Toward the close of the year the bearing and behavior of the general became constrained, reserved, and awkward. Various reasons were assigned for this demeanor. Many thought it was due to a consciousness of social deficiency, and his detractors still declare that Paris life was too fierce for even his self-assurance, pointing to the change in his handwriting and grammar, to his alternate silence and loquacity, as proof of mental uneasiness; to his sullen musings and coarse threats as a theatrical affectation to hide wounded pride; and to his coming marriage as a desperate shift to secure a social dignity proportionate to the career he saw opening before him in politics and war. In a common man not subjected to a microscopic examination, such conduct would be attributed to his being in love; the wedding would ordinarily be regarded as the natural and beautiful consequence of a great passion.
Men have not forgotten that Buonaparte once denounced love as a hurtful passion from which God should protect his creatures; and they have, for this, among other reasons, pronounced him incapable of disinterested affection. But it is also true that he likewise denounced Buttafuoco for having, among other crimes committed by him, "married to extend his influence"; and we are forced to ask which of the two sentiments is genuine and characteristic. Probably both and neither, according to the mood of the man. Outward caprice is, in great natures, often the mask of inward perseverance, especially among the unprincipled who suit their language to their present purpose, in fine disdain of commonplace consistency. The primitive Corsican was both rude and gentle, easily moved to tears at one time, insensate at another; selfish at one moment, lavish at another; and yet he had a consistent character. Although disliking in later life to be called a Corsican, Napoleon was nevertheless typical of his race: he could despise love, yet render himself its willing slave; he was fierce and dictatorial, yet, as the present object of his passion said, "tenderer and weaker than anybody dreamed."[56]
And thus it was in the matter of his courtship: there were elements in it of romantic, abandoned passion, but likewise of shrewd, calculating selfishness. In his callow youth his relations to the other sex had been either childish, morbid, or immoral. During his earliest manhood he had appeared like one who desired the training rather than the substance of gallantry. As a Jacobin he sought such support as he could find in thegood will of the women related to men in power; as a French patriot he put forth strenuous efforts to secure an influential alliance through matrimony. He appears to have addressedMme.Permon, whose fortune, despite her advanced age, would have been a great relief to his destitution. Refused by her, he was in a disordered and desperate emotional state until military and political success gave him sufficient self-confidence to try once more. With his feet firmly planted on the ladder of ambition, he was not indifferent to securing social props for a further rise, but was nevertheless in such a tumult of feeling as to make him particularly receptive to real passion. He had made advances for the hand of the rich and beautiful Désirée Clary;[57]the first evidence in his correspondence of a serious intention to marry her is contained in the letter of June eighteenth, 1795, to Joseph; and for a few weeks afterward he wrote at intervals with some impatience, as if she were coy. In explanation it is claimed that Napoleon, visiting her long before at the request of Joseph, who was then enamoured of her, had himself become interested, and persuading his brother to marry her sister, had entered into an understanding with her which was equivalent to a betrothal. Time and distance had cooled his ardor. He now virtually threw her over forMme.Beauharnais, who dazzled and infatuated him. This claim is probably founded on fact, but there is no evidence sufficient to sustain a charge of positive bad faith on the part of Napoleon. Neither he norMlle.Clary appears to have been ardent when Joseph as intermediary began, according to French custom, to arrange the preliminaries of marriage; and when General Buonaparte fell madly in love withMme.Beauharnais the matter was dropped.[Back to Contents]
The Taschers and Beauharnais — Execution of Alexandre Beauharnais — Adventures of His Widow — Meeting of Napoleon and Josephine — The Latter's Uncertainties — Her Character and Station — Passion and Convenience — The Bride's Dowry — Buonaparte's Philosophy of Life — The Ladder to Glory.
1796.
