It was therefore a grim necessity which led the Thermidorians of the Convention to try another political nostrum. What should it be? There had always beena profound sense in France of her historic continuity with Rome. Her system of jurisprudence, her speech, her church, her very land, were Roman. Recalling this, the constitution-framers also recollected that these had been the gifts of imperial and Christian Rome. It was a curious but characteristic whim which consequently suggested to the enemies of ecclesiasticism the revival of Roman forms dating from the heathen commonwealth. This it was which led them to commit the administration of government in both external and internal relations to a divided executive. There, however, the resemblance to Rome ended, for instead of two consuls there were to be five directors. These were to sit as a committee, to appoint their own ministerial agents, together with all officers and officials of the army, and to fill the few positions in the administrative departments which were not elective, except those in the treasury, which was a separate, independent administration. All executive powers except those of the treasury were likewise to be in their hands. They were to have no veto, and their treaties of peace must be ratified by the legislature; but they could declare war without consulting any one. The judiciary was to be elected directly by the people, and the judges were to hold office for about a year. The legislature was to be separated into a senate with two hundred and fifty members, called the Council of Ancients, which had the veto power, and an assembly called the Council of Juniors, or, more popularly, from its number, the Five Hundred, which had the initiative in legislation. The members of the former must be at least forty years old and married; every aspirant for a seat in the latter must be twenty-five and of good character. Both these bodies were alike to be elected by universal suffrage working indirectly through secondary electors, andlimited by educational and property qualifications. There were many wholesome checks and balances. This constitution is known as that of I Vendémiaire, AnIV, or September twenty-second, 1795. It became operative on October twenty-sixth.
The scheme was formed, as was intended, under Girondist influence, and was acceptable to the nation as a whole. In spite of many defects, it might after a little experience have been amended so as to work, if the people had been united and hearty in its support. But they were not. The Thermidorians, who were still Jacobins at heart, ordered that at least two-thirds of the men elected to sit in the new houses should have been members of the Convention, on the plea that they alone had sufficient experience of affairs to carry on the public business, at least for the present. Perhaps this was intended as some offset to the enforced closing of the Jacobin Club on November twelfth, 1794, due to menaces by the higher classes of Parisian society, known to history as "the gilded youth." On the other hand, the royalists saw in the new constitution an instrument ready to their hand, should public opinion, in its search for means to restore quiet and order, be carried still further away from the Revolution than the movement of Thermidor had swept it. Their conduct justified the measures of the Jacobins.[Back to Contents]
Punishment of the Terrorists — Dangers of the Thermidorians — Successes of Republican Arms — Some Republican Generals — Military Prodigies — The Treaty of Basel — Vendean Disorders Repressed — A "White Terror" — Royalist Activity — Friction Under the New Constitution — Arrival of Buonaparte in Paris — Paris Society — Its Power — The People Angry — Resurgence of Jacobinism — Buonaparte's Dejection — His Relations withMme.Permon — His Magnanimity.
1795.
From time to time after the events of Thermidor the more active agents of the Terror were sentenced to transportation, and the less guilty were imprisoned. On May seventh, 1795, three days before Buonaparte's arrival in Paris, Fouquier-Tinville, and fifteen other wretches who had been but tools, the executioners of the revolutionary tribunal, were put to death. The National Guard had been reorganized, and Pichegru was recalled from the north to take command of the united forces in Paris under a committee of the Convention with Barras at its head.
This was intended to overawe those citizens of Paris who were hostile to the Jacobins. They saw the trap set for them, and were angry. During the years of internal disorder and foreign warfare just passed the economic conditions of the land had grown worse and worse, until, in the winter of 1794-95, the laboring classes of Paris were again on the verge of starvation. As usual, they attributed their sufferings to the government, and there were bread riots. Twice in the springof 1795—on April first and May twentieth—the unemployed and hungry rose to overthrow the Convention, but they were easily put down by the soldiers on both occasions. The whole populace, as represented by the sections or wards of Paris, resented this use of armed force, and grew uneasy. The Thermidorians further angered it by introducing a new metropolitan administration, which greatly diminished the powers and influence of the sections, without, however, destroying their organization. The people of the capital, therefore, were ready for mischief. The storming of theTuilerieson August tenth, 1792, had been the work of the Paris mob. Why could they not in turn, another mob, reactionary and to a degree even royalist, overthrow the tyranny of the Jacobins as they themselves had overthrown the double-faced administration of the King?
A crisis might easily have been precipitated before Buonaparte's arrival in Paris, but it was delayed by events outside the city. The year 1794 had been a brilliant season for the republican arms and for republican diplomacy. We have seen how the Piedmontese were forced beyond the maritime Alps; the languid and worthless troops of Spain were expelled from the Pyrenean strongholds and forced southward; in some places, beyond the Ebro. Pichegru, with the Army of the North, had driven the invaders from French soil and had conquered the Austrian Netherlands. Jourdan, with the Army of the Sambre and Meuse, had defeated the Austrians at Fleurus in a battle decided by the bravery of Marceau, thus confirming the conquest. Other generals were likewise rising to eminence. Hoche had in 1793 beaten the Austrians under Wurmser at Weissenburg, and driven them from Alsace. He had now further heightened his fame by his successes againstthe insurgents of the west. Saint-Cyr, Bernadotte, and Kléber, with many others of Buonaparte's contemporaries, had also risen to distinction in minor engagements.
Of peasant birth, Pichegru was nevertheless appointed by ecclesiastical influence as a scholar at Brienne. In the dearth of generals he was selected for promotion by Saint-Just as was Hoche at the time when Carnot discovered Jourdan. Having assisted Hoche in the conquest of Alsace when a division general and only thirty-two years old, he began the next year, in 1794, to deploy his extraordinary powers, and with Moreau as second in command he swept the English and Austrians out of the Netherlands. Both these generals were sensitive and jealous men; after brilliant careers under the republic they turned royalists and came to unhappy ends. Moreau was two years the junior. He was the son of a Breton lawyer and rose to notice both as a local politician, and as a volunteer captain in the Breton struggles for independence with which he had no sympathy. As a great soldier he ranks with Hoche after Napoleon in the revolutionary time. Hoche was younger still, having been born in 1768. In 1784 he enlisted as a common soldier and rose from the ranks by sheer ability. He died at the age of thirty, but as a politician and strategist he was already famous. Kléber was an Alsatian who had been educated in the military school at Munich and was already forty-one years old. Having enlisted under the Revolution as a volunteer, he so distinguished himself on the Rhine that he was swiftly promoted; but, thwarted in his ambition to have an independent command, he lost his ardor and did not again distinguish himself until he secured service under Napoleon in Egypt. There he exhibited such capacity that he was regarded as one of Bonaparte'srivals. He was assassinated by an Oriental in Cairo. Bernadotte was four years the senior of Bonaparte, the son of a lawyer in Paris. He too enlisted in the ranks, as a royal marine, and rose by his own merits. He was a rude radical whose military ability was paralleled by his skill in diplomacy. His swift promotion was obtained in the Rhenish campaigns. Gouvion Saint-Cyr was also born in 1764 at Toul. He was a marquis but an ardent reformer, and a born soldier. He began as a volunteer captain on the staff of Custine, and rising like the others mentioned became an excellent general, though his chances for distinction were few. Jourdan was likewise a nobleman, born at Limoges to the rank of count in 1762. His long career was solid rather than brilliant, though he gained great distinction in the northern campaigns and ended as a marshal, the military adviser of Joseph Bonaparte in Naples and Madrid.
