In the collection of theDuc de Trevise.Josephine.From a pastel by Pierre Prud'hon.
In the collection of theDuc de Trevise.
Josephine.
From a pastel by Pierre Prud'hon.
Though the commanding general could not well yield to his subordinate, he did, most ungraciously, to the Convention legates. Between the seventeenth and twentieth of September effective batteries under Buonaparte's command forced the enemy's frigates to withdraw from the neighborhood of La Seyne on the inner bay. The shot were red hot, the fire concentrated, and the guns served with cool efficiency. Next day the village was occupied and with only four hundred men General Delaborde marched to seize the Eguillette, the key to the siege, as Buonaparte reiterated and reiterated. He was ingloriously routed; the British landed reinforcements and erected strong fortifications over night. They styled the place Fort Mulgrave. It was speedily flanked by three redoubts. To Buonaparte this contemptuous defiance was insufferable: he spoke and Salicetti wrote of the siege as destitute both of brains and means. Thereupon the Paris legates began to represent Carteauxas an incapable and demand his recall. Buonaparte ransacked the surrounding towns and countryside for cannon and secured a number; he established forges at Ollioules to keep his apparatus in order, and entirely reorganized his personnel. With fair efficiency and substantial quantity of guns and shot, he found himself without sufficient powder and wrote imperiously to his superiors, enforcing successfully his demand. Meantime he made himself conspicuous by personal daring and exposure. The days and nights were arduous because of the enemy's activity. In successive sorties on October first, eighth, and fourteenth the British garrison of Fort Mulgrave gained both ground and prestige by successive victories. It was hard for the French to repress their impatience, but they were not ready yet for a general move: not a single arm of the service was sufficiently strong and the army was becoming demoralized by inactivity. The feud between general and legates grew bitter and the demands of the latter for material were disregarded alike at Paris and by Doppet, who had just captured Lyons, but would part with none of his guns or ammunition or men for use at Toulon. Lapoype and Carteaux quarreled bitterly, and there was such confusion that Buonaparte ended by squarely disobeying his superior and taking many minor movements into his own hand; he was so cocksure that artillery alone would end the siege that the general dubbed him Captain Cannon. Finally the wrangling of all concerned cried to heaven, and on October twenty-third Carteaux was transferred to the Army of Italy with headquarters at Nice. He left for his new post on November seventh, and five days later his successor appeared. In the interim the nominal commander was Lapoype, really Salicetti prompted by Buonaparte.
Thus at length the artist was removed from command,and a physician was appointed in his stead. The doctor was an ardent patriot who had distinguished himself at the siege of Lyons, which had fallen on October ninth. But on arriving at Toulon the citizen soldier was awed by the magnitude of his new work. On November fifteenth the French pickets saw a Spaniard maltreating a French prisoner on the outworks of Fort Mulgrave. There was an impulsive and spontaneous rush of the besiegers to avenge the insult. General O'Hara landed from theVictorywith reinforcements for the garrison. Doppet was panic-stricken by the fire and ordered a retreat. Captain Buonaparte with an oath expressed his displeasure. The soldiers cried in angry spite: "Are we always to be commanded by painters and doctors?" Indeed, the newcomer had hardly taken command, leaving matters at loose ends as they were: in a short time he was transferred at his own suggestion to an easier station in the Pyrenees, it being understood that Dugommier, a professional soldier, would be finally appointed commander-in-chief, and that Duteil, the brother of Buonaparte's old friend and commander, was to be made general of artillery. He was a man advanced in years, unable even to mount a horse: but he was devoted to the young captain, trusted his powers, and left him in virtual command. Abundant supplies arrived at the same time from Lyons. On November twentieth the new officers took charge, two days later a general reconnaissance was made, and within a short time the investment was completed. On the thirtieth there was a formidable sally from the town directed against Buonaparte's batteries. In the force were two thousand three hundred and fifty men: about four hundred British, three hundred Sardinians, two hundred and fifty French, and seven hundred each of Neapolitans and Spanish. They were commandedby General Dundas. Their earliest movements were successful and the commander-in-chief of the besieged came out to see the victory. But the tide turned, the French revolutionists rallied, and the sortie was repulsed. The event was made doubly important by the chance capture of General O'Hara, the English commandant. Such a capture is rare,—Buonaparte was profoundly impressed by the fact. He obtained permission to visit the English general in captivity, but was coldly received. To the question: "What do you require?" came the curt reply: "To be left alone and owe nothing to pity." This striking though uncourtly reply delighted Buonaparte. The success was duly reported to Paris. In the "Moniteur" of December seventh the name of Buona Parte is mentioned for the first time, and as among the most distinguished in the action.
The councils of war before Dugommier's arrival had been numerous and turbulent, although the solitary plan of operations suggested by the commander and his aides would have been adequate only for capturing an inland town, and probably not even for that. From the beginning and with fierce iteration Buonaparte had explained to his colleagues the special features of their task, but all in vain. He reasoned that Toulon depended for its resisting power on the Allies and their fleets, and must be reduced from the side next the sea. The English themselves understood this when they seized and fortified the redoubt of Fort Mulgrave, known also by the French as Little Gibraltar, on the tongue of land separating, to the westward, the inner from the outer bay. That post on the promontory styled the Eguillette by the natives must be taken. From the very moment of his arrival this simple but clever conception had been urged on the council of warby Buonaparte. But Carteaux could not and would not see its importance: it was not until a skilled commander took charge that Buonaparte's insight was justified and his plan adopted. At the same time it was determined that operations should also be directed against two other strong outposts, one to the north, the other to the northeast, of the town. There was to be a genuine effort to capture Mt. Faron on the north and a demonstration merely against the third point. But the concentration of force was to be against the Eguillette.
Finally, on December seventeenth, after careful preparation, a concerted attack was made at all three points. Officers and men were daring and efficient everywhere. Buonaparte, assuming responsibility for the batteries, was ubiquitous and reckless. The movement on which he had set his heart was successful in every portion; the enemy was not only driven within the interior works, but by the fall of Little Gibraltar his communication with the sea was endangered. The whole peninsula, the fort itself, the point and the neighboring heights were captured. Victor, Muiron, Buonaparte, and Dugommier led the storming columns. The Allies were utterly demoralized by the fierce and bloody struggle. Since, therefore, the supporting fleets could no longer remain in a situation so precarious, the besieged at once made ready for departure, embarking with precipitate haste the troops and many of the inhabitants. The Spaniards fired two frigates loaded with powder and the explosion of the magazines shook the city and its suburbs like an earthquake. In that moment the young Sidney Smith landed from the British ships and laid the trains which kindled an awful conflagration. The captured French fleet lying at anchor, the magazines and shops of the arsenal, all itsenclosures burst into flames, and one explosion followed another in an awe-inspiring volcanic eruption. The besiegers were stupefied as they gazed, and stopped their ears. In a few hours the city was completely evacuated, and the foreign war vessels sailed away from the offing. The news of this decisive victory was despatched without a moment's delay to the Convention. The names of Salicetti, Robespierre, Ricord, Fréron, and Barras are mentioned in Dugommier's letters as those of men who had won distinction in various posts; that of Buonaparte does not occur.