In 1779, while the boys at Brienne were still tormenting the little untamed Corsican nobleman, and driving him to his garden fortalice to seek lonely refuge from their taunts in company with his Plutarch, there had arrived in Paris from Martinique a successful planter of that island, a French gentleman of good family, M. Tascherde la Pagerie, bringing back to that city for the second time his daughter Josephine. She was then a girl of sixteen, without either beauty or education, but thoroughly matured, and with a quick Creole intelligence and a graceful litheness of figure which made her a most attractive woman. She had spent the years of her life from ten to fourteen in the convent of Port Royal. Having passed the interval in her native isle, she was about to contract a marriage which her relatives in France had arranged. Her betrothed was the younger son of a family friend, theMarquis de Beauharnais. The bride landed on October twentieth, and the ceremony took place on December thirteenth. The young vicomte brought his wife home to a suitable establishment in the capital. Two childrenwere born to them—Eugène and Hortense; but before the birth of the latter the husband quarreled with his wife, for reasons that have never been known. The court granted a separation, with alimony, toMme.de Beauharnais, who some years later withdrew to her father's home in Martinique. Her husband sailed to America with the forces of Bouillé, and remained there until the outbreak of the Revolution, when he returned, and was elected a deputy to the States-General.
Becoming an ardent republican, he was several times president of the National Assembly, and his house was an important center of influence. In 1790 M. Tascher died, and his daughter, with her children, returned to France. It was probably at her husband's instance, for she at once joined him at his country-seat, where they continued to live, as "brother and sister," until Citizen Beauharnais was made commander of the Army of the Rhine. As the days of the Terror approached, every man of noble blood was more and more in danger. At last Beauharnais's turn came; he too was denounced to the Commune, and imprisoned. Before long his wife was behind the same bars. Their children were in the care of an aunt,Mme.Églé, who had been, and was again to be, a woman of distinction in the social world, but had temporarily sought the protection of an old acquaintance, a former abbé, who had become a member of the Commune. The gallant young general was not one of the four acquitted out of the batch of forty-nine among whom he was finally summoned to the bar of the revolutionary tribunal. He died on June twenty-third, 1794, true to his convictions, acknowledging in his farewell letter to his wife a fraternal affection for her, and committing solemnly to her charge his own good name, which she was to restore by proving his devotion to France. The children were to be her consolation; theywere to wipe out the disgrace of his punishment by the practice of virtue and—civism!
During her sojourn in prisonMme.Beauharnais had made a most useful friend. This was a fellow-sufferer of similar character, but far greater gifts, whose maiden name was Cabarrus, who was laterMme.de Fontenay, who was afterward divorced and, having married Tallien, the Convention deputy at Bordeaux, became renowned as his wife, and who, divorced a second and married a third time, died as thePrincesse de Chimay. The ninth of Thermidor saved them both from the guillotine. In the days immediately subsequent they had abundant opportunity to display their light but clever natures.Mme.Beauharnais, as well as her friend, unfolded her wings like a butterfly as she escaped from the bars of her cell. Being a Creole, and having matured early, her physical charms were already fading. Her spirit, too, had reached and passed its zenith; for in her letters of that time she describes herself as listless. Nevertheless, in those very letters there is some sprightliness, and considerable ability of a certain kind. A few weeks after her liberation, having apprenticed Eugène and Hortense to an upholsterer and a dressmaker respectively,[59]she was on terms of intimacy with Barras so close as to be considered suspicious, while her daily intercourse was with those who had brought her husband to a terrible end. In a luxurious and licentious society, she was a successful intriguer in matters both of politics and of pleasure; versed in the arts of coquetry and dress, she became for the needy and ambitious a successful intermediary with those in power. Preferring, as she rather ostentatiously asserted, to be guided by another's will, she gave little thought to her children, or to the sad legacy of her husband's good name. Sheemulated, outwardly at least, the unprincipled worldliness of those about her, although her friends believed her kind-hearted and virtuous. Whatever her true nature was, she had influence among the foremost men of that gay set which was imitating the court circles of old, and an influence which had become not altogether agreeable to the immoral Provençal noble who entertained and supported the giddy coterie. Perhaps the extravagance of the languid Creole was as trying to Barras as it became afterward to her second husband.
