped near Ollioules, to the north-west of Toulon. He found them in disorder: their commander, Carteaux, had left the easel to learn the art of war, and was ignorant of the range of his few cannon; Dommartin, their artillery commander, had been disabled by a wound; and the Commissioners of the Convention, who were charged to put new vigour into the operations, were at their wits' end for lack of men and munitions. One of them was Salicetti, who hailed his coming as a godsend, and urged him to take Dommartin's place. Thus, on September 16th, the thin, sallow, threadbare figure took command of the artillery.

The republicans menaced the town on two sides. Carteaux with some 8,000 men held the hills between Toulon and Ollioules, while a corps 3,000 strong, under Lapoype, observed the fortress on the side of La Valette. Badly led though they were, they wrested the valley north of Mount Faron from the allied outposts, and nearly completed the besiegers' lines (September 18th). In fact, the garrison, which comprised only 2,000 British troops, 4,000 Spaniards, 1,500 French royalists, together with some Neapolitans and Piedmontese, was insufficient to defend the many positions around the city on which its safety depended. Indeed, General Grey wrote to Pitt that 50,000 men were needed to garrison the place; but, as that was double the strength of the British regular army then, the English Minister could only hold out hopes of the arrival of an Austrian corps and a few hundred British.^[21]

[pg.48] Before Buonaparte's arrival the Jacobins had no artillery: true, they had a few field-pieces, four heavier guns and two mortars, which a sergeant helplessly surveyed; but they had no munitions, no tools, above all no method and no discipline. Here then was the opportunity for which he had been pining. At once he assumes the tone of a master. "You mind your business, and let me look after mine," he exclaims to officious infantrymen; "it is artillery that takes fortresses: infantry gives its help." The drudgery of the last weeks now yields fruitful results: his methodical mind, brooding over the chaos before him, flashes back to this or that detail in some coast fort or magazine: his energy hustles on the leisurely Provençaux, and in a few days he has a respectable park of artillery—fourteen cannon, four mortars, and the necessary stores. In a brief space the Commissioners show their approval of his services by promoting him to the rank of chef de bataillon.

By this time the tide was beginning to turn in favour of the Republic. On October 9th Lyons fell before the Jacobins. The news lends a new zest to the Jacobins, whose left wing had (October 1st) been severely handled by the allies on Mount Faron. Above all, Buonaparte's artillery can be still further strengthened. "I have despatched," he wrote to the Minister of War, "an intelligent officer to Lyons, Briançon, and Grenoble, to procure what might be useful to us. I have requested the Army of Italy to furnish us with the cannon now useless for the defence of Antibes and Monaco.... I have established at Ollioules an arsenal with 80 workers. I have requisitioned horses from Nice right to Valence [pg.49]and Montpellier.... I am having 5,000 gabions made every day at Marseilles." But he was more than a mere organizer. He was ever with his men, animating them by his own ardour: "I always found him at his post," wrote Doppet, who now succeeded Carteaux; "when he needed rest he lay on the ground wrapped in his cloak: he never left the batteries." There, amidst the autumn rains, he contracted the febrile symptoms which for several years deepened the pallor of his cheeks and furrowed the rings under his eyes, giving him that uncanny, almost spectral, look which struck a chill to all who saw him first and knew not the fiery energy that burnt within. There, too, his zeal, his unfailing resource, his bulldog bravery, and that indefinable quality which separates genius from talent speedily conquered the hearts of the French soldiery. One example of this magnetic power must here suffice. He had ordered a battery to be made so near to Fort Mulgrave that Salicetti described it as within a pistol-shot of the English guns. Could it be worked, its effect would be decisive. But who could work it? The first day saw all its gunners killed or wounded, and even the reckless Jacobins flinched from facing the iron hail. "Call it the battery of the fearless," ordered the young captain. The generous French nature was touched at its tenderest point, personal and national honour, and the battery thereafter never lacked its full complement of gunners, living and dead.

The position at Fort Mulgrave, or the Little Gibraltar, was, indeed, all important; for if the republicans seized that commanding position, the allied squadrons could be overpowered, or at least compelled to sail away; and with their departure Toulon must fall.

Here we come on to ground that has been fiercely fought over in wordy war. Did Bonaparte originate the plan of attack? Or did he throw his weight and influence into a scheme that others beside him had designed? Or did he merely carry out orders as a subordinate? According to the Commissioner Barras, the[pg.50] last was the case. But Barras was with the eastern wing of the besiegers, that is, some miles away from the side of La Seyne and L'Eguillette, where Buonaparte fought. Besides, Barras' "Mémoires" are so untruthful where Buonaparte is concerned, as to be unworthy of serious attention, at least on these points.^[22] The historian M. Jung likewise relegates Buonaparte to a quite subordinate position.^[23] But his narrative omits some of the official documents which show that Buonaparte played a very important part in the siege. Other writers claim that Buonaparte's influence on the whole conduct of operations was paramount and decisive. Thus, M. Duruy quotes the letter of the Commissioners to the Convention: "We shall take care not to lay siege to Toulon by ordinary means, when we have a surer means to reduce it, that is, by burning the enemy's fleet.... We are only waiting for the siege-guns before taking up a position whence we may reach the ships with red-hot balls; and we shall see if we are not masters of Toulon." But this very letter disproves the Buonapartist claim. It was written on September 13th. Thus, three days before Buonaparte's arrival, the Commissioners had fully decided on attacking the Little Gibraltar; and the claim that Buonaparte originated the plan can only be sustained by antedating his arrival at Toulon. ^[24] In fact, every experienced officer among besiegers and besieged saw the weak point of the defence: early in September Hood and Mulgrave began the fortification of the heights behind L'Eguillette. In face of these facts, the assertion that Buonaparte was the first to design the movements which secured the [pg.51] surrender of Toulon must be relegated to the domain of hero-worship. (See note on p. 56.)

[THE SIEGE OF TOULON, 1793, from "L'Histoire de France depuis la Révolution de 1789," by Emmanuel Toulougeon. Paris, An. XII. [1803].
A. Fort Mulgrave.
A'. Promontory of L'Eguillette.
1 and 2. Batteries.
3. Battery "Hommes sans Peur."
The black and shaded rectangles are the Republican and Allied positions respectively.]

Carteaux having been superseded by Doppet, more energy was thrown into the operations. Yet for him Buonaparte had scarcely more respect. On November 15th an affair of outposts near Fort Mulgrave showed his weakness. The soldiers on both sides eagerly took up the affray; line after line of the French rushed up towards that frowning redoubt: O'Hara, the leader of the allied troops, encouraged the British in a sortie that drove back the blue-coats; whereupon Buonaparte headed the rallying rush to the gorge of the redoubt, when Doppet sounded the retreat. Half blinded by rage and by the blood trickling from a slight wound in his forehead, the young Corsican rushed back to Doppet and abused him in the language of the camp: "Our blow at Toulon has missed, because a—— has beaten the retreat." The soldiery applauded this revolutionary licence, and bespattered their chief with similar terms.

A few days later the tall soldierly Dugommier took the command: reinforcements began to pour in, finally raising the strength of the besiegers to 37,000 men. Above all, the new commander gave Buonaparte carte blanche for the direction of the artillery. New batteries accordingly began to ring the Little Gibraltar on the landward side; O'Hara, while gallantly heading a sortie, fell into the republicans' hands, and the defenders began to lose heart. The worst disappointment was the refusal of the Austrian Court to fulfil its promise, solemnly given in September, to send 5,000 regular troops for the defence of Toulon.

The final conflict took place on the night of December 16-17, when torrents of rain, a raging wind, and flashes of lightning added new horrors to the strife. Scarcely had the assailants left the sheltering walls of La Seyne, than Buonaparte's horse fell under him, shot dead: whole companies went astray in the darkness: yet the first column of 2,000 men led by Victor rush at the palisades of Fort Mulgrave, tear them down, and sweep into the [pg.53] redoubt, only to fall in heaps before a second line of defence: supported by the second column, they rally, only to yield once more before the murderous fire. In despair, Dugommier hurries on the column of reserve, with which Buonaparte awaits the crisis of the night. Led by the gallant young Muiron, the reserve sweeps into the gorge of death; Muiron, Buonaparte, and Dugommier hack their way through the same embrasure: their men swarm in on the overmatched red-coats and Spaniards, cut them down at their guns, and the redoubt is won.

This event was decisive. The Neapolitans, who were charged to hold the neighbouring forts, flung themselves into the sea; and the ships themselves began to weigh anchor; for Buonaparte's guns soon poured their shot on the fleet and into the city itself. But even in that desperate strait the allies turned fiercely to bay. On the evening of December 17th a young officer, who was destined once more to thwart Buonaparte's designs, led a small body of picked men into the dockyard to snatch from the rescuing clutch of the Jacobins the French warships that could not be carried off. Then was seen a weird sight. The galley slaves, now freed from their chains and clustering in angry groups, menaced the intruders. Yet the British seamen spread the combustibles and let loose the demon of destruction. Forthwith the flames shot up the masts, and licked up the stores of hemp, tar, and timber: and the explosion of two powder-ships by the Spaniards shook the earth for many miles around. Napoleon ever retained a vivid mental picture of the scene, which amid the hated calm of St. Helena he thus described: "The whirlwind of flames and smoke from the arsenal resembled the eruption of a volcano, and the thirteen vessels blazing in the roads were like so many displays of fireworks: the masts and forms of the vessels were distinctly traced out by the flames, which lasted many hours and formed an unparalleled spectacle."^[25] The sight struck horror to the[pg.54] hearts of the royalists of Toulon, who saw in it the signal of desertion by the allies; and through the lurid night crowds of panic-stricken wretches thronged the quays crying aloud to be taken away from the doomed city. The glare of the flames, the crash of the enemy's bombs, the explosion of the two powder-ships, frenzied many a soul; and scores of those who could find no place in the boats flung themselves into the sea rather than face the pikes and guillotines of the Jacobins. Their fears were only too well founded; for a fortnight later Fréron, the Commissioner of the Convention, boasted that two hundred royalists perished daily.

It remains briefly to consider a question of special interest to English readers. Did the Pitt Ministry intend to betray the confidence of the French royalists and keep Toulon for England? The charge has been brought by certain French writers that the British, after entering Toulon with promise that they would hold it in pledge for Louis XVII., nevertheless lorded it over the other allies and revealed their intention of keeping that stronghold. These writers aver that Hood, after entering Toulon as an equal with the Spanish admiral, Langara, laid claim to entire command of the land forces; that English commissioners were sent for the administration of the town; and that the English Government refused to allow the coming of the Comte de Provence, who, as the elder of the two surviving brothers of Louis XVI., was entitled to act on behalf of Louis XVII.^[26] The facts in the main are correct, but the interpretation put upon them may well be questioned. Hood certainly acted with much arrogance towards the Spaniards. But when the more courteous O'Hara arrived to take command of the British, Neapolitan, and Sardinian troop, [pg.55] the new commander agreed to lay aside the question of supreme command. It was not till November 30th that the British Government sent off any despatch on the question, which meanwhile had been settled at Toulon by the exercise of that tact in which Hood seems signally to have been lacking. The whole question was personal, not national.

Still less was the conduct of the British Government towards the Comte de Provence a proof of its design to keep Toulon. The records of our Foreign Office show that, before the occupation of that stronghold for Louis XVII., we had declined to acknowledge the claims of his uncle to the Regency. He and his brother, the Comte d'Artois, were notoriously unpopular in France, except with royalists of the old school; and their presence at Toulon would certainly have raised awkward questions about the future government. The conduct of Spain had hitherto been similar.^[27] But after the occupation of Toulon, the Court of Madrid judged the presence of the Comte de Provence in that fortress to be advisable; whereas the Pitt Ministry adhered to its former belief, insisted on the difficulty of conducting the defence if the Prince were present as Regent, instructed Mr. Drake, our Minister at Genoa, to use every argument to deter him from proceeding to Toulon, and privately ordered our officers there, in the last resort, to refuse him permission to land. The instructions of October 18th to the royal commissioners at Toulon show that George III. and his Ministers believed they would be compromising the royalist cause by recognizing a regency; and certainly any effort by the allies to prejudice the future settlement would at once have shattered any hopes of a general rally to the royalist side.^[28] [pg.56]

Besides, if England meant to keep Toulon, why did she send only 2,200 soldiers? Why did she admit, not only 6,900 Spaniards, but also 4,900 Neapolitans and 1,600 Piedmontese? Why did she accept the armed help of 1,600 French royalists? Why did she urgently plead with Austria to send 5,000 white-coats from Milan? Why, finally, is there no word in the British official despatches as to the eventual keeping of Toulon; while there are several references to indemnities which George III. would require for the expenses of the war—such as Corsica or some of the French West Indies? Those despatches show conclusively that England did not wish to keep a fortress that required a permanent garrison equal to half of the British army on its peace footing; but that she did regard it as a good base of operations for the overthrow of the Jacobin rule and the restoration of monarchy; whereupon her services must be requited with some suitable indemnity, either one of the French West Indies or Corsica. These plans were shattered by Buonaparte's skill and the valour of Dugommier's soldiery; but no record has yet leaped to light to convict the Pitt Ministry of the perfidy which Buonaparte, in common with nearly all Frenchmen, charged to their account.[pg.57]

CHAPTER IV

The next period of Buonaparte's life presents few features of interest. He was called upon to supervise the guns and stores for the Army of Italy, and also to inspect the fortifications and artillery of the coast. At Marseilles his zeal outstripped his discretion. He ordered the reconstruction of the fortress which had been destroyed during the Revolution; but when the townsfolk heard the news, they protested so vehemently that the work was stopped and an order was issued for Buonaparte's arrest. From this difficulty the friendship of the younger Robespierre and of Salicetti, the Commissioners of the Convention, availed to rescue him; but the incident proves that his services at Toulon were not so brilliant as to have raised him above the general level of meritorious officers, who were applauded while they prospered, but might be sent to the guillotine for any serious offence.

In February, 1794, he was appointed at Nice general in command of the artillery of the Army of Italy, which drove the Sardinian troops from several positions between Ventimiglia and Oneglia. Thence, swinging round by passes of the Maritime Alps, they outflanked the positions of the Austro-Sardinian forces at the Col di Tenda, which had defied all attack in front. Buonaparte's share in this turning operation seems to have been restricted to the effective handling of artillery, and the chief credit here rested with Masséna, who won the first of his laurels in the country of his birth. He was of humble parentage; [pg.58] yet his erect bearing, proud animated glance, curt penetrating speech, and keen repartees, proclaimed a nature at once active and wary, an intellect both calculating and confident. Such was the man who was to immortalize his name in many a contest, until his glory paled before the greater genius of Wellington.

Much of the credit of organizing this previously unsuccessful army belongs to the younger Robespierre, who, as Commissioner of the Convention, infused his energy into all departments of the service. For some months his relations to Buonaparte were those of intimacy; but whether they extended to complete sympathy on political matters may be doubted. The younger Robespierre held the revolutionary creed with sufficient ardour, though one of his letters dated from Oneglia suggests that the fame of the Terror was hurtful to the prospects of the campaign. It states that the whole of the neighbouring inhabitants had fled before the French soldiers, in the belief that they were destroyers of religion and eaters of babies: this was inconvenient, as it prevented the supply of provisions and the success of forced loans. The letter suggests that he was a man of action rather than of ideas, and probably it was this practical quality which bound Buonaparte in friendship to him. Yet it is difficult to fathom Buonaparte's ideas about the revolutionary despotism which was then deluging Paris with blood. Outwardly he appeared to sympathize with it. Such at least is the testimony of Marie Robespierre, with whom Buonaparte's sisters were then intimate. "Buonaparte," she said, "was a republican: I will even say that he took the side of the Mountain: at least, that was the impression left on my mind by his opinions when I was at Nice.... His admiration for my elder brother, his friendship for my younger brother, and perhaps also the interest inspired by my misfortunes, gained for me, under the Consulate, a pension of 3,600 francs."^[29] Equally noteworthy is the later declaration of Napoleon that[pg.59] Robespierre was the "scapegoat of the Revolution."^[30] It appears probable, then, that he shared the Jacobinical belief that the Terror was a necessary though painful stage in the purification of the body politic. His admiration of the rigour of Lycurgus, and his dislike of all superfluous luxury, alike favour this supposition; and as he always had the courage of his convictions, it is impossible to conceive him clinging to the skirts of the terrorists merely from a mean hope of prospective favours. That is the alternative explanation of his intimacy with young Robespierre. Some of his injudicious admirers, in trying to disprove his complicity with the terrorists, impale themselves on this horn of the dilemma. In seeking to clear him from the charge of Terrorism, they stain him with the charge of truckling to the terrorists. They degrade him from the level of St. Just to that of Barrère.

A sentence in one of young Robespierre's letters shows that he never felt completely sure about the young officer. After enumerating to his brother Buonaparte's merits, he adds: "He is a Corsican, and offers only the guarantee of a man of that nation who has resisted the caresses of Paoli and whose property has been ravaged by that traitor." Evidently, then, Robespierre regarded Buonaparte with some suspicion as an insular Proteus, lacking those sureties, mental and pecuniary, which reduced a man to dog-like fidelity.

Yet, however warily Buonaparte picked his steps along the slopes of the revolutionary volcano, he was destined to feel the scorch of the central fires. He had recently been intrusted with a mission to the Genoese Republic, which was in a most difficult position. It was subject to pressure from three sides; from English men-of-war that had swooped down on a French frigate, the "Modeste," in Genoese waters; and from actual invasion by the French on the west and by the Austrians[pg.60] on the north. Despite the great difficulties of his task, the young envoy bent the distracted Doge and Senate to his will. He might, therefore, have expected gratitude from his adopted country; but shortly after he returned to Nice he was placed under arrest, and was imprisoned in a fort near Antibes.

The causes of this swift reverse of fortune were curiously complex. The Robespierres had in the meantime been guillotined at Paris (July 28th, or Thermidor 10th); and this "Thermidorian" reaction alone would have sufficed to endanger Buonaparte's head. But his position was further imperilled by his recent strategic suggestions, which had served to reduce to a secondary rôle the French Army of the Alps. The operations of that force had of late been strangely thwarted; and its leaders, searching for the paralyzing influence, discovered it in the advice of Buonaparte. Their suspicions against him were formulated in a secret letter to the Committee of Public Safety, which stated that the Army of the Alps had been kept inactive by the intrigues of the younger Robespierre and of Ricord. Many a head had fallen for reasons less serious than these. But Buonaparte had one infallible safeguard: he could not well be spared. After a careful examination of his papers, the Commissioners, Salicetti and Albitte, provisionally restored him to liberty, but not, for some weeks, to his rank of general (August 20th, 1794). The chief reason assigned for his liberation was the service which his knowledge and talents might render to the Republic, a reference to the knowledge of the Italian coast-line which he had gained during the mission to Genoa.

For a space his daring spirit was doomed to chafe in comparative inactivity, in supervising the coast artillery. But his faults were forgotten in the need which was soon felt for his warlike prowess. An expedition was prepared to free Corsica from "the tyranny of the English"; and in this Buonaparte sailed, as general commanding the artillery. With him were two friends, Junot and Marmont, who had clung to him through his [pg.61] recent troubles; the former was to be helped to wealth and fame by Buonaparte's friendship, the latter by his own brilliant gifts.^[31] In this expedition their talent was of no avail. The French were worsted in an engagement with the British fleet, and fell back in confusion to the coast of France. Once again Buonaparte's Corsican enterprises were frustrated by the ubiquitous lords of the sea: against them he now stored up a double portion of hate, for in the meantime his inspectorship of coast artillery had been given to his fellow-countryman, Casabianca.

The fortunes of these Corsican exiles drifted hither and thither in many perplexing currents, as Buonaparte was once more to discover. It was a prevalent complaint that there were too many of them seeking employment in the army of the south; and a note respecting the career of the young officer made by General Schérer, who now commanded the French Army of Italy, shows that Buonaparte had aroused at least as much suspicion as admiration. It runs: "This officer is general of artillery, and in this arm has sound knowledge, but has somewhat too much ambition and intriguing habits for his advancement." All things considered, it was deemed advisable to transfer him to the army which was engaged in crushing the Vendéan revolt, a service which he loathed and was determined, if possible, to evade. Accompanied by his faithful friends, Marmont and Junot, as also by his young brother Louis, he set out for Paris (May, 1795).

In reality Fortune never favoured him more than when she removed him from the coteries of intriguing Corsicans on the coast of Provence and brought him to[pg.62] the centre of all influence. An able schemer at Paris could decide the fate of parties and governments. At the frontiers men could only accept the decrees of the omnipotent capital. Moreover, the Revolution, after passing through the molten stage, was now beginning to solidify, an important opportunity for the political craftsman. The spring of the year 1795 witnessed a strange blending of the new fanaticism with the old customs. Society, dammed up for a time by the Spartan rigour of Robespierre, was now flowing back into its wonted channels. Gay equipages were seen in the streets; theatres, prosperous even during the Terror, were now filled to overflowing; gambling, whether in money or in stocks and assignals, was now permeating all grades of society; and men who had grown rich by amassing the confiscated State lands now vied with bankers, stock-jobbers, and forestallers of grain in vulgar ostentation. As for the poor, they were meeting their match in the gilded youth of Paris, who with clubbed sticks asserted the right of the rich to be merry. If the sansculottes attempted to restore the days of the Terror, the National Guards of Paris were ready to sweep them back into the slums. Such was their fate on May 20th, shortly after Buonaparte's arrival at Paris. Any dreams which he may have harboured of restoring the Jacobins to power were dissipated, for Paris now plunged into the gaieties of the ancien régime. The Terror was remembered only as a horrible nightmare, which served to add zest to the pleasures of the present. In some circles no one was received who had not lost a relative by the guillotine. With a ghastly merriment characteristic of the time, "victim balls" were given, to which those alone were admitted who could produce the death warrant of some family connection: these secured the pleasure of dancing in costumes which recalled those of the scaffold, and of beckoning ever and anon to their partners with nods that simulated the fall of the severed head. It was for this, then, that the amiable Louis, the majestic Marie Antoinette, the Minerva-like Madame [pg.63] Roland, the Girondins vowed to the utter quest of liberty, the tyrant-quelling Danton, the incorruptible Robespierre himself, had felt the fatal axe; in order that the mimicry of their death agonies might tickle jaded appetites, and help to weave anew the old Circean spells. So it seemed to the few who cared to think of the frightful sacrifices of the past, and to measure them against the seemingly hopeless degradation of the present.

Some such thoughts seem to have flitted across the mind of Buonaparte in those months of forced inactivity. It was a time of disillusionment. Rarely do we find thenceforth in his correspondence any gleams of faith respecting the higher possibilities of the human race. The golden visions of youth now vanish along with the bonnet rouge and the jargon of the Terror. His bent had ever been for the material and practical: and now that faith in the Jacobinical creed was vanishing, it was more than ever desirable to grapple that errant balloon to substantial facts. Evidently, the Revolution must now trust to the clinging of the peasant proprietors to the recently confiscated lands of the Church and of the emigrant nobles. If all else was vain and transitory, here surely was a solid basis of material interests to which the best part of the manhood of France would tenaciously adhere, defying alike the plots of reactionaries and the forces of monarchical Europe. Of these interests Buonaparte was to be the determined guarantor. Amidst much that was visionary in his later policy he never wavered in his championship of the new peasant proprietors. He was ever the peasants' General, the peasants' Consul, the peasants' Emperor.

The transition of the Revolution to an ordinary form of polity was also being furthered by its unparalleled series of military triumphs. When Buonaparte's name was as yet unknown, except in Corsica and Provence, France practically gained her "natural boundaries," the Rhine and the Alps. In the campaigns of 1793-4, the soldiers of Pichegru, Kléber, Hoche, and Moreau overran [pg.64] the whole of the Low Countries and chased the Germans beyond the Rhine; the Piedmontese were thrust behind the Alps; the Spaniards behind the Pyrenees. In quick succession State after State sued for peace: Tuscany in February, 1795; Prussia in April; Hanover, Westphalia, and Saxony in May; Spain and Hesse-Cassel in July; Switzerland and Denmark in August.

Such was the state of France when Buonaparte came to seek his fortunes in the Sphinx-like capital. His artillery command had been commuted to a corresponding rank in the infantry—a step that deeply incensed him. He attributed it to malevolent intriguers; but all his efforts to obtain redress were in vain. Lacking money and patronage, known only as an able officer and facile intriguer of the bankrupt Jacobinical party, he might well have despaired. He was now almost alone. Marmont had gone off to the Army of the Rhine; but Junot was still with him, allured perhaps by Madame Permon's daughter, whom he subsequently married. At the house of this amiable hostess, an old friend of his family, Buonaparte found occasional relief from the gloom of his existence. The future Madame Junot has described him as at this time untidy, unkempt, sickly, remarkable for his extreme thinness and the almost yellow tint of his visage, which was, however, lit up by "two eyes sparkling with keenness and will-power"—evidently a Corsican falcon, pining for action, and fretting its soaring spirit in that vapid town life. Action Buonaparte might have had, but only of a kind that he loathed. He might have commanded the troops destined to crush the brave royalist peasants of La Vendée. But, whether from scorn of such vulture-work, or from an instinct that a nobler quarry might be started at Paris, he refused to proceed to the Army of the West, and on the plea of ill-health remained in the capital. There he spent his time deeply pondering on politics and strategy. He designed a history of the last two years, and drafted a plan of campaign for the Army of [pg.65] Italy, which, later on, was to bear him to fortune. Probably the geographical insight which it displayed may have led to his appointment (August 20th, 1795) to the topographical bureau of the Committee of Public Safety. His first thought on hearing of this important advancement was that it opened up an opportunity for proceeding to Turkey to organize the artillery of the Sultan; and in a few days he sent in a formal request to that effect—the first tangible proof of that yearning after the Orient which haunted him all through life. But, while straining his gaze eastwards, he experienced a sharp rebuff. The Committee was on the point of granting his request, when an examination of his recent conduct proved him guilty of a breach of discipline in not proceeding to his Vendéan command. On the very day when one department of the Committee empowered him to proceed to Constantinople, the Central Committee erased his name from the list of general officers (September 15th).

This time the blow seemed fatal. But Fortune appeared to compass his falls only in order that he might the more brilliantly tower aloft. Within three weeks he was hailed as the saviour of the new republican constitution. The cause of this almost magical change in his prospects is to be sought in the political unrest of France, to which we must now briefly advert.

All through this summer of 1795 there were conflicts between Jacobins and royalists. In the south the latter party had signally avenged itself for the agonies of the preceding years, and the ardour of the French temperament seemed about to drive that hapless people from the "Red Terror" to a veritable "White Terror," when two disasters checked the course of the reaction. An attempt of a large force of emigrant French nobles, backed up by British money and ships, to rouse Brittany against the Convention was utterly crushed by the able young Hoche; and nearly seven hundred prisoners were afterwards shot down in cold blood (July). Shortly before this blow, the little prince styled Louis XVII. succumbed to the brutal treatment [pg.66]of his gaolers at the Temple in Paris; and the hopes of the royalists now rested on the unpopular Comte de Provence. Nevertheless, the political outlook in the summer of 1795 was not reassuring to the republicans; and the Commission of Eleven, empowered by the Convention to draft new organic laws, drew up an instrument of government, which, though republican in form, seemed to offer all the stability of the most firmly rooted oligarchy. Some such compromise was perhaps necessary; for the Commonwealth was confronted by three dangers, anarchy resulting from the pressure of the mob, an excessive centralization of power in the hands of two committees, and the possibility of a coup d'état by some pretender or adventurer. Indeed, the student of French history cannot fail to see that this is the problem which is ever before the people of France. It has presented itself in acute though diverse phases in 1797,1799,1814, 1830, 1848, 1851, and in 1871. Who can say that the problem has yet found its complete solution?

In some respects the constitution which the Convention voted in August, 1795, was skilfully adapted to meet the needs of the time. Though democratic in spirit, it granted a vote only to those citizens who had resided for a year in some dwelling and had paid taxes, thus excluding the rabble who had proved to be dangerous to any settled government. It also checked the hasty legislation which had brought ridicule on successive National Assemblies. In order to moderate the zeal for the manufacture of decrees, which had often exceeded one hundred a month, a second or revising chamber was now to be formed on the basis of age; for it had been found that the younger the deputies the faster came forth the fluttering flocks of decrees, that often came home to roost in the guise of curses. A senatorial guillotine, it was now proposed, should thin out the fledglings before they flew abroad at all. Of the seven hundred and fifty deputies of France, the two hundred and fifty oldest men were to form the Council of Ancients, having powers to amend or reject the proposals [pg.67] emanating from the Council of Five Hundred. In this Council were the younger deputies, and with them rested the sole initiation of laws. Thus the young deputies were to make the laws, but the older deputies were to amend or reject them; and this nice adjustment of the characteristics of youth and age, a due blending of enthusiasm with caution, promised to invigorate the body politic and yet guard its vital interests. Lastly, in order that the two Councils should continuously represent the feelings of France, one third of their members must retire for re-election every year, a device which promised to prevent any violent change in their composition, such as might occur if, at the end of their three years' membership, all were called upon to resign at once.

But the real crux of constitution builders had hitherto been in the relations of the Legislature to the Executive. How should the brain of the body politic, that is, the Legislature, be connected with the hand, that is, the Executive? Obviously, so argued all French political thinkers, the two functions were distinct and must be kept separate. The results of this theory of the separation of powers were clearly traceable in the course of the Revolution. When the hand had been left almost powerless, as in 1791-2, owing to democratic jealousy of the royal Ministry, the result had been anarchy. The supreme needs of the State in the agonies of 1793 had rendered the hand omnipotent: the Convention, that is, the brain, was for some time powerless before its own instrument, the two secret committees. Experience now showed that the brain must exercise a general control over the hand, without unduly hampering its actions. Evidently, then, the deputies of France must intrust the details of administration to responsible Ministers, though some directing agency seemed needed as a spur to energy and a check against royalist plots. In brief, the Committee of Public Safety, purged of its more dangerous powers, was to furnish the model for a new body of five members, termed the Directory. This [pg.68] organism, which was to give its name to the whole period 1795-1799, was not the Ministry. There was no Ministry as we now use the term. There were Ministers who were responsible individually for their departments of State: but they never met for deliberation, or communicated with the Legislature; they were only heads of departments, who were responsible individually to the Directors. These five men formed a powerful committee, deliberating in private on the whole policy of the State and on all the work of the Ministers. The Directory had not, it is true, the right of initiating laws and of arbitrary arrest which the two committees had freely exercised during the Terror. Its dependence on the Legislature seemed also to be guaranteed by the Directors being appointed by the two legislative Councils; while one of the five was to vacate his office for re-election every year. But in other respects the directorial powers were almost as extensive as those wielded by the two secret committees, or as those which Bonaparte was to inherit from the Directory in 1799. They comprised the general control of policy in peace and war, the right to negotiate treaties (subject to ratification by the legislative councils), to promulgate laws voted by the Councils and watch over their execution, and to appoint or dismiss the Ministers of State.

Such was the constitution which was proclaimed on September 22nd, 1795, or 1st Vendémiaire, Year IV., of the revolutionary calendar. An important postscript to the original constitution now excited fierce commotions which enabled the young officer to repair his own shattered fortunes. The Convention, terrified at the thought of a general election, which might send up a malcontent or royalist majority, decided to impose itself on France for at least two years longer. With an effrontery unparalleled in parliamentary annals, it decreed that the law of the new constitution, requiring the re-election of one-third of the deputies every year, should now be applied to itself; and that the rest of its members should sit in the forthcoming Councils. At once a cry of disgust and rage arose from [pg.69] all who were weary of the Convention and all its works. "Down with the two-thirds!" was the cry that resounded through the streets of Paris. The movement was not so much definitely royalist as vaguely malcontent. The many were enraged by the existing dearth and by the failure of the Revolution to secure even cheap bread. Doubtless the royalists strove to drive on the discontent to the desired goal, and in many parts they tinged the movement with an unmistakably Bourbon tint. But it is fairly certain that in Paris they could not alone have fomented a discontent so general as that of Vendémiaire. That they would have profited by the defeat of the Convention is, however, equally certain. The history of the Revolution proves that those who at first merely opposed the excesses of the Jacobins gradually drifted over to the royalists. The Convention now found itself attacked in the very city which had been the chosen abode of Liberty and Equality. Some thirty thousand of the Parisian National Guards were determined to give short shrift to this Assembly that clung so indecently to life; and as the armies were far away, the Parisian malcontents seemed masters of the situation. Without doubt they would have been but for their own precipitation and the energy of Buonaparte.

But how came he to receive the military authority which was so potently to influence the course of events? We left him in Fructidor disgraced: we find him in the middle of Vendémiaire leading part of the forces of the Convention. This bewildering change was due to the pressing needs of the Republic, to his own signal abilities, and to the discerning eye of Barras, whose career claims a brief notice.

Paul Barras came of a Provençal family, and had an adventurous life both on land and in maritime expeditions. Gifted with a robust frame, consummate self-assurance, and a ready tongue, he was well equipped for intrigues, both amorous and political, when the outbreak of the Revolution gave his thoughts a more serious turn. Espousing the ultra-democratic side, he yet [pg.70] contrived to emerge unscathed from the schisms which were fatal to less dextrous trimmers. He was present at the siege of Toulon, and has striven in his "Mémoires" to disparage Buonaparte's services and exalt his own. At the crisis of Thermidor the Convention intrusted him with the command of the "army of the interior," and the energy which he then displayed gained for him the same position in the equally critical days of Vendémiaire. Though he subsequently carped at the conduct of Buonaparte, his action proved his complete confidence in that young officer's capacity: he at once sent for him, and intrusted him with most important duties. Herein lies the chief chance of immortality for the name of Barras; not that, as a terrorist, he slaughtered royalists at Toulon; not that he was the military chief of the Thermidorians, who, from fear of their own necks, ended the supremacy of Robespierre; not even that he degraded the new régime by a cynical display of all the worst vices of the old; but rather because he was now privileged to hold the stirrup for the great captain who vaulted lightly into the saddle.

The present crisis certainly called for a man of skill and determination. The malcontents had been emboldened by the timorous actions of General Menou, who had previously been intrusted with the task of suppressing the agitation. Owing to a praiseworthy desire to avoid bloodshed, that general wasted time in parleying with the most rebellious of the "sections" of Paris. The Convention now appointed Barras to the command, while Buonaparte, Brune, Carteaux, Dupont, Loison, Vachot, and Vézu were charged to serve under him.^[32] Such was the decree of the Convention, which therefore refutes Napoleon's later claim that he was in command, and that of his admirers that he was second in command.

[pg.71] Yet, intrusted from the outset by Barras with important duties, he unquestionably became the animating spirit of the defence. "From the first," says Thiébault, "his activity was astonishing: he seemed to be everywhere at once: he surprised people by his laconic, clear, and prompt orders: everybody was struck by the vigour of his arrangements, and passed from admiration to confidence, from confidence to enthusiasm." Everything now depended on skill and enthusiasm. The defenders of the Convention, comprising some four or five thousand troops of the line, and between one and two thousand patriots, gendarmes, and Invalides, were confronted by nearly thirty thousand National Guards. The odds were therefore wellnigh as heavy as those which menaced Louis XVI. on the day of his final overthrow. But the place of the yielding king was now filled by determined men, who saw the needs of the situation. In the earlier scenes of the Revolution, Buonaparte had pondered on the efficacy of artillery in street-fighting—a fit subject for his geometrical genius. With a few cannon, he knew that he could sweep all the approaches to the palace; and, on Barras' orders, he despatched a dashing cavalry officer, Murat—a name destined to become famous from Madrid to Moscow—to bring the artillery from the neighbouring camp of Sablons. Murat secured them before the malcontents of Paris could lay hands on them; and as the "sections" of Paris had yielded up their own cannon after the affrays of May, they now lacked the most potent force in street-fighting. Their actions were also paralyzed by divided counsels: their commander, an old general named Danican, moved his men hesitatingly; he wasted precious minutes in parleying, and thus gave time to Barras' small but compact force to fight them in detail. Buonaparte had skilfully disposed his cannon to bear on the royalist columns that threatened the streets north of the Tuileries. But for some time the two parties stood face to face, seeking to cajole or intimidate one another. As the autumn afternoon waned, shots were fired from some houses near the church of [pg.72] St. Roch, where the malcontents had their headquarters.^[33] At once the streets became the scene of a furious fight; furious but unequal; for Buonaparte's cannon tore away the heads of the malcontent columns. In vain did the royalists pour in their volleys from behind barricades, or from the neighbouring houses: finally they retreated on the barricaded church, or fled down the Rue St. Honoré. Meanwhile their bands from across the river, 5,000 strong, were filing across the bridges, and menaced the Tuileries from that side, until here also they melted away before the grapeshot and musketry poured into their front and flank. By six o'clock the conflict was over. The fight presents few, if any, incidents which are authentic. The well-known engraving of Helman, which shows Buonaparte directing the storming of the church of St. Roch is unfortunately quite incorrect. He was not engaged there, but in the streets further east: the church was not stormed: the malcontents held it all through the night, and quietly surrendered it next morning.