The record of military energy put forth by the liberated nation under Jacobin rule stands, as Fox declared in the House of Commons, absolutely unique. Twenty-seven victories, eight in pitched battle; one hundred and twenty fights; ninety thousand prisoners; one hundred and sixteen towns and important places captured; two hundred and thirty forts or redoubts taken; three thousand eight hundred pieces of ordnance, seventy thousand muskets, one thousand tons of powder, and ninety standards fallen into French hands—such is the incredible tale. Moreover, the army had been purged with as little mercy as a mercantile corporation shows to incompetent employees. It is often claimed that the armies of republican France and of Napoleon were, after all, the armies of the Bourbons. Not so. The conscription law, though very imperfect in itself, was supplemented by the general enthusiasm; a nation was now in the ranks instead of hirelings; the reorganizationhad remodeled the whole structure, and between January first, 1792, and January twentieth, 1795, one hundred and ten division commanders, two hundred and sixty-three generals of brigade, and one hundred and thirty-eight adjutant-generals either resigned, were suspended from duty, or dismissed from the service. The republic had new leaders and new men in its armies.
The nation had apparently determined that the natural boundary of France and of its own revolutionary system was the Rhine. Nice and Savoy would round out their territory to the south. This much the new government, it was understood, would conquer, administer, and keep; the Revolution in other lands, impelled but not guided by French influence, must manage its own affairs. This was, of course, an entirely new diplomatic situation. Under its pressure Holland, by the aid of Pichegru's army, became the Batavian Republic, and ceded Dutch Flanders to France; while Prussia abandoned the coalition, and in the treaty of Basel, signed on April fifth, 1795, agreed to the neutrality of all north Germany. In return for the possessions of the ecclesiastical princes in central Germany, which were eventually to be secularized, she yielded to France undisputed possession of the left bank of the Rhine. Spain, Portugal, and the little states both of south Germany and of Italy were all alike weary of the contest, the more so as they were honeycombed with liberal ideas. They were already preparing to desert England and Austria, the great powers which still stood firm. With the exception of Portugal, they acceded within a few weeks to the terms made at Basel. Rome, as the instigator of the unyielding ecclesiastics of Vendée, was, of course, on the side of Great Britain and the Empire.
At home the military success of the republic was fora little while equally marked. Before the close of 1794 the Breton peasants who, under the name of Chouans, had become lawless highwaymen were entirely crushed; and the English expedition sent to Quiberon in the following year to revive the disorders was a complete, almost ridiculous failure. The insurrection of Vendée had dragged stubbornly on, but it was stamped out in June, 1795, by the execution of over seven hundred of the emigrants who had returned on English vessels to fan the royalist blaze which was kindling again.
In the collection of Mr. Edmond Taigny.Marie-Josephine-Rose Tascherde La Pagerie,Called Josephine, Empress of the French.From the design by Jean-Baptiste Isabey(pencil drawing retouched in water-color) made in 1798.
In the collection of Mr. Edmond Taigny.
Marie-Josephine-Rose Tascherde La Pagerie,Called Josephine, Empress of the French.
From the design by Jean-Baptiste Isabey(pencil drawing retouched in water-color) made in 1798.
The royalists, having created the panic of five years previous, were not to be outdone even by the Terror. Charette, the Vendean leader, retaliated by a holocaust of two thousand republican prisoners whom he had taken. After the events of Thermidor the Convention had thrown open the prison doors, put an end to bloodshed, and proclaimed an amnesty. The evident power of the Parisian burghers, the form given by the Girondists to the new constitution, the longing of all for peace and for a return of comfort and prosperity, still further emboldened the royalists, and enabled them to produce a wide-spread revulsion of feeling. They rose in many parts of the south, instituting what is known from the colors they wore as the "White Terror," and pitilessly murdering, in the desperation of timid revenge, their unsuspecting and unready neighbors of republican opinions. The scenes enacted were more terrible, the human butchery was more bloody, than any known during the darkest days of the revolutionary movement in Paris. This might well be considered the preliminary trial to the Great White Terror of 1815, in which the frenzy and fanaticism of royalists and Roman Catholics surpassed the most frantic efforts of radicals in lawless bloodshed. Imperialists, free-thinkers, and Protestants were the victims.
The Jacobins, therefore, in view of so dangerous a situation, and not without some reason, had determined that they themselves should administer the new constitution. They were in the most desperate straits because the Paris populace now held them directly responsible for the existing scarcity of food, a scarcity amounting to famine. From time to time for months the mob invaded the hall of the Convention, craving bread with angry, hungry clamor. The members mingled with the disorderly throng on the floor and temporarily soothed them by empty promises. But each inroad of disorder was worse than the preceding until the Mountain was not only without support from the rabble, but an object of loathing and contempt to them and their half-starved leaders. Hence their only chance for power was in some new rearrangement under which they would not be so prominent in affairs. The royalists at the same time saw in the provisions of the new charter a means to accomplish their own ends; and relying upon the attitude of the capital, in which mob and burghers alike were angry, determined simultaneously to strike a blow for mastery, and to supplant the Jacobins. Evidence of their activity appeared both in military and political circles. Throughout the summer of 1795 there was an unaccountable languor in the army. It was believed that Pichegru had purposely palsied his own and Jourdan's abilities, and the needless armistice he made with Austria went far to confirm the idea. It was afterward proved that several members of the Convention had been in communication with royalists. Among their agents was a personage of some importance—a certain Aubry—who, having returned after the events of Thermidor, never disavowed his real sentiments as a royalist; and being later made chairman of the army committee, was in that position when Buonaparte'scareer was temporarily checked by degradation from the artillery to the infantry. For this absurd reason he was long but unjustly thought also to have caused the original transfer to the west.
The Convention was aware of all that was taking place, but was also helpless to correct the trouble. Having abolished the powerful and terrible Committee of Safety, which had conducted its operations with such success as attends remorseless vigor, it was found necessary on August ninth to reconstruct something similar to meet the new crisis. At the same time the spirit of the hour was propitiated by forming sixteen other committees to control the action of the central one. Such a dispersion of executive power was a virtual paralysis of action, but it was to be only temporary, they would soon centralize their strength in an efficient way. The constitution was adopted only a fortnight later, on August twenty-second. Immediately the sections of Paris began to display irritation at the limitations set to their choice of new representatives. They had many sympathizers in the provinces, and the extreme reactionaries from the Revolution were jubilant. Fortunately for France, Carnot was temporarily retained to control the department of war. He was not removed until the following March.