There was either jealousy of his merits, which are declared by his enemies to have been unduly vaunted, or else his share had been more insignificant than is generally supposed. He related atSt.Helena that during the operations before Toulon he had had three horses killed under him, and showed Las Cases a great scar on his thigh which he said had been received in a bayonet charge at Toulon. "Men wondered at the fortune which kept me invulnerable; I always concealed my dangers in mystery." The hypothesis of his insignificance appears unlikely when we examine the memoirs written by his contemporaries, and consider the precise traditions of a later generation; it becomes untenable in view of what happened on the next day, when the commissioners nominated him for the office of general of brigade, a rank which in the exchange of prisoners with the English was reckoned as equal to that of lieutenant-general. In a report written on the nineteenth to the minister of war, Duteil speaks in the highest terms of Buonaparte. "A great deal of science, as much intelligence, and too much bravery; such is a faint sketch of the virtues of this rare officer. It rests with you, minister, to retain them for the glory of the republic."
On December twenty-fourth the Convention received the news of victory. It was really their reprieve, for news of disaster would have cut short their career. Jubilant over a prompt success, their joy was savage and infernal. With the eagerness of vampires they at once sent two commissioners to wipe the name of Toulon from the map, and its inhabitants from the earth. Fouché, later chief of police and Duke of Otranto under Napoleon, went down from Lyons to see the sport, and wrote to his friend the arch-murderer Collot d'Herbois that they were celebrating the victory in but one way. "This night we send two hundred and thirteen rebels into hell-fire." The fact is, no one ever knew how many hundreds or thousands of the Toulon Girondists were swept together and destroyed by the fire of cannon and musketry. Fréron, one of the commissioners, desired to leave not a single rebel alive. Dugommier would listen to no such proposition for a holocaust. Marmont declares that Buonaparte and his artillerymen pleaded for mercy, but in vain.
Running like a thread through all these events was a little counterplot. The Corsicans at Toulon were persons of importance, and had shown their mettle. Salicetti, Buonaparte, Arena, and Cervoni were now men of mark; the two latter had, like Buonaparte, been promoted, though to much lower rank. As Salicetti declared in a letter written on December twenty-eighth, they were scheming to secure vessels and arm them for an expedition to Corsica. But for the time their efforts came to naught; and thenceforward Salicetti seemed to lose all interest in Corsican affairs, becoming more and more involved in the ever madder rush of events in France.
This was not strange, for even a common politician could not remain insensible to the course or theconsequences of the malignant anarchy now raging throughout France. The massacres at Lyons, Marseilles, and Toulon were the reply to the horrors of like or worse nature perpetrated in Vendée by the royalists. Danton having used the Paris sections to overawe the Girondist majority of the Convention, Marat gathered his riotous band of sansculottes, and hounded the discredited remnant of the party to death, flight, or arrest. His bloody career was ended only by Charlotte Corday's dagger. Passions were thus inflamed until even Danton's conduct appeared calm, moderate, and inefficient when compared with the reckless bloodthirstiness of Hébert, now leader of the Exagérés. The latter prevailed, the Vendeans were defeated, and Citizen Carrier of Nantes in three months took fifteen thousand human lives by his fiendishly ingenious systems of drowning and shooting. In short, France was chaos, and the Salicettis of the time might hope for anything, or fear everything, in the throes of her disorder. Not so a man like Buonaparte. His instinct led him to stand in readiness at the parting of the ways. Others might choose and press forward; he gave no sign of being moved by current events, but stood with his eye still fixed, though now in a backward gaze, on Corsica, ready, if interest or self-preservation required it, for another effort to seize and hold it as his own. It was self-esteem, not Corsican patriotism, his French interest perhaps, which now prompted him. Determined and revengeful, he was again, through the confusion of affairs at Paris, to secure means for his enterprise, and this time on a scale proportionate to the difficulty. The influence of Toulon upon Buonaparte's fortunes was incalculable. Throughout life he spoke of the town, of the siege and his share therein, of the subsequent events and of the men whose acquaintance he made there, with livelyand emphatic interest. To all associated with the capture he was in after years generous to a fault, except a few enemies like Auna whom he treated with harshness. In particular it must not be forgotten that among many men of minor importance he there began his relations with some of his greatest generals and marshals: Desaix, Marmont, Junot, Muiron, and Chauvet. The experience launched him on his grand career; the intimacies he formed proved a strong support when he forced himself to the front. Moreover, his respect for England was heightened. It was not in violation of a pledge to hold the place for the Bourbon pretender, but by right of sheer ability that they took precedence of the Allies in command. They were haughty and dictatorial because their associates were uncertain and divided. When theComte de Provencewas suggested as a colleague they refused to admit him because he was detested by the best men of his own party. In the garrison of nearly fifteen thousand not a third were British. Buonaparte and others charged them with perfidy in a desire to hold the great fort for themselves, but the charge was untrue and he did not disdain them, but rather admired and imitated their policy.[Back to Contents]
Transformation in Buonaparte's Character — Confirmed as a French General — Conduct of His Brothers — Napoleon's Caution — His Report on Marseilles — The New French Army — Buonaparte the Jacobin Leader — Hostilities with Austria and Sardinia — Enthusiasm of the French Troops — Buonaparte in Society — His Plan for an Italian Campaign.
1793-94.
Hitherto prudence had not been characteristic of Buonaparte: his escapades and disobedience had savored rather of recklessness. Like scores of others in his class, he had fully exploited the looseness of royal and early republican administration; his madcap and hotspur versatility distinguished him from his comrades not in the kind but in the degree of his bold effrontery. The whole outlook having changed since his final flight to France, his conduct now began to reveal a definite plan—to be marked by punctilious obedience, sometimes even by an almost puerile caution. His family was homeless and penniless; their only hope for a livelihood was in coöperation with the Jacobins, who appeared to be growing more influential every hour. Through the powerful friends that Napoleon had made among the representatives of the Convention, men like the younger Robespierre, Fréron, and Barras, much had already been gained. If his nomination to the office of general of brigade were confirmed, as it was almost certain to be, the rest would follow, since, with his innate capacity for adapting himself to circumstances, he had during the last few weeks successfully cultivated hispower of pleasing, captivating the hearts of Marmont, Junot, and many others.
With such strong chances in his favor, it appeared to Buonaparte that no stumbling-block of technicality should be thrown in the path of his promotion. Accordingly, in the record of his life sent up to Paris, he puts his entrance into the service over a year earlier than it actually occurred, omits as unessential details some of the places in which he had lived and some of the companies in which he had served, declares that he had commanded a battalion at the capture of Magdalena, and, finally, denies categorically that he was ever noble. To this paper, which minimizes nearly to the vanishing-point all mention of Corsica, and emphasizes his services as a Frenchman by its insidious omissions, the over-driven officials in Paris took no exception; and on February sixth, 1794, he was confirmed, receiving an assignment for service in the new and regenerated Army of Italy, which had replaced as if by magic the ragged, shoeless, ill-equipped, and half-starved remnants of troops in and about Nice that in the previous year had been dignified by the same title. This gambler had not drawn the first prize in the lottery, but what he had secured was enough to justify his course, and confirm his confidence in fate. Eight years and three months nominally in the service, out of which in reality he had been absent four years and ten months either on furlough or without one, and already a general! Neither blind luck, nor the revolutionary epoch, nor the superlative ability of the man, but a compound of all these, had brought this marvel to pass. It did not intoxicate, but still further sobered, the beneficiary. This effect was partly due to an experience which demonstrated that strong as are the chains of habit, they are more easily broken than those which his associates forge about a man.