Such was the great day of Vendémiaire. It cost the lives of about two hundred on each side; at least, that is the usual estimate, which seems somewhat incongruous with the stories of fusillading and cannonading at close quarters, until we remember that it is the custom of memoir-writers and newspaper editors to trick out the details of a fight, and in the case of civil warfare to minimise the bloodshed. Certainly the Convention acted with clemency in the hour of victory: two only of the rebel leaders were put to death; and it is pleasing to remember that when Menou was charged with treachery, Buonaparte used his influence to procure his freedom.

Bourrienne states that in his later days the victor deeply regretted his action in this day of Vendémiaire. The assertion seems incredible. The "whiff of grapeshot" crushed a movement which could have led only to present anarchy, and probably would have brought[pg.73] France back to royalism of an odious type. It taught a severe lesson to a fickle populace which, according to Mme. de Staël, was hungering for the spoils of place as much as for any political object. Of all the events of his post-Corsican life, Buonaparte need surely never have felt compunctions for Vendémiaire.^[34]

After four signal reverses in his career, he now enters on a path strewn with glories. The first reward for his signal services to the Republic was his appointment to be second in command of the army of the interior; and when Barras resigned the first command, he took that responsible post. But more brilliant honours were soon to follow, the first of a social character, the second purely military.

Buonaparte had already appeared timidly and awkwardly at the salon of the voluptuous Barras, where the fair but frail Madame Tallien—Notre Dame de Thermidor she was styled—dazzled Parisian society by her classic features and the uncinctured grace of her attire. There he reappeared, not in the threadbare uniform that had attracted the giggling notice of that giddy throng, but as the lion of the society which his talents had saved. His previous attempts to gain the hand of a lady had been unsuccessful. He had been refused, first by Mlle. Clary, sister of his brother Joseph's wife, and quite recently by Madame Permon. Indeed, the scarecrow young officer had not been a brilliant match. But now he saw at that salon a charming widow, Josephine de Beauharnais, whose husband had perished in the Terror. The ardour of his southern temperament, long repressed by his privations, speedily rekindles in her presence: his stiff, awkward manners thaw under her smiles: his silence vanishes when she praises his military gifts: he admires her tact, her sympathy, her beauty: he[pg.74] determines to marry her. The lady, on her part, seems to have been somewhat terrified by her uncanny wooer: she comments questioningly on his "violent tenderness almost amounting to frenzy": she notes uneasily his "keen inexplicable gaze which imposes even on our Directors": How would this eager nature, this masterful energy, consort with her own "Creole nonchalance"? She did well to ask herself whether the general's almost volcanic passion would not soon exhaust itself, and turn from her own fading charms to those of women who were his equals in age. Besides, when she frankly asked her own heart, she found that she loved him not: she only admired him. Her chief consolation was that if she married him, her friend Barras would help to gain for Buonaparte the command of the Army of Italy. The advice of Barras undoubtedly helped to still the questioning surmises of Josephine; and the wedding was celebrated, as a civil contract, on March 9th, 1796. With a pardonable coquetry, the bride entered her age on the register as four years less than the thirty-four which had passed over her: while her husband, desiring still further to lessen the disparity, entered his date of birth as 1768.

A fortnight before the wedding, he had been appointed to command the Army of Italy: and after a honeymoon of two days at Paris, he left his bride to take up his new military duties. Clearly, then, there was some connection between this brilliant fortune and his espousal of Josephine. But the assertion that this command was the "dowry" offered by Barras to the somewhat reluctant bride is more piquant than correct. That the brilliance of Buonaparte's prospects finally dissipated her scruples may be frankly admitted. But the appointment to a command of a French army did not rest with Barras. He was only one of the five Directors who now decided the chief details of administration. His colleagues were Letourneur, Rewbell, La Réveillière-Lépeaux, and the great Carnot; and, as a matter of fact, it was the last-named who chiefly decided the appointment in question. [pg.75] He had seen and pondered over the plan of campaign which Buonaparte had designed for the Army of Italy; and the vigour of the conception, the masterly appreciation of topographical details which it displayed, and the trenchant energy of its style had struck conviction to his strategic genius. Buonaparte owed his command, not to a backstairs intrigue, as was currently believed in the army, but rather to his own commanding powers. While serving with the Army of Italy in 1794, he had carefully studied the coast-line and the passes leading inland; and, according to the well-known savant, Volney, the young officer, shortly after his release from imprisonment, sketched out to him and to a Commissioner of the Convention the details of the very plan of campaign which was to carry him victoriously from the Genoese Riviera into the heart of Austria.^[35] While describing this masterpiece of strategy, says Volney, Buonaparte spoke as if inspired. We can fancy the wasted form dilating with a sense of power, the thin sallow cheeks aglow with enthusiasm, the hawk-like eyes flashing at the sight of the helpless Imperial quarry, as he pointed out on the map of Piedmont and Lombardy the features which would favour a dashing invader and carry him to the very gates of Vienna. The splendours of the Imperial Court at the Tuileries seem tawdry and insipid when compared with the intellectual grandeur which lit up that humble lodging at Nice with the first rays that heralded the dawn of Italian liberation.

With the fuller knowledge which he had recently acquired, he now in January, 1796, elaborated this plan of campaign, so that it at once gained Carnot's admiration. The Directors forwarded it to General Schérer, who was in command of the Army of Italy, but promptly received the "brutal" reply that the man who had drafted the plan ought to come and carry it out. Long dissatisfied with Schérer's inactivity and constant complaints, the Directory now took him at his word, and replaced him[pg.76] by Buonaparte. Such is the truth about Buonaparte's appointment to the Army of Italy.

To Nice, then, the young general set out (March 21st) accompanied, or speedily followed, by his faithful friends, Marmont and Junot, as well as by other officers of whose energy he was assured, Berthier, Murat, and Duroc. How much had happened since the early summer of 1795, when he had barely the means to pay his way to Paris! A sure instinct had drawn him to that hot-bed of intrigues. He had played a desperate game, risking his commission in order that he might keep in close touch with the central authority. His reward for this almost superhuman confidence in his own powers was correspondingly great; and now, though he knew nothing of the handling of cavalry and infantry save from books, he determined to lead the Army of Italy to a series of conquests that would rival those of Cæsar. In presence of a will so stubborn and genius so fervid, what wonder that a friend prophesied that his halting-place would be either the throne or the scaffold? [pg.77]

CHAPTER V

In the personality of Napoleon nothing is more remarkable than the combination of gifts which in most natures are mutually exclusive; his instincts were both political and military; his survey of a land took in not only the geographical environment but also the material welfare of the people. Facts, which his foes ignored, offered a firm fulcrum for the leverage of his will: and their political edifice or their military policy crumbled to ruin under an assault planned with consummate skill and pressed home with relentless force.

For the exercise of all these gifts what land was so fitted as the mosaic of States which was dignified with the name of Italy?

That land had long been the battle-ground of the Bourbons and the Hapsburgs; and their rivalries, aided by civic dissensions, had reduced the people that once had given laws to Europe into a condition of miserable weakness. Europe was once the battle-field of the Romans: Italy was now the battle-field of Europe. The Hapsburgs dominated the north, where they held the rich Duchy of Milan, along with the great stronghold of Mantua, and some scattered imperial fiefs. A scion of the House of Austria reigned at Florence over the prosperous Duchy of Tuscany. Modena and Lucca were under the general control of the Court of Vienna. The south of the peninsula, along with Sicily, was swayed by Ferdinand IV., a descendant of the Spanish [pg.78] Bourbons, who kept his people in a condition of mediæval ignorance and servitude; and this dynasty controlled the Duchy of Parma. The Papal States were also sunk in the torpor of the Middle Ages; but in the northern districts of Bologna and Ferrara, known as the "Legations," the inhabitants still remembered the time of their independence, and chafed under the irritating restraints of Papal rule. This was seen when the leaven of French revolutionary thought began to ferment in Italian towns. Two young men of Bologna were so enamoured of the new ideas, as to raise an Italian tricolour flag, green, white, and red, and summon their fellow-citizens to revolt against the rule of the Pope's legate (November, 1794). The revolt was crushed, and the chief offenders were hanged; but elsewhere the force of democracy made itself felt, especially among the more virile peoples of Northern Italy. Lombardy and Piedmont throbbed with suppressed excitement. Even when the King of Sardinia, Victor Amadeus III., was waging war against the French Republic, the men of Turin were with difficulty kept from revolt; and, as we have seen, the Austro-Sardinian alliance was powerless to recover Savoy and Nice from the soldiers of liberty or to guard the Italian Riviera from invasion.

In fact, Bonaparte—for he henceforth spelt his name thus—detected the political weakness of the Hapsburgs' position in Italy. Masters of eleven distinct peoples north of the Alps, how could they hope permanently to dominate a wholly alien people south of that great mountain barrier? The many failures of the old Ghibelline or Imperial party in face of any popular impulse which moved the Italian nature to its depths revealed the artificiality of their rule. Might not such an impulse be imparted by the French Revolution? And would not the hopes of national freedom and of emancipation from feudal imposts fire these peoples with zeal for the French cause? Evidently there were vast possibilities in a democratic propaganda. At the outset Bonaparte's racial sympathies were warmly aroused for the liberation of[pg.79] Italy; and though his judgment was to be warped by the promptings of ambition, he never lost sight of the welfare of the people whence he was descended. In his "Memoirs written at St. Helena" he summed up his convictions respecting the Peninsula in this statesmanlike utterance: "Italy, isolated within its natural limits, separated by the sea and by very high mountains from the rest of Europe, seems called to be a great and powerful nation.... Unity in manners, language, literature ought finally, in a future more or less remote, to unite its inhabitants under a single government.... Rome is beyond doubt the capital which the Italians will one day choose." A prophetic saying: it came from a man who, as conqueror and organizer, awakened that people from the torpor of centuries and breathed into it something of his own indomitable energy.

And then again, the Austrian possessions south of the Alps were difficult to hold for purely military reasons. They were separated from Vienna by difficult mountain ranges through which armies struggled with difficulty. True, Mantua was a formidable stronghold, but no fortress could make the Milanese other than a weak and straggling territory, the retention of which by the Court of Vienna was a defiance to the gospel of nature of which Rousseau was the herald and Bonaparte the militant exponent.

The Austro-Sardinian forces were now occupying the pass which separates the Apennines from the Maritime Alps north of the town of Savona. They were accordingly near the headwaters of the Bormida and the Tanaro, two of the chief affluents of the River Po: and roads following those river valleys led, the one north-east, in the direction of Milan, the other north-west towards Turin, the Sardinian capital. A wedge of mountainous country separated these roads as they diverged from the neighbourhood of Montenotte. Here obviously was the vulnerable point of the Austro-Sardinian position. Here therefore Bonaparte purposed to deliver his first strokes, foreseeing that, should he sever the allies, he would have[pg.80] in his favour every advantage both political and topographical.

All this was possible to a commander who could overcome the initial difficulties. But these difficulties were enormous. The position of the French Army of Italy in March, 1796, was precarious. Its detachments, echelonned near the coast from Savona to Loano, and thence to Nice, or inland to the Col di Tende, comprised in all 42,000 men, as against the Austro-Sardinian forces amounting to 52,000 men.[36] Moreover, the allies occupied strong positions on the northern slopes of the Maritime Alps and Apennines, and, holding the inner and therefore shorter curve, they could by a dextrous concentration have pushed their more widely scattered opponents on to the shore, where the republicans would have been harassed by the guns of the British cruisers. Finally, Bonaparte's troops were badly equipped, worse clad, and were not paid at all. On his arrival at Nice at the close of March, the young commander had to disband one battalion for mutinous conduct. ^[37] For a brief space it seemed doubtful how the army would receive this slim, delicate-looking youth, known hitherto only as a skilful artillerist at Toulon and in the streets of Paris. But he speedily gained the respect and confidence of the rank and file, not only by stern punishment of the mutineers, but by raising money from a local banker, so as to make good some of the long arrears of pay. Other grievances he rectified by prompt reorganization of the commissariat and kindred departments. But, above all, by his burning words he thrilled them: "Soldiers, you are half starved and half naked. The Government owes you much, but can do nothing for you. Your patience and courage are honourable to you, but they procure you neither advantage nor glory.

I am about to lead you into the most fertile valleys of the world: there you will find flourishing cities and teeming provinces: there you will reap honour, glory, and riches. Soldiers of the Army of Italy, will you lack courage?" Two years previously so open a bid for the soldiers' allegiance would have conducted any French commander forthwith to the guillotine. But much had changed since the days of Robespierre's supremacy; Spartan austerity had vanished; and the former insane jealousy of individual pre-eminence was now favouring a startling reaction which was soon to install the one supremely able man as absolute master of France.

Bonaparte's conduct produced a deep impression alike on troops and officers. From Masséna his energy and his trenchant orders extorted admiration: and the tall swaggering Augereau shrank beneath the intellectual superiority of his gaze. Moreover, at the beginning of April the French received reinforcements which raised their total to 49,300 men, and gave them a superiority of force; for though the allies had 52,000, yet they were so widely scattered as to be inferior in any one district. Besides, the Austrian commander, Beaulieu, was seventy-one years of age, had only just been sent into Italy, with which land he was ill acquainted, and found one-third of his troops down with sickness.^[38]

Bonaparte now began to concentrate his forces near Savona. Fortune favoured him even before the campaign commenced. The snows of winter, still lying on the mountains, though thawing on the southern slopes, helped to screen his movements from the enemy's outposts; and the French vanguard pushed along the coastline even as far as Voltri. This movement was designed to coerce the Senate of Genoa into payment of a fine for its acquiescence in the seizure of a French vessel by a British cruiser within its neutral roadstead; but it served to alarm Beaulieu, who, breaking up his cantonments,[pg.83] sent a strong column towards that city. At the time this circumstance greatly annoyed Bonaparte, who had hoped to catch the Imperialists dozing in their winter quarters. Yet it is certain that the hasty move of their left flank towards Voltri largely contributed to that brilliant opening of Bonaparte's campaign, which his admirers have generally regarded as due solely to his genius.^[39] For, when Beaulieu had thrust his column into the broken coast district between Genoa and Voltri, he severed it dangerously far from his centre, which marched up the valley of the eastern branch of the Bormida to occupy the passes of the Apennines north of Savona. This, again, was by no means in close touch with the Sardinian allies encamped further to the west in and beyond Ceva. Beaulieu, writing at a later date to Colonel Graham, the English attaché at his headquarters, ascribed his first disasters to Argenteau, his lieutenant at Montenotte, who employed only a third of the forces placed under his command. But division of forces was characteristic of the Austrians in all their operations, and they now gave a fine opportunity to any enterprising opponent who should crush their weak and unsupported centre. In obedience to orders from Vienna, Beaulieu assumed the offensive; but he brought his chief force to bear on the French vanguard at Voltri, which he drove in with some loss. While he was occupying Voltri, the boom of cannon echoing across the mountains warned his outposts that the real campaign[pg.84] was opening in the broken country north of Savona.^[40] There the weak Austrian centre had occupied a ridge or plateau above the village of Montenotte, through which ran the road leading to Alessandria and Milan. Argenteau's attack partly succeeded: but the stubborn bravery of a French detachment checked it before the redoubt which commanded the southern prolongation of the heights named Monte-Legino.^[41]

Such was the position of affairs when Bonaparte hurried up. On the following day (April 12th), massing the French columns of attack under cover of an early morning mist, he moved them to their positions, so that the first struggling rays of sunlight revealed to the astonished Austrians the presence of an army ready to crush their front and turn their flanks. For a time the Imperialists struggled bravely against the superior forces in their front; but when Masséna pressed round their right wing, they gave way and beat a speedy retreat to save themselves from entire capture. Bonaparte took no active share in the battle: he was, very properly, intent on the wider problem of severing the Austrians[pg.85] from their allies, first by the turning movement of Masséna, and then by pouring other troops into the gap thus made. In this he entirely succeeded. The radical defects in the Austrian dispositions left them utterly unable to withstand the blows which he now showered upon them. The Sardinians were too far away on the west to help Argenteau in his hour of need: they were in and beyond Ceva, intent on covering the road to Turin: whereas, as Napoleon himself subsequently wrote, they should have been near enough to their allies to form one powerful army, which, at Dego or Montenotte, would have defended both Turin and Milan. "United, the two forces would have been superior to the French army: separated, they were lost."

The configuration of the ground favoured Bonaparte's plan of driving the Imperialists down the valley of the Bormida in a north-easterly direction; and the natural desire of a beaten general to fall back towards his base of supplies also impelled Beaulieu and Argenteau to retire towards Milan. But that would sever their connections with the Sardinians, whose base of supplies, Turin, lay in a north-westerly direction.

Bonaparte therefore hurled his forces at once against the Austrians and a Sardinian contingent at Millesimo, and defeated them, Augereau's division cutting off the retreat of twelve hundred of their men under Provera. Weakened by this second blow, the allies fell back on the intrenched village of Dego. Their position was of a strength proportionate to its strategic importance; for its loss would completely sever all connection between their two main armies save by devious routes many miles in their rear. They therefore clung desperately to the six mamelons and redoubts which barred the valley and dominated some of the neighbouring heights. Yet such was the superiority of the French in numbers that these positions were speedily turned by Masséna, whom Bonaparte again intrusted with the movement on the enemy's flank and rear. A strange event followed. The victors, while pillaging the country for the supplies [pg.86] which Bonaparte's sharpest orders failed to draw from the magazines and stores on the sea-coast, were attacked in the dead of night by five Austrian battalions that had been ordered up to support their countrymen at Dego. These, after straying among the mountains, found themselves among bands of the marauding French, whom they easily scattered, seizing Dego itself. Apprised of this mishap, Bonaparte hurried up more troops from the rear, and on the 15th recovered the prize which had so nearly been snatched from his grasp. Had Beaulieu at this time thrown all his forces on the French, he might have retrieved his first misfortunes: but foresight and energy were not to be found at the Austrian headquarters: the surprise at Dego was the work of a colonel; and for many years to come the incompetence of their aged commanders was to paralyze the fine fighting qualities of the "white-coats." In three conflicts they had been outmanoeuvred and outnumbered, and drew in their shattered columns to Acqui.

The French commander now led his columns westward against the Sardinians, who had fallen back on their fortified camp at Ceva, in the upper valley of the Tanaro. There they beat off one attack of the French. A check in front of a strongly intrenched position was serious. It might have led to a French disaster, had the Austrians been able to bring aid to their allies. Bonaparte even summoned a council of war to deliberate on the situation. As a rule, a council of war gives timid advice. This one strongly advised a second attack on the camp—a striking proof of the ardour which then nerved the republican generals. Not yet were they condottieri carving out fortunes by their swords: not yet were they the pampered minions of an autocrat, intent primarily on guarding the estates which his favour had bestowed. Timidity was rather the mark of their opponents. When the assault on the intrenchments of Ceva was about to be renewed, the Sardinian forces were discerned filing away westwards. Their general indulged the fond hope of holding the French at bay at several[pg.87] strong natural positions on his march. He was bitterly to rue his error. The French divisions of Sérurier and Dommartin closed in on him, drove him from Mondovi, and away towards Turin.

Bonaparte had now completely succeeded. Using to the full the advantage of his central position between the widely scattered detachments of his foes, he had struck vigorously at their natural point of junction, Montenotte, and by three subsequent successes—for the evacuation of Ceva can scarcely be called a French victory—had forced them further and further apart until Turin was almost within his power.

It now remained to push these military triumphs to their natural conclusion, and impose terms of peace on the House of Savoy, which was secretly desirous of peace. The Directors had ordered Bonaparte that he should seek to detach Sardinia from the Austrian alliance by holding out the prospect of a valuable compensation for the loss of Savoy and Nice in the fertile Milanese.^[42] The prospect of this rich prize would, the Directors surmised, dissolve the Austro-Sardinian alliance, as soon as the allies had felt the full vigour of the French arms. Not that Bonaparte himself was to conduct these negotiations. He was to forward to the Directory all offers of submission. Nay, he was not empowered to grant on his own responsibility even an armistice. He was merely to push the foe hard, and feed his needy soldiers on the conquered territory. He was to be solely a general, never a negotiator.

The Directors herein showed keen jealousy or striking ignorance of military affairs. How could he keep the Austrians quiet while envoys passed between Turin and Paris? All the dictates of common sense required him to grant an armistice to the Court of Turin before the Austrians could recover from their recent disasters. But the King of Sardinia drew him from a perplexing situation by instructing Colli to make overtures for an armistice as[pg.88] preliminary to a peace. At once the French commander replied that such powers belonged to the Directory; but as for an armistice, it would only be possible if the Court of Turin placed in his hands three fortresses, Coni, Tortona, and Alessandria, besides guaranteeing the transit of French armies through Piedmont and the passage of the Po at Valenza. Then, with his unfailing belief in accomplished facts, Bonaparte pushed on his troops to Cherasco.

Near that town he received the Piedmontese envoys; and from the pen of one of them we have an account of the general's behaviour in his first essay in diplomacy. His demeanour was marked by that grave and frigid courtesy which was akin to Piedmontese customs. In reply to the suggestions of the envoys that some of the conditions were of little value to the French, he answered: "The Republic, in intrusting to me the command of an army, has credited me with possessing enough discernment to judge of what that army requires, without having recourse to the advice of my enemy." Apart, however, from this sarcasm, which was uttered in a hard and biting voice, his tone was coldly polite. He reserved his home thrust for the close of the conference. When it had dragged on till considerably after noon with no definite result, he looked at his watch and exclaimed: "Gentlemen, I warn you that a general attack is ordered for two o'clock, and that if I am not assured that Coni will be put in my hands before nightfall, the attack will not be postponed for one moment. It may happen to me to lose battles, but no one shall ever see me lose minutes either by over-confidence or by sloth." The terms of the armistice of Cherasco were forthwith signed (April 28th); they were substantially the same as those first offered by the victor. During the luncheon which followed, the envoys were still further impressed by his imperturbable confidence and trenchant phrases; as when he told them that the campaign was the exact counterpart of what he had planned in 1794; or described a council of war as a convenient device for covering cowardice or irresolution [pg.89] in the commander; or asserted that nothing could now stop him before the walls of Mantua.^[43]

As a matter of fact, the French army was at that time so disorganized by rapine as scarcely to have withstood a combined and vigorous attack by Beaulieu and Colli. The republicans, long exposed to hunger and privations, were now revelling in the fertile plains of Piedmont. Large bands of marauders ranged the neighbouring country, and the regiments were often reduced to mere companies. From the grave risks of this situation Bonaparte was rescued by the timidity of the Court of Turin, which signed the armistice at Cherasco eighteen days after the commencement of the campaign. A fortnight later the preliminaries of peace were signed between France and the King of Sardinia, by which the latter yielded up his provinces of Savoy and Nice, and renounced the alliance with Austria. Great indignation was felt in the Imperialist camp at this news; and it was freely stated that the Piedmontese had let themselves be beaten in order to compass a peace that had been tacitly agreed upon in the month of January.^[44]

Even before this auspicious event, Bonaparte's despatches to the Directors were couched in almost imperious terms, which showed that he felt himself the master of the situation. He advised them as to their policy towards Sardinia, pointing out that, as Victor Amadeus had yielded up three important fortresses, he was practically in the hands of the French: "If you do not accept peace with him, if your plan is to dethrone him, you must amuse him for a few decades ^[45] and must warn me: I then seize Valenza and march on Turin." In military affairs the young general showed that he would brook no interference from Paris. He requested the Directory to draft 15,000 men from Kellermann's[pg.90] Army of the Alps to reinforce him: "That will give me an army of 45,000 men, of which possibly I may send a part to Rome. If you continue your confidence and approve these plans, I am sure of success: Italy is yours." Somewhat later, the Directors proposed to grant the required reinforcements, but stipulated for the retention of part of the army in the Milanese under the command of Kellermann. Thereupon Bonaparte replied (May 14th) that, as the Austrians had been reinforced, it was highly impolitic to divide the command. Each general had his own way of making war. Kellermann, having more experience, would doubtless do it better: but both together would do it very badly.

Again the Directors had blundered. In seeking to subject Bonaparte to the same rules as had been imposed on all French generals since the treason of Dumouriez in 1793, they were doubtless consulting the vital interests of the Commonwealth. But, while striving to avert all possibilities of Cæsarism, they now sinned against that elementary principle of strategy which requires unity of design in military operations. Bonaparte's retort was unanswerable, and nothing more was heard of the luckless proposal.

Meanwhile the peace with the House of Savoy had thrown open the Milanese to Bonaparte's attack. Holding three Sardinian fortresses, he had an excellent base of operations; for the lands restored to the King of Sardinia were to remain subject to requisitions for the French army until the general peace. The Austrians, on the other hand, were weakened by the hostility of their Italian subjects, and, worst of all, they depended ultimately on reinforcements drawn from beyond the Alps by way of Mantua. In the rich plains of Lombardy they, however, had one advantage which was denied to them among the rocks of the Apennines. Their generals could display the tactical skill on which they prided themselves, and their splendid cavalry had some chance of emulating the former exploits of the Hungarian and Croatian horse. They therefore awaited the onset of [pg.91] the French, little dismayed by recent disasters, and animated by the belief that their antagonist, unversed in regular warfare, would at once lose in the plains the bubble reputation gained in ravines. But the country in the second part of this campaign was not less favourable to Bonaparte's peculiar gifts than that in which he had won his first laurels as commander. Amidst the Apennines, where only small bodies of men could be moved, a general inexperienced in the handling of cavalry and infantry could make his first essays in tactics with fair chances of success. Speed, energy, and the prompt seizure of a commanding central position were the prime requisites; the handling of vast masses of men was impossible. The plains of Lombardy facilitated larger movements; but even here the numerous broad swift streams fed by the Alpine snows, and the network of irrigating dykes, favoured the designs of a young and daring leader who saw how to use natural obstacles so as to baffle and ensnare his foes. Bonaparte was now to show that he excelled his enemies, not only in quickness of eye and vigour of intellect, but also in the minutiæ of tactics and in those larger strategic conceptions which decide the fate of nations. In the first place, having the superiority of force, he was able to attack. This is an advantage at all times: for the aggressor can generally mislead his adversary by a series of feints until the real blow can be delivered with crushing effect. Such has been the aim of all great leaders from the time of Epaminondas and Alexander, Hannibal and Cæsar, down to the age of Luxembourg, Marlborough, and Frederick the Great. Aggressive tactics were particularly suited to the French soldiery, always eager, active, and intelligent, and now endowed with boundless enthusiasm in their cause and in their leader.

Then again he was fully aware of the inherent vice of the Austrian situation. It was as if an unwieldy organism stretched a vulnerable limb across the huge barrier of the Alps, exposing it to the attack of a [pg.92] compacter body. It only remained for Bonaparte to turn against his foes the smaller geographical features on which they too implicitly relied. Beaulieu had retired beyond the Po and the Ticino, expecting that the attack on the Milanese would be delivered across the latter stream by the ordinary route, which crossed it at Pavia. Near that city the Austrians occupied a strong position with 26,000 men, while other detachments patrolled the banks of the Ticino further north, and those of the Po towards Valenza, only 5,000 men being sent towards Piacenza. Bonaparte, however, was not minded to take the ordinary route. He determined to march, not as yet on the north of the River Po, where snow-swollen streams coursed down from the Alps, but rather on the south side, where the Apennines throw off fewer streams and also of smaller volume. From the fortress of Tortona he could make a rush at Piacenza, cross the Po there, and thus gain the Milanese almost without a blow. To this end he had stipulated in the recent terms of peace that he might cross the Po at Valenza; and now, amusing his foes by feints on that side, he vigorously pushed his main columns along the southern bank of the Po, where they gathered up all the available boats. The vanguard, led by the impetuous Lannes, seized the ferry at Piacenza, before the Austrian horse appeared, and scattered a squadron or two which strove to drive them back into the river (May 7th).

Time was thus gained for a considerable number of French to cross the river in boats or by the ferry. Working under the eye of their leader, the French conquered all obstacles: a bridge of boats soon spanned the stream, and was defended by a tête de pont; and with forces about equal in number to Liptay's Austrians, the republicans advanced northwards, and, after a tough struggle, dislodged their foes from the village of Fombio. This success drove a solid wedge between Liptay and his commander-in-chief, who afterwards bitterly blamed him, first for retreating, and secondly for not reporting his retreat to headquarters. [pg.93] It would appear, however, that Liptay had only 5,000 men (not the 8,000 which Napoleon and French historians have credited to him), that he was sent by Beaulieu to Piacenza too late to prevent the crossing by the French, and that at the close of the fight on the following day he was completely cut off from communicating with his superior. Beaulieu, with his main force, advanced on Fombio, stumbled on the French, where he looked to find Liptay, and after a confused fight succeeded in disengaging himself and withdrawing towards Lodi, where the high-road leading to Mantua crossed the River Adda. To that stream he directed his remaining forces to retire. He thereby left Milan uncovered (except for the garrison which held the citadel), and abandoned more than the half of Lombardy; but, from the military point of view, his retreat to the Adda was thoroughly sound. Yet here again a movement strategically correct was marred by tactical blunders. Had he concentrated all his forces at the nearest point of the Adda which the French could cross, namely Pizzighetone, he would have rendered any flank march of theirs to the northward extremely hazardous; but he had not yet sufficiently learned from his terrible teacher the need of concentration; and, having at least three passages to guard, he kept his forces too spread out to oppose a vigorous move against any one of them. Indeed, he despaired of holding the line of the Adda, and retired eastwards with a great part of his army.

Consequently, when Bonaparte, only three days after the seizure of Piacenza, threw his almost undivided force against the town of Lodi, his passage was disputed only by the rearguard, whose anxiety to cover the retreat of a belated detachment far exceeded their determination to defend the bridge over the Adda. This was a narrow structure, some eighty fathoms long, standing high above the swift but shallow river. Resolutely held by well-massed troops and cannon, it might have cost the French a severe struggle: but the Imperialists were badly handled: some were posted in and around the [pg.94] town which was between the river and the advancing French; and the weak walls of Lodi were soon escaladed by the impetuous republicans. The Austrian commander, Sebottendorf, now hastily ranged his men along the eastern bank of the river, so as to defend the bridge and prevent any passage of the river by boats or by a ford above the town. The Imperialists numbered only 9,627 men; they were discouraged by defeats and by the consciousness that no serious stand could be attempted before they reached the neighbourhood of Mantua; and their efforts to break down the bridge were now frustrated by the French, who, posted behind the walls of Lodi on the higher bank of the stream, swept their opponents' position with a searching artillery fire. Having shaken the constancy of his foes and refreshed his own infantry by a brief rest in Lodi, Bonaparte at 6 p.m. secretly formed a column of his choicest troops and hurled it against the bridge. A hot fire of grapeshot and musketry tore its front, and for a time the column bent before the iron hail. But, encouraged by the words of their young leader, generals, corporals, and grenadiers pressed home their charge. This time, aided by sharp-shooters who waded to islets in the river, the assailants cleared the bridge, bayoneted the Austrian cannoneers, attacked the first and second lines of supporting foot, and, when reinforced, compelled horse and foot to retreat towards Mantua.^[46]

Such was the affair of Lodi (May 10th). A legendary[pg.95] glamour hovers around all the details of this conflict and invests it with fictitious importance. Beaulieu's main force was far away, and there was no hope of entrapping anything more than the rear of his army. Moreover, if this were the object, why was not the flank move of the French cavalry above Lodi pushed home earlier in the fight? This, if supported by infantry, could have outflanked the enemy while the perilous rush was made against the bridge; and such a turning movement would probably have enveloped the Austrian force while it was being shattered in front. That is the view in which the strategist, Clausewitz, regards this encounter. Far different was the impression which it created among the soldiers and Frenchmen at large. They valued a commander more for bravery of the bull-dog type than for any powers of reasoning and subtle combination. These, it is true, Bonaparte had already shown. He now enchanted the soldiery by dealing a straight sharp blow. It had a magical effect on their minds. On the evening of that day the French soldiers, with antique republican camaraderie, saluted their commander as le petit caporal for his personal bravery in the fray, and this endearing phrase helped to immortalize the affair of the bridge of Lodi.^[47] It shot a thrill of exultation through France. With pardonable exaggeration, men told how he charged at the head of the column, and, with Lannes, was the first to reach the opposite side; and later generations have figured him charging before his tall grenadiers—a feat that was actually performed by Lannes, Berthier, Masséna, Cervoni, and Dallemagne. It was all one. Bonaparte alone was the hero of the day. He reigned supreme in the hearts of the soldiers, and he saw the importance of this conquest. At St. Helena he confessed to Montholon that it was the victory of Lodi which fanned his ambition into a steady flame.

A desire of stimulating popular enthusiasm throughout Italy impelled the young victor to turn away from his real objective, the fortress of Mantua, to the political[pg.96] capital of Lombardy. The people of Milan hailed their French liberators with enthusiasm: they rained flowers on the bronzed soldiers of liberty, and pointed to their tattered uniforms and worn-out shoes as proofs of their triumphant energy: above all, they gazed with admiration, not unmixed with awe, at the thin pale features of the young commander, whose plain attire bespoke a Spartan activity, whose ardent gaze and decisive gestures proclaimed a born leader of men. Forthwith he arranged for the investment of the citadel where eighteen hundred Austrians held out: he then received the chief men of the city with easy Italian grace; and in the evening he gave a sumptuous ball, at which all the dignity, wealth, and beauty of the old Lombard capital shone resplendent. For a brief space all went well between the Lombards and their liberators. He received with flattering distinction the chief artists and men of letters, and also sought to quicken the activity of the University of Pavia. Political clubs and newspapers multiplied throughout Lombardy; and actors, authors, and editors joined in a pæan of courtly or fawning praise, to the new Scipio, Cæsar, Hannibal, and Jupiter.

There were other reasons why the Lombards should worship the young victor. Apart from the admiration which a gifted race ever feels for so fascinating a combination of youthful grace with intellectual power and martial prowess, they believed that this Italian hero would call the people to political activity, perchance even to national independence. For this their most ardent spirits had sighed, conspired, or fought during the eighty-three years of the Austrian occupation. Ever since the troublous times of Dante there had been prophetic souls who caught the vision of a new Italy, healed of her countless schisms, purified from her social degradations, and uniting the prowess of her ancient life with the gentler arts of the present for the perfection of her own powers and for the welfare of mankind. The gleam of this vision had shone forth even amidst the thunder claps of the French Revolution; and now that the storm [pg.97] had burst over the plains of Lombardy, ecstatic youths seemed to see the vision embodied in the person of Bonaparte himself. At the first news of the success at Lodi the national colours were donned as cockades, or waved defiance from balconies and steeples to the Austrian garrisons. All truly Italian hearts believed that the French victories heralded the dawn of political freedom not only for Lombardy, but for the whole peninsula.

Bonaparte's first actions increased these hopes. He abolished the Austrian machinery of government, excepting the Council of State, and approved the formation of provisional municipal councils and of a National Guard. At the same time, he wrote guardedly to the Directors at Paris, asking whether they proposed to organize Lombardy as a republic, as it was much more ripe for this form of government than Piedmont. Further than this he could not go; but at a later date he did much to redeem his first promises to the people of Northern Italy.