When General Buonaparte reached Paris, and went to dwell in the mean and shabby lodgings which his lean purse compelled him to choose, he found the city strangely metamorphosed. Animated by a settled purpose not to accept the position assigned to him in the Army of the West, and, if necessary, to defy his military superiors, his humor put him out of all sympathy with the prevalent gaiety. Bitter experience had taught him that in civil war the consequences of victory and defeat are alike inglorious. In the fickleness of public opinionthe avenging hero of to-day may easily become the reprobated outcast of to-morrow. What reputation he had gained at Toulon was already dissipated in part; the rest might easily be squandered entirely in Vendée. He felt and said that he could wait. But how about his daily bread?
The drawing-rooms of Paris had opened like magic before the "sesame" of Thermidor and the prospects of settled order under the Directory. There were visiting, dining, and dancing; dressing, flirtation, and intrigue; walking, driving, and riding—all the avocations of a people soured with the cruel and bloody past, and reasserting its native passion for pleasure and refinement. All classes indulged in the wildest speculation, securities public and corporate were the sport of the exchange, the gambling spirit absorbed the energies of both sexes in desperate games of skill and chance. The theaters, which had never closed their doors even during the worst periods of terror, were thronged from pit to gallery by a populace that reveled in excitement. The morality of the hour was no better than the old; for there was a strange mixture of elements in this new society. The men in power were of every class—a few of the old aristocracy, many of the wealthy burghers, a certain proportion of the colonial nabobs from the West Indies and elsewhere, adventurers of every stripe, a few even of the city populace, and some country common folk. The purchase and sale of the confiscated lands, the national domain which furnished a slender security for the national debt and depreciated bonds, had enriched thousands of the vulgar sort. The newly rich lost their balance and their stolidity, becoming as giddy and frivolous and aggressive as the worst. The ingredients of this queer hodgepodge had yet to learn one another's language and nature; the niceties of speech,gesture, and mien which once had a well-understood significance in the higher circles of government and society were all to be readjusted in accordance with the ideas of the motley crowd and given new conventional currency. In such a disorderly transition vice does not require the mask of hypocrisy, virtue is helpless because unorganized, and something like riot characterizes conduct. The sound and rugged goodness of many newcomers, the habitual respectability of the veterans, were for the moment alike inactive because not yet kneaded into the lump they had to leaven.
There was, nevertheless, a marvelous exhibition of social power in this heterogeneous mass; nothing of course proportionate in extent to what had been brought forth for national defense, but still, of almost if not entirely equal significance. Throughout the revolutionary epoch there had been much discussion concerning reforms in education. It was in 1794 that Monge finally succeeded in founding the great Polytechnic School, an institution which clearly corresponded to a national characteristic, since from that day it has strengthened the natural bias of the French toward applied science, and tempted them to the undue and unfortunate neglect of many important humanizing disciplines. The Conservatory of Music and the Institute were permanently reorganized soon after. The great collections of the Museum of Arts and Crafts (Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers) were begun, and permanent lecture courses were founded in connection with the National Library, the Botanical Garden, the Medical School, and other learned institutions. Almost immediately a philosophical literature began to appear; pictures were painted, and the theaters reopened with new and tolerable pieces written for the day and place. In the very midst of war, moreover, an attempt was made to emancipatethe press. The effort was ill advised, and the results were so deplorable for the conduct of affairs that the newspapers were in the event more firmly muzzled than ever.
When Buonaparte had made his living arrangements, and began to look about, he must have been stupefied by the hatred for the Convention so generally and openly manifested on every side. The provinces had looked upon the Revolution as accomplished. Paris was evidently in such ill humor with the body which represented it that the republic was to all appearance virtually undone. "Reëlect two thirds of the Convention members to the new legislature!" said the angry demagogues of the Paris sections. "Never! Those men who, by their own confession, have for three years in all these horrors been the cowardly tools of a sentiment they could not restrain, but are now self-styled and reformed moderates! Impossible!" Whether bribed by foreign gold, and working under the influence of royalists, or by reason of the famine, or through the determination of the well-to-do to have a radical change, or from all these influences combined, the sections were gradually organizing for resistance, and it was soon clear that the National Guard was in sympathy with them. The Convention was equally alert, and began to arm for the conflict. They already had several hundred artillerymen and five thousand regulars who were imbued with the national rather that the local spirit; they now began to enlist a special guard of fifteen hundred from the desperate men who had been the trusty followers of Hébert and Robespierre. The fighting spirit of the Convention was unquenchable. Having lodged the "two thirds" in the coming government, they virtually declared war on all enemies internal and external. By their decree of October twenty-fourth, 1792, they hadannounced that the natural limits of France were their goal. Having virtually obtained them, they were now determined to defend them. This was the legacy of the Convention to the Directory, a legacy which indefinitely prolonged the Revolution and nullified the new polity from the outset.
For a month or more Buonaparte was a mere onlooker, or at most an interested examiner of events, weighing and speculating in obscurity much as he had done three years before. The war department listened to and granted his earnest request that he might remain in Paris until there should be completed a general reassignment of officers, which had been determined upon, and, as his good fortune would have it, was already in progress. As the first weeks passed, news arrived from the south of a reaction in favor of the Jacobins. It became clearer every day that the Convention had moral support beyond the ramparts of Paris, and within the city it was possible to maintain something in the nature of a Jacobin salon. Many of that faith who were disaffected with the new conditions in Paris—the Corsicans in particular—were welcomed at the home ofMme.Permon by herself and her beautiful daughter, afterwardMme.Junot and Duchess of Abrantès. Salicetti had chosen the other child, a son now grown, as his private secretary, and was of course a special favorite in the house. The first manifestation of reviving Jacobin confidence was shown in the attack made on May twentieth upon the Convention by hungry rioters who shouted for the constitution of 1793. The result was disastrous to the radicals because the tumult was quelled by the courage and presence of mind shown by Boissy d'Anglas, a calm and determined moderate. Commissioned to act alone in provisioning Paris, he bravely accepted his responsibility and mounted the president's chair in the midst ofthe tumult to defend himself. The mob brandished in his face the bloody head of Féraud, a fellow-member of his whom they had just murdered. The speaker uncovered his head in respect, and his undaunted mien cowed the leaders, who slunk away, followed by the rabble. The consequence was a total annihilation of the Mountain on May twenty-second. The Convention committees were disbanded, their artillerymen were temporarily dismissed, and the constitution of 1793 was abolished.
The friendly home ofMme.Permon was almost the only resort of Buonaparte, who, though disillusioned, was still a Jacobin. Something like desperation appeared in his manner; the lack of proper food emaciated his frame, while uncertainty as to the future left its mark on his wan face and in his restless eyes. It was not astonishing, for his personal and family affairs were apparently hopeless. His brothers, like himself, had now been deprived of profitable employment; they, with him, might possibly and even probably soon be numbered among the suspects; destitute of a powerful patron, and with his family once more in actual want, Napoleon was scarcely fit in either garb or humor for the society even of his friends. His hostess described him as having "sharp, angular features; small hands, long and thin; his hair long and disheveled; without gloves; wearing badly made, badly polished shoes; having always a sickly appearance, which was the result of his lean and yellow complexion, brightened only by two eyes glistening with shrewdness and firmness." Bourrienne, who had now returned from diplomatic service, was not edified by the appearance or temper of his acquaintance, who, he says, "was ill clad and slovenly, his character cold, often inscrutable. His smile was hollow and often out of place. He had moments of fierce gaiety which made you uneasy, and indisposed to love him."