In the interval between nomination and confirmation the young aspirant, through the fault of his friends, was involved in a most serious risk. Salicetti, and the Buonaparte brothers, Joseph, Lucien, and Louis, went wild with exultation over the fall of Toulon, and began by reckless assumptions and untruthful representations to reap an abundant harvest of spoils. Joseph, by the use of his brother's Corsican commission, had posed as a lieutenant-colonel; he was now made a commissary-general of the first class. Louis, without regard to his extreme youth, was promoted to be adjutant-major of artillery—a dignity which was short-lived, for he was soon after ordered to the school at Châlons as a cadet, but which served, like the greater success of Joseph, to tide over a crisis. Lucien retained his post as keeper of the commissary stores inSt.Maximin, where he was the leading Jacobin, styling himself Lucius Brutus, and rejoicing in the sobriquet of "the little Robespierre."
The positions of Lucien and Louis were fantastic even for revolutionary times. Napoleon was fully aware of the danger, and was correspondingly circumspect. It was possibly at his own suggestion that he was appointed, on December twenty-sixth, 1793, inspector of the shore fortifications, and ordered to proceed immediately on an inspection of the Mediterranean coast as far as Mentone. The expedition removed him from all temptation to an unfortunate display of exultation or anxiety, and gave him a new chance to display his powers. He performed his task with the thoroughness of an expert; but in so doing, his zeal played him a sorry trick, eclipsing the caution of the revolutionist by the eagerness of the sagacious general. In his report to the minister of war he comprehensively discussed both the fortification of the coast and the strengthening of the navy, which were alike indispensable to the wonderfulscheme of operations in Italy which he appears to have been already revolving in his mind. The Army of Italy, and in fact all southeastern France, depended at the moment for sustenance on the commerce of Genoa, professedly a neutral state and friendly to the French republic. This essential trade could be protected only by making interference from the English and the Spaniards impossible, or at least difficult.
Arrived at Marseilles, and with these ideas occupying his whole mind, Buonaparte regarded the situation as serious. The British and Spanish fleets swept the seas, and were virtually blockading all the Mediterranean ports of France. At Toulon, as has been told, they actually entered, and departed only after losing control of the promontory which forms the harbor. There is a similar conformation of the ground at the entrance to the port of Marseilles, but Buonaparte found that the fortress which occupied the commanding promontory had been dismantled. With the instinct of a strategist and with no other thought than that of his duties as inspector, he sat down, and on January fourth, 1794, wrote a most impolitic recommendation that the fortification should be restored in such a way as to "command the town." These words almost certainly referred both to the possible renewal by the conquered French royalists and other malcontents of their efforts to secure Marseilles, and to a conceivable effort on the part of the Allies to seize the harbor. Now it happened that the liberals of the town had regarded this very stronghold as their Bastille, and it had been dismantled by them in emulation of their brethren of Paris. The language and motive of the report were therefore capable of misinterpretation. A storm at once arose among the Marseilles Jacobins against both Buonaparte and his superior, General Lapoype; they were bothdenounced to the Convention, and in due time, about the end of February, were both summoned before the bar of that body. In the mean time Buonaparte's nomination as general of brigade had been confirmed, his commission arriving at Marseilles on February sixteenth. It availed nothing toward restoring him to popularity; on the contrary, the masses grew more suspicious and more menacing. He therefore returned to the protection of Salicetti and Robespierre, then at Toulon, whence by their advice he despatched to Paris by special messenger a poor-spirited exculpatory letter, admitting that the only use of restoring the fort would be to "command the town," that is, control it by military power in case of revolution. Having by this language pusillanimously acknowledged a fault which he had not committed, the writer, by the advice of Salicetti and Robespierre, refused to obey the formal summons of the Convention when it came. Those powerful protectors made vigorous representations to their friends in Paris, and Buonaparte was saved. Both they and he might well rely on the distinguished service rendered by the culprit at Toulon; his military achievement might well outweigh a slight political delinquency. On April first, 1794, he assumed the duties of his new command, reporting himself at Nice. Lapoype went to Paris, appeared at the bar of the Convention, and was triumphantly acquitted. Naturally, therefore, no indictment could lie against the inferior, and Buonaparte's name was not even mentioned.
A single circumstance changed the French Revolution from a sectarian dogma into a national movement. By the exertions and plans of Carnot the effective force of the French army had been raised in less than two years from one hundred and twelve thousand to the astonishing figure of over seven hundred and thirty thousand.The discipline was now rigid, and the machine was perfectly adapted to the workman's hand, although for lack of money the equipment was still sadly defective. In the Army of Italy were nearly sixty-seven thousand men, a number which included all the garrisons and reserves of the coast towns and of Corsica. Its organization, like that of the other portions of the military power, had been simplified, and so strengthened. There were a commander-in-chief, a chief of staff, three generals of division, of whom Masséna was one, and thirteen generals of brigade, of whom one, Buonaparte, was the commander and inspector of artillery. The former was now thirty-four years old. His sire was a wine-dealer of a very humble sort, probably of Jewish blood, and the boy, Italian in origin and feeling, had almost no education. Throughout his wonderful career he was coarse, sullen, and greedy; nevertheless, as a soldier he was an inspired genius, ranked by many as the peer of Napoleon. Having served France for several years as an Italian mercenary, he resigned in 1789, settled in his native town of Nice, and married; but the stir of arms was irresistible and three years later he volunteered under the tricolor. His comrades at once elected him an officer, and in about a year he was head of a battalion, or colonel in our style. In the reorganization he was promoted to be a division general because of sheer merit. For sixteen years he had an unbroken record of success and won from Napoleon the caressing title: "Dear Child of Victory."
The younger Robespierre, with Ricord and Salicetti, were the "representatives of the people." The first of these was, to outward appearance, the leading spirit of the whole organism, and to his support Buonaparte was now thoroughly committed. The young artillery commander was considered by all at Nice to be a pronounced"Montagnard," that is, an extreme Jacobin. Augustin Robespierre had quickly learned to see and hear with the eyes and ears of his Corsican friend, whose fidelity seemed assured by hatred of Paoli and by a desire to recover the family estates in his native island. Many are pleased to discuss the question of Buonaparte's attitude toward the Jacobin terrorists. The dilemma they propose is that he was either a convinced and sincere terrorist or that he fawned on the terrorists from interested motives. This last appears to have been the opinion of Augustin Robespierre, the former that of his sister Marie, for the time an intimate friend of the Buonaparte sisters. Both at least have left these opinions on record in letters and memoirs. There is no need to impale ourselves on either horn, if we consider the youth as he was, feeling no responsibility whatever for the conditions into which he was thrown, taking the world as he found it and using its opportunities while they lasted. For the time and in that place there were terrorists: he made no confession of faith, avoided all snares, and served his adopted country as she was in fact with little reference to political shibboleths. He so served her then and henceforth that until he lost both his poise and his indispensable power, she laid herself at his feet and adored him. Whatever the ties which bound them at first, the ascendancy of Buonaparte over the young Robespierre was thorough in the end. His were the suggestions and the enterprises, the political conceptions, the military plans, the devices to obtain ways and means. It was probably his advice which was determinative in the scheme of operations finally adopted. With an astute and fertile brain, with a feverish energy and an unbounded ambition, Buonaparte must attack every problem or be wretched. Here was a most interesting one, complicated by geographical,political, naval, and military elements. That he seized it, considered it, and found some solution is inherently probable. The conclusion too has all the marks of his genius. Yet the glory of success was justly Masséna's. A select third of the troops were chosen and divided into three divisions to assume the offensive, under Masséna's direction, against the almost impregnable posts of the Austrians and Sardinians in the upper Apennines. The rest were held in garrison partly as a reserve, partly to overawe the newly annexed department of which Nice was the capital.