The fair prospect was soon overclouded by the financial measures urged on the young commander from Paris, measures which were disastrous to the Lombards and degrading to the liberators themselves. The Directors had recently bidden him to press hard on the Milanese, and levy large contributions in money, provisions, and objects of art, seeing that they did not intend to keep this country.[48] Bonaparte accordingly issued a proclamation (May 19th), imposing on Lombardy the sum of twenty million francs, remarking that it was a very light sum for so fertile a country. Only two days before he had in a letter to the Directors described it as exhausted by five years of war. As for the assertion that the army needed this sum, it may be compared with his private notification to the Directory, three days after his proclamation, that they might speedily count on six to eight millions of the Lombard contribution, as lying[pg.98] ready at their disposal, "it being over and above what the army requires." This is the first definite suggestion by Bonaparte of that system of bleeding conquered lands for the benefit of the French Exchequer, which enabled him speedily to gain power over the Directors. Thenceforth they began to connive at his diplomatic irregularities, and even to urge on his expeditions into wealthy districts, provided that the spoils went to Paris; while the conqueror, on his part, was able tacitly to assume that tone of authority with which the briber treats the bribed.^[49]

The exaction of this large sum, and of various requisites for the army, as well as the "extraction" of works of art for the benefit of French museums, at once aroused the bitterest feelings. The loss of priceless treasures, such as the manuscript of Virgil which had belonged to Petrarch, and the masterpieces of Raphael and Leonardo da Vinci, might perhaps have been borne: it concerned only the cultured few, and their effervescence was soon quelled by patrols of French cavalry. Far different was it with the peasants between Milan and Pavia. Drained by the white-coats, they now refused to be bled for the benefit of the blue-coats of France. They rushed to arms. The city of Pavia defied the attack of a French column until cannon battered in its gates. Then the republicans rushed in, massacred all the armed men for some hours, and glutted their lust and rapacity. By order of Bonaparte, the members of the municipal council were condemned to execution; but a delay occurred before this ferocious order was carried out, and it was subsequently mitigated. Two hundred hostages were, however, sent away into France as a guarantee for the good behaviour of the unfortunate city: whereupon the chief announced to the Directory that this would serve as a useful lesson to the peoples of Italy.

In one sense this was correct. It gave the Italians a true insight into French methods; and painful emotions thrilled the peoples of the peninsula when they realized[pg.99] at what a price their liberation was to be effected. Yet it is unfair to lay the chief blame on Bonaparte for the pillage of Lombardy. His actions were only a development of existing revolutionary customs; but never had these demoralizing measures been so thoroughly enforced as in the present system of liberation and blackmail. Lombardy was ransacked with an almost Vandal rapacity. Bonaparte desired little for himself. His aim ever was power rather than wealth. Riches he valued only as a means to political supremacy. But he took care to place the Directors and all his influential officers deeply in his debt. To the five soi-disant rulers of France he sent one hundred horses, the finest that could be found in Lombardy, to replace "the poor creatures which now draw your carriages";^[50] to his officers his indulgence was passive, but usually effective. Marmont states that Bonaparte once reproached him for his scrupulousness in returning the whole of a certain sum which he had been commissioned to recover. "At that time," says Marmont, "we still retained a flower of delicacy on these subjects." This Alpine gentian was soon to fade in the heats of the plains. Some generals made large fortunes, eminently so Masséna, first in plunder as in the fray. And yet the commander, who was so lenient to his generals, filled his letters to the Directory with complaints about the cloud of French commissioners, dealers, and other civilian harpies who battened on the spoil of Lombardy. It seems impossible to avoid the conclusion that this indulgence towards the soldiers and severity towards civilians was the result of a fixed determination to link indissolubly to his fortunes the generals and rank and file. The contrast in his behaviour was often startling. Some of the civilians he imprisoned: others he desired to shoot; but as the hardiest robbers had generally made to themselves friends of the military mammon of unrighteousness, they escaped with a fine ridiculously out of proportion to their actual gains.^[51] [pg.100]

The Dukes of Parma and Modena were also mulcted. The former of these, owing to his relationship with the Spanish Bourbons, with whom the Directory desired to remain on friendly terms, was subjected to the fine of merely two million francs and twenty masterpieces of art, these last to be selected by French commissioners from the galleries of the duchy; but the Duke of Modena, who had assisted the Austrian arms, purchased his pardon by an indemnity of ten million francs, and by the cession of twenty pictures, the chief artistic treasures of his States.^[52] As Bonaparte naïvely stated to the Directors, the duke had no fortresses or guns; consequently these could not be demanded from him.

From this degrading work Bonaparte strove to wean his soldiers by recalling them to their nobler work of carrying on the enfranchisement of Italy. In a proclamation (May 20th) which even now stirs the blood like a trumpet call, he bade his soldiers remember that, though much had been done, a far greater task yet awaited them. Posterity must not reproach them for having found their Capua in Lombardy. Rome was to be freed: the Eternal City was to renew her youth and show again the virtues of her ancient worthies, Brutus and Scipio. Then France would give a glorious peace to Europe; then their fellow-citizens would say of each champion of liberty as he returned to his hearth: "He was of the Army of Italy." By such stirring words did he entwine with the love of liberty that passion for military glory which was destined to strangle the Republic.

Meanwhile the Austrians had retired behind the banks of the Mincio and the walls of its guardian fortress, Mantua. Their position was one of great strength. The river, which carries off the surplus waters of Lake Garda, joins the River Po after a course of some thirty miles. Along with the tongue-like cavity occupied by its parent lake, the river forms the chief inner barrier to all invaders of Italy. From the earliest times down to those[pg.101] of the two Napoleons, the banks of the Mincio have witnessed many of the contests which have decided the fortunes of the peninsula. On its lower course, where the river widens out into a semicircular lagoon flanked by marshes and backwaters, is the historic town of Mantua. For this position, if we may trust the picturesque lines of Mantua's noblest son,^[53] the three earliest races of Northern Italy had striven; and when the power of imperial Rome was waning, the fierce Attila pitched his camp on the banks of the Mincio, and there received the pontiff Leo, whose prayers and dignity averted the threatening torrent of the Scythian horse.

It was by this stream, famed in war as in song, that the Imperialists now halted their shattered forces, awaiting reinforcements from Tyrol. These would pass down the valley of the Adige, and in the last part of their march would cross the lands of the Venetian Republic. For this action there was a long-established right of way, which did not involve a breach of the neutrality of Venice. But, as some of the Austrian troops had straggled on to the Venetian territory south of Brescia, the French commander had no hesitation in openly violating Venetian neutrality by the occupation of that town (May 26th). Augereau's division was also ordered to push on towards the west shore of Lake Garda, and there collect boats as if a crossing were intended. Seeing this, the Austrians seized the small Venetian fortress of Peschiera, which commands the exit of the Mincio from the lake, and Venetian neutrality was thenceforth wholly disregarded.

By adroit moves on the borders of the lake, Bonaparte now sought to make Beaulieu nervous about his communications with Tyrol through the river valley of the Adige; he completely succeeded: seeking to guard the important positions on that river between Rivoli and Roveredo, Beaulieu so weakened his forces on the Mincio, that at Borghetto and Valeggio he had only two battalions and ten squadrons of horse, or about two thousand[pg.102] men. Lannes' grenadiers, therefore, had little difficulty in forcing a passage on May 30th, whereupon Beaulieu withdrew to the upper Adige, highly satisfied with himself for having victualled the fortress of Mantua so that it could withstand a long siege. This was, practically, his sole achievement in the campaign. Outnumbered, outgeneralled, bankrupt in health as in reputation, he soon resigned his command, but not before he had given signs of "downright dotage."^[54] He had, however, achieved immortality: his incapacity threw into brilliant relief the genius of his young antagonist, and therefore appreciably affected the fortunes of Italy and of Europe.

Bonaparte now despatched Masséna's division northwards, to coop up the Austrians in the narrow valley of the upper Adige, while other regiments began to close in on Mantua. The peculiarities of the ground favoured its investment. The semicircular lagoon which guards Mantua on the north, and the marshes on the south side, render an assault very difficult; but they also limit the range of ground over which sorties can be made, thereby lightening the work of the besiegers; and during part of the blockade Napoleon left fewer than five thousand men for this purpose. It was clear, however, that the reduction of Mantua would be a tedious undertaking, such as Bonaparte's daring and enterprising genius could ill brook, and that his cherished design of marching northwards to effect a junction with Moreau on the Danube was impossible. Having only 40,400 men with him at midsummer, he had barely enough to hold the line of the Adige, to blockade Mantua, and to keep open his communications with France.

At the command of the Directory he turned southward against feebler foes. The relations between the Papal States and the French Republic had been hostile since the assassination of the French envoy, Basseville, at Rome, in the early days of 1793; but the Pope, Pius VI., had confined himself to anathemas against the revolutionists and prayers for the success of the First Coalition.

[pg.103] This conduct now drew upon him a sharp blow. French troops crossed the Po and seized Bologna, whereupon the terrified cardinals signed an armistice with the republican commander, agreeing to close all their States to the English, and to admit a French garrison to the port of Ancona. The Pope also consented to yield up "one hundred pictures, busts, vases, or statues, as the French Commissioners shall determine, among which shall especially be included the bronze bust of Junius Brutus and the marble bust of Marcus Brutus, together with five hundred manuscripts." He was also constrained to pay 15,500,000 francs, besides animals and goods such as the French agents should requisition for their army, exclusive of the money and materials drawn from the districts of Bologna and Ferrara. The grand total, in money, and in kind, raised from the Papal States in this profitable raid, was reckoned by Bonaparte himself as 34,700,000 francs,^[55] or about; £1,400,000—a liberal assessment for the life of a single envoy and the bruta fulmina of the Vatican.

Equally lucrative was a dash into Tuscany. As the Grand Duke of this fertile land had allowed English cruisers and merchants certain privileges at Leghorn, this was taken as a departure from the neutrality which he ostensibly maintained since the signature of a treaty of peace with France in 1795. A column of the republicans now swiftly approached Leghorn and seized much valuable property from British merchants. Yet the invaders failed to secure the richest of the hoped-for plunder; for about forty English merchantmen sheered off from shore as the troops neared the seaport, and an English frigate, swooping down, carried off two French vessels almost under the eyes of Bonaparte himself. This last outrage gave, it is true, a slight excuse for the levying of requisitions in Leghorn and its environs; yet, according to the memoir-writer, Miot de Melito, this unprincipled action must be attributed not to Bonaparte, but to the urgent needs of the French treasury and the[pg.104] personal greed of some of the Directors. Possibly also the French commissioners and agents, who levied blackmail or selected pictures, may have had some share in the shaping of the Directorial policy: at least, it is certain that some of them, notably Salicetti, amassed a large fortune from the plunder of Leghorn. In order to calm the resentment of the Grand Duke, Bonaparte paid a brief visit to Florence. He was received in respectful silence as he rode through the streets where his ancestors had schemed for the Ghibelline cause. By a deft mingling of courtesy and firmness the new conqueror imposed his will on the Government of Florence, and then sped northward to press on the siege of Mantua. [pg.105]

CHAPTER VI

The circumstances which recalled Bonaparte to the banks of the Mincio were indeed serious. The Emperor Francis was determined at all costs to retain his hold on Italy by raising the siege of that fortress; and unless the French commander could speedily compass its fall, he had the prospect of fighting a greatly superior army while his rear was threatened by the garrison of Mantua. Austria was making unparalleled efforts to drive this presumptuous young general from a land which she regarded as her own political preserve. Military historians have always been puzzled to account for her persistent efforts in 1796-7 to re-conquer Lombardy. But, in truth, the reasons are diplomatic, not military, and need not be detailed here. Suffice it to say that, though the Hapsburg lands in Swabia were threatened by Moreau's Army of the Rhine, Francis determined at all costs to recover his Italian possessions.

To this end the Emperor now replaced the luckless Beaulieu by General Würmser, who had gained some reputation in the Rhenish campaigns; and, detaching 25,000 men from his northern armies to strengthen his army on the Adige, he bade him carry the double-headed eagle of Austria victoriously into the plains of Italy. Though too late to relieve the citadel of Milan, he was to strain every nerve to relieve Mantua; and, since the latest reports represented the French as widely dispersed for the plunder of Central Italy, the Emperor indulged the highest hopes of Würmser's success.^[56][pg.106] Possibly this might have been attained had the Austrian Emperor and staff understood the absolute need of concentration in attacking a commander who had already demonstrated its supreme importance in warfare. Yet the difficulties of marching an army of 47,000 men through the narrow defile carved by the Adige through the Tyrolese Alps, and the wide extent of the French covering lines, led to the adoption of a plan which favoured rapidity at the expense of security. Würmser was to divide his forces for the difficult march southward from Tyrol into Italy. In defence of this arrangement much could be urged. To have cumbered the two roads, which run on either side of the Adige from Trient towards Mantua, with infantry, cavalry, artillery, and the countless camp-followers, animals, and wagons that follow an army, would have been fatal alike to speed of marching and to success in mountain warfare. Even in the campaign of 1866 the greatest commander of this generation carried out his maxim, "March in separate columns: unite for fighting." But Würmser and the Aulic Council ^[57] at Vienna neglected to insure that reunion for attack, on which von Moltke laid such stress in his Bohemian campaign. The Austrian forces in 1796 were divided by obstacles which could not quickly be crossed, namely, by Lake Garda and the lofty mountains which tower above the valley of the Adige. Assuredly the Imperialists were not nearly strong enough to run any risks. The official Austrian returns show that the total force assembled in Tyrol for the invasion of Italy amounted to 46,937 men, not to the 60,000 as pictured by the imagination of Thiers and other French historians. As Bonaparte had in Lombardy-Venetia fully 45,000 men (including 10,000 now[pg.107] engaged in the siege of Mantua), scattered along a front of fifty miles from Milan to Brescia and Legnago, the incursion of Würmser's force, if the French were held to their separate positions by diversions against their flanks, must have proved decisive. But the fault was committed of so far dividing the Austrians that nowhere could they deal a crushing blow. Quosdanovich with 17,600 men was to take the western side of Lake Garda, seize the French magazines at Brescia, and cut their communications with Milan and France: the main body under Würmser, 24,300 strong, was meanwhile to march in two columns on either bank of the Adige, drive the French from Rivoli and push on towards Mantua: and yet a third division, led by Davidovich from the district of Friuli on the east, received orders to march on Vicenza and Legnago, in order to distract the French from that side, and possibly relieve Mantua if the other two onsets failed.

Faulty as these dispositions were, they yet seriously disconcerted Bonaparte. He was at Montechiaro, a village situated on the road between Brescia and Mantua, when, on July 29th, he heard that the white-coats had driven in Masséna's vanguard above Rivoli on the Adige, were menacing other positions near Verona and Legnago, and were advancing on Brescia. As soon as the full extent of the peril was manifest, he sent off ten despatches to his generals, ordering a concentration of troops—these, of course, fighting so as to delay the pursuit—towards the southern end of Lake Garda. This wise step probably saved his isolated forces from disaster. It was at that point that the Austrians proposed to unite their two chief columns and crush the French detachments. But, by drawing in the divisions of Masséna and Augereau towards the Mincio, Bonaparte speedily assembled a formidable array, and held the central position between the eastern and western divisions of the Imperialists. He gave up the important defensive line of the Adige, it is true; but by promptly rallying on the Mincio, he occupied a base that was defended on [pg.108] the north by the small fortress of Peschiera and the waters of Lake Garda. Holding the bridges over the Mincio, he could strike at his assailants wherever they should attack; above all, he still covered the siege of Mantua. Such were his dispositions on July 29th and 30th. On the latter day he heard of the loss of Brescia, and the consequent cutting of his communications with Milan. Thereupon he promptly ordered Sérurier, who was besieging Mantua, to make a last vigorous effort to take that fortress, but also to assure his retreat westwards if fortune failed him. Later in the day he ordered him forthwith to send away his siege-train, throwing into the lake or burying whatever he could not save from the advancing Imperialists.

This apparently desperate step, which seemed to forebode the abandonment not only of the siege of Mantua, but of the whole of Lombardy, was in reality a masterstroke. Bonaparte had perceived the truth, which the campaigns of 1813 and 1870 were abundantly to illustrate—that the possession of fortresses, and consequently their siege by an invader, is of secondary importance when compared with a decisive victory gained in the open. When menaced by superior forces advancing towards the south of Lake Garda, he saw that he must sacrifice his siege works, even his siege-train, in order to gain for a few precious days that superiority in the field which the division of the Imperialist columns still left to him.

The dates of these occurrences deserve close scrutiny; for they suffice to refute some of the exorbitant claims made at a later time by General Augereau, that only his immovable firmness forced Bonaparte to fight and to change his dispositions of retreat into an attack which re-established everything. This extraordinary assertion, published by Augereau after he had deserted Napoleon in 1814, is accompanied by a detailed recital of the events of July 30th-August 5th, in which Bonaparte appears as the dazed and discouraged commander, surrounded by pusillanimous generals, and urged on to [pg.109] fight solely by the confidence of Augereau. That the forceful energy of this general had a great influence in restoring the morale of the French army in the confused and desperate movements which followed may freely be granted. But his claims to have been the main spring of the French movements in those anxious days deserve a brief examination. He asserts that Bonaparte, "devoured by anxieties," met him at Roverbella late in the evening of July 30th, and spoke of retiring beyond the River Po. The official correspondence disproves this assertion. Bonaparte had already given orders to Sérurier to retire beyond the Po with his artillery train; but this was obviously an attempt to save it from the advancing Austrians; and the commander had ordered the northern part of the French besieging force to join Augereau between Roverbella and Goito. Augereau further asserts that, after he had roused Bonaparte to the need of a dash to recover Brescia, the commander-in-chief remarked to Berthier, "In that case we must raise the siege of Mantua," which again he (Augereau) vigorously opposed. This second statement is creditable neither to Augereau's accuracy nor to his sagacity. The order for the raising of the siege had been issued, and it was entirely necessary for the concentration of French troops, on which Bonaparte now relied as his only hope against superior force. Had Bonaparte listened to Augereau's advice and persisted still in besieging Mantua, the scattered French forces must have been crushed in detail. Augereau's words are those of a mere fighter, not of a strategist; and the timidity which he ungenerously attributed to Bonaparte was nothing but the caution which a superior intellect saw to be a necessary prelude to a victorious move.

That the fighting honours of the ensuing days rightly belong to Augereau may be frankly conceded. With forces augmented by the northern part of the besiegers of Mantua, he moved rapidly westwards from the Mincio against Brescia, and rescued it from the vanguard of Quosdanovich (August 1st). On the previous day other [pg.110] Austrian detachments had also, after obstinate conflicts, been worsted near Salo and Lonato. Still, the position was one of great perplexity: for though Masséna's division from the Adige was now beginning to come into touch with Bonaparte's chief force, yet the fronts of Würmser's columns were menacing the French from that side, while the troops of Quosdanovich, hovering about Lonato and Salo, struggled desperately to stretch a guiding hand to their comrades on the Mincio.

Würmser was now discovering his error. Lured towards Mantua by false reports that the French were still covering the siege, he had marched due south when he ought to have rushed to the rescue of his hard-pressed lieutenant at Brescia. Entering Mantua, he enjoyed a brief spell of triumph, and sent to the Emperor Francis the news of the capture of 40 French cannon in the trenches, and of 139 more on the banks of the Po. But, while he was indulging the fond hope that the French were in full retreat from Italy, came the startling news that they had checked Quosdanovich at Brescia and Salo. Realizing his errors, and determining to retrieve them before all was lost, he at once pushed on his vanguard towards Castiglione, and easily gained that village and its castle from a French detachment commanded by General Valette.

The feeble defence of so important a position threw Bonaparte into one of those transports of fury which occasionally dethroned his better judgment. Meeting Valette at Montechiaro, he promptly degraded him to the ranks, refusing to listen to his plea of having received a written order to retire. A report of General Landrieux asserts that the rage of the commander-in-chief was so extreme as for the time even to impair his determination. The outlook was gloomy. The French seemed about to be hemmed in amidst the broken country between Castiglione, Brescia, and Salo. A sudden attack on the Austrians was obviously the only safe and honourable course. But no one knew precisely their numbers or their position. Uncertainty ever preyed on Bonaparte's [pg.111] ardent imagination. His was a mind that quailed not before visible dangers; but, with all its powers of decisive action, it retained so much of Corsican eeriness as to chafe at the unknown,^[58] and to lose for the moment the faculty of forming a vigorous resolution. Like the python, which grips its native rock by the tail in order to gain its full constricting power, so Bonaparte ever needed a groundwork of fact for the due exercise of his mental force.

One of a group of generals, whom he had assembled about him near Montechiaro, proposed that they should ascend the hill which dominated the plain. Even from its ridge no Austrians were to be seen. Again the commander burst forth with petulant reproaches, and even talked of retiring to the Adda. Whereupon, if we may trust the "Memoirs" of General Landrieux, Augereau protested against retreat, and promised success for a vigorous charge. "I wash my hands of it, and I am going away," replied Bonaparte. "And who will command, if you go?" inquired Augereau. "You," retorted Bonaparte, as he left the astonished circle.

However this may be, the first attack on Castiglione was certainly left to this determined fighter; and the mingling of boldness and guile which he showed on the following day regained for the French not only the village, but also the castle, perched on a precipitous rock. Yet the report of Colonel Graham, who was then at Marshal Würmser's headquarters, somewhat dulls the lustre of Augereau's exploit; for the British officer asserts that the Austrian position had been taken up quite by haphazard, and that fewer than 15,000 white-coats were engaged in this first battle of Castiglione. Furthermore, the narratives of this mêlée written by Augereau himself and by two other generals, Landrieux and Verdier, who[pg.112] were disaffected towards Bonaparte, must naturally be received with much reserve. The effect of Augereau's indomitable energy in restoring confidence to the soldiers and victory to the French tricolour was, however, generously admitted by the Emperor Napoleon; for, at a later time when complaints were being made about Augereau, he generously exclaimed: "Ah, let us not forget that he saved us at Castiglione."^[59]

While Augereau was recovering this important position, confused conflicts were raging a few miles further north at Lonato. Masséna at first was driven back by the onset of the Imperialists; but while they were endeavouring to envelop the French, Bonaparte arrived, and in conjunction with Masséna pushed on a central attack such as often wrested victory from the enemy. The white-coats retired in disorder, some towards Gavardo, others towards the lake, hotly followed by the French. In the pursuit towards Gavardo, Bonaparte's old friend, Junot, distinguished himself by his dashing valour. He wounded a colonel, slew six troopers, and, covered with wounds, was finally overthrown into a ditch. Such is Bonaparte's own account. It is gratifying to know that the wounds neither singly nor collectively were dangerous, and did not long repress Junot's activity. A tinge of romance seems, indeed, to have gilded many of these narratives; and a critical examination of the whole story of Lonato seems to suggest doubts whether the victory was as decisive as historians have often represented. If the Austrians were "thrown back on Lake Garda and Desenzano,"^[60] it is difficult to see why the pursuers did not drive them into the lake. As a matter of fact, nearly all the beaten troops escaped to Gavardo, while others joined their comrades engaged in the blockade of Peschiera.

A strange incident serves to illustrate the hazards of[pg.113] war and the confusion of this part of the campaign. A detachment of the vanquished Austrian forces some 4,000 strong, unable to join their comrades at Gavardo or Peschiera, and yet unharmed by the victorious pursuers, wandered about on the hills, and on the next day chanced near Lonato to come upon a much smaller detachment of French. Though unaware of the full extent of their good fortune, the Imperialists boldly sent an envoy to summon the French commanding officer to surrender. When the bandage was taken from his eyes, he was abashed to find himself in the presence of Bonaparte, surrounded by the generals of his staff. The young commander's eyes flashed fire at the seeming insult, and in tones vibrating with well-simulated passion he threatened the envoy with condign punishment for daring to give such a message to the commander-in-chief at his headquarters in the midst of his army. Let him and his men forthwith lay down their arms. Dazed by the demand, and seeing only the victorious chief and not the smallness of his detachment, 4,000 Austrians surrendered to 1,200 French, or rather to the address and audacity of one master-mind.

Elated by this augury of further victory, the republicans prepared for the decisive blow. Würmser, though checked on August 3rd, had been so far reinforced from Mantua as still to indulge hopes of driving the French from Castiglione and cutting his way through to rescue Quosdanovich. He was, indeed, in honour bound to make the attempt; for the engagement had been made, with the usual futility that dogged the Austrian councils, to reunite their forces and fight the French on the 7th of August. These cast-iron plans were now adhered to in spite of their dislocation at the hands of Bonaparte and Augereau. Würmser's line stretched from near the village of Médole in a north-easterly direction across the high-road between Brescia and Mantua; while his right wing was posted in the hilly country around Solferino. In fact, his extreme right rested on the tower-crowned heights of Solferino, where the forces of Austria two [pg.114] generations later maintained so desperate a defence against the onset of Napoleon III. and his liberating army.

Owing to the non-arrival of Mezaros' corps marching from Legnago, Würmser mustered scarcely twenty-five thousand men on his long line; while the very opportune approach of part of Sérurier's division, under the lead of Fiorella, from the south, gave the French an advantage even in numbers. Moreover, Fiorella's advance on the south of Würmser's weaker flank, that near Médole, threatened to turn it and endanger the Austrian communications with Mantua. The Imperialists seem to have been unaware of this danger; and their bad scouting here as elsewhere was largely responsible for the issue of the day. Würmser's desire to stretch a helping hand to Quosdanovich near Lonato and his confidence in the strength of his own right wing betrayed him into a fatal imprudence. Sending out feelers after his hard-pressed colleague on the north, he dangerously prolonged his line, an error in which he was deftly encouraged by Bonaparte, who held back his own left wing. Meanwhile the French were rolling in the other extremity of the Austrian line. Marmont, dashing forward with the horse artillery, took the enemy's left wing in flank and silenced many of their pieces. Under cover of this attack, Fiorella's division was able to creep up within striking distance; and the French cavalry, swooping round the rear of this hard-pressed wing, nearly captured Würmser and his staff. A vigorous counterattack by the Austrian reserves, or an immediate wheeling round of the whole line, was needed to repulse this brilliant flank attack; but the Austrian reserves had been expended in the north of their line; and an attempt to change front, always a difficult operation, was crushed by a headlong charge of Masséna's and Augereau's divisions on their centre. Before these attacks the whole Austrian line gave way; and, according to Colonel Graham, nothing but this retreat, undertaken "without orders," saved the whole force from being cut[pg.115] off. The criticisms of our officer sufficiently reveal the cause of the disaster. The softness and incapacity of Würmser, the absence of a responsible second in command, the ignorance of the number and positions of the French, the determination to advance towards Castiglione and to wait thereabouts for Quosdanovich until a battle could be fought with combined forces on the 7th, the taking up a position almost by haphazard on the Castiglione-Médole line, and the failure to detect Fiorella's approach, present a series of defects and blunders which might have given away the victory to a third-rate opponent.^[61]

The battle was by no means sanguinary: it was a series of manoeuvres rather than of prolonged conflicts. Hence its interest to all who by preference dwell on the intellectual problems of warfare rather than on the details of fighting. Bonaparte had previously shown that he could deal blows with telling effect. The ease and grace of his moves at the second battle of Castiglione now redeemed the reputation which his uncertain behaviour on the four preceding days had somewhat compromised.

A complete and authentic account of this week of confused fighting has never been written. The archives of Vienna have not as yet yielded up all their secrets; and the reputations of so many French officers were over-clouded by this prolonged mêlée as to render even the victors' accounts vague and inconsistent. The aim of historians everywhere to give a clear and vivid account, and the desire of Napoleonic enthusiasts to represent their hero as always thinking clearly and acting decisively, have fused trusty ores and worthless slag into an alloy which has passed for true metal. But no student of Napoleon's "Correspondence," of the "Memoirs" of Marmont, and of the recitals of Augereau, Dumas, Landrieux, Verdier, Despinois and others, can hope wholly to unravel the complications arising from the almost continuous conflicts that extended over a dozen leagues of hilly country. War is not always dramatic, however much the readers[pg.116] of campaigns may yearn after thrilling narratives. In regard to this third act of the Italian campaign, all that can safely be said is that Bonaparte's intuition to raise the siege of Mantua, in order that he might defeat in detail the relieving armies, bears the imprint of genius: but the execution of this difficult movement was unequal, even at times halting; and the French army was rescued from its difficulties only by the grand fighting qualities of the rank and file, and by the Austrian blunders, which outnumbered those of the republican generals.

Neither were the results of the Castiglione cycle of battles quite so brilliant as have been represented. Würmser and Quasdanovich lost in all 17,000 men, it is true: but the former had re-garrisoned and re-victualled Mantua, besides capturing all the French siege-train. Bonaparte's primary aim had been to reduce Mantua, so that he might be free to sweep through Tyrol, join hands with Moreau, and overpower the white-coats in Bavaria. The aim of the Aulic Council and Würmser had been to relieve Mantua and restore the Hapsburg rule over Lombardy. Neither side had succeeded. But the Austrians could at least point to some successes; and, above all, Mantua was in a better state of defence than when the French first approached its walls: and while Mantua was intact, Bonaparte was held to the valley of the Mincio, and could not deal those lightning blows on the Inn and the Danube which he ever regarded as the climax of the campaign. Viewed on its material side, his position was no better than it was before Würmser's incursion into the plains of Venetia.^[62]

With true Hapsburg tenacity, Francis determined on further efforts for the relief of Mantua. Apart from the promptings of dynastic pride, his reasons for thus[pg.117] obstinately struggling against Alpine gorges, Italian sentiment, and Bonaparte's genius, are wellnigh inscrutable; and military writers have generally condemned this waste of resources on the Brenta, which, if hurled against the French on the Rhine, would have compelled the withdrawal of Bonaparte from Italy for the defence of Lorraine. But the pride of the Emperor Francis brooked no surrender of his Italian possessions, and again Würmser was spurred on from Vienna to another invasion of Venetia. It would be tedious to give an account of Würmser's second attempt, which belongs rather to the domain of political fatuity than that of military history. Colonel Graham states that the Austrian rank and file laughed at their generals, and bitterly complained that they were being led to the shambles, while the officers almost openly exclaimed: "We must make peace, for we don't know how to make war." This was again apparent. Bonaparte forestalled their attack. Their divided forces fell an easy prey to Masséna, who at Bassano cut Würmser's force to pieces and sent the débris flying down the valley of the Brenta. Losing most of their artillery, and separated in two chief bands, the Imperialists seemed doomed to surrender: but Würmser, doubling on his pursuers, made a dash westwards, finally cutting his way to Mantua. There again he vainly endeavoured to make a stand. He was driven from his positions in front of St. Georges and La Favorita, and was shut up in the town itself. This addition to the numbers of the garrison was no increase to its strength; for the fortress, though well provisioned for an ordinary garrison, could not support a prolonged blockade, and the fevers of the early autumn soon began to decimate troops worn out by forced marches and unable to endure the miasma ascending from the marshes of the Mincio.

The French also were wearied by their exertions in the fierce heats of September. Murmurs were heard in the ranks and at the mess tables that Bonaparte's reports of these exploits were tinged by favouritism and by undue severity against those whose fortune had been less [pg.118] conspicuous than their merits. One of these misunderstandings was of some importance. Masséna, whose services had been brilliant at Bassano but less felicitous since the crossing of the Adige, reproached Bonaparte for denying praise to the most deserving and lavishing it on men who had come in opportunely to reap the labours of others. His written protest, urged with the old republican frankness, only served further to cloud over the relations between them, which, since Lonato, had not been cordial.^[63] Even thus early in his career Bonaparte gained the reputation of desiring brilliant and entire success, and of visiting with his displeasure men who, from whatever cause, did not wrest from Fortune her utmost favours. That was his own mental attitude towards the fickle goddess. After entering Milan he cynically remarked to Marmont: "Fortune is a woman; and the more she does for me, the more I will require of her." Suggestive words, which explain at once the splendour of his rise and the rapidity of his fall.

During the few weeks of comparative inaction which ensued, the affairs of Italy claimed his attention. The prospect of an Austrian re-conquest had caused no less concern to the friends of liberty in the peninsula than joy to the reactionary coteries of the old sovereigns. At Rome and Naples threats against the French were whispered or openly vaunted. The signature of the treaties of peace was delayed, and the fulminations of the Vatican were prepared against the sacrilegious spoilers. After the Austrian war-cloud had melted away, the time had come to punish prophets of evil. The Duke of Modena was charged with allowing a convoy to pass from his State to the garrison of Mantua, and with neglecting to pay the utterly impossible fine to which Bonaparte had condemned him. The men of Reggio and Modena were also encouraged to throw off his yoke and to confide in the French. Those of Reggio succeeded; but in the city of Modena itself the ducal troops repressed the rising. Bonaparte accordingly asked the[pg.119] advice of the Directory; but his resolution was already formed. Two days after seeking their counsel, he took the decisive step of declaring Modena and Reggio to be under the protection of France. This act formed an exceedingly important departure in the history of France as well as in that of Italy. Hitherto the Directory had succeeded in keeping Bonaparte from active intervention in affairs of high policy. In particular, it had enjoined on him the greatest prudence with regard to the liberated lands of Italy, so as not to involve France in prolonged intervention in the peninsula, or commit her to a war à outrance with the Hapsburgs; and its warnings were now urged with all the greater emphasis because news had recently reached Paris of a serious disaster to the French arms in Germany. But while the Directors counselled prudence, Bonaparte forced their hand by declaring the Duchy of Modena to be under the protection of France; and when their discreet missive reached him, he expressed to them his regret that it had come too late. By that time (October 24th) he had virtually founded a new State, for whose security French honour was deeply pledged. This implied the continuance of the French occupation of Northern Italy and therefore a prolongation of Bonaparte's command.

It was not the Duchy of Modena alone which felt the invigorating influence of democracy and nationality. The Papal cities of Bologna and Ferrara had broken away from the Papal sway, and now sent deputies to meet the champions of liberty at Modena and found a free commonwealth. There amidst great enthusiasm was held the first truly representative Italian assembly that had met for many generations; and a levy of 2,800 volunteers, styled the Italian legion, was decreed. Bonaparte visited these towns, stimulated their energy, and bade the turbulent beware of his vengeance, which would be like that of "the exterminating angel." In a brief space these districts were formed into the Cispadane Republic, destined soon to be merged into a yet larger creation. A new life breathed from Modena and Bologna into [pg.120] Central Italy. The young republic forthwith abolished all feudal laws, decreed civic equality, and ordered the convocation at Bologna of a popularly elected Assembly for the Christmas following. These events mark the first stage in the beginning of that grand movement, Il Risorgimento, which after long delays was finally consummated in 1870.

This period of Bonaparte's career may well be lingered over by those who value his invigorating influence on Italian life more highly than his military triumphs. At this epoch he was still the champion of the best principles of the Revolution; he had overthrown Austrian domination in the peninsula, and had shaken to their base domestic tyrannies worse than that of the Hapsburgs. His triumphs were as yet untarnished. If we except the plundering of the liberated and conquered lands, an act for which the Directory was primarily responsible, nothing was at this time lacking to the full orb of his glory. An envoy bore him the welcome news that the English, wearied by the intractable Corsicans, had evacuated the island of his birth; and he forthwith arranged for the return of many of the exiles who had been faithful to the French Republic. Among these was Salicetti, who now returned for a time to his old insular sphere; while his former protégé was winning a world-wide fame. Then, turning to the affairs of Central Italy, the young commander showed his diplomatic talents to be not a whit inferior to his genius for war. One instance of this must here suffice. He besought the Pope, who had broken off the lingering negotiations with France, not to bring on his people the horrors of war.^[64] The beauty of this appeal, as also of a somewhat earlier appeal to the Emperor Francis at Vienna, is, however, considerably marred by other items which now stand revealed in Bonaparte's instructive correspondence. After hearing of the French defeats in Germany, he knew that the Directors could spare him very few of the 25,000 troops whom he demanded as reinforcements.

[pg.121] He was also aware that the Pope, incensed at his recent losses in money and lands, was seeking to revivify the First Coalition. The pacific precepts addressed by the young Corsican to the Papacy must therefore be viewed in the light of merely mundane events and of his secret advice to the French agent at Rome: "The great thing is to gain time.... Finally, the game really is for us to throw the ball from one to the other, so as to deceive this old fox."^[65]

From these diplomatic amenities the general was forced to turn to the hazards of war. Gauging Bonaparte's missive at its true worth, the Emperor determined to re-conquer Italy, an enterprise that seemed well within his powers. In the month of October victory had crowned the efforts of his troops in Germany. At Würzburg the Archduke Charles had completely beaten Jourdan, and had thrown both his army and that of Moreau back on the Rhine. Animated by reviving hopes, the Imperialists now assembled some 60,000 strong. Alvintzy, a veteran of sixty years, renowned for his bravery, but possessing little strategic ability, was in command of some 35,000 men in the district of Friuli, north of Trieste, covering that seaport from a threatened French attack. With this large force he was to advance due west, towards the River Brenta, while Davidovich, marching through Tyrol by the valley of the Adige, was to meet him with the remainder near Verona. As Jomini has observed, the Austrians gave themselves infinite trouble and encountered grave risks in order to compass a junction of forces which they might quietly have effected at the outset. Despite all Bonaparte's lessons, the Aulic Council still clung to its old plan of enveloping the foe and seeking to bewilder them by attacks delivered from different sides. Possibly also they were emboldened by the comparative smallness of Bonaparte's numbers to repeat this hazardous manoeuvre. [pg.122] The French could muster little more than 40,000 men; and of these at least 8,000 were needed opposite Mantua.