The meeting of Napoleon and Josephine was an event of the first importance.[60]His own account twice relates that a beautiful and tearful boy presented himself, soon after the disarmament of the sections, to the commander of the city, and asked for the sword of his father. The request was granted, and next day the boy's mother,Mme.Beauharnais, came to thank the general for his kindly act of restitution. Captivated by her grace, Buonaparte was thenceforward her slave. A cold critic must remember that in the first place there was no disarmament of anybody after the events of October fifth, the only action of the Convention which might even be construed into hostility being a decree making emigrants ineligible for election to the legislature under the new constitution; that in the second place this story attributes to destiny what was really due to the friendship of Barras, a fact which his beneficiary would have liked to forget or conceal; and finally, that the beneficiary left another account in which he confessed that he had first met his wife at Barras's house, this being confirmed by Lucien in his memoirs. Of the passion there is no doubt; it was a composite emotion, made up in part of sentiment, in part of self-interest. Those who are born to rude and simple conditions in life areoften dazzled by the charmed etiquette and mysterious forms of artificial society. Napoleon never affected to have been born to the manner, nor did he ever pretend to have adopted its exacting self-control, for he could not; although after the winter of 1795 he frequently displayed a weak and exaggerated regard for social conventions. It was not that he had need to assume a false and superficial polish, or that he particularly cared to show his equality with those accustomed to polite society; but that he probably conceived the splendid display and significant formality of that ancient nobility which had so cruelly snubbed him from the outset as being, nevertheless, the best conceivable prop to a throne.
Lucien looked on with interest, and thought that during the whole winter his brother was rather courted than a suitor. In his memoirs he naïvely wonders what Napoleon would have done in Asia,—either in the Indian service of England, or against her in that of Russia, for in his early youth he had also thought of that,—in fact, what he would have done at all, without the protection of women, in which he so firmly believed, if he had not, after the manner of Mohammed, found a Kadijah at least ten years older than himself, by whose favor he was set at the opening of a great career. There are hints, too, in various contemporary documents and in the circumstances themselves that Barras was an adroit match-maker. In a letter attributed to Josephine, but without address, a bright light seems to be thrown on the facts. She asks a female friend for advice on the question of the match. After a jocular introduction of her suitor as anxious to become a father to the children ofAlexandre de Beauharnaisand the husband of his widow, she gives a sportive but merciless dissection of her own character, and declares that whileshe does not love Buonaparte, she feels no repugnance. But can she meet his wishes or fulfil his desires? "I admire the general's courage; the extent of his information about all manner of things, concerning which he talks equally well; the quickness of his intelligence, which makes him catch the thought of another even before it is expressed: but I confess I am afraid of the power he seems anxious to wield over all about him. His piercing scrutiny has in it something strange and inexplicable, that awes even our directors; think, then, how it frightens a woman."[61]The writer is also terrified by the very ardor of her suitor's passion. Past her first youth, how can she hope to keep for herself that "violent tenderness" which is almost a frenzy? Would he not soon cease to love her, and regret the marriage? If so, her only resource would be tears—a sorry one, indeed, but still the only one. "Barras declares that if I marry the general, he will secure for him the chief command of the Army of Italy. Yesterday Buonaparte, speaking of this favor, which, although not yet granted, already has set his colleagues in arms to murmuring, said: 'Do they think I need protection to succeed? Some day they will be only too happy if I give them mine. My sword is at my side, and with it I shall go far.' What do you think of this assurance of success? Is it not a proof of confidence arising from excessive self-esteem? A general of brigade protecting the heads of the government! I don't know; but sometimes this ridiculous self-reliance leads me to the point of believing everything possible which this strange man would have me do; and with his imagination, who can reckon what he would undertake?" This letter, though often quoted, is so remarkable that, as some think, itmay be a later invention. If written later, it was probably the invention of Josephine herself.[62]
The divinity who could awaken such ardor in a Napoleon was in reality six years older than her suitor, and Lucien proves by his exaggeration of four years that she certainly looked more than her real age. She had no fortune, though by the subterfuges of which a clever woman could make use she led Buonaparte to think her in affluent circumstances. She had no social station; for her drawing-room, though frequented by men of ancient name and exalted position, was not graced by the presence of their wives. The very house she occupied had a doubtful reputation, having been a gift to the wife of Talma the actor from one of her lovers, and being a loan toMme.Beauharnais from Barras. She had thin brown hair, a complexion neither fresh nor faded, expressive eyes, a smallretroussénose, a pretty mouth, and a voice that charmed all listeners. She was rather undersized, but her figure was so perfectly proportioned as to give the impression of height and suppleness. Its charms were scarcely concealed by the clothing she wore, made as it was in the suggestive fashion of the day, with no support to the form but a belt, and as scanty about her shoulders as it was about her shapely feet. It appears to have been her elegance and her manners, as well as her sensuality, which overpowered Buonaparte; for he described her as having "the calm and dignified demeanor which belongs to the old régime."