Genoa now stood in a peculiar relation to France. Her oligarchy, though called a republic, was in spirit the antipodes of French democracy. Her trade was essential to France, but English influence predominated in her councils and English force worked its will in her domains. In October, 1793, a French supply-ship had been seized by an English squadron in the very harbor. Soon afterward, by way of rejoinder to this act of violence, the French minister at Genoa was officially informed from Paris that as it appeared no longer possible for a French army to reach Lombardy by the direct route through the Apennines, it might be necessary to advance along the coast through Genoese territory. This announcement was no threat, but serious earnest; the plan had been carefully considered and was before long to be put into execution. It was merely as a feint that in April, 1794, hostilities were formally opened against Sardinia and Austria. Masséna seized Ventimiglia on the sixth. Advancing by Oneglia and Ormea, in the valley of the Stura, he turned the position of the allied Austrians and Sardinians, thus compelling them to evacuate their strongholds one by one, until on May seventh the pass of Tenda, leading direct into Lombardy, was abandoned by them.
The result of this movement was to infuse new enthusiasm into the army, while at the same time it set free, for offensive warfare, large numbers of the garrison troops in places now no longer in danger. Masséna wrote in terms of exultation of the devotion and endurance which his troops had shown in the sacred name of liberty. "They know how to conquer and never complain. Marching barefoot, and often without rations, they abuse no one, but sing the loved notes of 'Ça ira'—'T will go, 't will go! We'll make the creatures that surround the despot at Turin dance the Carmagnole!" Victor Amadeus, King of Sardinia, was an excellent specimen of the benevolent despot; it was he whom they meant. Augustin Robespierre wrote to his brother Maximilien, in Paris, that they had found the country before them deserted: forty thousand souls had fled from the single valley of Oneglia, having been terrified by the accounts of French savagery to women and children, and of their impiety in devastating the churches and religious establishments.
Whether the phenomenal success of this short campaign, which lasted but a month, was expected or not, nothing was done to improve it, and the advancing battalions suddenly stopped, as if to make the impression that they could go farther only by way of Genoese territory. Buonaparte would certainly have shared in the campaign had it been a serious attack; but, except to bring captured stores from Oneglia, he did nothing, devoting the months of May and June to the completion of his shore defenses, and living at Nice with his mother and her family. That famous and coquettish town was now the center of a gay republican society in which Napoleon and his pretty sisters were important persons. They were the constant companions of young Robespierre and Ricord. The former, amazed by theactivity of his friend's brain, the scope of his plans, and the terrible energy which marked his preparations, wrote of Napoleon that he was a man of "transcendent merit." Marmont, speaking of Napoleon's charm at this time, says: "There was so much future in his mind.... He had acquired an ascendancy over the representatives which it is impossible to describe." He also declares, and Salicetti, too, repeatedly asseverated, that Buonaparte was the "man, the plan-maker" of the Robespierres.
The impression which Salicetti and Marmont expressed was doubtless due to the conclusions of a council of war held on May twentieth by the leaders of the two armies—of the Alps and of Italy—to concert a plan of coöperation. Naturally each group of generals desired the foremost place for the army it represented. Buonaparte overrode all objections, and compelled the acceptance of a scheme entirely his own, which with some additions and by careful elaboration ultimately developed into the famous plan of campaign in Italy. These circumstances are noteworthy. Again and again it has been charged that this grand scheme was bodily stolen from the papers of his great predecessors, one in particular, of whom more must be said in the sequel. Napoleon was a student and an omnivorous reader, he knew what others had done and written; but the achievement which launched him on his career was due to the use of his own senses, to his own assimilation and adaptation of other men's experiences and theories, which had everything to commend them except that perfection of detail and energy of command which led to actual victory. But affairs in Genoa were becoming so menacing that for the moment they demanded the exclusive attention of the French authorities. Austrian troops had disregarded her neutrality and trespassed on her territory; the land was full of French deserters,and England, recalling her successes in the same line during the American Revolution, had established a press in the city for printing counterfeit French money, which was sent by secret mercantile communications to Marseilles, and there was put into circulation. It was consequently soon determined to amplify greatly the plan of campaign, and likewise to send a mission to Genoa. Buonaparte was himself appointed the envoy, and thus became the pivot of both movements—that against Piedmont and that against Genoa.[Back to Contents]
Signs of Maturity — The Mission to Genoa — Course of the French Republic — The "Terror" — Thermidor — Buonaparte a Scapegoat — His Prescience — Adventures of His Brothers — Napoleon's Defense of His French Patriotism — Bloodshedding for Amusement — New Expedition Against Corsica — Buonaparte's Advice for Its Conduct.
1794.
Buonaparte's plan for combining operations against both Genoa and Sardinia was at first hazy. In his earliest efforts to expand and clarify it, he wrote a rambling document, still in existence, which draws a contrast between the opposite policies to be adopted with reference to Italy and Spain. In it he also calls attention to the scarcity of officers suitable for concerted action in a great enterprise, and a remark concerning the course to be pursued in this particular case contains the germ of his whole military system. "Combine your forces in a war, as in a siege, on one point. The breach once made, equilibrium is destroyed, everything else is useless, and the place is taken. Do not conceal, but concentrate, your attack." In the matter of politics he sees Germany as the main prop of opposition to democracy; Spain is to be dealt with on the defensive, Italy on the offensive. But, contrary to what he actually did in the following year, he advises against proceeding too far into Piedmont, lest the adversary should gain the advantage of position. This paper Robespierre the younger had in his pocket when he left for Paris, summoned to aid his brother in difficulties which were now pressing fast upon him.
Ricord was left behind to direct, at least nominally, the movements both of the armies and of the embassy to Genoa. Buonaparte continued to be the real power. Military operations having been suspended to await the result of diplomacy, his instructions from Ricord were drawn so as to be loose and merely formal. On July eleventh he started from Nice, reaching his destination three days later. During the week of his stay—for he left again on the twenty-first—the envoy made his representations, and laid down his ultimatum that the republic of Genoa should preserve absolute neutrality, neither permitting troops to pass over its territories, nor lending aid in the construction of military roads, as she was charged with doing secretly. His success in overawing the oligarchy was complete, and a written promise of compliance to these demands was made by the Doge. Buonaparte arrived again in Nice on the twenty-eighth. We may imagine that as he traveled the romantic road between the mountains and the sea, the rising general and diplomat indulged in many rosy dreams, probably feeling already on his shoulders the insignia of a commander-in-chief. But he was returning to disgrace, if not to destruction. A week after his arrival came the stupefying news that the hour-glass had once again been reversed, that on the very day of his own exultant return to Nice, Robespierre's head had fallen, that the Mountain was shattered, and that the land was again staggering to gain its balance after another political earthquake.