At first the Imperialists gained important successes; for though the French held their own on the Brenta, yet their forces in the Tyrol were driven down the valley of the Adige with losses so considerable that Bonaparte was constrained to order a general retreat on Verona. He discerned that from this central position he could hold in check Alvintzy's troops marching westwards from Vicenza and prevent their junction with the Imperialists under Davidovich, who were striving to thrust Vaubois' division from the plateau of Rivoli.

But before offering battle to Alvintzy outside Verona, Bonaparte paid a flying visit to his men posted on that plateau in order to rebuke the wavering and animate the whole body with his own dauntless spirit. Forming the troops around him, he addressed two regiments in tones of grief and anger. He reproached them for abandoning strong positions in a panic, and ordered his chief staff officer to inscribe on their colours the ominous words: "They are no longer of the Army of Italy."^[66] Stung by this reproach, the men begged with sobs that the general would test their valour before disgracing them for ever. The young commander, who must have counted on such a result to his words, when uttered to French soldiers, thereupon promised to listen to their appeals; and their bravery in the ensuing fights wiped every stain of disgrace from their colours. By such acts as these did he nerve his men against superior numbers and adverse fortune.

Their fortitude was to be severely tried at all points. Alvintzy occupied a strong position on a line of hills at Caldiero, a few miles to the east of Verona. His right wing was protected by the spurs of the Tyrolese Alps, while his left was flanked by the marshes which stretch between the rivers Alpon and Adige; and he protected his front by cannon skilfully ranged along the hills. All the bravery of Masséna's troops failed to dislodge the right[pg.123] wing of the Imperialists. The French centre was torn by the Austrian cannon and musketry. A pitiless storm of rain and sleet hindered the advance of the French guns and unsteadied the aim of the gunners; and finally they withdrew into Verona, leaving behind 2,000 killed and wounded, and 750 prisoners (November 12th). This defeat at Caldiero—for it is idle to speak of it merely as a check—opened up a gloomy vista of disasters for the French; and Bonaparte, though he disguised his fears before his staff and the soldiery, forthwith wrote to the Directors that the army felt itself abandoned at the further end of Italy, and that this fair conquest seemed about to be lost. With his usual device of under-rating his own forces and exaggerating those of his foes, he stated that the French both at Verona and Rivoli were only 18,000, while the grand total of the Imperialists was upwards of 50,000. But he must have known that for the present he had to deal with rather less than half that number. The greater part of the Tyrolese force had not as yet descended the Adige below Roveredo; and allowing for detachments and losses, Alvintzy's array at Caldiero barely exceeded 20,000 effectives.

Bonaparte now determined to hazard one of the most daring turning movements which history records. It was necessary at all costs to drive Alvintzy from the heights of Caldiero before the Tyrolese columns should overpower Vaubois' detachment at Rivoli and debouch in the plains west of Verona. But, as Caldiero could not be taken by a front attack, it must be turned by a flanking movement. To any other general than Bonaparte this would have appeared hopeless; but where others saw nothing but difficulties, his eye discerned a means of safety. South and south-east of those hills lies a vast depression swamped by the flood waters of the Alpon and the Adige. Morasses stretch for some miles west of the village of Arcola, through which runs a road up the eastern bank of the Alpon, crossing that stream at the aforenamed village and leading to the banks of the Adige opposite the village of Ronco; another causeway, [pg.124] diverging from the former a little to the north of Ronco, leads in a north-westerly direction towards Porcil. By advancing from Ronco along these causeways, and by seizing Arcola, Bonaparte designed to outflank the Austrians and tempt them into an arena where the personal prowess of the French veterans would have ample scope, and where numbers would be of secondary importance. Only heads of columns could come into direct contact; and the formidable Austrian cavalry could not display its usual prowess. On these facts Bonaparte counted as a set-off to his slight inferiority in numbers.

In the dead of night the divisions of Augereau and Masséna retired through Verona. Officers and soldiers were alike deeply discouraged by this movement, which seemed to presage a retreat towards the Mincio and the abandonment of Lombardy. To their surprise, when outside the gate they received the order to turn to the left down the western bank of the Adige. At Ronco the mystery was solved. A bridge of boats had there been thrown across the Adige; and, crossing this without opposition, Augereau's troops rapidly advanced along the causeway leading to Arcola and menaced the Austrian rear, while Masséna's column denied north-west, so as directly to threaten his flank at Caldiero. The surprise, however, was by no means complete; for Alvintzy himself purposed to cross the Adige at Zevio, so as to make a dash on Mantua, and in order to protect his flank he had sent a detachment of Croats to hold Arcola. These now stoutly disputed Augereau's progress, pouring in from the loopholed cottages volleys which tore away the front of every column of attack. In vain did Augereau, seizing the colours, lead his foremost regiment to the bridge of Arcola. Riddled by the musketry, his men fell back in disorder. In vain did Bonaparte himself, dismounting from his charger, seize a flag, rally these veterans and lead them towards the bridge. The Croats, constantly reinforced, poured in so deadly a fire as to check the advance: Muiron, Marmont, and a handful of gallant men still pressed on, thereby screening the body [pg.125] of their chief; but Muiron fell dead, and another officer, seizing Bonaparte, sought to drag him back from certain death. The column wavered under the bullets, fell back to the further side of the causeway, and in the confusion the commander fell into the deep dyke at the side. Agonized at the sight, the French rallied, while Marmont and Louis Bonaparte rescued their beloved chief from capture or from a miry death, and he retired to Ronco, [pg.126] soon followed by the wearied troops. ^[67]

This memorable first day of fighting at Arcola (November 15th) closed on the strange scene of two armies encamped on dykes, exhausted by an almost amphibious conflict, like that waged by the Dutch "Beggars" in their war of liberation against Spain. Though at Arcola the republicans had been severely checked, yet further west Masséna had held his own; and the French movement as a whole had compelled Alvintzy to suspend any advance on Verona or on Mantua, to come down from the heights of Caldiero, and to fight on ground where his superior numbers were of little avail. This was seen on the second day of fighting on the dykes opposite Arcola, which was, on the whole, favourable to the smaller veteran force. On the third day Bonaparte employed a skilful ruse to add to the discouragement of his foes. He posted a small body of horsemen behind a spinney near the Austrian flank, with orders to sound their trumpets as if for a great cavalry charge. Alarmed by the noise and by the appearance of French troops from the side of Legnago and behind Arcola, the demoralized white-coats suddenly gave way and retreated for Vicenza.

Victory again declared for the troops who could dare the longest, and whose general was never at a loss in face of any definite danger. Both armies suffered severely in these desperate conflicts;^[68] but, while the Austrians felt[pg.127] that the cup of victory had been snatched from their very lips, the French soldiery were dazzled by this transcendent exploit of their chief. They extolled his bravery, which almost vied with the fabulous achievement of Horatius Cocles, and adored the genius which saw safety and victory for his discouraged army amidst swamps and dykes. Bonaparte himself, with that strange mingling of the practical and the superstitious which forms the charm of his character, ever afterwards dated the dawn of his fortune in its full splendour from those hours of supreme crisis among the morasses of Arcola. But we may doubt whether this posing as the favourite of fortune was not the result of his profound knowledge of the credulity of the vulgar herd, which admires genius and worships bravery, but grovels before persistent good luck.

Though it is difficult to exaggerate the skill and bravery of the French leader and his troops, the failure of his opponents is inexplicable but for the fact that most of their troops were unable to manoeuvre steadily in the open, that Alvintzy was inexperienced as a commander-in-chief, and was hampered throughout by a bad plan of campaign. Meanwhile the other Austrian army, led by Davidovich, had driven Vaubois from his position at Rivoli; and had the Imperialist generals kept one another informed of their moves, or had Alvintzy, disregarding a blare of trumpets and a demonstration on his flank and rear, clung to Arcola for two days longer—the French would have been nipped between superior forces. But, as it was, the lack of accord in the Austrian movements nearly ruined the Tyrolese wing, which pushed on triumphantly towards Verona, while Alvintzy was retreating eastwards. Warned just in time, Davidovich hastily retreated to Roveredo, leaving a whole battalion in the hands of the French. To crown this chapter of blunders, Würmser, whose sortie after Caldiero might have been most effective, tardily essayed to break through the blockaders, when both his colleagues were in retreat. How different were these ill-assorted moves[pg.128] from those of Bonaparte. His maxims throughout this campaign, and his whole military career, were: (1) divide for foraging, concentrate for fighting; (2) unity of command is essential for success; (3) time is everything. This firm grasp of the essentials of modern warfare insured his triumph over enemies who trusted to obsolete methods for the defence of antiquated polities.^[69]

The battle of Arcola had an important influence on the fate of Italy and Europe. In the peninsula all the elements hostile to the republicans were preparing for an explosion in their rear which should reaffirm the old saying that Italy was the tomb of the French. Naples had signed terms of peace with them, it is true; but the natural animosity of the Vatican against its despoilers could easily have leagued the south of Italy with the other States that were working secretly for their expulsion. While the Austrians were victoriously advancing, these aims were almost openly avowed, and at the close of the year 1796 Bonaparte moved south to Bologna in order to guide the Italian patriots in their deliberations and menace the Pope with an invasion of the Roman States. From this the Pontiff was for the present saved by new efforts on the part of Austria. But before describing the final attempt of the Hapsburgs to wrest Italy from their able adversary, it will be well to notice his growing ascendancy in diplomatic affairs.

While Bonaparte was struggling in the marshes of Arcola, the Directory was on the point of sending to Vienna an envoy, General Clarke, with proposals for an armistice preliminary to negotiations for peace with Austria. This step was taken, because France was distracted by open revolt in the south, by general discontent in the west, and by the retreat of her Rhenish armies, now flung back on the soil of the Republic by the Austrian Arch-duke Charles. Unable to support large[pg.129] forces in the east of France out of its bankrupt exchequer, the Directory desired to be informed of the state of feeling at Vienna. It therefore sent Clarke with offers, which might enable him to look into the political and military situation at the enemy's capital, and see whether peace could not be gained at the price of some of Bonaparte's conquests. The envoy was an elegant and ambitious young man, descended from an Irish family long settled in France, who had recently gained Carnot's favour, and now desired to show his diplomatic skill by subjecting Bonaparte to the present aims of the Directory.

The Directors' secret instructions reveal the plans which they then harboured for the reconstruction of the Continent. Having arranged an armistice which should last up to the end of the next spring, Clarke was to set forth arrangements which might suit the House of Hapsburg. He might discuss the restitution of all their possessions in Italy, and the acquisition of the Bishopric of Salzburg and other smaller German and Swabian territories: or, if she did not recover the Milanese, Austria might gain the northern parts of the Papal States as compensation; and the Duke of Tuscany—a Hapsburg—might reign at Rome, yielding up his duchy to the Duke of Parma; while, as this last potentate was a Spanish Bourbon, France might for her good offices to this House gain largely from Spain in America.^[70] In these and other proposals two methods of bargaining are everywhere prominent. The great States are in every case to gain at the expense of their weaker neighbours; Austria is to be appeased; and France is to reap enormous gains ultimately at the expense of smaller Germanic or Italian States. These facts should clearly be noted. Napoleon was afterwards deservedly blamed for carrying out these unprincipled methods; but, at the worst, he only developed them from those of the Directors, who, with the cant of[pg.130] Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity on their lips, battened on the plunder of the liberated lands, and cynically proposed to share the spoil of weaker States with the potentates against whom they publicly declaimed as tyrants.

The chief aim of these negotiations, so Clarke was assured, was to convince the Court of Vienna that it would get better terms by treating with France directly and alone, rather than by joining in the negotiations which had recently been opened at Paris by England. But the Viennese Ministers refused to allow Clarke to proceed to their capital, and appointed Vicenza as the seat of the deliberations.

They were brief. Through the complex web of civilian intrigue, Bonaparte forthwith thrust the mailed hand of the warrior. He had little difficulty in proving to Clarke that the situation was materially altered by the battle of Arcola. The fall of Mantua was now only a matter of weeks. To allow its provisions to be replenished for the term of the armistice was an act that no successful general could tolerate. For that fortress the whole campaign had been waged, and three Austrian armies had been hurled back into Tyrol and Friuli. Was it now to be provisioned, in order that the Directory might barter away the Cispadane Republic? He speedily convinced Clarke of the fatuity of the Directors' proposals. He imbued him with his own contempt for an armistice that would rob the victors of their prize; and, as the Court of Vienna still indulged hopes of success in Italy, Clarke's negotiations at Vicenza came to a speedy conclusion.

In another important matter the Directory also completely failed. Nervous as to Bonaparte's ambition, it had secretly ordered Clarke to watch his conduct and report privately to Paris. Whether warned by a friend at Court, or forearmed by his own sagacity, Bonaparte knew of this, and in his intercourse with Clarke deftly let the fact be seen. He quickly gauged Clarke's powers, and the aim of his mission. "He is a spy," he remarked a little later to Miot, "whom the Directory have set [pg.131] upon me: he is a man of no talent—only conceited." The splendour of his achievements and the mingled grace and authority of his demeanour so imposed on the envoy that he speedily fell under the influence of the very man whom he was to watch, and became his enthusiastic adherent.

Bonaparte was at Bologna, supervising the affairs of the Cispadane Republic, when he heard that the Austrians were making a last effort for the relief of Mantua. Another plan had been drawn up by the Aulic Council at Vienna. Alvintzy, after recruiting his wearied force at Bassano, was quickly to join the Tyrolese column at Roveredo, thereby forming an army of 28,000 men wherewith to force the position of Rivoli and drive the French in on Mantua: 9,000 Imperialists under Provera were also to advance from the Brenta upon Legnago, in order to withdraw the attention of the French from the real attempt made by the valley of the Adige; while 10,000 others at Bassano and elsewhere were to assail the French front at different points and hinder their concentration. It will be observed that the errors of July and November, 1796, were now yet a third time to be committed: the forces destined merely to make diversions were so strengthened as not to be merely light bodies distracting the aim of the French, while Alvintzy's main force was thereby so weakened as to lack the impact necessary for victory.

Nevertheless, the Imperialists at first threw back their foes with some losses; and Bonaparte, hurrying northwards to Verona, was for some hours in a fever of uncertainty as to the movements and strength of the assailants. Late at night on January 13th he knew that Provera's advance was little more than a demonstration, and that the real blow would fall on the 10,000 men marshalled by Joubert at Monte Baldo and Rivoli. Forthwith he rode to the latter place, and changed retreat and discouragement into a vigorous offensive by the news that 13,000 more men were on the march to defend the strong position of Rivoli.[pg.132]

The great defensive strength of this plateau had from the first attracted his attention. There the Adige in a sharp bend westward approaches within six miles of Lake Garda. There, too, the mountains, which hem in the gorge of the river on its right bank, bend away towards the lake and leave a vast natural amphitheatre, near the centre of which rises the irregular plateau that commands the exit from Tyrol. Over this plateau towers on the north Monte Baldo, which, near the river gorge, sends out southward a sloping ridge, known as San Marco, connecting it with the plateau. At the foot of this spur is the summit of the road which leads the traveller from Trent to Verona; and, as he halts at the top of the zigzag, near the village of Rivoli, his eye sweeps over the winding gorge of the river beneath, the threatening mass of Monte Baldo on the north, and on the west of the village he gazes down on a natural depression which has been sharply furrowed by a torrent. The least experienced eye can see that the position is one of great strength. It is a veritable parade ground among the mountains, almost cut off from them by the ceaseless action of water, and destined for the defence of the plains of Italy. A small force posted at the head of the winding roadway can hold at bay an army toiling up from the valley; but, as at Thermopylae, the position is liable to be outflanked by an enterprising foe, who should scale the footpath leading over the western offshoots of Monte Baldo, and, fording the stream at its foot, should then advance eastwards against the village. This, in part, was Alvintzy's plan, and having nearly 28,000 men,^[71][pg.133] he doubted not that his enveloping tactics must capture Joubert's division of 10,000 men. So daunted was even this brave general by the superior force of his foes that he had ordered a retreat southwards when an aide-de-camp arrived at full gallop and ordered him to hold Rivoli at all costs. Bonaparte's arrival at 4 a.m. explained the order, and an attack made during the darkness wrested from the Austrians the chapel on the San Marco ridge which stands on the ridge above the zigzag track. The reflection of the Austrian watch-fires in the wintry sky showed him their general position. To an unskilled observer the wide sweep of the glare portended ruin for the French. To the eye of Bonaparte the sight brought hope. It proved that his foes were still bent on their old plan of enveloping him: and from information which he treacherously received from Alvintzy's staff he [pg.134] must have known that that commander had far fewer than the 45,000 men which he ascribed to him in bulletins.

Yet the full dawn of that January day saw the Imperialists flushed with success, as their six separate columns drove in the French outposts and moved towards Rivoli. Of these, one was on the eastern side of the Adige and merely cannonaded across the valley: another column wound painfully with most of the artillery and cavalry along the western bank, making for the village of Incanale and the foot of the zigzag leading up to Rivoli: three others denied over Monte Baldo by difficult paths impassable to cannon: while the sixth and westernmost column, winding along the ridge near Lake Garda, likewise lacked the power which field-guns and horsemen would have added to its important turning movement. Never have natural obstacles told more potently on the fortunes of war than at Rivoli; for on the side where the assailants most needed horses and guns they could not be used; while on the eastern edge of their broken front their cannon and horse, crowded together in the valley of the Adige, had to climb the winding road under the plunging fire of the French infantry and artillery. Nevertheless, such was the ardour of the Austrian attack, that the tide of battle at first set strongly in their favour. Driving the French from the San Marco ridge and pressing their centre hard between Monte Baldo and Rivoli, they made it possible for their troops in the valley to struggle on towards the foot of the zigzag; and on the west their distant right wing was already beginning to threaten the French rear. Despite the arrival of Masséna's troops from Verona about 9 a.m., the republicans showed signs of unsteadiness. Joubert on the ground above the Adige, Berthier in the centre, and Masséna on the left, were gradually forced back. An Austrian column, advancing from the side of Monte Baldo by the narrow ravine, stole round the flank of a French regiment in front of Masséna's division, and by a vigorous charge sent it flying in a panic which promised to spread to another regiment thus uncovered. This was too much [pg.135] for the veteran, already dubbed "the spoilt child of victory "; he rushed to its captain, bitterly upbraided him and the other officers, and finally showered blows on them with the flat of his sword. Then, riding at full speed to two tried regiments of his own division, he ordered them to check the foe; and these invincible heroes promptly drove back the assailants. Even so, however, the valour of the best French regiments and the skill of Masséna, Berthier, and Joubert barely sufficed to hold back the onstreaming tide of white-coats opposite Rivoli.

Yet even at this crisis the commander, confident in his central position, and knowing his ability to ward off the encircling swoops of the Austrian eagle, maintained that calm demeanour which moved the wonder of smaller minds. His confidence in his seasoned troops was not misplaced. The Imperialists, overburdened by long marches and faint now for lack of food, could not maintain their first advantage. Some of their foremost troops, that had won the broken ground in front of St. Mark's Chapel, were suddenly charged by French horse; they fled in panic, crying out, "French cavalry!" and the space won was speedily abandoned to the tricolour. This sudden rebuff was to dash all their hopes of victory; for at that crisis of the day the chief Austrian column of nearly 8,000 men was struggling up the zigzag ascent leading from the valley of the Adige to the plateau, in the fond hope that their foes were by this time driven from the summit. Despite the terrible fire that tore their flanks, the Imperialists were clutching desperately at the plateau, when Bonaparte put forth his full striking power. He could now assail the crowded ranks of the doomed column in front and on both flanks. A charge of Leclerc's horse and of Joubert's infantry crushed its head; volleys of cannon and musketry from the plateau tore its sides; an ammunition wagon exploded in its midst; and the great constrictor forthwith writhed its bleeding coils back into the valley, where it lay crushed and helpless for the rest of the fight. [pg.136]

Animated by this lightning stroke of their commander, the French turned fiercely towards Monte Baldo and drove back their opponents into the depression at its foot. But already at their rear loud shouts warned them of a new danger. The western detachment of the Imperialists had meanwhile worked round their rear, and, ignorant of the fate of their comrades, believed that Bonaparte's army was caught in a trap. The eyes of all the French staff officers were now turned anxiously on their commander, who quietly remarked, "We have them now." He knew, in fact, that other French troops marching up from Verona would take these new foes in the rear; and though Junot and his horsemen failed to cut their way through so as to expedite their approach, yet speedily a French regiment burst through the encircling line and joined in the final attack which drove these last assailants from the heights south of Rivoli, and later on compelled them to surrender.

Thus closed the desperate battle of Rivoli (January 14th). Defects in the Austrian position and the opportune arrival of French reinforcements served to turn an Austrian success into a complete rout. Circumstances which to a civilian may seem singly to be of small account sufficed to tilt the trembling scales of warfare, and Alvintzy's army now reeled helplessly back into Tyrol with a total loss of 15,000 men and of nearly all its artillery and stores. Leaving Joubert to pursue it towards Trent, Bonaparte now flew southwards towards Mantua, whither Provera had cut his way. Again his untiring energy, his insatiable care for all probable contingencies, reaped a success which the ignorant may charge to the account of his fortune. Strengthening Augereau's division by light troops, he captured the whole of Provera's army at La Favorita, near the walls of Mantua (January 16th). The natural result of these two dazzling triumphs was the fall of the fortress for which the Emperor Francis had risked and lost five armies. Würmser surrendered Mantua on February 2nd with 18,000 men and immense supplies of arms and stores. [pg.137] The close of this wondrous campaign was graced by an act of clemency. Generous terms were accorded to the veteran marshal, whose fidelity to blundering councillors at Vienna had thrown up in brilliant relief the prudence, audacity, and resourcefulness of the young war-god.

It was now time to chastise the Pope for his support of the enemies of France. The Papalini proved to be contemptible as soldiers. They fled before the republicans, and a military promenade brought the invaders to Ancona, and then inland to Tolentino, where Pius VI. sued for peace. The resulting treaty signed at that place (February 19th) condemned the Holy See to close its ports to the allies, especially to the English; to acknowledge the acquisition of Avignon by France, and the establishment of the Cispadane Republic at Bologna, Ferrara, and the surrounding districts; to pay 30,000,000 francs to the French Government; and to surrender 100 works of art to the victorious republicans.

It is needless to describe the remaining stages in Bonaparte's campaign against Austria. Hitherto he had contended against fairly good, though discontented and discouraged troops, badly led, and hampered by the mountain barrier which separated them from their real base of operations. In the last part of the war he fought against troops demoralized by an almost unbroken chain of disasters. The Austrians were now led by a brave and intelligent general, the Archduke Charles; but he was hampered by rigorous instructions from Vienna, by senile and indolent generals, by the indignation or despair of the younger officers at the official favouritism which left them in obscurity, and by the apathy of soldiers who had lost heart. Neither his skill nor the natural strength of their positions in Friuli and Carinthia could avail against veterans flushed with victory and marshalled with unerring sagacity. The rest of the war only served to emphasize the truth of Napoleon's later statement, that the moral element constitutes three-fourths of an army's strength. The barriers offered by the River Tagliamento and the many [pg.138] commanding heights of the Carnic and the Noric Alps were as nothing to the triumphant republicans; and from the heights that guard the province of Styria, the genius of Napoleon flashed as a terrifying portent to the Court of Vienna and the potentates of Central Europe. When the tricolour standards were nearing the town of Leoben, the Emperor Francis sent envoys to sue for peace;^[72] and the preliminaries signed there, within one hundred miles of the Austrian capital, closed the campaign which a year previously had opened with so little promise for the French on the narrow strip of land between the Maritime Alps and the petty township of Savona.

These brilliant results were due primarily to the consummate leadership of Bonaparte. His geographical instincts discerned the means of profiting by natural obstacles and of turning them when they seemed to screen his opponents. Prompt to divine their plans, he bewildered them by the audacity of his combinations, which overbore their columns with superior force at the very time when he seemed doomed to succumb. Genius so commanding had not been displayed even by Frederick or Marlborough. And yet these brilliant results could not have been achieved by an army which rarely exceeded 45,000 men without the strenuous bravery and tactical skill of the best generals of division, Augereau, Masséna, and Joubert, as well as of officers who had shown their worth in many a doubtful fight; Lannes, the hero of Lodi and Arcola; Marmont, noted for his daring advance of the guns at Castiglione; Victor, who justified his name by hard fighting at La Favorita; Murat, the beau sabreur, and Junot, both dashing cavalry generals; and many more whose daring earned them a soldier's death in order to gain glory for France and[pg.139] liberty for Italy. Still less ought the soldiery to be forgotten; those troops, whose tattered uniforms bespoke their ceaseless toils, who grumbled at the frequent lack of bread, but, as Masséna observed, never before a battle, who even in retreat never doubted the genius of their chief, and fiercely rallied at the longed-for sign of fighting. The source of this marvellous energy is not hard to discover. Their bravery was fed by that wellspring of hope which had made of France a nation of free men determined to free the millions beyond their frontiers. The French columns were "equality on the march"; and the soldiery, animated by this grand enthusiasm, found its militant embodiment in the great captain who seemed about to liberate Italy and Central Europe. [pg.140]

CHAPTER VII

In signing the preliminaries of peace at Leoben, which formed in part the basis for the Treaty of Campo Formio, Bonaparte appears as a diplomatist of the first rank. He had already signed similar articles with the Court of Turin and with the Vatican. But such a transaction with the Emperor was infinitely more important than with the third-rate powers of the peninsula. He now essays his first flight to the highest levels of international diplomacy. In truth, his mental endowments, like those of many of the greatest generals, were no less adapted to success in the council-chamber than on the field of battle; for, indeed, the processes of thought and the methods of action are not dissimilar in the spheres of diplomacy and war. To evade obstacles on which an opponent relies, to multiply them in his path, to bewilder him by feints before overwhelming him by a crushing onset, these are the arts which yield success either to the negotiator or to the commander.

In imposing terms of peace on the Emperor at Leoben (April 18th, 1797), Bonaparte reduced the Directory, and its envoy, Clarke, who was absent in Italy, to a subordinate rôle. As commander-in-chief, he had power only to conclude a brief armistice, but now he signed the preliminaries of peace. His excuse to the Directory was ingenious. While admitting the irregularity of his conduct, he pleaded the isolated position of his army, and the absence of Clarke, and that, under the circumstances, his act had been merely "a military operation." He could also urge that he had in his rear a disaffected [pg.141] Venetia, and that he believed the French armies on the Rhine to be stationary and unable to cross that river. But the very tardy advent of Clarke on the scene strengthens the supposition that Bonaparte was at the time by no means loth to figure as the pacifier of the Continent. Had he known the whole truth, namely, that the French were gaining a battle on the east bank of the Rhine while the terms of peace were being signed at Leoben, he would most certainly have broken off the negotiations and have dictated harsher terms at the gates of Vienna. That was the vision which shone before his eyes three years previously, when he sketched to his friends at Nice the plan of campaign, beginning at Savona and ending before the Austrian capital; and great was his chagrin at hearing the tidings of Moreau's success on April 20th. The news reached him on his return from Leoben to Italy, when he was detained for a few hours by a sudden flood of the River Tagliamento. At once he determined to ride back and make some excuse for a rupture with Austria; and only the persistent remonstrances of Berthier turned him from this mad resolve, which would forthwith have exhibited him to the world as estimating more highly the youthful promptings of destiny than the honour of a French negotiator.

The terms which he had granted to the Emperor were lenient enough. The only definitive gain to France was the acquisition of the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium), for which troublesome possession the Emperor was to have compensation elsewhere. Nothing absolutely binding was said about the left, or west, bank of the Rhine, except that Austria recognized the "constitutional limits" of France, but reaffirmed the integrity of "The Empire."^[73] These were contradictory statements; for France had declared the Rhine to be her natural boundary, and the old "Empire" included Belgium, Trèves, and Luxemburg. But, for the interpretation of these vague formularies, the following secret and all-important articles were appended. While the[pg.142] Emperor renounced that part of his Italian possessions which lay to the west of the Oglio, he was to receive all the mainland territories of Venice east of that river, including Dalmatia and Istria, Venice was also to cede her lands west of the Oglio to the French Government; and in return for these sacrifices she was to gain the three legations of Romagna, Ferrara, and Bologna—the very lands which Bonaparte had recently formed into the Cispadane Republic! For the rest, the Emperor would have to recognize the proposed Republic at Milan, as also that already existing at Modena, "compensation" being somewhere found for the deposed duke.

From the correspondence of Thugut, the Austrian Minister, it appears certain that Austria herself had looked forward to the partition of the Venetian mainland territories, and this was the scheme which Bonaparte actually proposed to her at Leoben. Still more extraordinary was his proposal to sacrifice, ostensibly to Venice but ultimately to Austria, the greater part of the Cispadane Republic. It is, indeed, inexplicable, except on the ground that his military position at Leoben was more brilliant than secure. His uneasiness about this article of the preliminaries is seen in his letter of April 22nd to the Directors, which explains that the preliminaries need not count for much. But most extraordinary of all was his procedure concerning the young Lombard Republic. He seems quite calmly to have discussed its retrocession to the Austrians, and that, too, after he had encouraged the Milanese to found a republic, and had declared that every French victory was "a line of the constitutional charter."^[74] The most reasonable explanation is that Bonaparte over-estimated the military strength of Austria, and undervalued the energy of the men of Milan, Modena, and Bologna, of whose levies he spoke most contemptuously. Certain it is that he desired to disengage himself from their affairs so as to be free for the grander visions of oriental[pg.143] conquest that now haunted his imagination. Whatever were his motives in signing the preliminaries at Leoben, he speedily found means for their modification in the ever-enlarging area of negotiable lands.

It is now time to return to the affairs of Venice. For seven months the towns and villages of that republic had been a prey to pitiless warfare and systematic rapacity, a fate which the weak ruling oligarchy could neither avert nor avenge. In the western cities, Bergamo and Brescia, whose interests and feelings linked them with Milan rather than Venice, the populace desired an alliance with the nascent republic on the west and a severance from the gloomy despotism of the Queen of the Adriatic. Though glorious in her prime, she now governed with obscurantist methods inspired by fear of her weakness becoming manifest; and Bonaparte, tearing off the mask which hitherto had screened her dotage, left her despised by the more progressive of her own subjects. Even before he first entered the Venetian territory, he set forth to the Directory the facilities for plunder and partition which it offered. Referring to its reception of the Comte de Provence (the future Louis XVIII.) and the occupation of Peschiera by the Austrians, he wrote (June 6th, 1796):

"If your plan is to extract five or six million francs from Venice, I have expressly prepared for you this sort of rupture with her.... If you have intentions more pronounced, I think that you ought to continue this subject of contention, instruct me as to your desires, and wait for the favourable opportunity, which I will seize according to circumstances, for we must not have everybody on our hands at the same time."

The events which now transpired in Venetia gave him excuses for the projected partition. The weariness felt by the Brescians and Bergamesques for Venetian rule had been artfully played on by the Jacobins of Milan and by the French Generals Kilmaine and Landrieux; and an effort made by the Venetian officials to repress the growing discontent brought about disturbances in [pg.144] which some men of the "Lombard legion" were killed. The complicity of the French in the revolt is clearly established by the Milanese journals and by the fact that Landrieux forthwith accepted the command of the rebels at Bergamo and Brescia.^[75] But while these cities espoused the Jacobin cause, most of the Venetian towns and all the peasantry remained faithful to the old Government. It was clear that a conflict must ensue, even if Bonaparte and some of his generals had not secretly worked to bring it about. That he and they did so work cannot now be disputed. The circle of proof is complete. The events at Brescia and Bergamo were part of a scheme for precipitating a rupture with Venice; and their success was so far assured that Bonaparte at Leoben secretly bargained away nearly the whole of the Venetian lands. Furthermore, a fortnight before the signing of these preliminaries, he had suborned a vile wretch, Salvatori by name, to issue a proclamation purporting to come from the Venetian authorities, which urged the people everywhere to rise and massacre the French. It was issued on April 5th, though it bore the date of March 20th. At once the Doge warned his people that it was a base fabrication, But the mischief had been done. On Easter Monday (April 17th) a chance affray in Verona let loose the passions which had been rising for months past: the populace rose in fury against the French detachment quartered on them: and all the soldiers who could not find shelter in the citadel, even the sick in the hospitals, fell victims to the craving for revenge for the humiliations and exactions of the last seven months.^[76] Such was Easter-tide at Verona—les Pâques véronaises—an event[pg.145] that recalls the Sicilian Vespers of Palermo in its blind southern fury.

The finale somewhat exceeded Bonaparte's expectations, but he must have hailed it with a secret satisfaction. It gave him a good excuse for wholly extinguishing Venice as an independent power. According to the secret articles signed at Leoben, the city of Venice was to have retained her independence and gained the Legations. But her contumacy could now be chastised by annihilation. Venice could, in fact, indemnify the Hapsburgs for the further cessions which France exacted from them elsewhere; and in the process Bonaparte would free himself from the blame which attached to his hasty signature of the preliminaries at Leoben.^[77] He was now determined to secure the Rhine frontier for France, to gain independence, under French tutelage, not only for the Lombard Republic, but also for Modena and the Legations. These were his aims during the negotiations to which he gave the full force of his intellect during the spring and summer of 1797.

The first thing was to pour French troops into Italy so as to extort better terms: the next was to declare war on Venice. For this there was now ample justification; for, apart from the massacre at Verona, another outrage had been perpetrated. A French corsair, which had persisted in anchoring in a forbidden part of the harbour of Venice, had been riddled by the batteries and captured. For this act, and for the outbreak at Verona, the Doge and Senate offered ample reparation: but Bonaparte refused to listen to these envoys, "dripping with French blood," and haughtily bade Venice evacuate her mainland territories.^[78] For various reasons he decided to use guile rather than force. He found in Venice a secretary of the French legation, Villetard by name, who could be trusted dextrously to undermine the crumbling fabric of the oligarchy.^[79] This man persuaded[pg.146] the terrified populace that nothing would appease the fury of the French general but the deposition of the existing oligarchy and the formation of a democratic municipality. The people and the patricians alike swallowed the bait; and the once haughty Senate tamely pronounced its own doom. Disorders naturally occurred on the downfall of the ancient oligarchy, especially when the new municipality ordered the removal of Venetian men-of-war into the hands of the French and the introduction of French troops by help of Venetian vessels. A mournful silence oppressed even the democrats when 5,000 French troops entered Venice on board the flotilla. The famous State, which for centuries had ruled the waters of the Levant, and had held the fierce Turks at bay, a people numbering 3,000,000 souls and boasting a revenue of 9,000,000 ducats, now struck not one blow against conquerors who came in the guise of liberators.

On the same day Bonaparte signed at Milan a treaty of alliance with the envoys of the new Venetian Government. His friendship was to be dearly bought. In secret articles, which were of more import than the vague professions of amity which filled the public document, it was stipulated that the French and Venetian Republics should come to an understanding as to the exchange of certain territories, that Venice should pay a contribution in money and in materials of war, should aid the French navy by furnishing three battleships and two frigates, and should enrich the museums of her benefactress by 20 paintings and 500 manuscripts. While he was signing these conditions of peace, the Directors were despatching from Paris a declaration of war against Venice. Their decision was already obsolete: it was founded on Bonaparte's despatch of April 30th; but in the interval their proconsul had wholly changed the situation by overthrowing the rule of the Doge and Senate, and by setting up a democracy, through which he could extract the wealth of that land. The Directors' declaration of war was accordingly stopped at Milan, and no more was heard of it. They were thus forcibly [pg.147] reminded of the truth of his previous warning that things would certainly go wrong unless they consulted him on all important details.^[80]

This treaty of Milan was the fourth important convention concluded by the general, who, at the beginning of the campaign of 1796, had been forbidden even to sign an armistice without consulting Salicetti!