No wonder the man was ill at ease. His worst fears were realized when the influence of the Mountain was wiped out,—Carnot, the organizer of victory, as he had been styled, being the only one of all the old leaders to escape. Salicetti was too prominent a partizan to be overlooked by the angry burghers. For a time he was concealed byMme.Permon in her Paris home. He escaped the vengeance of his enemies in the disguise of her lackey, flying with her when she left for the south to seek refuge for herself and children. Even the rank and file among the members of the Mountain either fled or were arrested. That Buonaparte was unmolested appears to prove how cleverly he had concealed his connection with them. The story that in these days he proposed for the hand ofMme.Permon, though without any corroborative evidence, has an air of probability, partly in the consideration of a despair which might lead him to seek any support, even that of a wife as old as his mother, partly from the existence of a letter to the lady which, though enigmatical, displays an interesting mixture of wounded pride and real or pretended jealousy. The epistle is dated June eighteenth, 1795. He felt that she would think him duped, he explains, if he did not inform her that although she had not seen fit to give her confidence to him, he had all along known that she had Salicetti in hiding. Then follows an address to that countryman, evidently intended to clear the writer from all taint of Jacobinism, and couched in these terms: "I could have denounced thee, but did not, although it would have been but a just revenge so to do. Which has chosen the truer part? Go, seek in peace an asylum where thou canst return to better thoughts of thy country. My lips shall never utter thy name. Repent, and above all, appreciate my motives. This I deserve, for they are noble and generous." Inthese words to the political refugee he employs the familiar republican "thou"; in the peroration, addressed, like the introduction, to the lady herself, he recurs to the polite and distant "you." "Mme.Permon, my good wishes go with you as with your child. You are two feeble creatures with no defense. May Providence and the prayers of a friend be with you. Above all, be prudent and never remain in the large cities. Adieu. Accept my friendly greetings."[49]
The meaning of this missive is recondite; perhaps it is this:Mme.Permon, I loved you, and could have ruined the rival who is your protégé with a clear conscience, for he once did me foul wrong, as he will acknowledge. But farewell. I bear you no grudge. Or else it may announce another change in the political weather by the veering of the cock. As a good citizen, despising the horrors of the past, I could have denounced you, Salicetti. I did not, for I recalled old times and your helplessness, and wished to heap coals of fire on your head, that you might see the error of your way. The latter interpretation finds support in the complete renunciation of Jacobinism which the writer made soon afterward, and in his subsequent labored explanation that in the "Supper of Beaucaire" he had not identified himself with the Jacobin soldier (so far an exact statement of fact), but had wished only by a dispassionate presentation of facts to show the hopeless case of Marseilles, and to prevent useless bloodshed.[Back to Contents]
Disappointments — Another Furlough — Connection with Barras — Official Society in Paris — Buonaparte as a Beau — Condition of His Family — A Political General — An Opening in Turkey — Opportunities in Europe — Social Advancement — Official Degradation — Schemes for Restoration — Plans of the Royalists — The Hostility of Paris to the Convention — Buonaparte, General of the Convention Troops — His Strategy.
1795.
The overhauling of the army list with the subsequent reassignment of officers turned out ill for Buonaparte. Aubry, the head of the committee, appears to have been utterly indifferent to him, displaying no ill will, and certainly no active good will, toward the sometime Jacobin, whose name, moreover, was last on the list of artillery officers in the order of seniority. According to the regulations, when one arm of the service was overmanned, the superfluous officers were to be transferred to another. This was now the case with the artillery, and Buonaparte, as a supernumerary, was on June thirteenth again ordered to the west, but this time only as a mere infantry general of brigade. He appears to have felt throughout life more vindictiveness toward Aubry, the man whom he believed to have beenthe author of this particular misfortune, than toward any other person with whom he ever came in contact. In this rigid scrutiny of the army list, exaggerated pretensions of service and untruthful testimonials were no longer accepted. For this reason Joseph also had already lost his position, and was about to settle with his family in Genoa, while Louis was actually sent back to school, being ordered to Châlons. Poor Lucien, overwhelmed in the general ruin of the radicals, and with a wife and child dependent on him, was in despair. The other members of the family were temporarily destitute, but self-helpful.
In this there was nothing new; but, for all that, the monotony of the situation must have been disheartening. Napoleon's resolution was soon taken. He was either really ill from privation and disappointment, or soon became so. Armed with a medical certificate, he applied for and received a furlough. This step having been taken, the next, according to the unchanged and familiar instincts of the man, was to apply under the law for mileage to pay his expenses on the journey which he had taken as far as Paris in pursuance of the order given him on March twenty-ninth to proceed to his post in the west. Again, following the precedents of his life, he calculated mileage not from Marseilles, whence he had really started, but from Nice, thus largely increasing the amount which he asked for, and in due time received. During his leave several projects occupied his busy brain. The most important were a speculation in the sequestered lands of the emigrants and monasteries, and the writing of two monographs—one a history of events from the ninth of Fructidor, yearII(August twenty-sixth, 1794), to the beginning of yearIV(September twenty-third, 1795), the other a memoir on the Army of Italy. The firstnotion was doubtless due to the frenzy for speculation, more and more rife, which was now comparable only to that which prevailed in France at the time of Law's Mississippi scheme or in England during the South Sea Bubble. It affords an insight into financial conditions to know that a gold piece of twenty francs was worth seven hundred and fifty in paper. A project for purchasing a certain property as a good investment for his wife's dowry was submitted to Joseph, but it failed by the sudden repeal of the law under which such purchases were made. The two themes were both finished, and another, "A Study in Politics: being an Inquiry into the Causes of Troubles and Discords," was sketched, but never completed. The memoir on the Army of Italy was virtually the scheme for offensive warfare which he laid before the younger Robespierre; it was now revised, and sent to the highest military power—the new central committee appointed as a substitute for the Committee of Safety. These occupations were all very well, but the furlough was rapidly expiring, and nothing had turned up. Most opportunely, the invalid had a relapse, and was able to secure an extension of leave until August fourth, the date on which a third of the committee on the reassignment of officers would retire, among them the hated Aubry.