The shock had been awful, but it was directly traceable to the accumulated disorders of Jacobin rule. A rude and vigorous but eerie order of things had been inaugurated on November twenty-fourth, 1793, by the so-called republic. There was first the new calendar, in which the year I began on September twenty-second,1792, the day on which the republic had been proclaimed. In it were the twelve thirty-day months, with their names of vintage, fog, and frost; of snow, rain, and wind; of bud, flower, and meadow; of seed, heat, and harvest: the whole terminated most unpoetically by the five or six supplementary days named sansculot-tides,—sansculottes meaning without knee-breeches, a garment confined to the upper classes; that is, with long trousers like the common people,—and these days were so named because they were to be a holiday for the long-trousered populace which was to use the new reckoning. There was next the new, strange, and unhallowed spectacle, seen in history for the first time, the realization of a nightmare—a whole people finally turned into an army, and at war with nearly all the world. The reforming Girondists had created the situation, and the Jacobins, with grim humor, were unflinchingly facing the logical consequences of such audacity. Carnot had given the watchword of attack in mass and with superior numbers; the times gave the frenzied courage of sentimental exaltation. Before the end of 1793 the foreign enemies of France, though not conquered, had been checked on the frontier; the outbreak of civil war in Vendée had been temporarily suppressed; both Lyons and Toulon had been retaken.
Robespierre,St.Just, Couthon, and Billaud-Varennes were theorists after the manner of Rousseau. Their new gospel of social regeneration embraced democracy, civic virtue, moral institutions, and public festivals. These were their shibboleths and catch-words. Incidentally they extolled paternalism in government, general conscription, compulsory military service, and, on the very eve of the greatest industrial revival known to history, a return to agricultural society! The sanction of all this was not moral suasion: essential to the system wasSpartan simplicity and severity, compulsion was the means to their utopia.[40]The Jacobins were nothing if not thorough; and here was another new and awful thing—the "Terror"—which had broken loose with its foul furies of party against party through all the land. It seemed at last as if it were exhausting itself, though for a time it had grown in intensity as it spread in extent. It had created three factions in the Mountain. Early in 1794 there remained but a little handful of avowed and still eager terrorists in the Convention—Hébert and his friends. These were the atheists who had abolished religion and the past, bowing down before the fetish which they dubbed Reason. They were seized and put to death on March twenty-fourth. There then remained the cliques of Danton and Robespierre; the former claiming the name of moderates, and telling men to be calm, the latter with no principle but devotion to a person who claimed to be the regenerator of society. These hero-worshipers were for a time victorious. Danton, like Hébert, was foully murdered, and Robespierre remained alone, virtually dictator. But his theatrical conduct in decreeing by law the existence of a Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul, and in organizing tawdry festivals to supply the place of worship, utterly embittered against him both atheists and pious people. In disappointed rage at his failure, he laid aside the characters of prophet and mild saint to give vent to his natural wickedness and to become a devil.
During the long days of June and July there raged again a carnival of blood, known to history as the "Great Terror." In less than seven weeks upward of twelvehundred victims were immolated. The unbridled license of the guillotine broadened as it ran. First the aristocrats had fallen, then royalty, then their sympathizers, then the hated rich, then the merely well-to-do, and lastly anybody not cringing to existing power. The reaction against Robespierre was one of universal fear. Its inception was the work of Tallien, Fouché, Barras, Carrier, Fréron, and the like, men of vile character, who knew that if Robespierre could maintain his pose of the "Incorruptible" their doom was sealed. In this sense Robespierre was what Napoleon called him atSt.Helena, "the scapegoat of the Revolution." The uprising of these accomplices was, however, the opportunity long desired by the better elements in Parisian society, and the two antipodal classes made common cause. Dictator as Robespierre wished to be, he was formed of other stuff, for when the reckoning came his brutal violence was cowed. On July twenty-seventh (the ninth of Thermidor), the Convention turned on him in rebellion, extreme radicals and moderate conservatives combining for the effort. Terrible scenes were enacted. The sections of Paris were divided, some for the Convention, some for Robespierre. The artillerymen who were ordered by the latter to batter down the part of theTuilerieswhere his enemies were sitting hesitated and disobeyed; at once all resistance to the decrees of the Convention died out. The dictator would have been his own executioner, but his faltering terrors stopped him midway in his half-committed suicide. He and his brother, with their friends, were seized, and beheaded on the morrow. With the downfall of Robespierre went the last vestige of social or political authority; for the Convention was no longer trusted by the nation—the only organized power with popular support which was left was the army.
This was the news which, traveling southward, finally reached Toulon, Marseilles, and Nice, cities where Robespierre's stanchest adherents were flaunting their newly gained importance. No wonder if the brains of common men reeled. The recent so-called parties had disappeared for the moment like wraiths. The victorious group in the Convention, now known as the Thermidorians, was compounded of elements from them both, and claimed to represent the whole of France as the wretched factions who had so long controlled the government had never done. Where now should those who had been active supporters of the late administration turn for refuge? The Corsicans who had escaped from the island at the same time with Salicetti and the Buonapartes were nearly all with the Army of Italy. Employment had been given to them, but, having failed to keep Corsica for France, they were not in favor. It had already been remarked in the Committee of Public Safety that their patriotism was less manifest than their disposition to enrich themselves. This too was the opinion of many among their own countrymen, especially of their own partisans shut up in Bastia or Calvi and deserted. Salicetti, ever ready for emergencies, was not disconcerted by this one; and with adroit baseness turned informer, denouncing as a suspicious schemer his former protégé and lieutenant, of whose budding greatness he was now well aware. He was apparently both jealous and alarmed. Possibly, however, the whole procedure was a ruse; in the critical juncture the apparent traitor was by this conduct able efficiently to succor and save his compatriot.
Buonaparte's mission to Genoa had been openly political; secretly it was also a military reconnaissance, and his confidential instructions, virtually dictated by himself, had unfortunately leaked out. They had directedhim to examine the fortifications in and about both Savona and Genoa, to investigate the state of the Genoese artillery, to inform himself as to the behavior of the French envoy to the republic, to learn as much as possible of the intentions of the oligarchy—in short, to gather all information useful for the conduct of a war "the result of which it is impossible to foresee." Buonaparte, knowing now that he had trodden dangerous ground in his unauthorized and secret dealings with the younger Robespierre, and probably foreseeing the coming storm, began to shorten sail immediately upon reaching Nice. Either he was prescient and felt the new influences in the air, or else a letter now in the war office at Paris, and purporting to have been written on August seventh to Tilly, the French agent at Genoa, is an antedated fabrication written later for Salicetti's use.[41]Speaking, in this paper, of Robespierre the younger, he said: "I was a little touched by the catastrophe, for I loved him and thought him spotless. But were it my own father, I would stab him to the heart if he aspired to become a tyrant." If the letter be genuine, as is probable, the writer was very far-sighted. He knew that its contents would speedily reach Paris in the despatches of Tilly, so that it was virtually a public renunciation of Jacobinism at the earliest possible date, an anchor to windward in the approaching tempest. But momentarily the trick was of no avail; he was first superseded in his command, then arrested on August tenth, and, fortunately for himself, imprisoned two days later in Fort Carré, near Antibes, instead of being sent direct to Paris as some of his friends were. This temporary shelter from the devastating blast he owed to Salicetti, who would, no doubt, without hesitation have destroyed a friend for his own safety, but waswilling enough to spare him if not driven to extremity.