It was speedily followed by another, which in many respects redounds to the credit of the young conqueror. If his conduct towards Venice inspires loathing, his treatment of Genoa must excite surprise and admiration. Apart from one very natural outburst of spleen, it shows little of that harshness which might have been expected from the man who had looked on Genoa as the embodiment of mean despotism. Up to the summer of 1796 Bonaparte seems to have retained something of his old detestation of that republic; for at midsummer, when he was in the full career of his Italian conquests, he wrote to Faypoult, the French envoy at Genoa, urging him to keep open certain cases that were in dispute, and three weeks later he again wrote that the time for Genoa had not yet come. Any definite action against this wealthy city was, indeed, most undesirable during the campaign; for the bankers of Genoa supplied the French army with the sinews of war by means of secret loans, and their merchants were equally complaisant in regard to provisions. These services were appreciated by Bonaparte as much as they were resented by Nelson; and possibly the succour which Genoese money and shipping covertly rendered to the French expeditions for the recovery of Corsica may have helped to efface from Bonaparte's memory the associations clustering around the once-revered name of Paoli. From ill-concealed hostility he drifted into a position of tolerance and finally of friendship[pg.148] towards Genoa, provided that she became democratic. If her institutions could be assimilated to those of France, she might prove a valuable intermediary or ally.

The destruction of the Genoese oligarchy presented no great difficulties. Both Venice and Genoa had long outlived their power, and the persistent violation of their neutrality had robbed them of that last support of the weak, self-respect. The intrigues of Faypoult and Salicetti were undermining the influence of the Doge and Senate, when the news of the fall of the Venetian oligarchy spurred on the French party to action, But the Doge and Senate armed bands of mountaineers and fishermen who were hostile to change; and in a long and desperate conflict in the narrow streets of Genoa the democrats were completely worsted (May 23rd). The victors thereupon ransacked the houses of the opposing faction and found lists of names of those who were to have been proscribed, besides documents which revealed the complicity of the French agents in the rising. Bonaparte was enraged at the folly of the Genoese democrats, which deranged his plans. As he wrote to the Directory, if they had only remained quiet for a fortnight, the oligarchy would have collapsed from sheer weakness. The murder of a few Frenchmen and Milanese now gave him an excuse for intervention. He sent an aide-de-camp, Lavalette, charged with a vehement diatribe against the Doge and Senate, which lost nothing in its recital before that august body. At the close a few senators called out, "Let us fight": but the spirit of the Dorias flickered away with these protests; and the degenerate scions of mighty sires submitted to the insults of an aide-de-camp and the dictation of his master.

The fate of this ancient republic was decided by Bonaparte at the Castle of Montebello, near Milan, where he had already drawn up her future constitution. After brief conferences with the Genoese envoys, he signed with them the secret convention which placed their republic—soon to be renamed the Ligurian Republic—under the protection of France and substituted for the [pg.149] close patrician rule a moderate democracy. The fact is significant. His military instincts had now weaned him from the stiff Jacobinism of his youth; and, in conjunction with Faypoult and the envoys, he arranged that the legislative powers should be intrusted to two popularly elected chambers of 300 and 150 members, while the executive functions were to be discharged by twelve senators, presided over by a Doge; these officers were to be appointed by the chambers: for the rest, the principles of religious liberty and civic equality were recognized, and local self-government was amply provided for. Cynics may, of course, object that this excellent constitution was but a means of insuring French supremacy and of peacefully installing Bonaparte's regiments in a very important city; but the close of his intervention may be pronounced as creditable to his judgment as its results were salutary to Genoa. He even upbraided the demagogic party of that city for shivering in pieces the statue of Andrea Doria and suspending the fragments on some of the innumerable trees of liberty recently planted.

"Andrea Doria," he wrote, "was a great sailor and a great statesman. Aristocracy was liberty in his time. The whole of Europe envies your city the honour of having produced that celebrated man. You will, I doubt not, take pains to rear his statue again: I pray you to let me bear a part of the expense which that will entail, which I desire to share with those who are most zealous for the glory and welfare of your country."

In contrasting this wise and dignified conduct with the hatred which most Corsicans still cherished against Genoa, Bonaparte's greatness of soul becomes apparent and inspires the wish: Utinam semper sic fuisses!

Few periods of his life have been more crowded with momentous events than his sojourn at the Castle of Montebello in May-July, 1797. Besides completing the downfall of Venice and reinvigorating the life of Genoa, he was deeply concerned with the affairs of the Lombard or Cisalpine Republic, with his family concerns, [pg.0] with the consolidation of his own power in French politics, and with the Austrian negotiations. We will consider these affairs in the order here indicated.

The future of Lombardy had long been a matter of concern to Bonaparte. He knew that its people were the fittest in all Italy to benefit by constitutional rule, but it must be dependent on France. He felt little confidence in the Lombards if left to themselves, as is seen in his conversation with Melzi and Miot de Melito at the Castle of Montebello. He was in one of those humours, frequent at this time of dawning splendour, when confidence in his own genius betrayed him into quite piquant indiscretions. After referring to the Directory, he turned abruptly to Melzi, a Lombard nobleman:

"As for your country, Monsieur de Melzi, it possesses still fewer elements of republicanism than France, and can be managed more easily than any other. You know better than anyone that we shall do what we like with Italy. But the time has not yet come. We must give way to the fever of the moment. We are going to have one or two republics here of our own sort. Monge will arrange that for us."

He had some reason for distrusting the strength of the democrats in Italy. At the close of 1796 he had written that there were three parties in Lombardy, one which accepted French guidance, another which desired liberty even with some impatience, and a third faction, friendly to the Austrians: he encouraged the first, checked the second, and repressed the last. He now complained that the Cispadanes and Cisalpines had behaved very badly in their first elections, which had been conducted in his absence; for they had allowed clerical influence to override all French predilections. And, a little later, he wrote to Talleyrand that the genuine love of liberty was feeble in Italy, and that, as soon as French influences were withdrawn, the Italian Jacobins would be murdered by the populace. The sequel was to justify his misgivings, and therefore to refute the charges of those [pg.151] who see in his conduct respecting the Cisalpine Republic nothing but calculating egotism. The difficulty of freeing a populace that had learnt to hug its chains was so great that the temporary and partial success which his new creation achieved may be regarded as a proof of his political sagacity.

After long preparations by four committees, which Bonaparte kept at Milan closely engaged in the drafting of laws, the constitution of the Cisalpine Republic was completed. It was a miniature of that of France, and lest there should be any further mistakes in the elections, Bonaparte himself appointed, not only the five Directors and the Ministers whom they were to control, but even the 180 legislators, both Ancients and Juniors. In this strange fashion did democracy descend on Italy, not mainly as the work of the people, but at the behest of a great organizing genius. It is only fair to add that he summoned to the work of civic reconstruction many of the best intellects of Italy. He appointed a noble, Serbelloni, to be the first President of the Cisalpine Republic, and a scion of the august House of the Visconti was sent as its ambassador to Paris. Many able men that had left Lombardy during the Austrian occupation or the recent wars were attracted back by Bonaparte's politic clemency; and the festival of July 9th at Milan, which graced the inauguration of the new Government, presented a scene of civic joy to which that unhappy province had long been a stranger. A vast space was thronged with an enormous crowd which took up the words of the civic oath uttered by the President. The Archbishop of Milan celebrated Mass and blessed the banners of the National Guards; and the day closed with games, dances, and invocations to the memory of the Italians who had fought and died for their nascent liberties. Amidst all the vivas and the clash of bells Bonaparte took care to sound a sterner note. On that very day he ordered the suppression of a Milanese club which had indulged in Jacobinical extravagances, and he called on the people "to show to the [pg.152] world by their wisdom, energy, and by the good organization of their army, that modern Italy has not degenerated and is still worthy of liberty."

The contagion of Milanese enthusiasm spread rapidly. Some of the Venetian towns on the mainland now petitioned for union with the Cisalpine Republic; and the deputies of the Cispadane, who were present at the festival, urgently begged that their little State might enjoy the same privilege. Hitherto Bonaparte had refused these requests, lest he should hamper the negotiations with Austria, which were still tardily proceeding; but within a month their wish was gratified, and the Cispadane State was united to the larger and more vigorous republic north of the River Po, along with the important districts of Como, Bergamo, Brescia, Crema, and Peschiera. Disturbances in the Swiss district of the Valteline soon enabled Bonaparte to intervene on behalf of the oppressed peasants, and to merge this territory also in the Cisalpine Republic, which consequently stretched from the high Alps southward to Rimini, and from the Ticino on the west to the Mincio on the east.^[81]

Already, during his sojourn at the Castle of Montebello, Bonaparte figured as the all-powerful proconsul of the French Republic. Indeed, all his surroundings—his retinue of complaisant generals, and the numerous envoys and agents who thronged his ante-chambers to beg an audience—befitted a Sulla or a Wallenstein, rather than a general of the regicide Republic. Three hundred Polish soldiers guarded the approaches to the castle; and semi-regal state was also observed in its spacious corridors and saloons. There were to be seen Italian nobles, literati, and artists, counting it the highest honour to visit the liberator of their land; and to them Bonaparte behaved with that mixture of affability and inner reserve,[pg.153] of seductive charm alternating with incisive cross-examination which proclaimed at once the versatility of his gifts, the keenness of his intellect, and his determination to gain social, as well as military and political, supremacy. And yet the occasional abruptness of his movements, and the strident tones of command lurking beneath his silkiest speech, now and again reminded beholders that he was of the camp rather than of the court. To his generals he was distant; for any fault even his favourite officers felt the full force of his anger; and aides-de-camp were not often invited to dine at his table. Indeed, he frequently dined before his retinue, almost in the custom of the old Kings of France.

With him was his mother, also his brothers, Joseph and Louis, whom he was rapidly advancing to fortune. There, too, were his sisters; Elise, proud and self-contained, who at this period married a noble but somewhat boorish Corsican, Bacciocchi; and Pauline, a charming girl of sixteen, whose hand the all-powerful brother offered to Marmont, to be by him unaccountably refused, owing, it would seem, to a prior attachment. This lively and luxurious young creature was not long to remain unwedded. The adjutant-general, Leclerc, became her suitor; and, despite his obscure birth and meagre talents, speedily gained her as his bride. Bonaparte granted her 40,000 francs as her dowry; and—significant fact—the nuptials were privately blessed by a priest in the chapel of the Palace of Montebello.

Certainly the Bonapartes were not happy in their loves: the one dark side to the young conqueror's life, all through this brilliant campaign, was the cruelty of his bride. From her side he had in March, 1796, torn himself away, distracted between his almost insane love for her and his determination to crush the chief enemy of France: to her he had written long and tender letters even amidst the superhuman activities of his campaign. Ten long despatches a day had not prevented him covering as [pg.154] many sheets of paper with protestations of devotion to her and with entreaties that she would likewise pour out her heart to him. Then came complaints, some tenderly pleading, others passionately bitter, of her cruelly rare and meagre replies. The sad truth, that Josephine cares much for his fame and little for him himself, that she delays coming to Italy, these and other afflicting details rend his heart. At last she comes to Milan, after a passionate outburst of weeping—at leaving her beloved Paris. In Italy she shows herself scarcely more than affectionate to her doting spouse. Marlborough's letters to his peevish duchess during the Blenheim campaign are not more crowded with maudlin curiosities than those of the fierce scourge of the Austrians to his heartless fair. He writes to her agonizingly, begging her to be less lovely, less gracious, less good—apparently in order that he may love her less madly: but she is never to be jealous, and, above all, never to weep: for her tears burn his blood: and he concludes by sending millions of kisses, and also to her dog! And this mad effusion came from the man whom the outside world took to be of steel-like coldness: yet his nature had this fevered, passionate side, just as the moon, where she faces the outer void, is compact of ice, but turns a front of molten granite to her blinding, all-compelling luminary.

Undoubtedly this blazing passion helped to spur on the lover to that terrific energy which makes the Italian campaign unique even amidst the Napoleonic wars. Beaulieu, Würmser, and Alvintzy were not rivals in war; they were tiresome hindrances to his unsated love. On the eve of one of his greatest triumphs he penned to her the following rhapsody:

"I am far from you, I seem to be surrounded by the blackest night: I need the lurid light of the thunder-bolts which we are about to hurl on our enemies to dispel the darkness into which your absence has plunged me. Josephine, you wept when we parted: you wept! At that thought all my being trembles. But be consoled! Würmser shall pay dearly for the tears which I have seen you shed."

[pg.155] What infatuation! to appease a woman's fancied grief, he will pile high the plains of Mincio with corpses, recking not of the thousand homes where bitter tears will flow. It is the apotheosis of sentimental egotism and social callousness. And yet this brain, with its moral vision hopelessly blurred, judged unerringly in its own peculiar plane. What power it must have possessed, that, unexhausted by the flames of love, it grasped infallibly the myriad problems of war, scanning them the more clearly, perchance, in the white heat of its own passion.

At last there came the time of fruition at Montebello: of fruition, but not of ease or full contentment; for not only did an average of eight despatches a day claim several hours, during which he jealously guarded his solitude; but Josephine's behaviour served to damp his ardour. As, during the time of absence, she had slighted his urgent entreaties for a daily letter, so too, during the sojourn at Montebello, she revealed the shallowness and frivolity of her being. Fêtes, balls, and receptions, provided they were enlivened by a light crackle of compliments from an admiring circle, pleased her more than the devotion of a genius. She had admitted, before marriage, that her "Creole nonchalance" shrank wearily away from his keen and ardent nature; and now, when torn away from the salons of Paris, she seems to have taken refuge in entertainments and lap-dogs.^[82] Doubtless even at this period Josephine evinced something of that warm feeling which deepened with ripening years and lit up her later sorrows with a mild radiance; but her recent association with Madame Tallien and that giddy cohue had accentuated her habits of feline complaisance to all and sundry. Her facile fondnesses certainly welled forth far too widely to carve out a single channel of love and mingle with the deep torrent of Bonaparte's early passion. In time, therefore, his affections strayed into many other courses; and it would seen that even in the later part of this Italian epoch his conduct was irregular.

For this Josephine had herself mainly to thank. At last she awakened to the real value and greatness of the love which her neglect had served to dull and tarnish, but then it was too late for complete reunion of souls: the Corsican eagle had by that time soared far beyond reach of her highest flutterings.^[83]

At Montebello, as also at Passeriano, whither the Austrian negotiations were soon transferred, Bonaparte, though strictly maintaining the ceremonies of his proconsular court, yet showed the warmth of his social instincts. After the receptions of the day and the semi-public dinner, he loved to unbend in the evening. Sometimes, when Josephine formed a party of ladies for vingt-et-un, he would withdraw to a corner and indulge in the game of goose; and bystanders noted with amusement that his love of success led him to play tricks and cheat in order not to "fall into the pit." At other times,[pg.157] if the conversation languished, he proposed that each person should tell a story; and when no Boccaccio-like facility inspired the company, he sometimes launched out into one of those eerie and thrilling recitals, such as he must often have heard from the improvisatori of his native island. Bourrienne states that Bonaparte's realism required darkness and daggers for the full display of his gifts, and that the climax of his dramatic monologue was not seldom enhanced by the screams of the ladies, a consummation which gratified rather than perturbed the accomplished actor.

A survey of Bonaparte's multifarious activity in Italy enables the reader to realize something of the wonder and awe excited by his achievements. Like an Athena he leaped forth from the Revolution, fully armed for every kind of contest. His mental superiority impressed diplomats as his strategy baffled the Imperialist generals; and now he was to give further proofs of his astuteness by intervening in the internal affairs of France.

In order to understand Bonaparte's share in the coup d'état of Fructidor, we must briefly review the course of political events at Paris. At the time of the installation of the Directory the hope was widely cherished that the Revolution was now entirely a thing of the past. But the unrest of the time was seen in the renewal of the royalist revolts in the west, and in the communistic plot of Babeuf for the overthrow of the whole existing system of private property. The aims of these desperadoes were revealed by an accomplice; the ringleaders were arrested, and after a long trial Babeuf was guillotined and his confederates were transported (May, 1797). The disclosure of these ultra-revolutionary aims shocked not only the bourgeois, but even the peasants who were settled on the confiscated lands of the nobles and clergy. The very class which had given to the events of 1789 their irresistible momentum was now inclined to rest and be thankful; and in this swift revulsion of popular feeling the royalists began to gain [pg.158] ground. The elections for the renewal of a third part of the Councils resulted in large gains for them, and they could therefore somewhat influence the composition of the Directory by electing Barthélemy, a constitutional royalist. Still, he could not overbear the other four regicide Directors, even though one of these, Carnot, also favoured moderate opinions more and more. A crisis therefore rapidly developed between the still Jacobinical Directory and the two legislative Councils, in each of which the royalists, or moderates, had the upper hand. The aim of this majority was to strengthen the royalist elements in France by the repeal of many revolutionary laws. Their man of action was Pichegru, the conqueror of Holland, who, abjuring Jacobinism, now schemed with a club of royalists, which met at Clichy, on the outskirts of Paris. That their intrigues aimed at the restoration of the Bourbons had recently been proved. The French agents in Venice seized the Comte d'Entraigues, the confidante of the soi-disant Louis XVIII.; and his papers, when opened by Bonaparte, Clarke, and Berthier at Montebello, proved that there was a conspiracy in France for the recall of the Bourbons. With characteristic skill, Bonaparte held back these papers from the Directory until he had mastered the difficulties of the situation. As for the count, he released him; and in return for this signal act of clemency, then very unusual towards an émigré, he soon became the object of his misrepresentation and slander.

The political crisis became acute in July, when the majority of the Councils sought to force on the Directory Ministers who would favour moderate or royalist aims. Three Directors, Barras, La Réveillière-Lépeaux, and Rewbell, refused to listen to these behests, and insisted on the appointment of Jacobinical Ministers even in the teeth of a majority of the Councils. This defiance of the deputies of France was received with execration by most civilians, but with jubilant acclaim by the armies; for the soldiery, far removed from the partisan strifes of the capital, still retained their strongly [pg.159] republican opinions. The news that their conduct towards Venice was being sharply criticised by the moderates in Paris aroused their strongest feelings, military pride and democratic ardour.

Nevertheless, Bonaparte's conduct was eminently cautious and reserved. In the month of May he sent to Paris his most trusted aide-de-camp, Lavalette, instructing him to sound all parties, to hold aloof from all engagements, and to report to him dispassionately on the state of public opinion.^[84] Lavalette judged the position of the Directory, or rather of the Triumvirate which swayed it, to be so precarious that he cautioned his chief against any definite espousal of its cause; and in June-July, 1797, Bonaparte almost ceased to correspond with the Directors except on Italian affairs, probably because he looked forward to their overthrow as an important step towards his own supremacy. There was, however, the possibility of a royalist reaction sweeping all before it in France and ranging the armies against the civil power. He therefore waited and watched, fully aware of the enhanced importance which an uncertain situation gives to the outsider who refuses to show his hand.

Duller eyes than his had discerned that the constitutional conflict between the Directory and the Councils could not be peaceably adjusted. The framers of the constitution had designed the slowly changing Directory as a check on the Councils, which were renewed to the extent of one-third every year; but, while seeking to put a regicide drag on the parliamentary coach, they had omitted to provide against a complete overturn. The Councils could not legally override the Directory; neither could the Directory veto the decrees of the Councils, nor, by dissolving them, compel an appeal to the country. This defect in the constitution had been clearly pointed out by Necker, and it now drew from Barras the lament: [pg.160]

"Ah, if the constitution of the Year III., which offers so many sage precautions, had not neglected one of the most important; if it had foreseen that the two great powers of the State, engaged in heated debates, must end with open conflicts, when there is no high court of appeal to arrange them; if it had sufficiently armed the Directory with the right of dissolving the Chamber!"^[85]

As it was, the knot had to be severed by the sword: not, as yet, by Bonaparte's trenchant blade: he carefully drew back; but where as yet he feared to tread, Hoche rushed in. This ardently republican general was inspired by a self-denying patriotism, that flinched not before odious duties. While Bonaparte was culling laurels in Northern Italy, Hoche was undertaking the most necessary task of quelling the Vendéan risings, and later on braved the fogs and storms of the Atlantic in the hope of rousing all Ireland in revolt. His expedition to Bantry Bay in December, 1796, having miscarried, he was sent into the Rhineland. The conclusion of peace by Bonaparte at Leoben again dashed his hopes, and he therefore received with joy the orders of the Directory that he should march a large part of his army to Brest for a second expedition to Ireland. The Directory, however, intended to use those troops nearer home, and appointed him Minister of War (July 16th). The choice was a good one; Hoche was active, able, and popular with the soldiery; but he had not yet reached the thirtieth year of his age, the limit required by the constitution. On this technical defect the majority of the Councils at once fastened; and their complaints were redoubled when a large detachment of his troops came within the distance of the capital forbidden to the army. The moderates could therefore accuse the triumvirs and Hoche of conspiracy against the laws; he speedily resigned the Ministry (July 22nd), and withdrew his troops into Champagne, and finally to the Rhineland. [pg.161]

Now was the opportunity for Bonaparte to take up the rôle of Cromwell which Hoche had so awkwardly played. And how skilfully the conqueror of Italy plays it—through subordinates. He was too well versed in statecraft to let his sword flash before the public gaze. By this time he had decided to act, and doubtless the fervid Jacobinism of the soldiery was the chief cause determining his action. At the national celebration on July 14th he allowed it to have free vent, and thereupon wrote to the Directory, bitterly reproaching them for their weakness in face of the royalist plot: "I see that the Clichy Club means to march over my corpse to the destruction of the Republic." He ended the diatribe by his usual device, when he desired to remind the Government of his necessity to them, of offering his resignation, in case they refused to take vigorous measures against the malcontents. Yet even now his action was secret and indirect. On July 27th he sent to the Directors a brief note stating that Augereau had requested leave to go to Paris, "where his affairs call him"; and that he sent by this general the originals of the addresses of the army, avowing its devotion to the constitution. No one would suspect from this that Augereau was in Bonaparte's confidence and came to carry out the coup d'état. The secret was well preserved. Lavalette was Bonaparte's official representative; and his neutrality was now maintained in accordance with a note received from his chief: "Augereau is coming to Paris: do not put yourself in his power: he has sown disorder in the army: he is a factious man."

But, while Lavalette was left to trim his sails as best he might, Augereau was certain to act with energy. Bonaparte knew well that his Jacobinical lieutenant, famed as the first swordsman of the day, and the leader of the fighting division of the army, would do his work thoroughly, always vaunting his own prowess and decrying that of his commander. It was so. Augereau rushed to Paris, breathing threats of slaughter against the royalists. Checked for a time by the calculating [pg.162] finesse of the triumvirs, he prepared to end matters by a single blow; and, when the time had come, he occupied the strategic points of the capital, drew a cordon of troops round the Tuileries, where the Councils sat, invaded the chambers of deputies and consigned to the Temple the royalists and moderates there present, with their leader, Pichegru. Barthélemy was also seized; but Carnot, warned by a friend, fled during the early hours of this eventful day—September 4th (or 18 Fructidor). The mutilated Councils forthwith annulled the late elections in forty-nine Departments, and passed severe laws against orthodox priests and the unpardoned émigrés who had ventured to return to France. The Directory was also intrusted with complete power to suppress newspapers, to close political clubs, and to declare any commune in a state of siege. Its functions were now wellnigh as extensive and absolute as those of the Committee of Public Safety, its powers being limited only by the incompetence of the individual Directors and by their paralyzing consciousness that they ruled only by favour of the army. They had taken the sword to solve a political problem: two years later they were to fall by that sword.^[86]

Augereau fully expected that he would be one of the two Directors who were elected in place of Carnot and Barthélemy; but the Councils had no higher opinion of his civic capacity than Bonaparte had formed; and, to his great disgust, Merlin of Douai and François of Neufchâtel were chosen. The last scenes of the coup d'état centred around the transportation of the condemned deputies. One of the early memories of the future Duc de Broglie recalled the sight of the "députés fructidorisés travelling in closed carriages, railed up like cages," to the seaport whence they were to sail to the lingering agonies of a tropical prison in French Guiana.

It was a painful spectacle: the indignation was great, but the consternation was greater still. Everybody[pg.163] foresaw the renewal of the Reign of Terror and resignedly prepared for it.

Such were the feelings, even of those who, like Madame de Staël and her friend Benjamin Constant, had declared before the coup d'état that it was necessary to the salvation of the Republic. That accomplished woman was endowed with nearly every attribute of genius except political foresight and self-restraint. No sooner had the blow been dealt than she fell to deploring its results, which any fourth-rate intelligence might have foreseen. "Liberty was the only power really conquered"—such was her later judgment on Fructidor. Now that Liberty fled affrighted, the errant enthusiasms of the gifted authoress clung for a brief space to Bonaparte. Her eulogies on his exploits, says Lavalette, who listened to her through a dinner in Talleyrand's rooms, possessed all the mad disorder and exaggeration of inspiration; and, after the repast was over, the votaress refused to pass out before an aide-de-camp of Bonaparte! The incident is characteristic both of Madame de Staël's moods and of the whims of the populace. Amidst the disenchantments of that time, when the pursuit of liberty seemed but an idle quest, when royalists were the champions of parliamentary rule and republicans relied on military force, all eyes turned wearily away from the civic broils at Paris to the visions of splendour revealed by the conqueror of Italy. Few persons knew how largely their new favourite was responsible for the events of Fructidor; all of them had by heart the names of his victories; and his popularity flamed to the skies when he recrossed the Alps, bringing with him a lucrative peace with Austria.

The negotiations with that Power had dragged on slowly through the whole summer and far into the autumn, mainly owing to the hopes of the Emperor Francis that the disorder in France would filch from her the meed of victory. Doubtless that would have been the case, had not Bonaparte, while striking down the royalists at Paris through his lieutenant, remained [pg.164] at the head of his victorious legions in Venetia ready again to invade Austria, if occasion should arise.

In some respects, the coup d'état of Fructidor helped on the progress of the negotiations. That event postponed, if it did not render impossible, the advent of civil war in France; and, like Pride's Purge in our civil strifes, it installed in power a Government which represented the feelings of the army and of its chief. Moreover, it rid him of the presence of Clarke, his former colleague in the negotiations, whose relations with Carnot aroused the suspicions of Barras and led to his recall. Bonaparte was now the sole plenipotentiary of France. The final negotiations with Austria and the resulting treaty of Campo Formio may therefore be considered as almost entirely his handiwork.

And yet, at this very time, the head of the Foreign Office at Paris was a man destined to achieve the greatest diplomatic reputation of the age. Charles Maurice de Talleyrand seemed destined for the task of uniting the society of the old régime with the France of the Revolution. To review his life would be to review the Revolution. With a reforming zeal begotten of his own intellectual acuteness and of resentment against his family, which had disinherited him for the crime of lameness, he had led the first assaults of 1789 against the privileges of the nobles and of the clerics among whom his lot had perforce been cast. He acted as the head of the new "constitutional" clergy, and bestowed his episcopal blessing at the Feast of Pikes in 1790; but, owing to his moderation, he soon fell into disfavour with the extreme men who seized on power. After a sojourn in England and the United States, he came back to France, and on the suggestion of Madame de Staël was appointed Minister for Foreign Affairs (July, 1797). To this post he brought the highest gifts: his early clerical training gave a keen edge to an intellect naturally subtle and penetrating: his intercourse with Mirabeau gave him a grip on the essentials of sound policy and diplomacy: his sojourn abroad widened his vision, and imbued him [pg.165] with an admiration for English institutions and English moderation. Yet he loved France with a deep and fervent love. For her he schemed; for her he threw over friends or foes with a Macchiavellian facility. Amidst all the glamour of the Napoleonic Empire he discerned the dangers that threatened France; and he warned his master—as uselessly as he warned reckless nobles, priestly bigots, and fanatical Jacobins in the past, or the unteachable zealots of the restored monarchy. His life, when viewed, not in regard to its many sordid details, but to its chief guiding principle, was one long campaign against French élan and partisan obstinacy; and he sealed it with the quaint declaration in his will that, on reviewing his career, he found he had never abandoned a party before it had abandoned itself. Talleyrand was equipped with a diversity of gifts: his gaze, intellectual yet composed, blenched not when he uttered a scathing criticism or a diplomatic lie: his deep and penetrating voice gave force to all his words, and the curl of his lip or the scornful lifting of his eyebrows sometimes disconcerted an opponent more than his biting sarcasm. In brief, this disinherited noble, this unfrocked priest, this disenchanted Liberal, was the complete expression of the inimitable society of the old régime, when quickened intellectually by Voltaire and dulled by the Terror. After doing much to destroy the old society, he was now to take a prominent share in its reconstruction on a modern basis.^[87]

Such was the man who now commenced his chief life-work, the task of guiding Napoleon. "The mere name of Bonaparte is an aid which ought to smooth away all my difficulties"—these were the obsequious terms in which he began his correspondence with the great general. In reality, he distrusted him; but whether from diffidence, or from the weakness of his own position, which as yet was little more than that of the head clerk of his department, he did nothing to assert the predominance of civil[pg.166] over military influence in the negotiations now proceeding.

Two months before Talleyrand accepted office, Bonaparte had enlarged his original demands on Austria, and claimed for France the whole of the lands on the left or west bank of the Rhine, and for the Cisalpine Republic all the territory up to the River Adige. To these demands the Court of Vienna offered a tenacious resistance which greatly irritated him. "These people are so slow," he exclaimed, "they think that a peace like this ought to be meditated upon for three years first."

Concurrently with the Franco-Austrian negotiations, overtures for a peace between France and England were being discussed at Lille. Into these it is impossible to enter farther than to notice that in these efforts Pitt and the other British Ministers (except Grenville) were sincerely desirous of peace, and that negotiations broke down owing to the masterful tone adopted by the Directory. It was perhaps unfortunate that Lord Malmesbury was selected as the English negotiator, for his behaviour in the previous year had been construed by the French as dilatory and insincere. But the Directors may on better evidence be charged with postponing a settlement until they had struck down their foes within France. Bonaparte's letters at this time show that he hoped for the conclusion of a peace with England, doubtless in order that his own pressure on Austria might be redoubled. In this he was to be disappointed. After Fructidor the Directory assumed overweening airs. Talleyrand was bidden to enjoin on the French plenipotentiaries the adoption of a loftier tone. Maret, the French envoy at Lille, whose counsels had ever been on the side of moderation, was abruptly replaced by a "Fructidorian"; and a decisive refusal was given to the English demand for the retention of Trinidad and the Cape, at the expense of Spain and the Batavian Republic respectively. Indeed, the Directory intended to press for the cession of the Channel Islands to France and of [pg.167] Gibraltar to Spain, and that, too, at the end of a maritime war fruitful in victories for the Union Jack.^[88]

Towards the King of Sardinia the new Directory was equally imperious. The throne of Turin was now occupied by Charles Emmanuel IV. He succeeded to a troublous heritage. Threatened by democratic republics at Milan and Genoa, and still more by the effervescence of his own subjects, he strove to gain an offensive and defensive alliance with France, as the sole safeguard against revolution. To this end he offered 10,000 Piedmontese for service with Bonaparte, and even secretly covenanted to cede the island of Sardinia to France. But these offers could not divert Barras and his colleagues from their revolutionary policy. They spurned the alliance with the House of Savoy, and, despite the remonstrances of Bonaparte, they fomented civil discords in Piedmont such as endangered his communications with France. Indeed, the Directory after Fructidor was deeply imbued with fear of their commander in Italy. To increase his difficulties was now their paramount[pg.168] desire; and under the pretext of extending liberty in Italy, they instructed Talleyrand to insist on the inclusion of Venice and Friuli in the Cisalpine Republic. Austria must be content with Trieste, Istria, and Dalmatia, must renounce all interest in the fate of the Ionian Isles, and find in Germany all compensation for her losses in Italy. Such was the ultimatum of the Directory (September 16th). But a loophole of escape was left to Bonaparte; the conduct of these negotiations was confided solely to him, and he had already decided their general tenor by giving his provisional assent to the acquisition by Austria of the east bank of the Adige and the city of Venice. From these terms he was disinclined to diverge. He was weary of "this old Europe": his gaze was directed towards Corfu, Malta, and Egypt; and when he received the official ultimatum, he saw that the Directory desired a renewal of the war under conditions highly embarrassing for him. "Yes: I see clearly that they are preparing defeats for me," he exclaimed to his aide-de-camp Lavalette. They angered him still more when, on the death of Hoche, they intrusted their Rhenish forces, numbering 120,000 men, to the command of Augereau, and sent to the Army of Italy an officer bearing a manifesto written by Augereau concerning Fructidor, which set forth the anxiety felt by the Directors concerning Bonaparte's political views. At this Bonaparte fired up and again offered his resignation (September 25th):

"No power on earth shall, after this horrible and most unexpected act of ingratitude by the Government, make me continue to serve it. My health imperiously demands calm and repose.... My recompense is in my conscience and in the opinion of posterity. Believe me, that at any time of danger, I shall be the first to defend the Constitution of the Year III."

The resignation was of course declined, in terms most flattering to Bonaparte; and the Directors prepared to ratify the treaty with Sardinia.

Indeed, the fit of passion once passed, the determination [pg.169] to dominate events again possessed him, and he decided to make peace, despite the recent instructions of the Directory that no peace would be honourable which sacrificed Venice to Austria. There is reason to believe that he now regretted this sacrifice. His passionate outbursts against Venice after the Pâques véronaises, his denunciations of "that fierce and bloodstained rule," had now given place to some feelings of pity for the people whose ruin he had so artfully compassed; and the social intercourse with Venetians which he enjoyed at Passeriano, the castle of the Doge Manin, may well have inspired some regard for the proud city which he was now about to barter away to Austria. Only so, however, could he peacefully terminate the wearisome negotiations with the Emperor. The Austrian envoy, Count Cobenzl, struggled hard to gain the whole of Venetia, and the Legations, along with the half of Lombardy.^[89] From these exorbitant demands he was driven by the persistent vigour of Bonaparte's assaults. The little Corsican proved himself an expert in diplomatic wiles, now enticing the Imperialist on to slippery ground, and occasionally shocking him by calculated outbursts of indignation or bravado. After many days spent in intellectual fencing, the discussions were narrowed down to Mainz, Mantua, Venice, and the Ionian Isles. On the fate of these islands a stormy discussion arose, Cobenzl stipulating for their complete independence, while Bonaparte passionately claimed them for France. In one of these sallies his vehement gestures overturned a cabinet with a costly vase; but the story that he smashed the vase, as a sign of his power to crush the House of Austria, is a later refinement on the incident, about which Cobenzl merely reported to Vienna—"He behaved like a fool." Probably his dextrous disclosure of the severe terms which the Directory ordered him to extort was far more effective than this boisterous gasconnade. Finally, after threatening an immediate[pg.170] attack on the Austrian positions, he succeeded on three of the questions above named, but at the sacrifice of Venice to Austria.

The treaty was signed on October 17th at the village of Campo Formio. The published articles may be thus summarized: Austria ceded to the French Republic her Belgic provinces. Of the once extensive Venetian possessions France gained the Ionian Isles, while Austria acquired Istria, Dalmatia, the districts at the mouth of the Cattaro, the city of Venice, and the mainland of Venetia as far west as Lake Garda, the Adige, and the lower part of the River Po. The Hapsburgs recognized the independence of the now enlarged Cisalpine Republic. France and Austria agreed to frame a treaty of commerce on the basis of "the most favoured nation." The Emperor ceded to the dispossessed Duke of Modena the territory of Breisgau on the east of the Rhine. A congress was to be held at Rastadt, at which the plenipotentiaries of France and of the Germanic Empire were to regulate affairs between these two Powers.

Secret articles bound the Emperor to use his influence in the Empire to secure for France the left bank of the Rhine; while France was to use her good offices to procure for the Emperor the Archbishopric of Salzburg and the Bavarian land between that State and the River Inn. Other secret articles referred to the indemnities which were to be found in Germany for some of the potentates who suffered by the changes announced in the public treaty.

The bartering away of Venice awakened profound indignation. After more than a thousand years of independence, that city was abandoned to the Emperor by the very general who had promised to free Italy. It was in vain that Bonaparte strove to soothe the provisional government of that city through the influence of a Venetian Jew, who, after his conversion, had taken the famous name of Dandolo. Summoning him to Passeriano, he explained to him the hard necessity which now dictated the transfer of Venice to Austria. [pg.171]

[CENTRAL EUROPE AFTER THE PEACE OF CAMPO FORMIO, 1797
The boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire are indicated by thick dots. The Austrian Dominions are indicated by vertical lines. The Prussian Dominions are indicated by horizontal lines. The Ecclesiastical States are indicated by dotted areas.]