What motives may have combined to overcome her scruples we cannot tell; perhaps a love of adventure, probably an awakened ambition for a success in other domains than the one which advancing years would soon compel her to abandon. She knew that Buonapartehad no fortune whatever, but she also knew, on the highest authority, that both favor and fortune would by her assistance soon be his. At all events, his suit made swift advance, and by the end of January, 1796, he was secure of his prize. His love-letters, to judge from one which has been preserved, were as fiery as the despatches with which he soon began to electrify his soldiers and all France. "I awaken full of thee," he wrote; "thy portrait and yester eve's intoxicating charm have left my senses no repose. Sweet and matchless Josephine, how strange your influence upon my heart! Are you angry, do I see you sad, are you uneasy, ... my soul is moved with grief, and there is no rest for your friend; but is there then more when, yielding to an overmastering desire, I draw from your lips, your heart, a flame which consumes me? Ah, this very night, I knew your portrait was not you! Thou leavest at noon; three hours more, and I shall see thee again. Meantime,mio dolce amor, a thousand kisses; but give me none, for they set me all afire." What genuine and reckless passion! The "thou" and "you" maybe strangely jumbled; the grammar may be mixed and bad; the language may even be somewhat indelicate, as it sounds in other passages than those given: but the meaning would be strong enough incense for the most exacting woman.
On February ninth, 1796, their banns were proclaimed; on March second the bridegroom received his bride's dowry in his own appointment, on Carnot's motion, not on that of Barras, as chief of the Army of Italy, still under the name of Buonaparte;[63]on the seventh he washanded his commission; on the ninth the marriage ceremony was performed by the civil magistrate; and on the eleventh the husband started for his post. In the marriage certificate at Paris the groom gives his age as twenty-eight, but in reality he was not yet twenty-seven; the bride, who was thirty-three, gives hers as not quite twenty-nine. Her name is spelled Detascher, his Bonaparte. A new birth, a new baptism, a new career, a new start in a new sphere, Corsica forgotten, Jacobinism renounced, General andMme.Bonaparte made their bow to the world. The ceremony attracted no public attention, and was most unceremonious, no member of the family from either side being present.Madame Mère, in fact, was very angry, and foretold that with such a difference in age the union would be barren.
There was one weird omen which, read aright, distinguishes the otherwise commonplace occurrence. In the wedding-ring were two words—"To destiny." The words were ominous, for they were indicative of a policy long since formed and never afterward concealed, being a pretense to deceive Josephine as well as the rest of the world: the giver was about to assume a new rôle,—that of the "man of destiny,"—to work for a time on the imagination and superstition of his age. Sometimes he forgot his part, and displayed the shrewd, calculating, hard-working man behind the mask, who was less a fatalist than a personified fate, less a child of fortune than its maker. "Great events," he wrote a very short time later from Italy, "ever depend but upon a single hair. The adroit man profits by everything, neglects nothing which can increase his chances; the less adroit, by sometimes disregarding a single chance, fails in everything." Here is the whole philosophy of Bonaparte's life. He may have been sincere at times in the other profession; if so, it was because he could findno other expression for what in his nature corresponded to romance in others.