As the true state of things in Corsica began to be known in France, there was a general disposition to blame and punish the influential men who had brought things to such a desperate pass and made the loss of the island probable, if not certain. Salicetti, Multedo, and the rest quickly unloaded the whole blame on Buonaparte's shoulders, so that he had many enemies in Paris. Thus by apparent harshness to one whom he still considered a subordinate, the real culprit escaped suspicion. Assured of immunity from punishment himself, Salicetti was content with his rival's humiliation, and felt no real rancor toward the family. This is clear from his treatment of Louis Buonaparte, who had fallen from place and favor along with his brother, but was by Salicetti's influence soon afterward made an officer of the home guard at Nice. Joseph had rendered himself conspicuous in the very height of the storm by a brilliant marriage; but neither he nor Fesch was arrested, and both managed to pull through with whole skins. The noisy Lucien was also married, but to a girl who, though respectable, was poor; and in consequence he was thoroughly frightened at the thought of losing his means of support. But though menaced with arrest, he was sufficiently insignificant to escape for the time.
Napoleon was kept in captivity but thirteen days. Salicetti apparently found it easier than he had supposed to exculpate himself from the charge either of participating in Robespierre's conspiracy or of having brought about the Corsican insurrection. More than this, he found himself firm in the good graces of the Thermidorians, among whom his old friends Barras and Fréron were held in high esteem. It would therefore be a simple thing to liberate General Buonaparte, if only a properexpression of opinion could be secured from him. The clever prisoner had it ready before it was needed. To the faithful Junot he wrote a kindly note declining to be rescued by a body of friends organized to storm the prison or scale its walls.[42]Such a course would have compromised him further. But to the "representatives of the people" he wrote in language which finally committed him for life. He explained that in a revolutionary epoch there are but two classes of men, patriots and suspects. It could easily be seen to which class a man belonged who had fought both intestine and foreign foes. "I have sacrificed residence in my department, I have abandoned all my goods, I have lost all for the republic. Since then I have served at Toulon with some distinction, and I have deserved a share with the Army of Italy in the laurels it earned at the taking of Saorgio, Oneglia, and Tanaro. On the discovery of Robespierre's conspiracy, my conduct was that of a man accustomed to regard nothing but principle." The letter concludes with a passionate appeal to each one of the controlling officials separately and by name, that is, to both Salicetti and Albitte, for justice and restoration. "An hour later, if the wicked want my life, I will gladly give it to them, I care so little for it, I weary so often of it! Yes; the idea that it may be still useful to my country is all that makes me bear the burden with courage." The word for country which he employed,patrie, could only be interpreted as referring to France.
Salicetti in person went through the form of examining the papers offered in proof of Buonaparte's statements; found them, as a matter of course, satisfactory; and the commissioners restored the suppliant to partial liberty, but not to his post. He was to remain at army headquarters, and the still terrible Committee of Safety wasto receive regular reports of his doings. This, too, was but a subterfuge; on August twentieth he was restored to his rank. A few weeks later commissioners from the Thermidorians arrived, with orders that for the present all offensive operations in Italy were to be suspended in order to put the strength of the district into a maritime expedition against Rome and ultimately against Corsica, which was now in the hands of England. Buonaparte immediately sought, and by Salicetti's favor obtained, the important charge of equipping and inspecting the artillery destined for the enterprise. He no doubt hoped to make the venture tell in his personal interest against the English party now triumphant in his home. This was the middle of September. Before beginning to prepare for the Corsican expedition, the army made a final demonstration to secure its lines. It was during the preparatory days of this short campaign that a dreadful incident occurred. Buonaparte had long since learned the power of women, and had been ardently attentive in turn both toMme.Robespierre and toMme.Ricord. "It was a great advantage to please them," he said; "for in a lawless time a representative of the people is a real power."Mme.Turreau, wife of one of the new commissioners, was now the ascendant star in his attentions. One day, while walking arm in arm with her near the top of the Tenda pass, Buonaparte took a sudden freak to show her what war was like, and ordered the advance-guard to charge the Austrian pickets. The attack was not only useless, but it endangered the safety of the army; yet it was made according to command, and human blood was shed. The story was told by Napoleon himself, at the close of his life, in a tone of repentance, but with evident relish.[43]
Buonaparte was present at the ensuing victories, but only as a well-informed spectator and adviser, for he was yet in nominal disgrace. Within five days the enemies' lines were driven back so as to leave open the two most important roads into Italy—that by the valley of the Bormida to Alessandria, and that by the shore to Genoa. The difficult pass of Tenda fell entirely into French hands. The English could not disembark their troops to strengthen the Allies. The commerce of Genoa with Marseilles was reëstablished by land. "We have celebrated the fifth sansculottide of the yearII(September twenty-first, 1794) in a manner worthy of the republic and the National Convention," wrote the commissioners to their colleagues in Paris. On the twenty-fourth, General Buonaparte was released by them from attendance at headquarters, thus becoming once again a free man and his own master. He proceeded immediately to Toulon in order to prepare for the Corsican expedition. Once more the power of a great nation was, he hoped, to be directed against the land of his birth, and he was an important agent in the plan.
To regain, if possible, some of his lost influence in the island, Buonaparte had already renewed communication with former acquaintances in Ajaccio. In a letter written immediately after his release in September, 1794, to the Corsican deputy Multedo, he informed his correspondent that his birthplace was the weakest spot on the island, and open to attack. The information was correct. Paoli had made an effort to strengthen it, but without success. "To drive the English," said the writer of the letter, "from a position which makes them masters of the Mediterranean, ... to emancipate a large number of good patriots still to be found in that department, and to restore to their firesides the goodrepublicans who have deserved the care of their country by the generous manner in which they have suffered for it,—this, my friend, is the expedition which should occupy the attention of the government." His fortune was in a sense dependent on success: the important position of artillery inspector could not be held by an absentee and it was soon filled by the appointment of a rival compatriot, Casabianca. In the event of failure Buonaparte would be destitute. Perhaps the old vista of becoming a Corsican hero opened up once again to a sore and disappointed man, but it is not probable: the horizon of his life had expanded too far to be again contracted, and the present task was probably considered but as a bridge to cross once more the waters of bitterness. On success or failure hung his fate. Two fellow-adventurers were Junot and Marmont. The former was the child of plain French burghers, twenty-three years old, a daring, swaggering youth, indifferent to danger, already an intimate of Napoleon's, having been his secretary at Toulon. His chequered destiny was interwoven with that of his friend and he came to high position. But though faithful to the end, he was always erratic and troublesome; and in an attack of morbid chagrin he came to a violent end in 1813. The other comrade was but a boy of twenty, the son of an officer who, though of the lower nobility, was a convinced revolutionary. The boys had met several years earlier at Dijon and again as young men at Toulon, where the friendship was knitted which grew closer and closer for twenty years. At Wagram, Marmont became a marshal. Already he had acquired habits of luxurious ease and the doubtful fortunes of his Emperor exasperated him into critical impatience. He so magnified his own importance that at last he deserted. The labored memoirs he wrote are theapology for his life and for his treachery. Though without great genius, he was an able man and an industrious recorder of valuable impressions. Not one of the three accomplished anything during the Corsican expedition; their common humiliation probably commended both of his junior comrades to Buonaparte's tenderness, and thereafter both enjoyed much of his confidence, especially Marmont, in whom it was utterly misplaced.[Back to Contents]
The English Conquest of Corsica — Effects in Italy — The Buonapartes at Toulon — Napoleon Thwarted Again — Departure for Paris — His Character Determined — His Capacities — Reaction From the "Terror" — Resolutions of the Convention — Parties in France — Their Lack of Experience — A New Constitution — Different Views of Its Value.