Acribus initiis, ut ferme talia, incuriosa fine; these cynical words, with which the historian of the Roman Empire blasted the movements of his age, may almost serve as the epitaph to Bonaparte's early enthusiasms. Proclaiming at the beginning of his Italian campaigns that he came to free Italy, he yet finished his course of almost unbroken triumphs by a surrender which his panegyrists have scarcely attempted to condone. But the fate of Venice was almost forgotten amidst the jubilant acclaim which greeted the conqueror of Italy on his arrival at Paris. All France rang with the praises of the hero who had spread liberty throughout Northern and Central Italy, had enriched the museums of Paris with priceless masterpieces of art, whose army had captured 150,000 prisoners, and had triumphed in 18 pitched battles—for Caldiero was now reckoned as a French victory—and 47 smaller engagements. The Directors, shrouding their hatred and fear of the masterful proconsul under their Roman togas, greeted him with uneasy effusiveness. The climax of the official comedy was [pg.173] reached when, at the reception of the conqueror, Barras, pointing northwards, exclaimed: "Go there and capture the giant corsair that infests the seas: go punish in London outrages that have too long been unpunished": whereupon, as if overcome by his emotions, he embraced the general. Amidst similar attentions bestowed by the other Directors, the curtain falls on the first, or Italian, act of the young hero's career, soon to rise on oriental adventures that were to recall the exploits of Alexander. [pg.174]

CHAPTER VIII

Among the many misconceptions of the French revolutionists none was more insidious than the notion that the wealth and power of the British people rested on an artificial basis. This mistaken belief in England's weakness arose out of the doctrine taught by the Economistes or Physiocrates in the latter half of last century, that commerce was not of itself productive of wealth, since it only promoted the distribution of the products of the earth; but that agriculture was the sole source of true wealth and prosperity. They therefore exalted agriculture at the expense of commerce and manufactures, and the course of the Revolution, which turned largely on agrarian questions, tended in the same direction. Robespierre and St. Just were never weary of contrasting the virtues of a simple pastoral life with the corruptions and weakness engendered by foreign commerce; and when, early in 1793, Jacobinical zeal embroiled the young Republic with England, the orators of the Convention confidently prophesied the downfall of the modern Carthage. Kersaint declared that "the credit of England rests upon fictitious wealth: ... bounded in territory, the public future of England is found almost wholly in its bank, and this edifice is entirely supported by naval commerce. It is easy to cripple this commerce, and especially so for a power like France, which stands alone on her own riches."^[90] [pg.175]

Commercial interests played a foremost part all through the struggle. The official correspondence of Talleyrand in 1797 proves that the Directory intended to claim the Channel Islands, the north of Newfoundland, and all our conquests in the East Indies made since 1754, besides the restitution of Gibraltar to Spain.^[91] Nor did these hopes seem extravagant. The financial crisis in London and the mutiny at the Nore seemed to betoken the exhaustion of England, while the victories of Bonaparte raised the power of France to heights never known before. Before the victory of Duncan over the Dutch at Camperdown (October 11th, 1797), Britain seemed to have lost her naval supremacy.

The recent admission of State bankruptcy at Paris, when two-thirds of the existing liabilities were practically expunged, sharpened the desire of the Directory to compass England's ruin, an enterprise which might serve to restore French credit and would certainly engage those vehement activities of Bonaparte that could otherwise work mischief in Paris. On his side he gladly accepted the command of the Army of England.

"The people of Paris do not remember anything," he said to Bourrienne. "Were I to remain here long, doing nothing, I should be lost. In this great Babylon everything wears out: my glory has already disappeared. This little Europe does not supply enough of it for me. I must seek it in the East: all great fame comes from that quarter. However, I wish first to make a tour along the [northern] coast to see for myself what may be attempted. If the success of a descent upon England appear doubtful, as I suspect it will, the Army of England shall become the Army of the East, and I go to Egypt."^[92]

In February, 1798, he paid a brief visit to Dunkirk and the Flemish coast, and concluded that the invasion of England was altogether too complicated to be hazarded[pg.176] except as a last desperate venture. In a report to the Government (February 23rd) he thus sums up the whole situation:

"Whatever efforts we make, we shall not for some years gain the naval supremacy. To invade England without that supremacy is the most daring and difficult task ever undertaken.... If, having regard to the present organization of our navy, it seems impossible to gain the necessary promptness of execution, then we must really give up the expedition against England, be satisfied with keeping up the pretence of it, and concentrate all our attention and resources on the Rhine, in order to try to deprive England of Hanover and Hamburg:^[93] ... or else undertake an eastern expedition which would menace her trade with the Indies. And if none of these three operations is practicable, I see nothing else for it but to conclude peace with England."

The greater part of his career serves as a commentary on these designs. To one or other of them he was constantly turning as alternative schemes for the subjugation of his most redoubtable foe. The first plan he now judged to be impracticable; the second, which appears later in its fully matured form as his Continental System, was not for the present feasible, because France was about to settle German affairs at the Congress of Rastadt; to the third he therefore turned the whole force of his genius.

The conquest of Egypt and the restoration to France of her supremacy in India appealed to both sides of Bonaparte's nature. The vision of the tricolour floating above the minarets of Cairo and the palace of the Great Mogul at Delhi fascinated a mind in which the mysticism of the south was curiously blent with the practicality and passion for details that characterize the northern races. To very few men in the world's history has it been granted to dream grandiose dreams and all but[pg.177] realize them, to use by turns the telescope and the microscope of political survey, to plan vast combinations of force, and yet to supervise with infinite care the adjustment of every adjunct. Cæsar, in the old world, was possibly the mental peer of Bonaparte in this majestic equipoise of the imaginative and practical qualities; but of Cæsar we know comparatively little; whereas the complex workings of the greatest mind of the modern world stand revealed in that storehouse of facts and fancies, the "Correspondance de Napoléon." The motives which led to the Eastern Expedition are there unfolded. In the letter which he wrote to Talleyrand shortly before the signature of the peace of Campo Formio occurs this suggestive passage:

"The character of our nation is to be far too vivacious amidst prosperity. If we take for the basis of all our operations true policy, which is nothing else than the calculation of combinations and chances, we shall long be la grande nation and the arbiter of Europe. I say more: we hold the balance of Europe: we will make that balance incline as we wish; and, if such is the order of fate, I think it by no means impossible that we may in a few years attain those grand results of which the heated and enthusiastic imagination catches a glimpse, and which the extremely cool, persistent, and calculating man will alone attain."

This letter was written when Bonaparte was bartering away Venice to the Emperor in consideration of the acquisition by France of the Ionian Isles. Its reference to the vivacity of the French was doubtless evoked by the orders which he then received to "revolutionize Italy." To do that, while the Directory further extorted from England Gibraltar, the Channel Islands, and her eastern conquests, was a programme dictated by excessive vivacity. The Directory lacked the practical qualities that selected one great enterprise at a time and brought to bear on it the needful concentration of effort. In brief, he selected the war against England's eastern commerce as his next sphere of action; for it offered "an arena vaster, more necessary [pg.178] and resplendent" than war with Austria; "if we compel the [British] Government to a peace, the advantages we shall gain for our commerce in both hemispheres will be a great step towards the consolidation of liberty and the public welfare."^[94]

For this eastern expedition he had already prepared. In May, 1797, he had suggested the seizure of Malta from the Knights of St. John; and when, on September 27th, the Directory gave its assent, he sent thither a French commissioner, Poussielgue, on a "commercial mission," to inspect those ports, and also, doubtless, to undermine the discipline of the Knights. Now that the British had retired from Corsica, and France disposed of the maritime resources of Northern Italy, Spain, and Holland, it seemed quite practicable to close the Mediterranean to those "intriguing and enterprising islanders," to hold them at bay in their dull northern seas, to exhaust them by ruinous preparations against expected descents on their southern coasts, on Ireland, and even on Scotland, while Bonaparte's eastern conquests dried up the sources of their wealth in the Orient: "Let us concentrate all our activity on our navy and destroy England. That done, Europe is at our feet."^[95]

But he encountered opposition from the Directory. They still clung to their plan of revolutionizing Italy; and only by playing on their fear of the army could he bring these civilians to assent to the expatriation of 35,000 troops and their best generals. On La Réveillière-Lépeaux[pg.179] the young commander worked with a skill that veiled the choicest irony. This Director was the high-priest of a newly-invented cult, termed Théo-philanthropie, into the dull embers of which he was still earnestly blowing. To this would-be prophet Bonaparte now suggested that the eastern conquests would furnish a splendid field for the spread of the new faith; and La Réveillière was forthwith converted from his scheme of revolutionizing Europe to the grander sphere of moral proselytism opened out to him in the East by the very chief who, on landing in Egypt, forthwith professed the Moslem creed.

After gaining the doubtful assent of the Directory, Bonaparte had to face urgent financial difficulties. The dearth of money was, however, met by two opportune interventions. The first of these was in the affairs of Rome. The disorders of the preceding year in that city had culminated at Christmas in a riot in which General Duphot had been assassinated; this outrage furnished the pretext desired by the Directory for revolutionizing Central Italy. Berthier was at once ordered to lead French troops against the Eternal City. He entered without resistance (February 15th, 1798), declared the civil authority of the Pope at an end, and proclaimed the restoration of the Roman Republic. The practical side of the liberating policy was soon revealed. A second time the treasures of Rome, both artistic and financial, were rifled; and, as Lucien Bonaparte caustically remarked in his "Memoirs," the chief duty of the newly-appointed consuls and quæstors was to superintend the packing up of pictures and statues designed for Paris. Berthier not only laid the basis of a large private fortune, but showed his sense of the object of the expedition by sending large sums for the equipment of the armada at Toulon. "In sending me to Rome," wrote Berthier to Bonaparte, "you appoint me treasurer to the expedition against England. I will try to fill the exchequer."

The intervention of the Directory in the affairs of Switzerland was equally lucrative. The inhabitants of[pg.180] the district of Vaud, in their struggles against the oppressive rule of the Bernese oligarchy, had offered to the French Government the excuse for interference: and a force invading that land, overpowered the levies of the central cantons.^[96] The imposition of a centralized form of government modelled on that of France, the wresting of Geneva from this ancient confederation, and its incorporation with France, were not the only evils suffered by Switzerland. Despite the proclamation of General Brune that the French came as friends to the descendants of William Tell, and would respect their independence and their property, French commissioners proceeded to rifle the treasuries of Berne, Zürich, Solothurn, Fribourg, and Lucerne of sums which amounted in all to eight and a half million francs; fifteen millions were extorted in forced contributions and plunder, besides 130 cannon and 60,000 muskets which also became the spoils of the liberators.^[97] The destination of part of the treasure was already fixed; on April 13th Bonaparte wrote an urgent letter to General Lannes, directing him to expedite the transit of the booty to Toulon, where three million francs were forthwith expended on the completion of the armada.

This letter, and also the testimony of Madame de Staël, Barras, Bourrienne, and Mallet du Pan, show that he must have been a party to this interference in Swiss affairs, which marks a debasement, not only of Bonaparte's character, but of that of the French army and people. It drew from Coleridge, who previously had seen in the Revolution the dawn of a nobler era, an indignant protest against the prostitution of the ideas of 1789:

"Oh France that mockest Heaven, adulterous, blind,
Are these thy boasts, champion of human kind?
[pg.181] To mix with Kings in the low lust of sway,
Yell in the hunt and join the murderous prey? ...
The sensual and the dark rebel in vain
Slaves by their own compulsion. In mad game
They burst their manacles: but wear the name
Of Freedom, graven on a heavier chain."

The occupation by French troops of the great central bastion of the European system seemed a challenge, not only to idealists, but to German potentates. It nearly precipitated a rupture with Vienna, where the French tricolour had recently been torn down by an angry crowd. But Bonaparte did his utmost to prevent a renewal of war that would blight his eastern prospects; and he succeeded. One last trouble remained. At his final visit to the Directory, when crossed about some detail, he passionately threw up his command. Thereupon Rewbell, noted for his incisive speech, drew up the form of resignation, and presenting it to Bonaparte, firmly said, "Sign, citizen general." The general did not sign, but retired from the meeting apparently crestfallen, but really meditating a coup d'état. This last statement rests on the evidence of Mathieu Dumas, who heard it through General Desaix, a close friend of Bonaparte; and it is clear from the narratives of Bourrienne, Barras, and Madame Junot that, during his last days in Paris, the general was moody, preoccupied, and fearful of being poisoned.

At last the time of preparation and suspense was at an end. The aims of the expedition as officially defined by a secret decree on April 12th included the capture of Egypt and the exclusion of the English from "all their possessions in the East to which the general can come"; Bonaparte was also to have the isthmus of Suez cut through; to "assure the free and exclusive possession of the Red Sea to the French Republic"; to improve the condition of the natives of Egypt, and to cultivate good relations with the Grand Signior. Another secret decree empowered Bonaparte to seize Malta. To these schemes he added another of truly colossal dimensions. After [pg.182] conquering the East, he would rouse the Greeks and other Christians of the East, overthrow the Turks, seize Constantinople, and "take Europe in the rear."

Generous support was accorded to the savants who were desirous of exploring the artistic and literary treasures of Egypt and Mesopotamia. It has been affirmed by the biographer of Monge that the enthusiasm of this celebrated physicist first awakened Bonaparte's desire for the eastern expedition; but this seems to have been aroused earlier by Volney, who saw a good deal of Bonaparte in 1791. In truth, the desire to wrest the secrets of learning from the mysterious East seems always to have spurred on his keenly inquisitive nature. During the winter months of 1797-8 he attended the chemical lectures of the renowned Berthollet; and it was no perfunctory choice which selected him for the place in the famous institute left vacant by the exile of Carnot. The manner in which he now signed his orders and proclamations—Member of the Institute, General in Chief of the Army of the East—showed his determination to banish from the life of France that affectation of boorish ignorance by which the Terrorists had rendered themselves uniquely odious.

After long delays, caused by contrary winds, the armada set sail from Toulon. Along with the convoys from Marseilles, Genoa, and Civita Vecchia, it finally reached the grand total of 13 ships of the line, 7 frigates, several gunboats, and nearly 300 transports of various sizes, conveying 35,000 troops. Admiral Brueys was the admiral, but acting under Bonaparte. Of the generals whom the commander-in-chief took with him, the highest in command were the divisional generals Kléber, Desaix, Bon, Menou, Reynier, for the infantry: under them served 14 generals, a few of whom, as Marmont, were to achieve a wider fame. The cavalry was commanded by the stalwart mulatto, General Alexandre Dumas, under whom served Leclerc, the husband of Pauline Bonaparte, along with two men destined to world-wide renown, Murat and Davoust. The artillery [pg.183] was commanded by Dommartin, the engineers by Caffarelli: and the heroic Lannes was quarter-master general.

The armada appeared off Malta without meeting with any incident. This island was held by the Knights of St. John, the last of those companies of Christian warriors who had once waged war on the infidels in Palestine. Their courage had evaporated in luxurious ease, and their discipline was a prey to intestine schisms and to the intrigues carried on with the French Knights of the Order. A French fleet had appeared off Valetta in the month of March in the hope of effecting a surprise; but the admiral, Brueys, judging the effort too hazardous, sent an awkward explanation, which only served to throw the knights into the arms of Russia. One of the chivalrous dreams of the Czar Paul was that of spreading his influence in the Mediterranean by a treaty with this Order. It gratified his crusading ardour and promised to Russia a naval base for the partition of Turkey which was then being discussed with Austria: to secure the control of the island, Russia was about to expend 400,000 roubles, when Bonaparte anticipated Muscovite designs by a prompt seizure.^[98] An excuse was easily found for a rupture with the Order: some companies of troops were disembarked, and hostilities commenced.

Secure within their mighty walls, the knights might have held the intruders at bay, had they not been divided by internal disputes: the French knights refused to fight against their countrymen; and a revolt of the native Maltese, long restless under the yoke of the Order, now helped to bring the Grand Master to a surrender. The evidence of the English consul, Mr. Williams, seems to show that the discontent of the natives was even more potent than the influence of French gold in bringing about this result.^[99] At any rate, one of the[pg.184] strongest places in Europe admitted a French garrison, after so tame a defence that General Caffarelli, on viewing the fortifications, remarked to Bonaparte: "Upon my word, general, it is lucky there was some one in the town to open the gates to us."

During his stay of seven days at Malta, Bonaparte revealed the vigour of those organizing powers for which the half of Europe was soon to present all too small an arena. He abolished the Order, pensioning off those French knights who had been serviceable: he abolished the religious houses and confiscated their domains to the service of the new government: he established a governmental commission acting under a military governor: he continued provisionally the existing taxes, and provided for the imposition of customs, excise, and octroi dues: he prepared the way for the improvement of the streets, the erection of fountains, the reorganization of the hospitals and the post office. To the university he gave special attention, rearranging the curriculum on the model of the more advanced écoles centrales of France, but inclining the studies severely to the exact sciences and the useful arts. On all sides he left the imprint of his practical mind, that viewed life as a game at chess, whence bishops and knights were carefully banished, and wherein nothing was left but the heavy pieces and subservient pawns.

After dragging Malta out of its mediaeval calm and plunging it into the full swirl of modern progress, Bonaparte set sail for Egypt. His exchequer was the richer by all the gold and silver, whether in bullion or in vessels, discoverable in the treasury of Malta or in the Church of St. John. Fortunately, the silver gates of this church had been coloured over, and thus escaped the fate of the other treasures.^[100] On the voyage to Alexandria[pg.185] he studied the library of books which he had requested Bourrienne to purchase for him. The composition of this library is of interest as showing the strong trend of his thoughts towards history, though at a later date he was careful to limit its study in the university and schools which he founded. He had with him 125 volumes of historical works, among which the translations of Thucydides, Plutarch, Tacitus, and Livy represented the life of the ancient world, while in modern life he concentrated his attention chiefly on the manners and institutions of peoples and the memoirs of great generals—as Turenne, Condé, Luxembourg, Saxe, Marlborough, Eugène, and Charles XII. Of the poets he selected the so-called Ossian, Tasso, Ariosto, Homer, Virgil, and the masterpieces of the French theatre; but he especially affected the turgid and declamatory style of Ossian. In romance, English literature was strongly represented by forty volumes of novels, of course in translations. Besides a few works on arts and sciences, he also had with him twelve volumes of "Barclay's Geography," and three volumes of "Cook's Voyages," which show that his thoughts extended to the antipodes; and under the heading of Politics he included the Bible, the Koran, the Vedas, a Mythology, and Montesquieu's "Esprit des Lois"! The composition and classification of this library are equally suggestive. Bonaparte carefully searched out the weak places of the organism which he was about to attack—in the present campaign, Egypt and the British Empire. The climate and natural products, the genius of its writers and the spirit of its religion—nothing came amiss to his voracious intellect, which assimilated the most diverse materials and pressed them all into his service. Greek mythology provided allusions for the adornment of his proclamations, the Koran would dictate his behaviour towards the Moslems, and the Bible was to be his guide-book concerning the Druses and Armenians. All three were therefore grouped together under the head of Politics.[pg.186]

And this, on the whole, fairly well represents his mental attitude towards religion: at least, it was his work-a-day attitude. There were moments, it is true, when an overpowering sense of the majesty of the universe lifted his whole being far above this petty opportunism: and in those moments, which, in regard to the declaration of character, may surely be held to counterbalance whole months spent in tactical shifts and diplomatic wiles, he was capable of soaring to heights of imaginative reverence. Such an episode, lighting up for us the recesses of his mind, occurred during his voyage to Egypt. The savants on board his ship, "L'Orient," were discussing one of those questions which Bonaparte often propounded, in order that, as arbiter in this contest of wits, he might gauge their mental powers. Mental dexterity, rather than the Socratic pursuit after truth, was the aim of their dialectic; but on one occasion, when religion was being discussed, Bonaparte sounded a deeper note: looking up into the midnight vault of sky, he said to the philosophizing atheists: "Very ingenious, sirs, but who made all that?" As a retort to the tongue-fencers, what could be better? The appeal away from words to the star-studded canopy was irresistible: it affords a signal proof of what Carlyle has finely called his "instinct for nature" and his "ineradicable feeling for reality." This probably was the true man, lying deep under his Moslem shifts and Concordat bargainings.

That there was a tinge of superstition in Bonaparte's nature, such as usually appears in gifted scions of a coast-dwelling family, cannot be denied;^[101] but his usual attitude towards religion was that of the political mechanician, not of the devotee, and even while professing the forms of fatalistic belief, he really subordinated them to his own designs. To this profound calculation of the credulity of mankind we may probably refer his allusions to his star. The present writer[pg.187] regards it as almost certain that his star was invoked in order to dazzle the vulgar herd. Indeed, if we may trust Miot de Melito, the First Consul once confessed as much to a circle of friends. "Cæsar," he said, "was right to cite his good fortune and to appear to believe in it. That is a means of acting on the imagination of others without offending anyone's self-love." A strange admission this; what boundless self-confidence it implies that he should have admitted the trickery. The mere acknowledgment of it is a proof that he felt himself so far above the plane of ordinary mortals that, despite the disclosure, he himself would continue to be his own star. For the rest, is it credible that this analyzing genius could ever have seriously adopted the astrologer's creed? Is there anything in his early note-books or later correspondence which warrants such a belief? Do not all his references to his star occur in proclamations and addresses intended for popular consumption?

Certainly Bonaparte's good fortune was conspicuous all through these eastern adventures, and never more so than when he escaped the pursuit of Nelson. The English admiral had divined his aim. Setting all sail, he came almost within sight of the French force near Crete, and he reached Alexandria barely two days before his foes hove in sight. Finding no hostile force there, he doubled back on his course and scoured the seas between Crete, Sicily, and the Morca, until news received from a Turkish official again sent him eastwards. On such trifles does the fate of empires sometimes depend.

Meanwhile events were crowding thick and fast upon Bonaparte. To free himself from the terrible risks which had menaced his force off the Egyptian coast, he landed his troops, 35,000 strong, with all possible expedition at Marabout near Alexandria, and, directing his columns of attack on the walls of that city, captured it by a rush (July 2nd).

For this seizure of neutral territory he offered no excuse other than that the Beys, who were the real rulers [pg.188] of Egypt, had favoured English commerce and were guilty of some outrages on French merchants. He strove, however, to induce the Sultan of Turkey to believe that the French invasion of Egypt was a friendly act, as it would overthrow the power of the Mamelukes, who had reduced Turkish authority to a mere shadow. This was the argument which he addressed to the Turkish officials, but it proved to be too subtle even for the oriental mind fully to appreciate. Bonaparte's chief concern was to win over the subject population, which consisted of diverse races. At the surface were the Mamelukes, a powerful military order, possessing a magnificent cavalry, governed by two Beys, and scarcely recognizing the vague suzerainty claimed by the Porte. The rivalries of the Beys, Murad and Ibrahim, produced a fertile crop of discords in this governing caste, and their feuds exposed the subject races, both Arabs and Copts, to constant forays and exactions. It seemed possible, therefore, to arouse them against the dominant caste, provided that the Mohammedan scruples of the whole population were carefully respected. To this end, the commander cautioned his troops to act towards the Moslems as towards "Jews and Italians," and to respect their muftis and imams as much as "rabbis and bishops." He also proclaimed to the Egyptians his determination, while overthrowing Mameluke tyranny, to respect the Moslem faith: "Have we not destroyed the Pope, who bade men wage war on Moslems? Have we not destroyed the Knights of Malta, because those fools believed it to be God's will to war against Moslems?" The French soldiers were vastly amused by the humour of these proceedings, and the liberated people fully appreciated the menaces with which Bonaparte's proclamation closed, backed up as these were by irresistible force.^[102]

After arranging affairs at Alexandria, where the gallant[pg.189] Kléber was left in command, Bonaparte ordered an advance into the interior. Never, perhaps, did he show the value of swift offensive action more decisively than in this prompt march on Damanhour across the desert. The other route by way of Rosetta would have been easier; but, as it was longer, he rejected it, and told off General Menou to capture that city and support a flotilla of boats which was to ascend the Nile and meet the army on its march to Cairo. On July 4th the first division of the main force set forth by night into the desert south of Alexandria. All was new and terrible; and, when the rays of the sun smote on their weary backs, the murmurings of the troops grew loud. This, then, was the land "more fertile than Lombardy," which was the goal of their wanderings. "See, there are the six acres of land which you are promised," exclaimed a waggish soldier to his comrade as they first gazed from ship-board on the desert east of Alexandria; and all the sense of discipline failed to keep this and other gibes from the ears of staff officers even before they reached that city. Far worse was their position now in the shifting sand of the desert, beset by hovering Bedouins, stung by scorpions, and afflicted by intolerable thirst. The Arabs had filled the scanty wells with stones, and only after long toil could the sappers reach the precious fluid beneath. Then the troops rushed and fought for the privilege of drinking a few drops of muddy liquor. Thus they struggled on, the succeeding divisions faring worst of all. Berthier, chief of the staff, relates that a glass of water sold for its weight in gold. Even brave officers abandoned themselves to transports of rage and despair which left them completely prostrate.^[103]

But Bonaparte flinched not. His stern composure offered the best rebuke to such childish sallies; and when out of a murmuring group there came the bold remark, "Well, General, are you going to take us to India thus," he abashed the speaker and his comrades by the quick[pg.190] retort, "No, I would not undertake that with such soldiers as you." French honour, touched to the quick, reasserted itself even above the torments of thirst; and the troops themselves, when they tardily reached the Nile and slaked their thirst in its waters, recognized the pre-eminence of his will and his profound confidence in their endurance. French gaiety had not been wholly eclipsed even by the miseries of the desert march. To cheer their drooping spirits the commander had sent some of the staunchest generals along the line of march. Among them was the gifted Caffarelli, who had lost a leg in the Rhenish campaign: his reassuring words called forth the inimitable retort from the ranks: "Ah! he don't care, not he: he has one leg in France." Scarcely less witty was the soldier's description of the prowling Bedouins, who cut off stragglers and plunderers, as "The mounted highway police."

After brushing aside a charge of 800 Mamelukes at Chebreiss, the army made its way up the banks of the Nile to Embabeh, opposite Cairo. There the Mamelukes, led by the fighting Bey, Murad, had their fortified camp; and there that superb cavalry prepared to overwhelm the invaders in a whirlwind rush of horse (July 21st, 1798). The occasion and the surroundings were such as to inspire both sides with deperate resolution. It was the first fierce shock on land of eastern chivalry and western enterprise since the days of St. Louis; and the ardour of the republicans was scarcely less than that which had kindled the soldiers of the cross. Beside the two armies rolled the mysterious Nile; beyond glittered the slender minarets of Cairo; and on the south there loomed the massy Pyramids. To the forty centuries that had rolled over them, Bonaparte now appealed, in one of those imaginative touches which ever brace the French nature to the utmost tension of daring and endurance. Thus they advanced in close formation towards the intrenched camp of the Mamelukes. The divisions on the left at once rushed at its earthworks, silenced its feeble artillery, and slaughtered the fellahin inside. [pg.191]

But the other divisions, now ranged in squares, while gazing at this exploit, were assailed by the Mamelukes. From out the haze of the mirage, or from behind the ridges of sand and the scrub of the water-melon plants that dotted the plain, some 10,000 of these superb horsemen suddenly appeared and rushed at the squares commanded by Desaix and Reynier. Their richly caparisoned chargers, their waving plumes, their wild battle-cries, and their marvellous skill with carbine and sword, lent picturesqueness and terror to the charge. Musketry and grapeshot mowed down their front coursers in ghastly swathes; but the living mass swept on, wellnigh overwhelming the fronts of the squares, and then, swerving aside, poured through the deadly funnel between. Decimated here also by the steady fire of the French files, and by the discharges of the rear face, they fell away exhausted, leaving heaps of dead and dying on the fronts of the squares, and in their very midst a score of their choicest cavaliers, whose bravery and horsemanship had carried them to certain death amidst the bayonets. The French now assumed the offensive, and Desaix's division, threatening to cut off the retreat of Murad's horsemen, led that wary chief to draw off his shattered squadrons; others sought, though with terrible losses, to escape across the Nile to Ibrahim's following. That chief had taken no share in the fight, and now made off towards Syria. Such was the battle of the Pyramids, which gained a colony at the cost of some thirty killed and about ten times as many wounded: of the killed about twenty fell victims to the cross fire of the two squares.^[104]

After halting for a fortnight at Cairo to recruit his weary troops and to arrange the affairs of his conquest, Bonaparte marched eastwards in pursuit of Ibrahim and drove him into Syria, while Desaix waged an arduous but successful campaign against Murad in Upper Egypt. But the victors were soon to learn the uselessness of[pg.192] merely military triumphs in Egypt. As Bonaparte returned to complete the organization of the new colony, he heard that Nelson had destroyed his fleet.

On July 3rd, before setting out from Alexandria, the French commander gave an order to his admiral, though it must be added that its authenticity is doubtful:

"The admiral will to-morrow acquaint the commander-in-chief by a report whether the squadron can enter the port of Alexandria, or whether, in Aboukir Roads, bringing its broadside to bear, it can defend itself against the enemy's superior force; and in case both these plans should be impracticable, he must sail for Corfu ... leaving the light ships and the flotilla at Alexandria."

Brueys speedily discovered that the first plan was beset by grave dangers: the entrance to the harbour of Alexandria, when sounded, proved to be most difficult for large ships—such was his judgment and that of Villeneuve and Casabianca—and the exit could be blocked by a single English battleship. As regards the alternatives of Aboukir or Corfu, Brueys went on to state: "My firm desire is to be useful to you in every possible way: and, as I have already said, every post will suit me well, provided that you placed me there in an active way." By this rather ambiguous phrase it would seem that he scouted the alternative of Corfu as consigning him to a degrading inactivity; while at Aboukir he held that he could be actively useful in protecting the rear of the army. In that bay he therefore anchored his largest ships, trusting that the dangers of the approach would screen him from any sudden attack, but making also special preparations in case he should be compelled to fight at anchor.^[105] His decision was probably less sound than that of Bonaparte, who, while[pg.193] marching to Cairo, and again during his sojourn there, ordered him to make for Corfu or Toulon; for the general saw clearly that the French fleet, riding in safety in those well-protected roadsteads, would really dominate the Mediterranean better than in the open expanse of Aboukir. But these orders did not reach the admiral before the blow fell; and it is, after all, somewhat ungenerous to censure Brueys for his decision to remain at Aboukir and risk a fight rather than comply with the dictates of a prudent but inglorious strategy.

The British admiral, after sweeping the eastern Mediterranean, at last found the French fleet in Aboukir Bay, about ten miles from the Rosetta mouth of the Nile. It was anchored under the lee of a shoal which would have prevented any ordinary admiral from attacking, especially at sundown. But Nelson, knowing that the head ship of the French was free to swing at anchor, rightly concluded that there must be room for British ships to sail between Brueys' stationary line and the shallows. The British captains thrust five ships between the French and the shoal, while the others, passing down the enemy's line on the seaward side, crushed it in detail; and, after a night of carnage, the light of August 2nd dawned on a scene of destruction unsurpassed in naval warfare. Two French ships of the line and two frigates alone escaped: one, the gigantic "Orient," had blown up with the spoils of Malta on board: the rest, eleven in number, were captured or burnt.

To Bonaparte this disaster came as a bolt from the blue. Only two days before, he had written from Cairo to Brueys that all the conduct of the English made him believe them to be inferior in numbers and fully satisfied with blockading Malta. Yet, in order to restore the morale of his army, utterly depressed by this disaster,[pg.194] he affected a confidence which he could no longer feel, and said: "Well! here we must remain or achieve a grandeur like that of the ancients."^[106] He had recently assured his intimates that after routing the Beys' forces he would return to France and strike a blow direct at England. Whatever he may have designed, he was now a prisoner in his conquest. His men, even some of his highest officers, as Berthier, Bessières, Lannes, Murat, Dumas, and others, bitterly complained of their miserable position. But the commander, whose spirits rose with adversity, took effective means for repressing such discontent. To the last-named, a powerful mulatto, he exclaimed: "You have held seditious parleys: take care that I do not perform my duty: your six feet of stature shall not save you from being shot": and he offered passports for France to a few of the most discontented and useless officers, well knowing that after Nelson's victory they could scarcely be used. Others, again, out-Heroding Herod, suggested that the frigates and transports at Alexandria should be taken to pieces and conveyed on camels' backs to Suez, there to be used for the invasion of India.^[107]

The versatility of Bonaparte's genius was never more marked than at this time of discouragement. While his enemies figured him and his exhausted troops as vainly seeking to escape from those arid wastes; while Nelson was landing the French prisoners in order to increase his embarrassment about food, Bonaparte and his savants were developing constructive powers of the highest order, which made the army independent of Europe. It was a vast undertaking. Deprived of most of their treasure and many of their mechanical appliances by the loss of the fleet, the savants and engineers had, as it were, to start from the beginning. Some strove to meet the difficulties of food-supply by extending the cultivation of corn and rice, or by the construction of large ovens and bakeries, or of windmills for grinding[pg.195] corn. Others planted vineyards for the future, or sought to appease the ceaseless thirst of the soldiery by the manufacture of a kind of native beer. Foundries and workshops began, though slowly, to supply tools and machines; the earth was rifled of her treasures, natron was wrought, saltpetre works were established, and gunpowder was thereby procured for the army with an energy which recalled the prodigies of activity of 1793.

With his usual ardour in the cause of learning, Bonaparte several times a week appeared in the chemical laboratory, or witnessed the experiments performed by Berthollet and Monge. Desirous of giving cohesion to the efforts of his savants, and of honouring not only the useful arts but abstruse research, he united these pioneers of science in a society termed the Institute of Egypt. On August 23rd, 1798, it was installed with much ceremony in the palace of one of the Beys, Monge being president and Bonaparte vice-president. The general also enrolled himself in the mathematical section of the institute. Indeed, he sought by all possible means to aid the labours of the savants, whose dissertations were now heard in the large hall of the harem that formerly resounded only to the twanging of lutes, weary jests, and idle laughter. The labours of the savants were not confined to Cairo and the Delta. As soon as the victories of Desaix in Upper Egypt opened the middle reaches of the Nile to peaceful research, the treasures of Memphis were revealed to the astonished gaze of western learning. Many of the more portable relics were transferred to Cairo, and thence to Rosetta or Alexandria, in order to grace the museums of Paris. The savants proposed, but sea-power disposed, of these treasures. They are now, with few exceptions, in the British Museum.

Apart from archæology, much was done to extend the bounds of learning. Astronomy gained much by the observations of General Caffarelli. A series of measurements was begun for an exact survey of Egypt: the geologists and engineers examined the course of[pg.196] the Nile, recorded the progress of alluvial deposits at its mouth or on its banks, and therefrom calculated the antiquity of divers parts of the Delta. No part of the great conqueror's career so aptly illustrates the truth of his noble words to the magistrates of the Ligurian Republic: "The true conquests, the only conquests which cost no regrets, are those achieved over ignorance."

Such, in brief outline, is the story of the renascence in Egypt. The mother-land of science and learning, after a wellnigh barren interval of 1,100 years since the Arab conquest, was now developed and illumined by the application of the arts with which in the dim past she had enriched the life of barbarous Europe. The repayment of this incalculable debt was due primarily to the enterprise of Bonaparte. It is one of his many titles to fame and to the homage of posterity. How poor by the side of this encyclopaedic genius are the gifts even of his most brilliant foes! At that same time the Archduke Charles of Austria was vegetating in inglorious ease on his estates. As for Beaulieu and Würmser, they had subsided into their native obscurity. Nelson, after his recent triumph, persuading himself that "Bonaparte had gone to the devil," was bending before the whims of a professional beauty and the odious despotism of the worst Court in Europe. While the admiral tarnished his fame on the Syren coast of Naples, his great opponent bent all the resources of a fertile intellect to retrieve his position, and even under the gloom of disaster threw a gleam of light into the dark continent. While his adversaries were merely generals or admirals, hampered by a stupid education and a narrow nationality, Bonaparte had eagerly imbibed the new learning of his age and saw its possible influence on the reorganization of society. He is not merely a general. Even when he is scattering to the winds the proud chivalry of the East, and is prescribing to Brueys his safest course of action, he finds time vastly to expand the horizon of human knowledge. [pg.197]

Nor did he neglect Egyptian politics. He used a native council for consultation and for the promulgation of his own ideas. Immediately after his entry into Cairo he appointed nine sheikhs to form a divan, or council, consulting daily on public order and the food-supplies of the city. He next assembled a general divan for Egypt, and a smaller council for each province, and asked their advice concerning the administration of justice and the collection of taxes.^[108] In its use of oriental terminology, this scheme was undeniably clever; but neither French, Arabs, nor Turks were deceived as to the real government, which resided entirely in Bonaparte; and his skill in reapportioning the imposts had some effect on the prosperity of the land, enabling it to bear the drain of his constant requisitions. The welfare of the new colony was also promoted by the foundation of a mint and of an Egyptian Commercial Company.