The general and his adjutant reached Marseilles in due season. Associated with them were Marmont, Junot, Murat, Berthier, and Duroc. The two last named had as yet accomplished little: Berthier was forty-three, Duroc only twenty-three. Both were destined to close intimacy with Napoleon and to a career of high renown. The good news of Napoleon's successes having long preceded them, the home of the Bonapartes had become the resort of many among the best and most ambitious men in the southern land. Elisa was now twenty, and though much sought after, was showing a marked preference for Pasquale Bacciocchi, the poor young Corsican whom she afterward married. Pauline was sixteen, a great beauty, and deep in a serious flirtation with Fréron, who, not having been elected to the Five Hundred, had been appointed to a lucrative but uninfluential office in the great provincial town—that of commissioner for the department. Caroline, the youngest sister, was blossoming with greater promise even than Pauline. Napoleon stopped a few days under his mother's roof to regulate these matrimonial proceedings as he thought most advantageous. On March twenty-second he reached the headquarters of the Army of Italy. The command was assumed with simple and appropriate ceremonial. The short despatch to the Directory announcing this momentous event was signed "Bonaparte." The Corsican nobleman di Buonaparte was now entirely transformed into the French general Bonaparte. The process had been long and difficult: loyal Corsican; mercenary cosmopolitan, ready as an expert artillery officer for service in any land or under any banner; lastly, Frenchman, liberal, and revolutionary. So far he had been consistent in eachcharacter; for years to come he remained stationary as a sincere French patriot, always of course with an eye to the main chance. As events unfolded, the transformation began again; and the "adroit" man, taking advantage of every chance, became once more a cosmopolitan—this time not as a soldier, but as a statesman; not as a servant, but as theimperator universalis, too large for a single land, determined to reunite once more all Western Christendom, and, like the great German Charles a thousand years before, make the imperial limits conterminous with those of orthodox Christianity. The power of this empire was, however, to rest on a Latin, not on a Teuton; not on Germany, but on France. Its splendor was not to be embodied in Aachen nor in the Eternal City, but in Paris; and its destiny was not to bring in a Christian millennium for the glory of God, but a scientific equilibrium of social states to the glory of Napoleon's dynasty, permanent because universally beneficent.[Back to Contents]
The First Coalition — England and Austria — The Armies of the Republic — The Treasury of the Republic — Necessary Zeal — The Directory — Its Members — The Abbé Sieyès — Carnot as a Model Citizen — His Capacity as a Military Organizer — His Personal Character — His Policy — France at the Opening of 1796 — Plans of the Directory — Their Inheritance.
1796.
The great European coalition against France which had been formed in 1792 had in it little centripetal force. In 1795 Prussia, Spain, and Tuscany withdrew for reasons already indicated in another connection, and made their peace on terms as advantageous as they could secure. Holland was conquered by France in the winter of 1794-95, and to this day the illustrated school-books recall to every child of the French Republic the half-fabulous tale of how a Dutch fleet was captured by French hussars. The severity of the cold was long remembered as phenomenal, and the frozen harbors rendered naval resistance impossible, while cavalry manœuvered with safety on the thickice. The Batavian Republic, as the Dutch commonwealth was now called, was really an appanage of France.
But England and Austria, though deserted by their strongest allies, were still redoubtable enemies. The policy of the former had been to command the seas and destroy the commerce of France on the one hand, on the other to foment disturbance in the country itself by subsidizing the royalists. In both plans she had been successful: her fleets were ubiquitous, the Chouan and Vendean uprisings were perennial, and the emigrant aristocrats menaced every frontier. Austria, on the other hand, had once been soundly thrashed. Since Frederick the Great had wrested Silesia from her, and thereby set Protestant Prussia among the great powers, she had felt that the balance of power was disturbed, and had sought everywhere for some territorial acquisition to restore her importance. The present emperor, FrancisII, and his adroit minister, Thugut, were equally stubborn in their determination to draw something worth while from the seething caldron before the fires of war were extinguished. They thought of Bavaria, of Poland, of Turkey, and of Italy; in the last country especially it seemed as if the term of life had been reached for Venice, and that at her impending demise her fair domains on the mainland would amply replace Silesia. Russia saw her own advantage in the weakening either of Turkey or of the central European powers, and became the silent ally of Austria in this policy.