Speaking atSt.Helena of these days, he said: "I lived in the Paris streets without employment. I had no social habits, going only into the set at the house of Barras, where I was well received.... I was there because there was nothing to be had elsewhere. I attached myself to Barras because I knew no one else. Robespierre was dead; Barras was playing a rôle: I had to attach myself to somebody and something." It will not be forgotten that Barras and Fréron had been Dantonists when they were at the siege of Toulon withBuonaparte. After the events of Thermidor they had forsworn Jacobinism altogether, and were at present in alliance with the moderate elements of Paris society. Barras's rooms in the Luxembourg were the center of all that was gay and dazzling in that corrupt and careless world. They were, as a matter of course, the resort of the most beautiful and brilliant women, influential, but not over-scrupulous.Mme.Tallien, who has been called "the goddess of Thermidor," was the queen of the coterie; scarcely less beautiful and gracious were the widow Beauharnais andMme.Récamier. Barras had been a noble; the instincts of his class made him a delightful host.
What Napoleon saw and experienced he wrote to the faithful Joseph. The letters are a truthful transcript of his emotions, the key-note of which is admiration for the Paris women. "Carriages and the gay world reappear, or rather no more recall as after a long dream that they have ever ceased to glitter. Readings, lecture courses in history, botany, astronomy, etc., follow one another. Everything is here collected to amuse and render life agreeable; you are taken out of your thoughts; how can you have the blues in this intensity of purpose and whirling turmoil? The women are everywhere, at the play, on the promenades, in the libraries. In the scholar's study you find very charming persons. Here only of all places in the world they deserve to hold the helm: the men are mad about them, think only of them, and live only by means of their influence. A woman needs six months in Paris to know what is her due and what is her sphere."[51]As yet he had not metMme.Beauharnais. The whole tone of the correspondence is cheerful, and indicates that Buonaparte's efforts fora new alliance had been successful, that his fortunes were looking up, and that the giddy world contained something of uncommon interest. As his fortunes improved, he grew more hopeful, and appeared more in society. On occasion he even ventured upon little gallantries. Presented toMme.Tallien, he was frequently seen at her receptions. He was at first shy and reserved, but time and custom put him more at his ease. One evening, as little groups were gradually formed for the interchange of jest and repartee, he seemed to lose his timidity altogether, and, assuming the mien of a fortune-teller, caught his hostess's hand, and poured out a long rigmarole of nonsense which much amused the rest of the circle.
These months had also improved the situation of the family. His mother and younger sisters were somehow more comfortable in their Marseilles home. Strange doings were afterward charged against them, but it is probable that these stories are without other foundation than spite. Napoleon had received a considerable sum for mileage, nearly twenty-seven hundred francs, and, good son as he always was, it is likely that he shared the money with his family. Both Elisa and the little Pauline now had suitors. Fesch, described by Lucien as "ever fresh, not like a rose, but like a good radish," was comfortably waiting at Aix in the house of old acquaintances for a chance to return to Corsica. Joseph's arrangements for moving to Genoa were nearly complete, and Louis was comfortably settled at school in Châlons. "Brutus" Lucien was the only luckless wight of the number: his fears had been realized, and, having been denounced as a Jacobin, he was now lying terror-stricken in the prison of Aix, and all about him men of his stripe were being executed.
On August fifth the members of the new Committeeof Safety finally entered on their duties. Almost the first document presented at the meeting was Buonaparte's demand for restoration to his rank in the artillery. It rings with indignation, and abounds with loose statements about his past services, boldly claiming the honors of the last short but successful Italian campaign. The paper was referred to the proper authorities, and, a fortnight later, its writer received peremptory orders to join his corps in the west. What could be more amusingly characteristic of this persistent man than to read, in a letter to Joseph under date of the following day, August twentieth: "I am attached at this moment to the topographical bureau of the Committee of Safety for the direction of the armies in Carnot's place. If I wish, I can be sent to Turkey by the government as general of artillery, with a good salary and a splendid title, to organize the artillery of the Grand Turk." Then follow plans for Joseph's appointment to the consular service, for a meeting at Leghorn, and for a further land speculation. At the close are these remarks, which not only exhibit great acuteness of observation, but are noteworthy as displaying a permanent quality of the man, that of always having an alternative in readiness: "It is quiet, but storms are gathering, perhaps; the primaries are going to meet in a few days. I shall take with me five or six officers.... The commission and decree of the Committee of Safety, which employs me in the duty of directing the armies and plans of campaign, being most flattering to me, I fear they will no longer allow me to go to Turkey. We shall see. I may have on hand a campaign to-day.... Write always as if I were going to Turkey."
This was all half true. By dint of soliciting Barras andDoulcet de Pontécoulant, another well-wisher, both men of influence, and by importuning Fréron, then atthe height of his power, but soon to display a ruinous incapacity, Buonaparte had actually been made a member of the commission of four which directed the armies, and Dutot had been sent in his stead to the west. Moreover, there was likewise a chance for realizing those dreams of achieving glory in the Orient which had haunted him from childhood. At this moment there was a serious tension in the politics of eastern Europe, and the French saw an opportunity to strike Austria on the other side by an alliance with Turkey. The latter country was of course entirely unprepared for war, and asked for the appointment of a French commission to reconstruct its gun-foundries and to improve its artillery service. Buonaparte, having learned the fact, had immediately prepared two memorials, one on the Turkish artillery, and another on the means of strengthening Turkish power against the encroachments of European monarchies. These he sent up with an application that he should be appointed head of the commission, inclosing also laudatory certificates of his uncommon ability from Doulcet and from Debry, a newly made friend.
But the vista of an Eastern career temporarily vanished. The new constitution, adopted, as already stated, on August twenty-second, could not become operative until after the elections. On August thirty-first Buonaparte's plan for the conduct of the coming Italian campaign was read by the Convention committee, found satisfactory, and adopted. It remains in many respects the greatest of all Napoleon's military papers, its only fault being that no genius inferior to his own could carry it out. At intervals some strategic authority revives the charge that this plan was bodily appropriated from the writings of Maillebois, the French general who led his army to disaster in Italyduring 1746. There is sufficient evidence that Buonaparte read Maillebois, and any reader may see the resemblances of the two plans. But the differences, at first sight insignificant, are as vital as the differences of character in the two men. Like the many other charges of plagiarism brought against Napoleon by pedants, this one overlooks the difference between mediocrity and genius in the use of materials. It is not at all likely that the superiors of Buonaparte were ignorant of the best books concerning the invasion of Italy or of their almost contemporary history. They brought no charges of plagiarism for the excellent reason that there is none, and they were impressed by the suggestions of their general. It is even possible that Buonaparte formed his plan before reading Maillebois. Volney declared he had heard it read and commentated by its author shortly after his return from Genoa and Nice.[52]The great scholar was already as profoundly impressed as a year later Carnot, and now the war commission. A few days later the writer and author of the plan became aware of the impression he had made: it seemed clear that he had a reality in hand worth every possibility in the Orient. He therefore wrote to Joseph that he was going to remain in Paris, explaining, as if incidentally, that he could thus be on the lookout for any desirable vacancy in the consular service, and secure it, if possible, for him.