His inventive genius was by no means exhausted by these varied toils. On his journey to Suez he met a camel caravan in the desert, and noticing the speed of the animals, he determined to form a camel corps; and in the first month of 1799 the experiment was made with such success that admission into the ranks of the camelry came to be viewed as a favour. Each animal carried two men with their arms and baggage: the uniform was sky-blue with a white turban; and the speed and precision of their movements enabled them to deal terrible blows, even at distant tribes of Bedouins, who bent before a genius that could outwit them even in their own deserts.

The pleasures of his officers and men were also met by the opening of the Tivoli Gardens; and there, in sight of the Pyramids, the life of the Palais Royal took root: the glasses clinked, the dice rattled, and heads reeled to the lascivious movements of the eastern dance; and Bonaparte himself indulged a passing passion for[pg.198] the wife of one of his officers, with an openness that brought on him a rebuke from his stepson, Eugène Beauharnais. But already he had been rendered desperate by reports of the unfaithfulness of Josephine at Paris; the news wrung from him this pathetic letter to his brother Joseph—the death-cry of his long drooping idealism:

"I have much to worry me privately, for the veil is entirely torn aside. You alone remain to me; your affection is very dear to me: nothing more remains to make me a misanthrope than to lose her and see you betray me.... Buy a country seat against my return, either near Paris or in Burgundy. I need solitude and isolation: grandeur wearies me: the fount of feeling is dried up: glory itself is insipid. At twenty-nine years of age I have exhausted everything. It only remains to me to become a thorough egoist."^[109]

Many rumours were circulated as to Bonaparte's public appearance in oriental costume and his presence at a religious service in a mosque. It is even stated by Thiers that at one of the chief festivals he repaired to the great mosque, repeated the prayers like a true Moslem, crossing his legs and swaying his body to and fro, so that he "edified the believers by his orthodox piety." But the whole incident, however attractive scenically and in point of humour, seems to be no better authenticated than the religious results about which the historian cherished so hopeful a belief. The truth seems to be that the general went to the celebration of the birth of the Prophet as an interested spectator, at the house of the sheik, El Bekri. Some hundred sheikhs were there present: they swayed their bodies to and fro while the story of Mahomet's life was recited; and Bonaparte afterwards partook of an oriental repast. But he never forgot his dignity so far as publicly to appear in a turban and loose trousers, which he donned only once for the amusement of his staff.^[110] That he[pg.199] endeavoured to pose as a Moslem is beyond doubt. Witness his endeavour to convince the imams at Cairo of his desire to conform to their faith. If we may believe that dubious compilation, "A Voice from St. Helena," he bade them consult together as to the possibility of admission of men, who were not circumcised and did not abstain from wine, into the true fold. As to the latter disability, he stated that the French were poor cold people, inhabitants of the north, who could not exist without wine. For a long time the imams demurred to this plea, which involved greater difficulties than the question of circumcision: but after long consultations they decided that both objections might be waived in consideration of a superabundance of good works. The reply was prompted by an irony no less subtle than that which accompanied the claim, and neither side was deceived in this contest of wits.

A rude awakening soon came. For some few days there had been rumours that the division under Desaix which was fighting the Mamelukes in Upper Egypt had been engulfed in those sandy wastes; and this report fanned to a flame the latent hostility against the unbelievers. From many minarets of Cairo a summons to arms took the place of the customary call to prayer: and on October 21st the French garrison was so fiercely and suddenly attacked as to leave the issue doubtful. Discipline and grapeshot finally prevailed, whereupon a repression of oriental ferocity cowed the spirits of the townsfolk and of the neighbouring country. Forts were constructed in Cairo and at all the strategic points along the lower Nile, and Egypt seemed to be conquered.

Feeling sure now of his hold on the populace, Bonaparte, at the close of the year, undertook a journey to Suez and the Sinaitic peninsula. It offered that combination of utility and romance which ever appealed to him. At Suez he sought to revivify commerce by lightening the customs' dues, by founding a branch of his Egyptian commercial company, and by graciously [pg.200] receiving a deputation of the Arabs of Tor who came to sue for his friendship.^[111] Then, journeying on, he visited the fountains of Moses; but it is not true that (as stated by Lanfrey) he proceeded to Mount Sinai and signed his name in the register of the monastery side by side with that of Mahomet. On his return to the isthmus he is said to have narrowly escaped from the rising tide of the Red Sea. If we may credit Savary, who was not of the party, its safety was due to the address of the commander, who, as darkness fell on the bewildered band, arranged his horsemen in files, until the higher causeway of the path was again discovered. North of Suez the traces of the canal dug by Sesostris revealed themselves to the trained eye of the commander. The observations of his engineers confirmed his conjecture, but the vast labour of reconstruction forbade any attempt to construct a maritime canal. On his return to Cairo he wrote to the Imam of Muscat, assuring him of his friendship and begging him to forward to Tippoo Sahib a letter offering alliance and deliverance from "the iron yoke of England," and stating that the French had arrived on the shores of the Red Sea "with a numerous and invincible army." The letter was intercepted by a British cruiser; and the alarm caused by these vast designs only served to spur on our forces to efforts which cost Tippoo his life and the French most of their Indian settlements. [pg.201]

CHAPTER IX

Meanwhile Turkey had declared war on France, and was sending an army through Syria for the recovery of Egypt, while another expedition was assembling at Rhodes. Like all great captains, Bonaparte was never content with the defensive: his convictions and his pugnacious instincts alike urged him to give rather than to receive the blow; and he argued that he could attack and destroy the Syrian force before the cessation of the winter's gales would allow the other Turkish expedition to attempt a disembarkation at Aboukir. If he waited in Egypt, he might have to meet the two attacks at once, whereas, if he struck at Jaffa and Acre, he would rid himself of the chief mass of his foes. Besides, as he explained in his letter of February 10th, 1799, to the Directors, his seizure of those towns would rob the English fleet of its base of supplies and thereby cripple its activities off the coast of Egypt. So far, his reasons for the Syrian campaign are intelligible and sound. But he also gave out that, leaving Desaix and his Ethiopian supernumeraries to defend Egypt, he himself would accomplish the conquest of Syria and the East: he would raise in revolt the Christians of the Lebanon and Armenia, overthrow the Turkish power in Asia, and then march either on Constantinople or Delhi.

It is difficult to take this quite seriously, considering that he had only 12,000 men available for these adventures; and with anyone but Bonaparte they might be dismissed as utterly Quixotic. But in his case we must seek for some practical purpose; for he never divorced [pg.202] fancy from fact, and in his best days imagination was the hand-maid of politics and strategy rather than the mistress. Probably these gorgeous visions were bodied forth so as to inspirit the soldiery and enthrall the imagination of France. He had already proved the immense power of imagination over that susceptible people. In one sense, his whole expedition was but a picturesque drama; and an imposing climax could now be found in the plan of an Eastern Empire, that opened up dazzling vistas of glory and veiled his figure in a grandiose mirage, beside which the civilian Directors were dwarfed into ridiculous puppets.

If these vast schemes are to be taken seriously, another explanation of them is possible, namely, that he relied on the example set by Alexander the Great, who with a small but highly-trained army had shattered the stately dominions of the East. If Bonaparte trusted to this precedent, he erred. True, Alexander began his enterprise with a comparatively small force: but at least he had a sure base of operations, and his army in Thessaly was strong enough to prevent Athens from exchanging her sullen but passive hostility for an offensive that would endanger his communications by sea. The Athenian fleet was therefore never the danger to the Macedonians that Nelson and Sir Sidney Smith were to Bonaparte. Since the French armada weighed anchor at Toulon, Britain's position had became vastly stronger. Nelson was lord of the Mediterranean: the revolt in Ireland had completely failed: a coalition against France was being formed; and it was therefore certain that the force in Egypt could not be materially strengthened. Bonaparte did not as yet know the full extent of his country's danger; but the mere fact that he would have to bear the pressure of England's naval supremacy along the Syrian coast should have dispelled any notion that he could rival the exploits of Alexander and become Emperor of the East.^[112] [pg.203]

From conjectures about motives we turn to facts. Setting forth early in February, the French captured most of the Turkish advanced guard at the fort of El Arisch, but sent their captives away on condition of not bearing arms against France for at least one year. The victors then marched on Jaffa, and, in spite of a spirited defence, took it by storm (March 7th). Flushed with their triumph over a cruel and detested foe, the soldiers were giving up the city to pillage and massacre, when two aides-de-camp promised quarter to a large body of the defenders, who had sought refuge in a large caravanserai; and their lives were grudgingly spared by the victors. Bonaparte vehemently reproached his aides-de-camp for their ill-timed clemency. What could he now do with these 2,500 or 3,000 prisoners? They could not be trusted to serve with the French; besides, the provisions scarcely sufficed for Bonaparte's own men, who began to complain loudly at sharing any with Turks and Albanians. They could not be sent away to Egypt, there to spread discontent: and only 300 Egyptians were so sent away.^[113] Finally, on the demand of his generals and troops, the remaining prisoners were shot down on the seashore. There is, however, no warrant for the malicious assertion that Bonaparte readily gave the fatal order. On the contrary, he delayed it for[pg.204] three days, until the growing difficulties and the loud complaints of his soldiers wrung it from him as a last resort.

Moreover, several of the victims had already fought against him at El Arisch, and had violated their promise that they would fight no more against the French in that campaign. M. Lanfrey's assertion that there is no evidence for the identification is untenable, in view of a document which I have discovered in the Records of the British Admiralty. Inclosed with Sir Sidney Smith's despatches is one from the secretary of Gezzar, dated Acre, March 1st, 1799, in which the Pacha urgently entreats the British commodore to come to his help, because his (Gezzar's) troops had failed to hold El Arisch, and the same troops had also abandoned Gaza and were in great dread of the French at Jaffa. Considered from the military point of view, the massacre at Jaffa is perhaps defensible; and Bonaparte's reluctant assent contrasts favourably with the conduct of many commanders in similar cases. Perhaps an episode like that at Jaffa is not without its uses in opening the eyes of mankind to the ghastly shifts by which military glory may have to be won. The alternative to the massacre was the detaching of a French battalion to conduct their prisoners to Egypt. As that would seriously have weakened the little army, the prisoners were shot.

A deadlier foe was now to be faced. Already at El Arisch a few cases of the plague had appeared in Kléber's division, which had come from Rosetta and Damietta; and the relics of the retreating Mameluke and Turkish forces seem also to have bequeathed that disease as a fatal legacy to their pursuers. After Jaffa the malady attacked most battalions of the army; and it may have quickened Bonaparte's march towards Acre. Certain it is that he rejected Kléber's advice to advance inland towards Nablus, the ancient Shechem, and from that commanding centre to dominate Palestine and defy the power of Gezzar. ^[114]

Always prompt to strike at the [pg.205] heart, the commander-in-chief determined to march straight on Acre, where that notorious Turkish pacha sat intrenched behind weak walls and the ramparts of terror which his calculating ferocity had reared around him. Ever since the age of the Crusades that seaport [pg.206] had been the chief place of arms of Palestine; but the harbour was now nearly silted up, and even the neighbouring roadstead of Hayfa was desolate. The fortress was formidable only to orientals. In his work, "Les Ruines," Volney had remarked about Acre: "Through all this part of Asia bastions, lines of defence, covered ways, ramparts, and in short everything relating to modern fortification are utterly unknown; and a single thirty-gun frigate would easily bombard and lay in ruins the whole coast." This judgment of his former friend undoubtedly lulled Bonaparte into illusory confidence, and the rank and file after their success at Jaffa expected an easy triumph at Acre.

This would doubtless have happened but for British help. Captain Miller, of H.M.S. "Theseus," thus reported on the condition of Acre before Sir Sidney Smith's arrival:

"I found almost every embrasure empty except those towards the sea. Many years' collection of the dirt of the town thrown in such a situation as completely covered the approach to the gate from the only guns that could flank it and from the sea ... none of their batteries have casemates, traverses, or splinter-proofs: they have many guns, but generally small and defective—the carriages in general so." ^[115]

Captain Miller's energy made good some of these defects; but the place was still lamentably weak when, on March 15th, Sir Sidney Smith arrived. The English squadron in the east of the Mediterranean had, to Nelson's chagrin, been confided to the command of this ardent young officer, who now had the good fortune to capture off the promontory of Mount Carmel seven French vessels containing Bonaparte's siege-train. This event had a decisive influence on the fortunes of the siege and of the whole campaign. The French cannon were now hastily mounted on the very walls that they had been intended to breach; while the gun vessels reinforced the two English frigates, and were[pg.207] ready to pour a searching fire on the assailants in their trenches or as they rushed against the walls. These had also been hastily strengthened under the direction of a French royalist officer named Phélippeaux, an old schoolfellow of Bonaparte, and later on a comrade of Sidney Smith, alike in his imprisonment and in his escape from the clutches of the revolutionists. Sharing the lot of the adventurous young seaman, Phélippeaux sailed to the Levant, and now brought to the defence of Acre the science of a skilled engineer. Bravely seconded by British officers and seamen, he sought to repair the breach effected by the French field-pieces, and constructed at the most exposed points inner defences, before which the most obstinate efforts of the storming parties melted away. Nine times did the assailants advance against the breaches with the confidence born of unfailing success and redoubled by the gaze of their great commander; but as often were they beaten back by the obstinate bravery of the British seamen and Turks.

The monotony was once relieved by a quaint incident. In the course of a correspondence with Bonaparte, Sir Sidney Smith is said to have shown his annoyance by sending him a challenge to a duel. It met with the very proper reply that he would fight, if the English would send out a Marlborough.

During these desperate conflicts Bonaparte detached a considerable number of troops inland to beat off a large Turkish and Mameluke force destined for the relief of Acre and the invasion of Egypt. The first encounter was near Nazareth, where Junot displayed the dash and resource which had brought him fame in Italy; but the decisive battle was fought in the Plain of Esdraëlon, not far from the base of Mount Tabor. There Kléber's division of 2,000 men was for some hours hard pressed by a motley array of horse and foot drawn from diverse parts of the Sultan's dominions. The heroism of the burly Alsacian and the toughness of his men barely kept off the fierce rushes of the Moslem [pg.208] horse and foot. At last Bonaparte's cannon were heard. The chief, marching swiftly on with his troops drawn up in three squares, speedily brushed aside the enveloping clouds of orientals; finally, by well-combined efforts the French hurled back the enemy on passes, some of which had been seized by the commander's prescience. At the close of this memorable day (April 15th) an army of nearly 30,000 men was completely routed and dispersed by the valour and skilful dispositions of two divisions which together amounted to less than a seventh of that number. No battle of modern times more closely resembles the exploits of Alexander than this masterly concentration of force; and possibly some memory of this may have prompted the words of Kléber—"General, how great you are!"—as he met and embraced his commander on the field of battle. Bonaparte and his staff spent the night at the Convent of Nazareth; and when his officers burst out laughing at the story told by the Prior of the breaking of a pillar by the angel Gabriel at the time of the Annunciation, their untimely levity was promptly checked by the frown of the commander.

The triumph seemed to decide the Christians of the Lebanon to ally themselves with Bonaparte, and they secretly covenanted to furnish 12,000 troops at his cost; but this question ultimately depended on the siege of Acre. On rejoining their comrades before Acre, the victors found that the siege had made little progress: for a time the besiegers relied on mining operations, but with little success; though Phélippeaux succumbed to a sunstroke (May 1st), his place was filled by Colonel Douglas, who foiled the efforts of the French engineers and enabled the place to hold out till the advent of the long-expected Turkish succours. On May 7th their sails were visible far out on an almost windless sea. At once Bonaparte made desperate efforts to carry the "mud-hole" by storm. Led with reckless gallantry by the heroic Lannes, his troops gained part of the wall and planted the tricolour on the north-east tower; but all further progress was checked by English blue-jackets, [pg.209] whom the commodore poured into the town; and the Turkish reinforcements, wafted landwards by a favouring breeze, were landed in time to wrest the ramparts from the assailants' grip. On the following day an assault was again attempted: from the English ships Bonaparte could be clearly seen on Richard Coeur de Lion's mound urging on the French; but though, under Lannes' leadership, they penetrated to the garden of Gezzar's seraglio, they fell in heaps under the bullets, pikes, and scimitars of the defenders, and few returned alive to the camp. Lannes himself was dangerously wounded, and saved only by the devotion of an officer.

Both sides were now worn out by this extraordinary siege. "This town is not, nor ever has been, defensible according to the rules of art; but according to every other rule it must and shall be defended"—so wrote Sir Sidney Smith to Nelson on May 9th. But a fell influence was working against the besiegers; as the season advanced, they succumbed more and more to the ravages of the plague; and, after failing again on May 10th, many of their battalions refused to advance to the breach over the putrid remains of their comrades. Finally, Bonaparte, after clinging to his enterprise with desperate tenacity, on the night of May 20th gave orders to retreat.

This siege of nine weeks' duration had cost him severe losses, among them being Generals Caffarelli and Bon: but worst of all was the loss of that reputation for invincibility which he had hitherto enjoyed. His defeat at Caldiero, near Verona, in 1796 had been officially converted into a victory: but Acre could not be termed anything but a reverse. In vain did the commander and his staff proclaim that, after dispersing the Turks at Mount Tabor, the capture of Acre was superfluous; his desperate efforts in the early part of May revealed the hollowness of his words. There were, it is true, solid reasons for his retreat. He had just heard of the breaking out of the war of the Second Coalition against France; and revolts in Egypt also demanded his [pg.210] presence.^[116] But these last events furnished a damning commentary on his whole Syrian enterprise, which had led to a dangerous diffusion of the French forces. And for what? For the conquest of Constantinople or of India? That dream seems to have haunted Bonaparte's brain even down to the close of the siege of Acre. During the siege, and later, he was heard to inveigh against "the miserable little hole" which had come between him and his destiny—the Empire of the East; and it is possible that ideas which he may at first have set forth in order to dazzle his comrades came finally to master his whole being. Certainly the words just quoted betoken a quite abnormal wilfulness as well as a peculiarly subjective notion of fatalism. His "destiny" was to be mapped out by his own prescience, decided by his own will, gripped by his own powers. Such fatalism had nothing in common with the sombre creed of the East: it was merely an excess of individualism: it was the matured expression of that feature of his character, curiously dominant even in childhood, that what he wanted he must of necessity have. How strange that this imperious obstinacy, this sublimation of western willpower, should not have been tamed even by the overmastering might of Nature in the Orient!

As for the Empire of the East, the declared hostility of the tribes around Nablus had shown how futile were Bonaparte's efforts to win over Moslems: and his earlier Moslem proclamations were skilfully distributed by Sir Sidney Smith among the Christians of Syria, and served partly to neutralize the efforts which Bonaparte made to win them over.^[117] Vain indeed was the effort to conciliate the Moslems in Egypt, and yet in Syria to arouse the Christians against the Commander of the Faithful. Such religious opportunism smacked of the Parisian boulevards: it utterly ignored the tenacity of belief of the East, where the creed is the very life. The outcome of all that finesse was seen in the closing days of the[pg.211] siege and during the retreat towards Jaffa, when the tribes of the Lebanon and of the Nablûs district watched like vultures on the hills and swooped down on the retreating columns. The pain of disillusionment, added to his sympathy with the sick and wounded, once broke down Bonaparte's nerves. Having ordered all horsemen to dismount so that there might be sufficient transport for the sick and maimed, the commander was asked by an equerry which horse he reserved for his own use. "Did you not hear the order," he retorted, striking the man with his whip, "everyone on foot." Rarely did this great man mar a noble action by harsh treatment: the incident sufficiently reveals the tension of feelings, always keen, and now overwrought by physical suffering and mental disappointment.

There was indeed much to exasperate him. At Acre he had lost nearly 5,000 men in killed, wounded, and plague-stricken, though he falsely reported to the Directory that his losses during the whole expedition did not exceed 1,500 men: and during the terrible retreat to Jaffa he was shocked, not only by occasional suicides of soldiers in his presence, but by the utter callousness of officers and men to the claims of the sick and wounded. It was as a rebuke to this inhumanity that he ordered all to march on foot, and his authority seems even to have been exerted to prevent some attempts at poisoning the plague-stricken. The narrative of J. Miot, commissary of the army, shows that these suggestions originated among the soldiery at Acre when threatened with the toil of transporting those unfortunates back to Egypt; and, as his testimony is generally adverse to Bonaparte, and he mentions the same horrible device, when speaking of the hospitals at Jaffa, as a camp rumour, it may be regarded as scarcely worthy of credence.^[118]

[pg.212] Undoubtedly the scenes were heartrending at Jaffa; and it has been generally believed that the victims of the plague were then and there put out of their miseries by large doses of opium. Certainly the hospitals were crowded with wounded and victims of the plague; but during the seven days' halt at that town adequate measures were taken by the chief medical officers, Desgenettes and Larrey, for their transport to Egypt. More than a thousand were sent away on ships, seven of which were fortunately present; and 800 were conveyed to Egypt in carts or litters across the desert.^[119] Another fact suffices to refute the slander mentioned above. From the despatch of Sir Sidney Smith to Nelson of May 30th, 1799, it appears that, when the English commodore touched at Jaffa, he found some of the abandoned ones still alive: "We have found seven poor fellows in the hospital and will take care of them." He also supplied the French ships conveying the wounded with water, provisions, and stores, of which they were much in need, and allowed them to proceed to their destination. It is true that the evidence of Las Cases at St. Helena, eagerly cited by Lanfrey, seems to show that some of the worst cases in the Jaffa hospitals were got rid of by opium; but the admission by Napoleon that the administering of opium was justifiable occurred in one of those casuistical discussions which turn, not on facts, but on motives. Conclusions drawn from such conversations, sixteen years or more after the supposed occurrence, must in any case give ground before the evidence of contemporaries, which proves that every care was taken of the sick and wounded, that the proposals of poisoning first came from the soldiery, that Napoleon both before and after Jaffa set the noble example of marching on foot so that there might be sufficiency of transport, that nearly all the unfortunates arrived in Egypt and in fair condition,[pg.213] and that seven survivors were found alive at Jaffa by English officers.^[120]

The remaining episodes of the Eastern Expedition may be briefly dismissed. After a painful desert march the army returned to Egypt in June; and, on July 25th, under the lead of Murat and Lannes, drove into the sea a large force of Turks which had effected a landing in Aboukir Bay. Bonaparte was now weary of gaining triumphs over foes whom he and his soldiers despised. While in this state of mind, he received from Sir Sidney Smith a packet of English and German newspapers giving news up to June 6th, which brought him quickly to a decision. The formation of a powerful coalition, the loss of Italy, defeats on the Rhine, and the schisms, disgust, and despair prevalent in France—all drew his imagination westwards away from the illusory Orient; and he determined to leave his army to the care of Kléber and sail to France.

The morality of this step has been keenly discussed. The rank and file of the army seem to have regarded it as little less than desertion,^[121] and the predominance of personal motives in this important decision can scarcely be denied. His private aim in undertaking the Eastern Expedition, that of dazzling the imagination of the French people and of exhibiting the incapacity of the Directory, had been abundantly realized. His eastern enterprise had now shrunk to practical and prosaic dimensions, namely, the consolidation of French power in Egypt. Yet, as will appear in later chapters, he did not give up his oriental schemes; though at St. Helena he once oddly spoke of the Egyptian expedition as an "exhausted enterprise," it is clear that he worked hard[pg.214] to keep his colony. The career of Alexander had for him a charm that even the conquests of Cæsar could not rival; and at the height of his European triumphs, the hero of Austerlitz was heard to murmur: "J'ai manqué à ma fortune à Saint-Jean d'Acre."^[122]

In defence of his sudden return it may be urged that he had more than once promised the Directory that his stay in Egypt would not exceed five months; and there can be no doubt that now, as always, he had an alternative plan before him in case of failure or incomplete success in the East. To this alternative he now turned with that swiftness and fertility of resource which astonished both friends and foes in countless battles and at many political crises.

It has been stated by Lanfrey that his appointment of Kléber to succeed him was dictated by political and personal hostility; but it may more naturally be considered a tribute to his abilities as a general and to his influence over the soldiery, which was only second to that of Bonaparte and Desaix. He also promised to send him speedy succour; and as there seemed to be a probability of France regaining her naval supremacy in the Mediterranean by the union of the fleet of Bruix with that of Spain, he might well hope to send ample reinforcements. He probably did not know the actual facts of the case, that in July Bruix tamely followed the Spanish squadron to Cadiz, and that the Directory had ordered Bruix to withdraw the French army from Egypt. But, arguing from the facts as known to him, Bonaparte might well believe that the difficulties of France would be fully met by his own return, and that Egypt could be held with ease. The duty of a great commander is to be at the post of greatest danger, and that was now on the banks of the Rhine or Mincio.

The advent of a south-east wind, a rare event there at that season of the year, led him hastily to embark at Alexandria in the night of August 22nd-23rd. His two frigates bore with him some of the greatest sons of France; his chief of the staff, Berthier, whose ardent love for Madame Visconti had been repressed by his[pg.215] reluctant determination to share the fortunes of his chief; Lannes and Murat, both recently wounded, but covered with glory by their exploits in Syria and at Aboukir; his friend Marmont, as well as Duroc, Andréossi, Bessières, Lavalette, Admiral Gantheaume, Monge, and Berthollet, his secretary Bourrienne, and the traveller Denon. He also left orders that Desaix, who had been in charge of Upper Egypt, should soon return to France, so that the rivalry between him and Kléber might not distract French councils in Egypt. There seems little ground for the assertion that he selected for return his favourites and men likely to be politically serviceable to him. If he left behind the ardently republican Kléber, he also left his old friend Junot: if he brought back Berthier and Marmont, he also ordered the return of the almost Jacobinical Desaix. Sir Sidney Smith having gone to Cyprus for repairs, Bonaparte slipped out unmolested. By great good fortune his frigates eluded the English ships cruising between Malta and Cape Bon, and after a brief stay at Ajaccio, he and his comrades landed at Fréjus (October 9th). So great was the enthusiasm of the people that, despite all the quarantine regulations, they escorted the party to shore. "We prefer the plague to the Austrians," they exclaimed; and this feeling but feebly expressed the emotion of France at the return of the Conqueror of the East.

And yet he found no domestic happiness. Josephine's liaison with a young officer, M. Charles, had become notorious owing to his prolonged visits to her country house, La Malmaison. Alarmed at her husband's return, she now hurried to meet him, but missed him on the way; while he, finding his home at Paris empty, raged at her infidelity, refused to see her on her return, and declared he would divorce her. From this he was turned by the prayers of Eugène and Hortense Beauharnais, and the tears of Josephine herself. A reconciliation took place; but there was no reunion of hearts, and Mme. Reinhard echoed the feeling of respectable society when she wrote that he should have divorced her outright. Thenceforth he lived for Glory alone.[pg.216]

CHAPTER X

Rarely has France been in a more distracted state than in the summer of 1799. Royalist revolts in the west and south rent the national life. The religious schism was unhealed; education was at a standstill; commerce had been swept from the seas by the British fleets; and trade with Italy and Germany was cut off by the war of the Second Coalition.

The formation of this league between Russia, Austria, England, Naples, Portugal, and Turkey was in the main the outcome of the alarm and indignation aroused by the reckless conduct of the Directory, which overthrew the Bourbons at Naples, erected the Parthenopæan Republic, and compelled the King of Sardinia to abdicate at Turin and retire to his island. Russia and Austria took a leading part in forming the Coalition. Great Britain, ever hampered by her inept army organization, offered to supply money in place of the troops which she could not properly equip.

But under the cloak of legitimacy the monarchical Powers harboured their own selfish designs. This Nessus' cloak of the First Coalition soon galled the limbs of the allies and rendered them incapable of sustained and vigorous action. Yet they gained signal successes over the raw conscripts of France. In July, 1799, the Austro-Russian army captured Mantua and Alessandria; and in the following month Suvoroff gained the decisive victory of Novi and drove the remains of the French forces towards Genoa. The next months were far more favourable to the tricolour flag, for, owing to [pg.217] Austro-Russian jealousies, Masséna was able to gain an important victory at Zurich over a Russian army. In the north the republicans were also in the end successful. Ten days after Bonaparte's arrival at Fréjus, they compelled an Anglo-Russian force campaigning in Holland to the capitulation of Alkmaar, whereby the Duke of York agreed to withdraw all his troops from that coast. Disgusted by the conduct of his allies, the Czar Paul withdrew his troops from any active share in the operations by land, thenceforth concentrating his efforts on the acquisition of Corsica, Malta, and posts of vantage in the Adriatic. These designs, which were well known to the British Government, served to hamper our naval strength in those seas, and to fetter the action of the Austrian arms in Northern Italy.^[123]

Yet, though the schisms of the allies finally yielded a victory to the French in the campaigns of 1799, the position of the Republic was precarious. The danger was rather internal than external. It arose from embarrassed finances, from the civil war that burst out with new violence in the north-west, and, above all, from a sense of the supreme difficulty of attaining political stability and of reconciling liberty with order. The struggle between the executive and legislative powers which had been rudely settled by the coup d'état of Fructidor, had been postponed, not solved. Public opinion was speedily ruffled by the Jacobinical violence which ensued. The stifling of liberty of the press and the curtailment of the right of public meeting served only to instill new energy into the party of resistance in the elective Councils, and to undermine a republican government that relied on Venetian methods of rule. Reviewing the events of those days, Madame de Staël finely remarked that only the free consent of the people could breathe life into political institutions; and that the monstrous system of guaranteeing freedom by despotic means served only to manufacture governments[pg.218] that had to be wound up at intervals lest they should stop dead.^[124] Such a sarcasm, coming from the gifted lady who had aided and abetted the stroke of Fructidor, shows how far that event had falsified the hopes of the sincerest friends of the Revolution. Events were therefore now favourable to a return from the methods of Rousseau to those of Richelieu; and the genius who was skilfully to adapt republicanism to autocracy was now at hand. Though Bonaparte desired at once to attack the Austrians in Northern Italy, yet a sure instinct impelled him to remain at Paris, for, as he said to Marmont: "When the house is crumbling, is it the time to busy oneself with the garden? A change here is indispensable."

The sudden rise of Bonaparte to supreme power cannot be understood without some reference to the state of French politics in the months preceding his return to France. The position of parties had been strangely complicated by the unpopularity of the Directors. Despite their illegal devices, the elections of 1798 and 1799 for the renewal of a third part of the legislative Councils had signally strengthened the anti-directorial ranks. Among the Opposition were some royalists, a large number of constitutionals, whether of the Feuillant or Girondin type, and many deputies, who either vaunted the name of Jacobins or veiled their advanced opinions under the convenient appellation of "patriots." Many of the deputies were young, impressionable, and likely to follow any able leader who promised to heal the schisms of the country. In fact, the old party lines were being effaced. The champions of the constitution of 1795 (Year III.) saw no better means of defending it than by violating electoral liberties—always in the sacred name of Liberty; and the Directory, while professing to hold the balance between the extreme parties, repressed them by turns with a vigour which rendered them popular and official moderation odious.[pg.219]

In this general confusion and apathy the dearth of statesmen was painfully conspicuous. Only true grandeur of character can defy the withering influences of an age of disillusionment; and France had for a time to rely upon Sieyès. Perhaps no man has built up a reputation for political capacity on performances so slight as the Abbé Sieyès. In the States General of 1789 he speedily acquired renown for oracular wisdom, owing to the brevity and wit of his remarks in an assembly where such virtues were rare. But the course of the Revolution soon showed the barrenness of his mind and the timidity of his character. He therefore failed to exert any lasting influence upon events. In the time of the Terror his insignificance was his refuge. His witty reply to an inquiry how he had then fared—"J'ai vécu "—sufficiently characterizes the man. In the Directorial period he displayed more activity. He was sent as French ambassador to Berlin, and plumed himself on having persuaded that Court to a neutrality favourable to France. But it is clear that the neutrality of Prussia was the outcome of selfish considerations. While Austria tried the hazards of war, her northern rival husbanded her resources, strengthened her position as the protectress of Northern Germany, and dextrously sought to attract the nebula of middle German States into her own sphere of influence. From his task of tilting a balance which was already decided, Sieyès was recalled to Paris in May, 1799, by the news of his election to the place in the Directory vacated by Rewbell. The other Directors had striven, but in vain, to prevent his election: they knew well that this impracticable theorist would speedily paralyze the Government; for, when previously elected Director in 1795, he had refused to serve, on the ground that the constitution was thoroughly bad. He now declared his hostility to the Directory, and looked around for some complaisant military chief who should act as his tool and then be cast away. His first choice, Joubert, was killed at the battle of Novi. Moreau seems then to have been looked [pg.220] on with favour; he was a republican, able in warfare and singularly devoid of skill or ambition in political matters. Relying on Moreau, Sieyès continued his intrigues, and after some preliminary fencing gained over to his side the Director Barras. But if we may believe the assertions of the royalist, Hyde de Neuville, Barras was also receiving the advances of the royalists with a view to a restoration of Louis XVIII., an event which was then quite within the bounds of probability. For the present, however, Barras favoured the plans of Sieyès, and helped him to get rid of the firmly republican Directors, La Réveillière-Lépeaux and Merlin, who were deposed (30th Prairial).^[125]

The new Directors were Gohier, Roger Ducos, and Moulin; the first, an elderly respectable advocate; the second, a Girondin by early associations, but a trimmer by instinct, and therefore easily gained over by Sieyès; while the recommendation of the third, Moulin, seem to have been his political nullity and some third-rate military services in the Vendéan war. Yet the Directory of Prairial was not devoid of a spasmodic energy, which served to throw back the invaders of France. Bernadotte, the fiery Gascon, remarkable for his ardent gaze, his encircling masses of coal-black hair, and the dash of Moorish blood which ever aroused Bonaparte's respectful apprehensions, was Minister of War, and speedily formed a new army of 100,000 men: Lindet undertook to re-establish the finances by means of progressive taxes: the Chouan movement in the northern and western departments was repressed by a law legalising the seizure of hostages; and there seemed some hope that France would roll back the tide of invasion, keep her "natural frontiers," and return to normal methods of government.

Such was the position of affairs when Bonaparte's arrival inspired France with joy and the Directory with ill-concealed dread. As in 1795, so now in 1799, he appeared at Paris when French political life was in a[pg.221] stage of transition. If ever the Napoleonic star shone auspiciously, it was in the months when he threaded his path between Nelson's cruisers and cut athwart the maze of Sieyès' intrigues. To the philosopher's "J'ai vécu" he could oppose the crushing retort "J'ai vaincu."

The general, on meeting the thinker at Gohier's house, studiously ignored him. In truth, he was at first disposed to oust both Sieyès and Barras from the Directory. The latter of these men was odious to him for reasons both private and public. In time past he had had good reasons for suspecting Josephine's relations with the voluptuous Director, and with the men whom she met at his house. During the Egyptian campaign his jealousy had been fiercely roused in another quarter, and, as we have seen, led to an almost open breach with his wife. But against Barras he still harboured strong suspicions; and the frequency of his visits to the Director's house after returning from Egypt was doubtless due to his desire to sound the depths of his private as well as of his public immorality. If we may credit the embarras de mensonges which has been dignified by the name of Barras' "Memoirs," Josephine once fled to his house and flung herself at his knees, begging to be taken away from her husband; but the story is exploded by the moral which the relator clumsily tacks on, as to the good advice which he gave her.^[126] While Bonaparte seems to have found no grounds for suspecting Barras on this score, he yet discovered his intrigues with various malcontents; and he saw that Barras, holding the balance of power in the Directory between the opposing pairs of colleagues, was intriguing to get the highest possible price for the betrayal of the Directory and of the constitution of 1795.