1795.
The turmoils of civil war in France had now left Corsica to her own pursuits for many months. Her internal affairs had gone from bad to worse, and Paoli, unable to control his fierce and wilful people, had found himself helpless. Compelled to seek the support of some strong foreign power, he had instinctively turned to England, and the English fleet, driven from Toulon, was finally free to help him. On February seventeenth, 1794, it entered the fine harbor ofSt.Florent, and captured the town without an effort. Establishing a depot which thus separated the two remaining centers of French influence, Calvi and Bastia, the English admiral next laid siege to the latter. The place made a gallant defense, holding out for over three months, until on May twenty-second Captain Horatio Nelson, who had virtually controlled operations for eighty-eight days continuously,—nearly the entire time,—directed the guns of theAgamemnonwith such destructive force against the little city that when the land forces fromSt.Florent appeared it was weakened beyond the power of resistance and surrendered.[44]Theterms made by its captors were the easiest known to modern warfare, the conquered being granted all the honors of war. As a direct and immediate result, the Corsican estates met, and declared the island a constitutional monarchy under the protection of England. Sir Gilbert Elliot was appointed viceroy, and Paoli was recalled by GeorgeIIIto England. On August tenth fell Calvi, the last French stronghold in the country, hitherto considered impregnable by the Corsicans.
The presence of England so close to Italian shores immediately produced throughout Lombardy and Tuscany a reaction of feeling in favor of the French Revolution and its advanced ideas. The Committee of Safety meant to take advantage of this sentiment and reduce the Italian powers to the observance of strict neutrality at least, if nothing more. They hoped to make a demonstration at Leghorn and punish Rome for an insult to the republic still unavenged—the death of the French minister, in 1793, at the hands of a mob; perhaps they might also drive the British from Corsica. This explained the arrival of the commissioners at Nice with the order to cease operations against Sardinia and Austria, for the purpose of striking at English influence in Italy, and possibly in Corsica.
Everything but one was soon in readiness. To meet the English fleet, the shipwrights at Toulon must prepare a powerful squadron. They did not complete their gigantic task until February nineteenth, 1795. We can imagine the intense activity of any man of great power, determined to reconquer a lost position: what Buonaparte's fire and zeal must have been we can scarcely conceive; even his fiercest detractors bear witness to the activity of those months. When the order to embark was given, his organization and material were both as nearly perfect as possible. His motherhad brought the younger children to a charming house near by, where she entertained the influential women of the neighborhood; and thither her busy son often withdrew for the pleasures of a society which he was now beginning thoroughly to enjoy. Thanks to the social diplomacy of this most ingenious family, everything went well for a time, even with Lucien; and Louis, now sixteen, was made a lieutenant of artillery. At the last moment came what seemed the climax of Napoleon's good fortune, the assurance that the destination of the fleet would be Corsica. Peace was made with Tuscany. Rome could not be reached without a decisive engagement with the English; therefore the first object of the expedition would be to engage the British squadron which was cruising about Corsica. Victory would of course mean entrance into Corsican harbors.
On March eleventh the new fleet set sail. In its very first encounter with the English on March thirteenth the fleet successfully manœuvered and just saved a fine eighty-gun ship, theÇa Ira, from capture by Nelson. Next day there was a partial fleet action which ended in a disaster, and two fine ships were captured, theÇa Iraand theCenseur; the others fled to Hyères, where the troops were disembarked from their transports, and sent back to their posts.[45]Naval operations were not resumed for three months. Once more Buonaparte was the victim of uncontrollable circumstance. Destitute of employment, stripped even of the little credit gained in the last half-year,[46]he stood for the seventh time on the threshold of the world, a suppliant at the door. In some respects he was worse equipped for success than at the beginning, for he nowhad a record to expunge. To an outsider the spring of 1795 must have appeared the most critical period of his life.[47]He himself knew better; in fact, this ill-fated expedition was probably soon forgotten altogether. In hisSt.Helena reminiscences, at least, he never recalled it: at that time he was not fond of mentioning his failures, little or great, being chiefly concerned to hand himself down to history as a man of lofty purposes and unsullied motives. Besides, he was never in the slightest degree responsible for the terrible waste of millions in this ill-starred maritime enterprise; all his own plans had been for the conduct of the war by land.
The Corsican administration had always had in it at least one French representative. Between the latest of these, Lacombe Saint-Michel, now a member of the Committee of Safety, and the Salicetti party no love was ever lost. It was a general feeling that the refugee Corsicans on the Mediterranean shore were too near their home. They were always charged with unscrupulous planning to fill their own pockets. Now, somehow or other, inexplicably perhaps, but nevertheless certainly, a costly expedition had been sent to Corsica under the impulse of these very men, and it had failed. The unlucky adventurers had scarcely set their feet on shore before Lacombe secured Buonaparte's appointment to the Army of the West, where he would be far from old influences, with orders to proceed immediately to his post. The papers reached Marseilles, whither the Buonapartes had already betaken themselves, during the month of April. On May second,[48]accompanied by Louis, Junot, and Marmont, the broken general setout for Paris, where he arrived with his companions eight days later, and rented shabby lodgings in the Fossés-Montmartre, now Aboukir street. The style of the house was Liberty Hotel.
At this point Buonaparte's apprentice years may be said to have ended: he was virtually the man he remained to the end. A Corsican by origin, he retained the national sensibility and an enormous power of endurance both physical and intellectual, together with the dogged persistence found in the medieval Corsicans. He was devoted with primitive virtue to his family and his people, but was willing to sacrifice the latter, at least, to his ambition. His moral sense, having never been developed by education, and, worse than that, having been befogged by the extreme sensibility of Rousseau and by the chaos of the times which that prophet had brought to pass, was practically lacking. Neither the hostility of his father to religion, nor his own experiences with the Jesuits, could, however, entirely eradicate a superstition which passed in his mind for faith. Sometimes he was a scoffer, as many with weak convictions are; but in general he preserved a formal and outward respect for the Church. He was, however, a stanch opponent of Roman centralization and papal pretensions. His theoretical education had been narrow and one-sided; but his reading and his authorship, in spite of their superficial and desultory character, had given him certain large and fairly definite conceptions of history and politics. But his practical education! What a polishing and sharpening he had had against the revolving world moving many times faster then than in most ages! He was an adept in the art of civil war, for he had been not merely an interested observer, but an active participant in it during five years in two countries. Long the victim of wiles moresecret than his own, he had finally grown most wily in diplomacy; an ambitious politician, his pulpy principles were republican in their character so far as they had any tissue or firmness.