Dreams of another kind had supplanted in his mind all visions of Oriental splendor; for in subsequent letters to the same correspondent, written almost daily, he unfolds a series of rather startling schemes, which among other things include a marriage, a town house, and a country residence, with a cabriolet and three horses. How all this was to come about we cannotentirely discover. The marriage plan is clearly stated. Joseph had wedded one of the daughters of a comparatively wealthy merchant. He was requested to sound his brother-in-law concerning the other, the famous Désirée Clary, who afterward becameMme.Bernadotte. Two of the horses were to be supplied by the government in place of a pair which he might be supposed to have possessed at Nice in accordance with the rank he then held, and to have sold, according to orders, when sent on the maritime expedition to Corsica. Where the third horse and the money for the houses were to come from is inscrutable; but, as a matter of fact, Napoleon had already left his shabby lodgings for better ones in Michodière street, and was actually negotiating for the purchase of a handsome detached residence near that of Bourrienne, whose fortunes had also been retrieved. The country-seat which the speculator had in view, and for which he intended to bid as high as a million and a half of francs, was knocked down to another purchaser for three millions or, as the price of gold then was, about forty thousand dollars! So great a personage as he now was must, of course, have a secretary, and the faithful Junot had been appointed to the office.
The application for the horses turned out a serious matter, and brought the adventurer once more to the verge of ruin. The story he told was not plain, the records did not substantiate it, the hard-headed officials of the war department evidently did not believe a syllable of his representations,—which, in fact, were untruthful,—and, the central committee having again lost a third of its members by rotation, among them Doulcet, there was no one now in it to plead Buonaparte's cause. Accordingly there was no little talk about the matter in very influential circles, and almost simultaneously was issued the report concerning hisformal request for restoration, which had been delayed by the routine prescribed in such cases, and was only now completed. It was not only adverse in itself, but contained a confidential inclosure animadverting severely on the irregularities of the petitioner's conduct, and in particular on his stubborn refusal to obey orders and join the Army of the West. Thus it happened that on September fifteenth the name of Buonaparte was officially struck from the list of general officers on duty, "in view of his refusal to proceed to the post assigned him." It really appeared as if the name of Napoleon might almost have been substituted for that of Tantalus in the fable. But it was the irony of fate that on this very day the subcommittee on foreign affairs submitted to the full meeting a proposition to send the man who was now a disgraced culprit in great state and with a full suite to take service at Constantinople in the army of the Grand Turk!
No one had ever understood better than Buonaparte the possibilities of political influence in a military career. Not only could he bend the bow of Achilles, but he always had ready an extra string. Thus far in his ten years of service he had been promoted only once according to routine; the other steps of the height which he had reached had been secured either by some startling exhibition of ability or by influence or chicane. He had been first Corsican and then French, first a politician and then a soldier. Such a veteran was not to be dismayed even by the most stunning blow; had he not even now three powerful protectors—Barras, Tallien, and Fréron? He turned his back, therefore, with ready adaptability on the unsympathetic officials of the army, the mere soldiers with cool heads and merciless judgment. The evident short cut to restoration was to carry through the project of employmentat Constantinople; it had been formally recommended, and to secure its adoption he renewed his importunate solicitations. His rank he still held; he might hope to regain position by some brilliant stroke such as he could execute only without the restraint of orders and on his own initiative. His hopes grew, or seemed to, as his suit was not rejected, and he wrote to Joseph on September twenty-sixth that the matter of his departure was urgent; adding, however: "But at this moment there are some ebullitions and incendiary symptoms." He was right in both surmises. The Committee of Safety was formally considering the proposition for his transfer to the Sultan's service, while simultaneously affairs both in Paris and on the frontiers alike were "boiling."
Meantime the royalists and clericals had not been idle. They had learned nothing from the events of the Revolution, and did not even dimly understand their own position. Their own allies repudiated both their sentiments and their actions in the very moments when they believed themselves to be honorably fighting for self-preservation. English statesmen like Granville and Harcourt now thought and said that it was impossible to impose on France a form of government distasteful to her people; but the British regent and the French pretender, who, on the death of his unfortunate nephew, the dauphin, had been recognized by the powers as LouisXVIII, were stubbornly united under the old Bourbon motto, "All or nothing." The change in the Convention, in Paris society, even in the country itself, which was about to desert its extreme Jacobinism and to adopt the new constitution by an overwhelming vote—all this deceived them, and they determined to strike for everything they had lost. Preparations, it is now believed, were all ready for an inroad from the Rhinefrontier, for Pichegru to raise the white flag and to advance with his troops on Paris, and for a simultaneous rising of the royalists in every French district. On October fourth an English fleet had appeared on the northern shore of France, having on board the Count of Artois and a large body of emigrants, accompanied by a powerful force of English, composed in part of regulars, in part of volunteers. This completed the preliminary measures.
With the first great conflict in the struggle, avowed royalism had only an indirect connection. By this time the Paris sections were thoroughly reorganized, having purged themselves of the extreme democratic elements from the suburbs. They were well drilled, well armed, and enthusiastic for resistance to the decree of the Convention requiring the compulsory reëlection of the "two thirds" from its existing membership. The National Guard was not less embittered against that measure. There were three experienced officers then in Paris who were capable of leading an insurrection, and could be relied on to oppose the Convention. These were Danican, Duhoux d'Hauterive, and Laffont, all royalists at heart; the last was an emigrant, and avowed it. The Convention had also by this time completed its enlistment, and had taken other measures of defense; but it was without a trustworthy person to command its forces, for among the fourteen generals of the republic then present in Paris, only two were certainly loyal to the Convention, and both these were men of very indifferent character and officers of no capacity.