For Sieyès the general felt dislike but respect. He soon saw the advantage of an alliance with so learned a thinker, so skilful an intriguer, and so weak a man. It was, indeed, necessary; for, after making vain overtures to Gohier for the alteration of the law which excluded from the Directory men of less than forty years of age,[pg.222] the general needed the alliance of Sieyès for the overthrow of the constitution. In a short space he gathered around him the malcontents whom the frequent crises had deprived of office, Roederer, Admiral Bruix, Réal, Cambacérès, and, above all, Talleyrand. The last-named; already known for his skill in diplomacy, had special reasons for favouring the alliance of Bonaparte and Sieyès: he had been dismissed from the Foreign Office in the previous month of July because in his hands it had proved to be too lucrative to the holder and too expensive for France. It was an open secret that, when American commissioners arrived in Paris a short time previously, for the settlement of various disputes between the two countries, they found that the negotiations would not progress until 250,000 dollars had changed hands. The result was that hostilities continued, and that Talleyrand soon found himself deprived of office, until another turn of the revolutionary kaleidoscope should restore him to his coveted place.^[127] He discerned in the Bonaparte-Sieyès combination the force that would give the requisite tilt now that Moreau gave up politics.

The army and most of the generals were also ready for some change, only Bernadotte and Jourdan refusing to listen to the new proposals; and the former of these came "with sufficiently bad grace" to join Bonaparte at the time of action. The police was secured through that dextrous trimmer, the regicide Fouché, who now turned against the very men who had recently appointed him to office. Feeling sure of the soldiery and police, the innovators fixed the 18th of Brumaire as the date of their enterprise. There were many conferences at the houses of the conspirators; and one of the few vivid touches which relieve the dull tones of the Talleyrand "Memoirs" reveals the consciousness of these men that they were conspirators. Late on a night in the middle of Brumaire, Bonaparte came to Talleyrand's house to arrange details of the coup d'état, when the noise of[pg.223] carriages stopping outside caused them to pale with fear that their plans were discovered. At once the diplomatist blew out the lights and hurried to the balcony, when he found that their fright was due merely to an accident to the carriages of the revellers and gamesters returning from the Palais Royal, which were guarded by gendarmes. The incident closed with laughter and jests; but it illustrates the tension of the nerves of the political gamesters, as also the mental weakness of Bonaparte when confronted by some unknown danger. It was perhaps the only weak point in his intellectual armour; but it was to be found out at certain crises of his career.

Meanwhile in the legislative Councils there was a feeling of vague disquiet. The Ancients were, on the whole, hostile to the Directory, but in the Council of Five Hundred the democratic ardour of the younger deputies foreboded a fierce opposition. Yet there also the plotters found many adherents, who followed the lead now cautiously given by Lucien Bonaparte. This young man, whose impassioned speeches had marked him out as an irreproachable patriot, was now President of that Council. No event could have been more auspicious for the conspirators. With Sieyès, Barras, and Ducos, as traitors in the Directory, with the Ancients favourable, and the junior deputies under the presidency of Lucien, the plot seemed sure of success.

The first important step was taken by the Council of Ancients, who decreed the transference of the sessions of the Councils to St. Cloud. The danger of a Jacobin plot was urged as a plea for this motion, which was declared carried without the knowledge either of the Directory as a whole, or of the Five Hundred, whose opposition would have been vehement. The Ancients then appointed Bonaparte to command the armed forces in and near Paris. The next step was to insure the abdication of Gohier and Moulin. Seeking to entrap Gohier, then the President of the Directory, Josephine invited him to breakfast on the morning of 18th Brumaire; but Gohier, suspecting a snare, remained at his official [pg.224] residence, the Luxemburg Palace. None the less the Directory was doomed; for the two defenders of the institution had not the necessary quorum for giving effect to their decrees. Moulin thereupon escaped, and Gohier was kept under guard—by Moreau's soldiery!^[128]

Meanwhile, accompanied by a brilliant group of generals, Bonaparte proceeded to the Tuileries, where the Ancients were sitting; and by indulging in a wordy declamation he avoided taking the oath to the constitution required of a general on entering upon a new command. In the Council of Five Hundred, Lucien Bonaparte stopped the eager questions and murmurs, on the pretext that the session was only legal at St. Cloud.

There, on the next day (19th Brumaire or 10th November), a far more serious blow was to be struck. The overthrow of the Directory was a foregone conclusion. But with the Legislature it was far otherwise, for its life was still whole and vigorous. Yet, while amputating a moribund limb, the plotters did not scruple to paralyze the brain of the body politic.

Despite the adhesion of most of the Ancients to his plans, Bonaparte, on appearing before them, could only utter a succession of short, jerky phrases which smacked of the barracks rather than of the Senate. Retiring in some confusion, he regains his presence of mind among the soldiers outside, and enters the hall of the Five Hundred, intending to intimidate them not only by threats, but by armed force. At the sight of the uniforms at the door, the republican enthusiasm of the younger deputies catches fire. They fiercely assail him with cries of "Down with the tyrant! down with the Dictator! outlaw him!" In vain Lucien Bonaparte commands order. Several deputies rush at the general, and fiercely shake him by the collar. He turns faint with excitement and chagrin; but Lefebvre and a few grenadiers rushing up drag him from the hall. He comes forth like a somnambulist (says an onlooker), pursued by[pg.225] the terrible cry, "Hors la loi!" Had the cries at once taken form in a decree, the history of the world might have been different. One of the deputies, General Augereau, fiercely demands that the motion of outlawry be put to the vote. Lucien Bonaparte refuses, protests, weeps, finally throws off his official robes, and is rescued from the enraged deputies by grenadiers whom the conspirators send in for this purpose. Meanwhile Bonaparte and his friends were hastily deliberating, when one of their number brought the news that the deputies had declared the general an outlaw. The news chased the blood from his cheek, until Sieyès, whose sang froid did not desert him in these civilian broils, exclaims, "Since they outlaw you, they are outlaws." This revolutionary logic recalls Bonaparte to himself. He shouts, "To arms!" Lucien, too, mounting a horse, appeals to the soldiers to free the Council from the menaces of some deputies armed with daggers, and in the pay of England, who are terrorising the majority. The shouts of command, clinched by the adroit reference to daggers and English gold, cause the troops to waver in their duty; and Lucien, pressing his advantage to the utmost, draws a sword, and, holding it towards his brother, exclaims that he will stab him if ever he attempts anything against liberty. Murat, Leclerc, and other generals enforce this melodramatic appeal by shouts for Bonaparte, which the troops excitedly take up. The drums sound for an advance, and the troops forthwith enter the hall. In vain the deputies raise the shout, "Vive la République," and invoke the constitution. Appeals to the law are overpowered by the drum and by shouts for Bonaparte; and the legislators of France fly pell-mell from the hall through doors and windows.^[129]

Thus was fulfilled the prophecy which eight years[pg.226] previously Burke had made in his immortal work on the French Revolution. That great thinker had predicted that French liberty would fall a victim to the first great general who drew the eyes of all men upon himself. "The moment in which that event shall happen, the person who really commands the army is your master, the master of your king, the master of your Assembly, the master of your whole republic."

Discussions about the coup d'état of Brumaire generally confuse the issue at stake by ignoring the difference between the overthrow of the Directory and that of the Legislature. The collapse of the Directory was certain to take place; but few expected that the Legislature of France would likewise vanish. For vanish it did: not for nearly half a century had France another free and truly democratic representative assembly. This result of Brumaire was unexpected by several of the men who plotted the overthrow of unpopular Directors, and hoped for the nipping of Jacobinical or royalist designs. Indeed, no event in French history is more astonishing than the dispersal of the republican deputies, most of whom desired a change of personnel but not a revolution in methods of government. Until a few days previously the Councils had the allegiance of the populace and of the soldiers; the troops at St. Cloud were loyal to the constitution, and respected the persons of the deputies until they were deluded by Lucien. For a few minutes the fate of France trembled in the balance; and the conspirators knew it.^[130] Bonaparte confessed it by his incoherent gaspings; Sieyès had his carriage ready, with six horses, for flight; the terrible cry, "Hors la loi!" if raised against Bonaparte in the heart of Paris, would certainly have roused the populace to fury in the cause of liberty and have swept the conspirators to the guillotine. But, as it was, the affair was decided in the solitudes of St. Cloud by Lucien and a battalion of soldiers.

Efforts have frequently been made to represent the[pg.227] events of Brumaire as inevitable and to dovetail them in with a pretended philosophy of history. But it is impossible to study them closely without observing how narrow was the margin between the success and failure of the plot, and how jagged was the edge of an affair which philosophizers seek to fit in with their symmetrical explanations. In truth, no event of world-wide importance was ever decided by circumstances so trifling. "There is but one step from triumph to a fall. I have seen that in the greatest affairs a little thing has always decided important events"—so wrote Bonaparte three years before his triumph at St. Cloud: he might have written it of that event. It is equally questionable whether it can be regarded as saving France from anarchy. His admirers, it is true, have striven to depict France as trodden down by invaders, dissolved by anarchy, and saved only by the stroke of Brumaire. But she was already triumphant: it was quite possible that she would peacefully adjust her governmental difficulties: they were certainly no greater than they had been in and since the year 1797: Fouché had closed the club of the Jacobins: the Councils had recovered their rightful influence, and, but for the plotters of Brumaire, might have effected a return to ordinary government of the type of 1795-7. This was the real blow; that the vigorous trunk, the Legislature, was struck down along with the withering Directorial branch.

The friends of liberty might well be dismayed when they saw how tamely France accepted this astounding stroke. Some allowance was naturally to be made, at first, for the popular apathy: the Jacobins, already discouraged by past repression, were partly dazed by the suddenness of the blow, and were also ignorant of the aims of the men who dealt it; and while they were waiting to see the import of events, power passed rapidly into the hands of Bonaparte and his coadjutors. Such is an explanation, in part at least, of the strange docility now shown by a populace which still vaunted its loyalty to the democratic republic. But there is another [pg.228] explanation, which goes far deeper. The revolutionary strifes had wearied the brain of France and had predisposed it to accept accomplished facts. Distracted by the talk about royalist plots and Jacobin plots, cowering away from the white ogre and the red spectre, the more credulous part of the populace was fain to take shelter under the cloak of a great soldier, who at least promised order. Everything favoured the drill-sergeant theory of government. The instincts developed by a thousand years of monarchy had not been rooted out in the last decade. They now prompted France to rally round her able man; and, abandoning political liberty as a hopeless quest, she obeyed the imperious call which promised to revivify the order and brilliance of her old existence with the throbbing blood of her new life.

The French constitution was now to be reconstructed by a self-appointed commission which sat with closed doors. This strange ending to all the constitution-building of a decade was due to the adroitness of Lucien Bonaparte. At the close of that eventful day, the 19th of Brumaire, he gathered about him in the deserted hall at St. Cloud some score or so of the dispersed deputies known to be favourable to his brother, declaimed against the Jacobins, whose spectral plot had proved so useful to the real plotters, and proposed to this "Rump" of the Council the formation of a commission who should report on measures that were deemed necessary for the public safety. The measures were found to be the deposition of the Directory, the expulsion of sixty-one members from the Councils, the nomination of Sieyès, Roger Ducos, and Bonaparte as provisional Consuls and the adjournment of the Councils for four months. The Consuls accordingly took up their residence in the Luxemburg Palace, just vacated by the Directors, and the drafting of a constitution was confided to them and to an interim commission of fifty members chosen equally from the two Councils.

The illegality of these devices was hidden beneath a cloak of politic clemency. To this commission the [pg.229] Consuls, or rather Bonaparte—for his will soon dominated that of Sieyès—proposed two most salutary changes. He desired to put an end to the seizure of hostages from villages suspected of royalism; and also to the exaction of taxes levied on a progressive scale, which harassed the wealthy without proportionately benefiting the exchequer. These two expedients, adopted by the Directory in the summer of 1799, were temporary measures adopted to stem the tide of invasion and to crush revolts; but they were regarded as signs of a permanently terrorist policy, and their removal greatly strengthened the new consular rule. The blunder of nearly all the revolutionary governments had been in continuing severe laws after the need for them had ceased to be pressing. Bonaparte, with infinite tact, discerned this truth, and, as will shortly appear, set himself to found his government on the support of that vast neutral mass which was neither royalist nor Jacobin, which hated the severities of the reds no less than the abuses of the ancien régime.

While Bonaparte was conciliating the many, Sieyès was striving to body forth the constitution which for many years had been nebulously floating in his brain. The function of the Socratic [Greek: maieutaes] was discharged by Boulay de la Meurthe, who with difficulty reduced those ideas to definite shape. The new constitution was based on the principle: "Confidence comes from below, power from above." This meant that the people, that is, all adult males, were admitted only to the preliminary stages of election of deputies, while the final act of selection was to be made by higher grades or powers. The "confidence" required of the people was to be shown not only towards their nominees, but towards those who were charged with the final and most important act of selection. The winnowing processes in the election of representatives were to be carried out on a decimal system. The adult voters meeting in their several districts were to choose one-tenth of their number, this tenth being named the Notabilities of the Commune. These, some five or [pg.230] six hundred thousand in number, meeting in their several Departments, were thereupon to choose one-tenth of their number; and the resulting fifty or sixty thousand men, termed Notabilities of the Departments, were again to name one-tenth of their number, who were styled Notabilities of the Nation. But the most important act of selection was still to come—from above. From this last-named list the governing powers were to select the members of the legislative bodies and the chief officials and servants of the Government.

The executive now claims a brief notice. The well-worn theory of the distinction of powers, that is, the legislative and executive powers, was maintained in Sieyès' plan. At the head of the Government the philosopher desired to enthrone an august personage, the Grand Elector, who was to be selected by the Senate. This Grand Elector was to nominate two Consuls, one for peace, the other for war; they were to nominate the Ministers of State, who in their turn selected the agents of power from the list of Notabilities of the Nation. The two Consuls and their Ministers administered the executive affairs. The Senate, sitting in dignified ease, was merely to safeguard the constitution, to elect the Grand Elector, and to select the members of the Corps Législatif (proper) and the Tribunate.

Distrust of the former almost superhuman activity in law-making now appeared in divisions, checks, and balances quite ingenious in their complexity. The Legislature was divided into three councils: the Corps Législatif, properly so called, which listened in silence to proposals of laws offered by the Council of State and criticised or orally approved by the Tribunate.^[131] These three bodies were not only divided, but were placed in opposition, especially the two talking bodies, which[pg.231] resembled plaintiff and defendant pleading before a gagged judge. But even so the constitution was not sufficiently guarded against Jacobins or royalists. If by any chance a dangerous proposal were forced through these mutually distrustful bodies, the Senate was charged with the task of vetoing it, and if the Grand Elector, or any other high official, strove to gain a perpetual dictatorship, the Senate was at once to absorb him into its ranks.

Moreover, lest the voters should send up too large a proportion of Jacobins or royalists, the first selection of members of the great Councils and the chief functionaries for local affairs was to be made by the Consuls, who thus primarily exercised not only the "power from above," but also the "confidence" which ought to have come from below. Perhaps this device was necessary to set in motion Sieyès' system of wheels within wheels; for the Senate, which was to elect the Grand Elector, by whom the executive officers were indirectly to be chosen, was in part self-sufficient: the Consuls named the first members, who then co-opted, that is, chose the new members. Some impulse from without was also needed to give the constitution life; and this impulse was now to come. Where Sieyès had only contrived wheels, checks, regulator, break, and safety-valve, there now rushed in an imperious will which not only simplified the parts but supplied an irresistible motive power.

The complexity of much of the mechanism, especially that relating to popular election and the legislature, entirely suited Bonaparte. But, while approving the triple winnowing, to which Sieyès subjected the results of manhood suffrage, and the subordination of the legislative to the executive authority,^[132] the general expressed his entire disapproval of the limitations of the Grand Elector's powers. The name was anti-republican: let it be changed to First Consul. And whereas Sieyès[pg.232] condemned his grand functionary to the repose of a roi fainéant, Bonaparte secured to him practically all the powers assigned by Sieyès to the Consuls for Peace and for War. Lastly, Bonaparte protested against the right of absorbing him being given to the Senate. Here also he was successful; and thus a delicately poised bureaucracy was turned into an almost unlimited dictatorship.

This metamorphosis may well excite wonder. But, in truth, Sieyès and his colleagues were too weary and sceptical to oppose the one "intensely practical man." To Bonaparte's trenchant reasons and incisive tones the theorist could only reply by a scornful silence broken by a few bitter retorts. To the irresistible power of the general he could only oppose the subtlety of a student. And, indeed, who can picture Bonaparte, the greatest warrior of the age, delegating the control of all warlike operations to a Consul for War while Austrian cannon were thundering in the county of Nice and British cruisers were insulting the French coasts? It was inevitable that the reposeful Grand Elector should be transformed into the omnipotent First Consul, and that these powers should be wielded by Bonaparte himself.^[133]

The extent of the First Consul's powers, as finally settled by the joint commission, was as follows. He had the direct and sole nomination of the members of the general administration, of those of the departmental and municipal councils, and of the administrators, afterwards called prefects and sub-prefects. He also appointed all military and naval officers, ambassadors and agents sent to foreign Powers, and the judges in civil and criminal suits, except the juges de paix and, later on, the members of the Cour de Cassation. He therefore controlled the army, navy, and diplomatic service, as well as the general administration. He also signed treaties, though these might be discussed, and must be ratified, by the legislative bodies. The three Consuls were to reside in the Tuileries palace; but, apart from the[pg.233] enjoyment of 150,000 francs a year, and occasional consultation by the First Consul, the position of these officials was so awkward that Bonaparte frankly remarked to Roederer that it would have been better to call them Grand Councillors. They were, in truth, supernumeraries added to the chief of the State, as a concession to the spirit of equality and as a blind to hide the reality of the new despotism. All three were to be chosen for ten years, and were re-eligible.

Such is an outline of the constitution of 1799 (Year VIII.). It was promulgated on December 15th, 1799, and was offered to the people for acceptance, in a proclamation which closed with the words: "Citizens, the Revolution is confined to the principles which commenced it. It is finished." The news of this last fact decided the enthusiastic acceptance of the constitution. In a plébiscite, or mass vote of the people, held in the early days of 1800, it was accepted by an overwhelming majority, viz., by 3,011,007 as against only 1,562 negatives. No fact so forcibly proves the failure of absolute democracy in France; and, whatever may be said of the methods of securing this national acclaim, it was, and must ever remain, the soundest of Bonaparte's titles to power. To a pedant who once inquired about his genealogy he significantly replied: "It dates from Brumaire."

Shortly before the plébiscite, Sieyès and Ducos resigned their temporary commissions as Consuls: they were rewarded with seats in the Senate; and Sieyès, in consideration of his constitutional work, received the estate of Crosne from the nation.

The sting in the tail of Lebrun's epigram struck home. Sieyès' acceptance of Crosne was, in fact, his acceptance of notice to quit public affairs, in which he had always [pg.234] moved with philosophic disdain. He lived on to the year 1836 in dignified ease, surveying with Olympian calm the storms of French and Continental politics.

The two new Consuls were Cambacérès and Lebrun. The former was known as a learned jurist and a tactful man. He had voted for the death of Louis XVI., but his subsequent action had been that of a moderate, and his knowledge of legal affairs was likely to be of the highest service to Bonaparte, who intrusted him with a general oversight of legislation. His tact was seen in his refusal to take up his abode in the Tuileries, lest, as he remarked to Lebrun, he might have to move out again soon. The third Consul, Lebrun, was a moderate with leanings towards constitutional royalty. He was to prove another useful satellite to Bonaparte, who intrusted him with the general oversight of finance and regarded him as a connecting link with the moderate royalists. The chief secretary to the Consuls was Maret, a trusty political agent, who had striven for peace with England both in 1793 and in 1797.

As for the Ministers, they were now reinforced by Talleyrand, who took up that of Foreign Affairs, and by Berthier, who brought his powers of hard work to that of War, until he was succeeded for a time by Carnot. Lucien Bonaparte, and later Chaptal, became Minister of the Interior, Gaudin controlled Finance, Forfait the Navy, and Fouché the Police. The Council of State was organized in the following sections; that of War, which was presided over by General Brune: Marine, by Admiral Gantheaume: Finance, by Defermon: Legislation, by Boulay de la Meurthe: the Interior, by Roederer.

The First Consul soon showed that he intended to adopt a non-partisan and thoroughly national policy. That had been, it is true, the aim of the Directors in their policy of balance and repression of extreme parties on both sides. For the reasons above indicated, they had failed: but now a stronger and more tactful grasp was to succeed in a feat which naturally became easier every year that removed the passions of the revolutionary epoch further [pg.235] into the distance. Men cannot for ever perorate, and agitate and plot. A time infallibly comes when an able leader can successfully appeal to their saner instincts: and that hour had now struck. Bonaparte's appeal was made to the many, who cared not for politics, provided that they themselves were left in security and comfort: it was urged quietly, persistently, and with the reserve power of a mighty prestige and of overwhelming military force. Throughout the whole of the Consulate, a policy of moderation, which is too often taken for weakness, was strenuously carried through by the strongest man and the greatest warrior of the age.

The truly national character of his rule was seen in many ways. He excluded from high office men who were notorious regicides, excepting a few who, like Fouché, were too clever to be dispensed with. The constitutionals of 1791 and even declared royalists were welcomed back to France, and many of the Fructidorian exiles also returned.^[134] The list of émigrés was closed, so that neither political hatred nor private greed could misrepresent a journey as an act of political emigration. Equally generous and prudent was the treatment of Roman Catholics. Toleration was now extended to orthodox or non-juring priests, who were required merely to promise allegiance to the new constitution. By this act of timely clemency, orthodox priests were allowed to return to France, and they were even suffered to officiate in places where no opposition was thereby aroused.

While thus removing one of the chief grievances of the Norman, Breton and Vendéan peasants, who had risen as much for their religion as for their king, he determined to crush their revolts. The north-west, and indeed parts of the south of France, were still simmering with rebellions and brigandage. In Normandy a daring and able leader named Frotté headed a considerable band of malcontents, and still more formidable were the[pg.236] Breton "Chouans" that followed the peasant leader Georges Cadoudal. This man was a born leader. Though but thirty years of age, his fierce courage had long marked him out as the first fighter of his race and creed. His features bespoke a bold, hearty spirit, and his massive frame defied fatigue and hardship. He struggled on; and in the autumn of 1799 fortune seemed about to favour the "whites": the revolt was spreading; and had a Bourbon prince landed in Brittany before Bonaparte returned from Egypt, the royalists might quite possibly have overthrown the Directory. But Bonaparte's daring changed the whole aspect of affairs. The news of the stroke of Brumaire gave the royalists pause. At first they believed that the First Consul would soon call back the king, and Bonaparte skilfully favoured this notion: he offered a pacification, of which some of the harassed peasants availed themselves. Georges himself for a time advised a reconciliation, and a meeting of the royalist leaders voted to a man that they desired "to have the king and you" (Bonaparte). One of them, Hyde de Neuville, had an interview with the First Consul at Paris, and has left on record his surprise at seeing the slight form of the man whose name was ringing through France. At the first glance he took him for a rather poorly dressed lackey; but when the general raised his eyes and searched him through and through with their eager fire, the royalist saw his error and fell under the spell of a gaze which few could endure unmoved. The interview brought no definite result.

Other overtures made by Bonaparte were more effective. True to his plan of dividing his enemies, he appealed to the clergy to end the civil strife. The appeal struck home to the heart or the ambitions of a cleric named Bernier. This man was but a village priest of La Vendée: yet his natural abilities gained him an ascendancy in the councils of the insurgents, which the First Consul was now victoriously to exploit. Whatever may have been Bernier's motives, he certainly acted with some [pg.237] duplicity. Without forewarning Cadoudal, Bourmont, Frotté, and other royalist leaders, he secretly persuaded the less combative leaders to accept the First Consul's terms; and a pacification was arranged (January 18th), In vain did Cadoudal rage against this treachery: in vain did he strive to break the armistice. Frotté in Normandy was the last to capitulate and the first to feel Bonaparte's vengeance: on a trumped-up charge of treachery he was hurried before a court-martial and shot. An order was sent from Paris for his pardon; but a letter which Bonaparte wrote to Brune on the day of the execution contains the ominous phrase: By this time Frotté ought to be shot; and a recently published letter to Hédouville expresses the belief that the punishment of that desperate leader will doubtless contribute to the complete pacification of the West.^[135]

In the hope of gaining over the Chouans, Bonaparte required their chiefs to come to Paris, where they received the greatest consideration. In Bernier the priest, Bonaparte discerned diplomatic gifts of a high order, which were soon to be tested in a far more important negotiation. The nobles, too, received flattering attentions which touched their pride and assured their future insignificance. Among them was Count Bourmont, the Judas of the Waterloo campaign.

In contrast with the priest and the nobles, Georges Cadoudal stood firm as a rock. That suave tongue spoke to him of glory, honour, and the fatherland: he heeded it not, for he knew it had ordered the death of Frotté. There stood these fighters alone, face to face, types of the north and south, of past and present, fiercest and toughest of living men, their stern wills racked in wrestle for two hours. But southern craft was foiled by Breton steadfastness, and Georges went his way unshamed. Once outside the palace, his only words to his friend, Hyde de Neuville, were: "What a mind I had to strangle him in these arms!" Shadowed by[pg.238] Bonaparte's spies, and hearing that he was to be arrested, he fled to England; and Normandy and Brittany enjoyed the semblance of peace.^[136]

Thus ended the civil war which for nearly seven years had rent France in twain. Whatever may be said about the details of Bonaparte's action, few will deny its beneficent results on French life. Harsh and remorseless as Nature herself towards individuals, he certainly, at this part of his career, promoted the peace and prosperity of the masses. And what more can be said on behalf of a ruler at the end of a bloody revolution?

Meanwhile the First Consul had continued to develop Sieyès' constitution in the direction of autocracy. The Council of State, which was little more than an enlarged Ministry, had been charged with the vague and dangerous function of "developing the sense of laws" on the demand of the Consuls; and it was soon seen that this Council was merely a convenient screen to hide the operations of Bonaparte's will. On the other hand, a blow was struck at the Tribunate, the only public body which had the right of debate and criticism. It was now proposed (January, 1800) that the time allowed for debate should be strictly limited. This restriction to the right of free discussion met with little opposition. One of the most gifted of the new tribunes, Benjamin Constant, the friend of Madame de Staël, eloquently pleaded against this policy of distrust which would reduce the Tribunate to a silence that would be heard by Europe. It was in vain. The rabid rhetoric of the past had infected France with a foolish fear of all free debate. The Tribunate signed its own death warrant; and the sole result of its feeble attempt at opposition was that Madame de Staël's salon was forthwith deserted by the Liberals who had there found inspiration; while the gifted authoress herself was officially requested to retire into the country.

The next act of the central power struck at freedom[pg.239] of the press. As a few journals ventured on witticisms at the expense of the new Government, the Consuls ordered the suppression of all the political journals of Paris except thirteen; and three even of these favoured papers were suppressed on April 7th. The reason given for this despotic action was the need of guiding public opinion wisely during the war, and of preventing any articles "contrary to the respect due to the social compact, to the sovereignty of the people, and to the glory of the armies." By a finely ironical touch Rousseau's doctrine of the popular sovereignty was thus invoked to sanction its violation. The incident is characteristic of the whole tendency of events, which showed that the dawn of personal rule was at hand. In fact, Bonaparte had already taken the bold step of removing to the Tuileries, and that too, on the very day when he ordered public mourning for the death of Washington (February 7th). No one but the great Corsican would have dared to brave the comments which this coincidence provoked. But he was necessary to France, and all men knew it. At the first sitting of the provisional Consuls, Ducos had said to him: "It is useless to vote about the presidence; it belongs to you of right"; and, despite the wry face pulled by Sieyès, the general at once took the chair. Scarcely less remarkable than the lack of energy in statesmen was the confusion of thought in the populace. Mme. Reinhard tells us that after the coup d'état people believed they had returned to the first days of liberty. What wonder, then, that the one able and strong-willed man led the helpless many and re-moulded Sieyès' constitution in a fashion that was thus happily parodied:

CHAPTER XI

Reserving for the next chapter a description of the new civil institutions of France, it will be convenient now to turn to foreign affairs. Having arranged the most urgent of domestic questions, the First Consul was ready to encounter the forces of the Second Coalition. He had already won golden opinions in France by endeavouring peacefully to dissolve it. On the 25th of December, 1799, he sent two courteous letters, one to George III., the other to the Emperor Francis, proposing an immediate end to the war. The close of the letter to George III. has been deservedly admired: "France and England by the abuse of their strength may, for the misfortune of all nations, be long in exhausting it: but I venture to declare that the fate of all civilized nations is concerned in the termination of a war which kindles a conflagration over the whole world." This noble sentiment touched the imagination of France and of friends of peace everywhere.

And yet, if the circumstances of the time be considered, the first agreeable impressions aroused by the perusal of this letter must be clouded over by doubts. The First Consul had just seized on power by illegal and forcible means, and there was as yet little to convince foreign States that he would hold it longer than the men whom he had displaced. Moreover, France was in a difficult position. Her treasury was empty; her army in Italy was being edged into the narrow coast-line near Genoa; and her oriental forces were shut up in their new conquest. Were not the appeals to Austria and England [pg.241] merely a skillful device to gain time? Did his past power in Italy and Egypt warrant the belief that he would abandon the peninsula and the new colony? Could the man who had bartered away Venetia and seized Malta and Egypt be fitly looked upon as the sacred'r peacemaker? In diplomacy men's words are interpreted by their past conduct and present circumstances, neither of which tended to produce confidence in Bonaparte's pacific overtures; and neither Francis nor George III. looked on the present attempt as anything but a skilful means of weakening the Coalition.

Indeed, that league was, for various reasons, all but dissolved by internal dissensions. Austria was resolved to keep all the eastern part of Piedmont and the greater part of the Genoese Republic. While welcoming the latter half of this demand, George III.'s Ministers protested against the absorption of so great a part of Piedmont as an act of cruel injustice to the King of Sardinia. Austria was annoyed at the British remonstrances and was indignant at the designs of the Czar on Corsica. Accordingly no time could have been better chosen by Bonaparte for seeking to dissolve the Coalition, as he certainly hoped to do by these two letters. Only the staunch support of legitimist claims by England then prevented the Coalition from degenerating into a scramble for Italian territories.^[137] And, if we may trust the verdict of contemporaries and his own confession at St. Helena, Bonaparte never expected any other result from these letters than an increase of his popularity in France. This was enhanced by the British reply, which declared that His Majesty could not place his reliance on "general professions of pacific dispositions": France had waged aggressive war, levied exactions, and overthrown institutions in neighbouring States; and the British Government could not as yet discern any abandonment of this system: something more was required for[pg.242] a durable peace: "The best and most natural pledge of its reality and permanence would be the restoration of that line of princes which for so many centuries maintained the French nation in prosperity at home and in consideration and respect abroad." This answer has been sharply criticised, and justly so, if its influence on public opinion be alone considered. But a perusal of the British Foreign Office Records reveals the reason for the use of these stiffly legitimist claims. Legitimacy alone promised to stop the endless shiftings of the political kaleidoscope, whether by France, Austria, or Russia. Our ambassador at Vienna was requested to inform the Government of Vienna of the exact wording of the British reply:

"As a proof of the zeal and steadiness with which His Majesty adheres to the principles of the Confederacy, and as a testimony of the confidence with which he anticipates a similar answer from His Imperial Majesty, to whom an overture of a similar nature has without doubt been made."

But this correct conduct, while admirably adapted to prop up the tottering Coalition, was equally favourable to the consolidation of Bonaparte's power. It helped to band together the French people to resist the imposition of their exiled royal house by external force. Even George III. thought it "much too strong," though he suggested no alteration. At once Bonaparte retorted in a masterly note; he ironically presumed that His Britannic Majesty admitted the right of nations to choose their form of government, since only by that right did he wear the British crown; and he invited him not to

CHAPTER		page
PREFACE		VII
NOTE ON THE REPUBLICAN CALENDAR		XV
VOLUME I
I. PARENTAGE AND EARLY YEARS		1
II. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND CORSICA		24
III. TOULON		44
IV. VENDÉMIAIRE		57
V. THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN (1796)		77
VI. THE FIGHTS FOR MANTUA		105
VII. LEOBEN TO CAMPO FORMIO		140
VIII. EGYPT		174
IX. SYRIA		201
X. BRUMAIRE		216
XI. MARENGO: LUNÉVILLE		240
XII.THE NEW INSTITUTIONS OF FRANCE		266
XIII. THE CONSULATE FOR LIFE		302
XIV. THE PEACE OF AMIENS		331
XV. A FRENCH COLONIAL EMPIRE: ST. DOMINGO--LOUISIANA--INDIA--AUSTRALIA		355
XVI. NAPOLEON'S INTERVENTIONS		386
XVII. THE RENEWAL OF WAR		401
XVIII. EUROPE AND THE BONAPARTES		430
XIX. THE ROYALIST PLOT		446
XX. THE DAWN OF THE EMPIRE		465
XXI. THE BOULOGNE FLOTILLA		462
XXII. APPENDIX: REPORTS HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED ON (a) THE SALE OF LOUISIANA; (b) THE IRISH DIVISION IN NAPOLEON'S SERVICE		509

ILLUSTRATIONS, MAPS, AND PLANS
THE SIEGE OF TOULON, 1793		51
MAP TO ILLUSTRATE THE CAMPAIGNS IN NORTH ITALY		81
PLAN TO ILLUSTRATE THE VICTORY OF ARCOLA		125
THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF RIVOLI		133
FACSIMILE OF A LETTER OF NAPOLEON TO "LA CITOYENNE TALLIEN," 1797		156
CENTRAL EUROPE, after the Peace of Campo Formio, 1797		171
PLAN OF THE SIEGE OF ACRE, from a contemporary sketch		205
THE BATTLE OF MARENGO, to illustrate Kellermann's charge		255
FRENCH MAP OF THE SOUTH OF AUSTRALIA, 1807		378

VOLUME II
XXII. ULM AND TRAFALGAR		1
XXIII. AUSTERLITZ		29
XXIV. PRUSSIA AND THE NEW CHARLEMAGNE		51
XXV. THE FALL OF PRUSSIA		79
XXVI. THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM: FRIEDLAND		103
XXVII. TILSIT		125
XXVIII. THE SPANISH RISING		159
XXIX. ERFURT		174
XXX. NAPOLEON AND AUSTRIA		189
XXXI. THE EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT		208
XXXII. THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN		231
XXXIII. THE FIRST SAXON CAMPAIGN		267
XXXIV. VITTORIA AND THE ARMISTICE		300
XXXV. DRESDEN AND LEIPZIG		329
XXXVI. FROM THE RHINE TO THE SEINE		368
XXXVII. THE FIRST ABDICATION		399
XXXVIII. ELBA AND PARIS		435
XXXIX. LIGNY AND QUATRE BRAS		453
XL. WATERLOO		487
XLI. FROM THE ELYSÉE TO ST. HELENA		512
XLII. CLOSING YEARS		539
APPENDIX I: LIST OF THE CHIEF APPOINTMENTS AND DIGNITIES BESTOWED BY NAPOLEON		575
APPENDIX II: THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO		577
INDEX		579
MAPS AND PLANS
BATTLE OF ULM		15
BATTLE OF AUSTERLITZ		39
BATTLE OF JENA		95
BATTLE OF FRIEDLAND		121
BATTLE OF WAGRAM		196
CENTRAL EUROPE AFTER 1810		215
CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA		247
BATTLE OF VITTORIA		310
THE CAMPAIGN OF 1813		336
BATTLE OF DRESDEN		343
BATTLE OF LEIPZIG		357
THE CAMPAIGN OF 1814	to face	383

PLAN OF THE WATERLOO CAMPAIGN		458
BATTLE OF LIGNY		465
BATTLE OF WATERLOO, about 11 o'clock a.m.	to face	490
ST. HELENA		540
FOOTNOTES
INDEX

THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I

THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I

INCLUDING NEW MATERIALS FROM THE BRITISH OFFICIAL RECORDS

BY JOHN HOLLAND ROSE, LITT.D. LATE SCHOLAR OF CHRIST'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

LONDON G. BELL AND SONS, LTD. 1910

PREFACE

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION

CONTENTS

VOLUME I

NOTE ON THE REPUBLICAN CALENDAR

THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

BY JOHN HOLLAND ROSE, LITT.D.
LATE SCHOLAR OF CHRIST'S COLLEGE,
CAMBRIDGE

LONDON G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
1910