His acquisitions in the science of war were substantial and definite. Neither a martinet himself nor in any way tolerant of routine, ignorant in fact of many hateful details, among others of obedience, he yet rose far above tradition or practice in his conception of strategy. He was perceptibly superior to the world about him in almost every aptitude, and particularly so in power of combination, in originality, and in far-sightedness. He could neither write nor spell correctly, but he was skilled in all practical applications of mathematics: town and country, mountains and plains, seas and rivers, were all quantities in his equations. Untrustworthy himself, he strove to arouse trust, faith, and devotion in those about him; and concealing successfully his own purpose, he read the hearts of others like an open book. Of pure-minded affection for either men or women he had so far shown only a little, and had experienced in return even less; but he had studied the arts of gallantry, and understood the leverage of social forces. To these capacities, some embryonic, some perfectly formed, add the fact that he was now a cosmopolitan, and there will be outline, relief, and color to his character. "I am in that frame of mind," he said of himself about this time, "in which men are when on the eve of battle, with a persistent conviction that since death is imminent in the end, to be uneasy is folly. Everything makes me brave death and destiny; and if this goes on, I shall in the end, my friend, no longer turn when a carriage passes. My reason is sometimes astonished at all this; but it is the effect produced on me by the moral spectacle of this land [ce pays-ci, notpatrie], and by thehabit of running risks." This is the power and the temper of a man of whom an intimate and confidential friend predicted that he would never stop short until he had mounted either the throne or the scaffold.
The overthrow of Robespierre was the result of an alliance between what have been called the radicals and the conservatives in the Convention. Both were Jacobins, for the Girondists had been discredited, and put out of doors. It was not, however, the Convention, but Paris, which took command of the resulting movement. The social structure of France has been so strong, and the nation so homogeneous, that political convulsions have had much less influence there than elsewhere. But the "Terror" had struck at the heart of nearly every family of consequence in the capital, and the people were utterly weary of horrors. The wave of reaction began when the would-be dictator fell. A wholesome longing for safety, with its attendant pleasures, overpowered society, and light-heartedness returned. Underneath this temper lay but partly concealed a grim determination not to be thwarted, which awed the Convention. Slowly, yet surely, the Jacobins lost their power. As once the whole land had been mastered by the idea of "federation," and as a later patriotic impulse had given as a watchword "the nation," so now another refrain was in every mouth—"humanity." The very songs of previous stages, the"Ça ira"and the "Carmagnole," were displaced by new and milder ones. With Paris in this mood, it was clear that the proscribed might return, and the Convention, for its intemperate severity, must abdicate.
This, of course, meant a new political experiment; but being, as they were, sanguine admirers of Rousseau, the French felt no apprehension at the prospect. The constitution of the third republic in France has beenconsidered a happy chance by many. Far from being perfectly adapted to the needs of the nation, the fine qualities it possesses are the outcome, not of chance, nor of theory, but of a century's experience. It should be remembered that France in the eighteenth century had had no experience whatever of constitutional government, and the spirit of the age was all for theory in politics. Accordingly the democratic monarchy of 1791 had failed because, its framework having been built of empty visions, its constitution was entirely in the air. The same fate had now overtaken the Girondist experiment of 1792 and the Jacobin usurpation of the following year, which was ostensibly sanctioned by the popular adoption of a new constitution. With perfect confidence in Rousseau's idea that government is based on a social contract between individuals, the nation had sworn its adhesion to two constitutions successively, and had ratified the act each time by appropriate solemnities. Already the bubble of such a conception had been punctured. Was it strange that the Convention determined to repeat the same old experiment? Not at all. They knew nothing better than the old idea, and never doubted that the fault lay, not in the system, but in its details; they believed they could improve on the work of their predecessors by the change and modification of particulars. Aware, therefore, that their own day had passed, they determined, before dissolving, to construct a new and improved form of government. The work was confided to a committee of eleven, most of whom were Girondists recalled for the purpose in order to hoodwink the public. They now separated the executive and judiciary from each other and from the legislature, divided the latter into two branches, so as to cool the heat of popular sentiment before it was expressed in statutes, and, avoiding the pitfall dug for itself bythe National Assembly, made members of the Convention eligible for election under the new system.
If the monarchy could have been restored at the same time, these features of the new charter would have reproduced in France some elements of the British constitution, and its adoption would probably have pacified the dynastic rulers of Europe. But the restoration of monarchy in any form was as yet impossible. The Bourbons had utterly discredited royalty, and the late glorious successes had been won partly by the lavish use in the enemy's camp of money raised and granted by radical democrats, partly by the prowess of enthusiastic republicans. The compact, efficient organization of the national army was the work of the Jacobins, and while the Mountain was discredited in Paris, it was not so in the provinces; moreover, the army which was on foot and in the field was in the main a Jacobin army. Royalty was so hated by most Frenchmen that the sad plight of the child dauphin, dying by inches in the Temple, awakened no compassion, and its next lineal representative was that hated thing, a voluntary exile; the nobility, who might have furnished the material for a French House of Lords, were traitors to their country, actually bearing arms in the levies of her foes. The national feeling was a passion; LouisXVIhad been popular enough until he had outraged it first by ordering the Church to remain obedient to Rome, and then by appealing to foreign powers for protection. The emigrant nobles had stumbled over one another in their haste to manifest their contempt for nationality by throwing themselves into the arms of their own class in foreign lands.
Moreover, another work of the Revolution could not be undone. The lands of both the emigrants and the Church had either been seized and divided among theadherents of the new order, or else appropriated to state uses. Restitution was out of the question, for the power of the new owners was sufficient to destroy any one who should propose to take away their possessions. This is a fact particularly to be emphasized, because, making all allowances, the subsequent history of France has been determined by the alliance of a landed peasantry with the petty burghers of the cities and towns. What both have always desired is a strong hand in government which assures their property rights. Whenever any of the successive forms and methods has failed its fate was doomed. In this temper of the masses, in the flight of the ruling class, in the distemper of the radical democracy, a constitutional monarchy was unthinkable. A presidential government on the model of that devised and used by the United States was equally impossible, because the French appear already to have had a premonition or an instinct that a ripe experience of liberty was essential to the working of such an institution. The student of the revolutionary times will become aware how powerful the feeling already was among the French that a single strong executive, elected by the masses, would speedily turn into a tyrant. They have now a nominal president; but his election is indirect, his office is representative, not political, and his duties are like an impersonal, colorless reflection of those performed by the English crown. The constitution-makers simply could not fall back on an experience of successful free government which did not exist. Absolute monarchy had made gradual change impossible, for oppression dies only in convulsions. Experience was in front, not behind, and must be gained through suffering.