The great armies of the French republic had been created by Carnot, with the aid of his able lieutenant,Dubois de Crancé; they were organized and directed by the unassisted genius of the former. Being the first national armies which Europe had known, they were animated as no others had been by that form of patriotism which rests not merely on animal instinct, but ona principle. They had fought with joyous alacrity for the assertion, confirmation, and extension of the rights of man. For the two years from Valmy to Fleurus (1792-94) they had waged a holy war. But victory modified their quality and their attitude. The French people were too often disenchanted by their civilian rulers; the army supplanted the constitution after 1796. Conscious of its strength, and of itself as the armed nation, yet the officers and men drew closer and closer for reciprocal advantage, not merely political but material. The civil government must have money, the army alone could command money, and on all the military organization took a full commission. Already some of the officers were reveling in wealth and splendor, more desired to follow the example, the rank and file longed for at least a decent equipment and some pocket money. As yet the curse of pillage was not synonymous with conquest, as yet the free and generous ardor of youth and military tradition exerted its force, as yet self-sacrifice to the extreme of endurance was a virtue, as yet the canker of lust and debauchery had not ruined the life of the camp. Emancipated from the bonds of formality and mere contractual relation to superiors, manhood asserted itself in troublesome questionings as to the motives and plans of officers, discussion of what was done and what was to be done, above all in searching criticism of government and its schemes. These were so continuously misleading and disingenuous that the lawyer politicaster who played such a rôle at Paris seemed despicable to the soldiery, and "rogue of a lawyer" was almost synonymous to the military mind with place-holder and civil ruler. In the march of events the patriotism of the army had brought into prominence Rousseau's conception of natural boundaries. There was but one opinion in the entire nation concerning itsfrontiers, to wit: that Nice, Savoy, and the western bank of the Rhine were all by nature a part of France. As to what was beyond, opinion had been divided, some feeling that they should continue fighting in order to impose their own system wherever possible, while others, as has previously been explained, were either indifferent, or else maintained that the nation should fight only for its natural frontier. To the support of the latter sentiment came the general longing for peace which was gradually overpowering the whole country.
From the collection of W. C. Crane.Engraved by G. Fiesinger.Buonaparte.Drawn by S. Guerin.Deposited in the National Libraryon the 29th Vendémiaire of the year 7 of the French Republic
From the collection of W. C. Crane.Engraved by G. Fiesinger.
Buonaparte.
Drawn by S. Guerin.Deposited in the National Libraryon the 29th Vendémiaire of the year 7 of the French Republic
No people ever made such sacrifices for liberty as the French had made. Through years of famine they had starved with grim determination, and the leanness of their race was a byword for more than a generation. They had been for over a century the victims of a system abhorrent to both their intelligence and their character—a system of absolutism which had subsisted on foreign wars and on successful appeals to the national vainglory. Now at last they were to all appearance exhausted, their treasury was bankrupt, their paper money was worthless, their agriculture and industries were paralyzed, their foreign commerce was ruined; but they cherished the delusion that their liberties were secure. Their soldiers were badly fed, badly armed, and badly clothed; but they were freemen under such discipline as is possible only among freemen. Why should not their success in the arts of peace be as great as in the glorious and successful wars they had carried on? There was, therefore, both in the country and in the government, as in the army, a considerable and ever growing party which demanded a general peace, but only with the "natural" frontier, and a small one which felt peace to be imperative even if the nation should be confined within its old boundaries.
But such a reasonable and moderate policy wasimpossible on two accounts. In consequence of the thirteenth of Vendémiaire, the radical party still survived and controlled the machinery of government; and, in spite of the seeming supremacy of moderate ideas, the royalists were still irreconcilable. In particular there was the religious question, which in itself comprehended a political, social, and economic revolution which men like those who sat in the Directory refused to understand because they chose to treat it on the basis of pure theory.[65]The great western district of France was Roman, royalist, and agricultural. There was a unity in their life and faith so complete that any disturbance of the equilibrium produced frenzy and chaos, an embattled strife for life itself. It was a discovery to Hoche, that to pacify the Vendée brute force was quite insufficient. The peasantry were beggared and savage but undismayed. While he used force with nobles, strangers, and madmen, his conquest was in the main moral because he restored to the people their fields and their church, their institutions somewhat modified and improved, but still their old institutions. No man less gigantic in moral stature would have dared thus to defy the petty atheistic fanaticism of the Directory. France had secured enlightened legislation which was not enforced, religious liberty which could not be practised because of ill will in the government, civil liberty which was a mere sham because of internal violence, political liberty which was a chimera before hostile foreigners. Hence it seemed to the administration that one evil must cure another. Intestine disturbances, they naïvely believed, could be kept under some measure of control only by an aggressive foreign policy which should deceive the insurgent elements as to the resources of the government. Thus far, by hookor by crook, the armies, so far as they had been clothed and paid and fed at all, had been fed and paid and clothed by the administration at Paris. If the armies should still march and fight, the nation would be impressed by the strength of the Directory.