The Convention forces were technically a part of the army known as that of the interior, of which Menou was the commander. The new constitution having been formally proclaimed on September twenty-third, the signs of open rebellion in Paris became too clear to belonger disregarded, and on that night a mass meeting of the various sections was held in the Odéon theater in order to prepare plans for open resistance. That of Lepelletier, in the heart of Paris, comprising the wealthiest and most influential of the mercantile class, afterward assembled in its hall and issued a call to rebellion. These were no contemptible foes: on the memorable tenth of August, theirs had been the battalion of the National Guard which died with the Swiss in defense of theTuileries. Menou, in obedience to the command of the Convention to disarm the insurgent sections, confronted them for a moment. But the work was not to his taste. After a short parley, during which he feebly recommended them to disperse and behave like good citizens, he withdrew his forces to their barracks, and left the armed and angry sections masters of the situation. Prompt and energetic measures were more necessary than ever. For some days already the Convention leaders had been discussing their plans. Carnot and Tallien finally agreed with Barras that the man most likely to do thoroughly the active work was Buonaparte. But, apparently, they dared not altogether trust him, for Barras himself was appointed commander-in-chief. His "little Corsican officer, who will not stand on ceremony," as he called him, was to be nominally lieutenant. On October fourth Buonaparte was summoned to a conference. The messengers sought him at his lodgings and in all his haunts, but could not find him. It was nine in the evening when he appeared at headquarters in thePlace du Carrousel. This delay gave Barras a chance to insinuate that his ardent republican friend, who all the previous week had been eagerly soliciting employment, was untrustworthy in the crisis, and had been negotiating with the sectionaries. Buonaparte reported himself as having comefrom the section of Lepelletier, but as having been reconnoitering the enemy. After a rather tart conversation, Barras appointed him aide-de-camp, the position for which he had been destined from the first. Whatever was the general's understanding of the situation, that of the aide was clear—that he was to be his own master.[53]
Not a moment was lost, and throughout the night most vigorous and incessant preparation was made. Buonaparte was as much himself in the streets of Paris as in those of Ajaccio, except that his energy was proportionately more feverish, as the defense of theTuileriesand the riding-school attached to it, in which the Convention sat, was a grander task than the never-accomplished capture of the Corsican citadel. The avenues and streets of a city somewhat resemble the main and tributary valleys of a mountain-range, and the task of campaigning in Paris was less unlike that of manœuvering in the narrow gorges of the Apennines than might be supposed; at least Buonaparte's strategy was nearly identical for both. All his measures were masterly. The foe, scattered as yet throughout Parison both sides of the river, was first cut in two by seizing and fortifying the bridges across the Seine; then every avenue of approach was likewise guarded, while flanking artillery was set in the narrow streets to command the main arteries. Thanks to Barras's suggestion, the dashing, reckless, insubordinate Murat, who first appears at the age of twenty-seven on the great stage in these events, had under Buonaparte's orders brought in the cannon from the camp of Sablons. These in the charge of a ready artillerist were invaluable, as the event proved. Finally a reserve, ready for use on either side of the river, was established in what is now thePlace de la Concorde, with an open line of retreat towardSt.Cloudbehind it. Every order was issued in Barras's name, and Barras, in his memoirs, claims all the honors of the day. He declares that his aide was afoot, while he was the man on horseback, ubiquitous and masterful. He does not even admit that Buonaparte bestrode a cab-horse, as even the vanquished were ready to acknowledge. The sections, of course, knew nothing of the new commander or of Buonaparte, and recalled only Menou's pusillanimity. Without cannon and without a plan, they determined to drive out the Convention at once, and to overwhelm its forces by superior numbers. The quays of the left bank were therefore occupied by a large body of the National Guard, ready to rush in from behind when the main attack, made from the north through the labyrinth of streets and blind alleys then designated by the name ofSt.Honoré, and by the short, wide passage of l'Échelle, should draw the Convention forces away in that direction to resist it. A kind of rendezvous had been appointed at the church ofSt.Roch, which was to be used as a depot of supplies and a retreat. Numerous sectionaries were, in fact, posted there as auxiliaries at the crucial instant.[Back to Contents]
The Warfare ofSt.Roch and the Pont Royal — Order Restored — Meaning of the Conflict — Political Dangers — Buonaparte's Dilemma — His True Attitude — Sudden Wealth — The Directory and Their General — Buonaparte in Love — His Corsican Temperament — His Matrimonial Adventures.
1795.
In this general position the opposing forces confronted each other on the morning of October fifth, the thirteenth of Vendémiaire. In point of numbers the odds were tremendous, for the Convention forces numbered only about four thousand regulars and a thousand volunteers, while the sections' force comprised about twenty-eight thousand National Guards. But the former were disciplined, they had cannon, and they were desperately able; and there was no distracted, vacillating leadership. What the legend attributes to Napoleon Buonaparte as his commentary on the conduct of King Louis at theTuilerieswas to be the Convention's ideal now. The "man on horseback" and the hot fire of cannon were to carry the day. Both sides seemed loath to begin. But at half-past four in the afternoon it was clear that the decisive moment had come. As if by instinct, but in reality at Danican's signal, the forces of the sections from the northern portion of the capital began to pour through the narrow main street ofSt.Honoré, behind the riding-school, toward the chief entrance of theTuileries. They no doubt felt safer in the rear of the Convention hall, with the high walls of houses all about, than they would have done in the openspaces which they would have had to cross in order to attack it from the front. Just before their compacted mass reached the church ofSt.Roch, it was brought to a halt. Suddenly becoming aware that in the side streets on the right were yawning the muzzles of hostile cannon, the excited citizens lost their heads, and began to discharge their muskets. Then with a swift, sudden blast, the street was cleared by a terrible discharge of the canister and grape-shot with which the field-pieces of Barras and Buonaparte were loaded. The action continued about an hour, for the people and the National Guard rallied again and again, each time to be mowed down by a like awful discharge. At last they could be rallied no longer, and retreated to the church, which they held. On the left bank a similar mêlée ended in a similar way. Three times Laffont gathered his forces and hurled them at the Pont Royal; three times they were swept back by the cross-fire of artillery. The scene then changed like the vanishing of a mirage. Awe-stricken messengers appeared, hurrying everywhere with the prostrating news from both sides of the river, and the entire Parisian force withdrew to shelter. Before nightfall the triumph of the Convention was complete. The dramatic effect of this achievement was heightened by the appearance on horseback here, there, and everywhere, during the short hour of battle, of an awe-inspiring leader; both before and after, he was unseen. In spite of Barras's claims, there can be no doubt that this dramatic personage was Buonaparte. If not, for what was he so signally rewarded in the immediate sequel? Barras was no artillerist, and this was the appearance of an expert giving masterly lessons in artillery practice to an astonished world, which little dreamed what he was yet to demonstrate as to the worth of his chosen arm on wider battle-fields. For the moment itsuited Buonaparte to appear merely as an agent. In his reports of the affair his own name is kept in the background. It is evident that from first to last he intended to produce the impression that, though acting with Jacobins, he does so because they for the time represent the truth: he is not for that reason to be identified with them.
Thus by the "whiff of grape-shot" what the wizard historian of the time "specifically called the French Revolution" was not "blown into space" at all. Though there was no renewal of the reign of terror, yet the Jacobins retained their power and the Convention lived on under the name of the Directory. It continued to live on in its own stupid anarchical way until the "man on horseback" of the thirteenth Vendémiaire had established himself as the first among French generals and the Jacobins had rendered the whole heart of France sick. While the events of October twenty-fifth were a bloody triumph for the Convention, only a few conspicuous leaders of the rebels were executed, among them Laffont; and harsh measures were enacted in relation to the political status of returned emigrants. But in the main an unexpected mercy controlled the Convention's policy. They closed the halls in which the people of the mutinous wards had met, and once more reorganized the National Guard. Order was restored without an effort. Beyond the walls of Paris the effect of the news was magical. Artois, afterward CharlesX, though he had landed three days before onÎle Dieu, now reëmbarked, and sailed back to England, while the other royalist leaders prudently held their followers in check and their measures in abeyance. The new constitution was in a short time offered to the nation, and accepted by an overwhelming majority; the members of the Convention were assured of their ascendancy in the new legislature;and before long the rebellion in Vendée and Brittany was so far crushed as to release eighty thousand troops for service abroad. For the leaders of its forces the Convention made a most liberal provision: the division commanders of the thirteenth of Vendémiaire were all promoted. Buonaparte was made second in command of the Army of the Interior: in other words, was confirmed in an office which, though informally, he had both created and rendered illustrious. As Barras almost immediately resigned, this was equivalent to very high promotion.
