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

POST 8VO EDITION, ILLUSTRATED

First Published, December 1901.
Second Edition, revised, March 1902.
Third Edition, revised, January 1903.
Fourth Edition, revised, September 1907.
Reprinted, January 1910.

CROWN 8VO EDITION
First Published, September 1904.
Reprinted, October 1907; July 1910.

DEDICATED TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD ACTON, K.C.V.O., D.C.L.,
LL.D. REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF
CAMBRIDGE, IN ADMIRATION OF HIS PROFOUND HISTORICAL LEARNING, AND
IN GRATITUDE FOR ADVICE AND HELP GENEROUSLY GIVEN.

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.”

J.H.R.

[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.

J.H.R.

October, 1902.

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.

CONTENTS

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.

The months are as follows:

Add five (in leap years six) “Sansculottides” or “Jours
complémentaires.”

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:

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

(1796)

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.

MAP TO
ILLUSTRATE THE CAMPAIGNS IN NORTH ITALY

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]

PLAN TO
ILLUSTRATE THE VICTORY OF ARCOLA

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.

THE
NEIGHBOURHOOD OF RIVOLI

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):

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.

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:

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.

There, too, at Montebello was Josephine.

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:

[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.

FACSIMILE
OF A LETTER OF NAPOLEON TO “LA CITOYENNE TALLIEN, (missing)” 1797

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]

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):

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

[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.

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:

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:

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:

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:

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]

PLAN OF THE
SIEGE OF ACRE, from a contemporary
sketch

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:

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.