The Directory was by no means a homogeneous body. It is doubtful whether Barras was a sincere republican, or sincere in anything except in his effort to keep himself afloat on the tide of the times. It has been believed by many that he hoped for the restoration of monarchy through disgust of the nation with such intolerable disorders as they would soon associate with the name of republic. His friendship for General Bonaparte was a mixed quantity; for while he undoubtedly wished to secure for the state in any future crisis the support of so able a man, he had at the same time used him as a sort of social scapegoat. His own strength lay in several facts: he had been Danton's follower; he had been an officer, and was appointed for that reason commanding general against the Paris sections; he had been shrewd enough to choose Bonaparte as his agent so that he enjoyed the prestige of Bonaparte's success; and in the new society of the capital he was magnificent, extravagant, and licentious, the only representative in the Directory of the newly aroused passion for life and pleasure, his colleagues being severe, unostentatious, and economical democrats.
Barras's main support in the government was Rewbell, a vigorous Alsatian and a bluff democrat, enthusiastic for the Revolution and its extension. He was no Frenchman himself, but a German at heart, and thought that the German lands—Holland, Switzerland, Germany itself—should be brought into the great movement. Like Barras, who needed disorder for his Orleanist schemes and for the supply of his lavishpurse, Rewbell despised the new constitution; but for a different reason. To him it appeared a flimsy, theoretical document, so subdividing the exercise of power as to destroy it altogether. His rôle was in the world of finance, and he was always suspected, though unjustly, of unholy alliances with army contractors and stock manipulators.Larévellièrewas another doctrinaire, but, in comparison with Rewbell, a bigot. He had been a Girondist, a good citizen, and active in the formation of the new constitution; but he lacked practical common sense, and hated the Church with as much narrow bitterness as the most rancorous modern agnostic,—seeking, however, not merely its destruction, but, like Robespierre, to substitute for it a cult of reason and humanity. The fourth member of the Directory, Letourneur, was a plain soldier, an officer in the engineers. With abundant common sense and a hard head, he, too, was a sincere republican; but he was a tolerant one, a moderate, kindly man like his friend Carnot, with whom, as time passed by and there was gradually developed an irreconcilable split in the Directory, he always voted in a minority of two against the other three.
At first the notorious Abbé Sieyès had been chosen a member of the executive. He was both deep and dark, like Bonaparte, to whom he later rendered valuable services. His ever famous pamphlet, which in 1789 triumphantly proved that the Third Estate was neither more nor less than the French nation, had made many think him a radical. As years passed on he became the oracle of his time, and as such acquired an enormous influence even in the days of the Terror, which he was helpless to avert, and which he viewed with horror and disgust. Whatever may have been his original ideas, he appears to have been for some time after the thirteenth of Vendémiaire an Orleanist, the head of a party whichdesired no longer a strict hereditary and absolute monarchy, but thought that in the son of PhilippeÉgalitéthey had a useful prince to preside over a constitutional kingdom. Perhaps for this reason, perhaps for the one he gave, which was that the new constitution was not yet the right one, he flatly refused the place in the Directory which was offered to him.
It was as a substitute for this dangerous visionary that Carnot was made a director. He was now in his forty-third year, and at the height of his powers. In him was embodied all that was moderate and sound, consequently all that was enduring, in the French Revolution; he was a thorough scholar, and his treatise on the metaphysics of the calculus forms an important chapter in the history of mathematical physics. As an officer in the engineers he had attained the highest distinction, while as minister of war he had shown himself an organizer and strategist of the first order. But his highest aim was to be a model French citizen. In his family relations as son, husband, and father, he was held by his neighbors to be a pattern; in his public life he strove with equal sincerity of purpose to illustrate the highest ideals of the eighteenth century. Such was the ardor of his republicanism that no man nor party in France was so repugnant but that he would use either one or both, if necessary, for his country's welfare, although he was like Chatham in his lofty scorn for parties. To him as a patriot, therefore, France, as against the outer world, was first, no matter what her government might be; but the France he yearned for was a land regenerated by the gospel of humanity, awakened to the highest activity by the equality of all before the law, refined by that self-abnegation of every man which makes all men brothers, and destroys the menace of the law.