This memorable "day of the sections," as it is often called, was an unhallowed day for France and French liberty. It was the first appearance of the army since the Revolution as a support to political authority; it was the beginning of a process which made the commander-in-chief of the army the dictator of France. All purely political powers were gradually to vanish in order to make way for a military state. The temporary tyranny of the Convention rested on a measure, at least, of popular consent; but in the very midst of its preparations to perpetuate a purely civil and political administration, the violence of the sections had compelled it to confide the new institutions to the keeping of soldiers. The idealism of the new constitution was manifest from the beginning. Every chance which the Directory had for success was dependent, not on the inherent worth of the system or its adaptability to present conditions, but on the support of interested men in power; among these the commanders of the army were not the least influential. After the suppression of the sections, the old Convention continued to sit under the style of the Primary Assembly, and was occupied in selecting those of its members who were to be returned to the legislature under the new constitution. Therebeing no provision for any interim government, the exercise of real power was suspended; the elections were a mere sham; the magistracy was a house swept and garnished, ready for the first comer to occupy it.
As the army and not the people had made the coming administration possible, the executive power would from the first be the creature of the army; and since under the constitutional provisions there was no legal means of compromise between the Directory and the legislature in case of conflict, so that the stronger would necessarily crush the weaker, the armed power supporting the directors must therefore triumph in the end, and the man who controlled that must become the master of the Directory and the ruler of the country. Moreover, a people can be free only when the first and unquestioning devotion of every citizen is not to a party, but to his country and its constitution, his party allegiance being entirely secondary. This was far from being the case in France: the nation was divided into irreconcilable camps, not of constitutional parties, but of violent partizans; many even of the moderate republicans now openly expressed a desire for some kind of monarchy. Outwardly the constitution was the freest so far devised. It contained, however, three fatal blunders which rendered it the best possible tool for a tyrant: it could not be changed for a long period; there was no arbiter but force between a warring legislative and executive; the executive was now supported by the army.
It is impossible to prove that Buonaparte understood all this at the time. When atSt.Helena he spoke as if he did; but unfortunately his later writings, however valuable from the psychological, are worthless from the historical, standpoint. They abound in misrepresentations which are in part due to lapse of time and weaknessof memory, in part to wilful intention. Wishing the Robespierre-Salicetti episode of his life to be forgotten, he strives in his memoirs to create the impression that the Convention had ordered him to take charge of the artillery at Toulon, when in fact he was in Marseilles as a mere passer-by on his journey to Nice, and in Toulon as a temporary adjunct to the army of Carteaux, having been made an active participant partly through accident, partly by the good will of personal friends. In the same way he also devised a fable about the "day of the sections," in order that he might not appear to have been scheming for himself in the councils of the Convention, and that Barras's share in his elevation might be consigned to oblivion. This story of Napoleon's has come down in three stages of its development, by as many different transcribers, who heard it at different times. The final one, as given by Las Cases, was corrected by Napoleon's own hand.[54]It runs as follows: On the night of October third he was at the theater, but hearing that Menou had virtually retreated before the wards, and was to be arrested, he left and went to the meeting of the Convention, where, as he stood among the spectators, he heard his own name mentioned as Menou's successor. For half an hour he deliberated what he should do if chosen. If defeated, he would be execrated by all coming generations, while victory would be almost odious. How could he deliberately become the scapegoat of so many crimes to which he had been an utter stranger? Why go as an avowed Jacobin and in a few hours swell the list of names uttered with horror? "On the other hand, if the Convention be crushed, what becomes of the great truths of our Revolution? Our many victories, our blood so often shed, are all nothing but shameful deeds.The foreigner we have so thoroughly conquered triumphs and overwhelms us with his contempt; an incapable race, an overbearing and unnatural following, reappear triumphant, throw up our crime to us, wreak their vengeance, and govern us like helots by the hand of a stranger. Thus the defeat of the Convention would crown the brow of the foreigner, and seal the disgrace and slavery of our native land." Such thoughts, his youth, trust in his own power and in his destiny, turned the balance.
Statements made under such circumstances are not proof; but there is this much probability of truth in them, that if we imagine the old Buonaparte in disgrace as of old, following as of old the promptings of his curiosity, indifferent as of old to the success of either principle, and by instinct a soldier as of old,—if we recall him in this character, and remember that he is no longer a youthful Corsican patriot, but a mature cosmopolitan consumed with personal ambition,—we may surely conclude that he was perfectly impartial as to the parties involved, leaned toward the support of the principles of the Revolution as he understood them, and saw in the complications of the hour a probable opening for his ambition. At any rate, his conduct after October fourth seems to uphold this view. He was a changed man, ardent, hopeful, and irrepressible, as he had ever been when lucky; but now, besides, daring, overbearing, and self-confident to a degree which those characteristic qualities had never reached before.
His first care was to place on a footing of efficiency the Army of the Interior, scattered in many departments, undisciplined and disorganized; the next, to cow into submission all the low elements in Paris, still hungry and fierce, by reorganizing the National Guard, and forming a picked troop for the special protection of the legislature; the next, to show himself as the powerfulfriend of every one in disgrace, as a man of the world without rancor or exaggerated partizanship. At the same time he plunged into speculation, and sent sums incredibly large to various members of his family, a single remittance of four hundred thousand francs being mentioned in his letters. Lucien was restored to the arms of his low-born but faithful and beloved wife, and sent to join his mother and sisters in Marseilles; Louis was brought from Châlons, and made a lieutenant; Jerome was put at school in Paris; and to Joseph a consular post was assured. Putting aside all bashfulness, General Buonaparte became a full-fledged society man and a beau. No social rank was now strange to him; the remnants of the old aristocracy, the wealthy citizens of Paris, the returning Girondists, many of whom had become pronounced royalists, the new deputies, the officers who in some turn of the wheel had, like himself, lost their positions, but were now, through his favor, reinstated—all these he strove to court, flatter, and make his own.
Such activity, of course, could not pass unnoticed. The new government had been constituted without disturbance, the Directory chosen, and the legislature installed. Of the five directors—Barras, Rewbell, Carnot,Letourneaux de la Manche, andLarévellière-Lépeaux,—all had voted for the death of LouisXVI, and were so-called regicides; but, while varying widely in character and ability, they were all, excepting Barras, true to their convictions. They scarcely understood how strong the revulsion of popular feeling had been, and, utterly ignoring the impossibility of harmonious action among themselves, hoped to exercise their power with such moderation as to win all classes to the new constitution. They were extremely disturbed by the course of the general commanding their army in seeking intimacy with men of all opinions, but were unwillingto interpret it aright. Under the Convention, the Army of the Interior had been a tool, its commander a mere puppet; now the executive was confronted by an independence which threatened a reversal of rôles. This situation was the more disquieting because Buonaparte was a capable and not unwilling police officer. Among many other invaluable services to the government, he closed in person the great club of the Panthéon, which was the rallying-point of the disaffected.[55]Throughout another winter of famine there was not a single dangerous outbreak. At the same time there were frequent manifestations of jealousy in lower circles, especially among those who knew the origin and career of their young master.