And yet he was no dreamer. While a member of the National Assembly he had displayed such practical common sense in his chosen field of military science, that in 1793 the Committee of Safety intrusted to him the control of the war. The standard of rank and command was no longer birth nor seniority nor influence, but merit. The wild and ignorant hordes of men which the conscription law had brought into the field were something hitherto unknown in Europe. It was Carnot who organized, clothed, fed, and drilled them. It was he who devised the new tactics and evolved the new and comprehensive plans which made his national armies the power they became. It was in Carnot's administration that the young generals first came to the fore. It was by his favor that almost every man of that galaxy of modern warriors who so long dazzled Europe by their feats of arms first appeared as a candidate for advancement. Moreau, Macdonald, Jourdan, Bernadotte, Kléber, Mortier, Ney, Pichegru, Desaix, Berthier, Augereau, and Bonaparte himself,—each one of these was the product of Carnot's system. He was the creator of the armies which for a time made all Europe tributary to France.
Throughout an epoch which laid bare the meanness of most natures, his character was unsmirched. He began life under the ancient régime by writing and publishing a eulogy on Vauban, who had been disgraced for his plain speaking to LouisXIV.When called to a share in the government he was the advocate of a strong nationality, of a just administration within, and of a fearless front to the world. While minister of war he on one occasion actually left his post and hastened to Maubeuge, where defeat was threatening Jourdan, devised and put into operation a new plan, led in person the victorious assault, and then returned to Paris to inspire the country and the army with news of thevictory; all this he did as if it were commonplace duty, without advertising himself by parade or ceremony. Even Robespierre had trembled before his biting irony and yet dared not, as he wished, include him among his victims. After the events of Thermidor, when it was proposed to execute all those who had authorized the bloody deeds of the Terror, excepting Carnot, he prevented the sweeping measure by standing in his place to say that he too had acted with the rest, had held like them the conviction that the country could not otherwise be saved, and that therefore he must share their fate.
In the milder light of the new constitution the dark blot on his record thus frankly confessed grew less repulsive as the continued dignity and sincerity of his nature asserted themselves in a tolerance which he believed to be as needful now as ruthless severity once had been. For a year the glory of French arms had been eclipsed: his dominant idea was first to restore their splendor, then to make peace with honor and give the new life of his country an opportunity for expansion in a mild and firm administration of the new laws. If he had been dictator in the crisis, no doubt his plan, arduous as was the task, might have been realized; but, with Letourneur in a minority of two, against an unprincipled adventurer leading two bigots, it was impossible to secure the executive unity necessary for success.
At the opening of the year 1796, therefore, the situation of France was quite as distracting as ever, and the foundation of her institutions more than ever unstable. There was hopeless division in the executive, and no coördination under the constitution between it and the other branches of the government, while the legislature did not represent the people. The treasury was empty, famine was as wide-spread as ever, administrationvirtually non-existent. The army, checked for the moment, moped unsuccessful, dispirited, and unpaid. Hunger knows little discipline, and with temporary loss of discipline the morals of the troops had been undermined. To save the constitution public opinion must be diverted from internal affairs, and conciliated. To that end the German emperor must be forced to yield the Rhine frontier, and money must be found at least for the most pressing necessities of the army and of the government. If the republic could secure for France her natural borders, and command a peace by land, it might hope for eventual success in the conflict with England. To this end its territorial conquests must be partitioned into three classes: those within the "natural limits," and already named, for incorporation; those to be erected into buffer states to fend off from the tender republic absolutism and all its horrors; and finally such districts as might be valuable for exchange in order to the eventual consolidation of the first two classes. Of the second type, the Directory considered as most important the Germanic Confederation. There was the example of Catherine's dealing with Poland by which to proceed. As that had been partitioned, so should Germany. From its lands should be created four electorates, one to indemnify the House of Orange for Holland, one for Würtemberg; the others according to circumstances would be confided to friendly hands.
The means to the end were these. Russia must be reduced to inactivity by exciting against her through bribes and promises all her foes to the eastward. Prussia must be cajoled into coöperation by pressure on King George of Hanover, even to the extinction of his kingdom, and by the hope of a consolidated territory with the possibility of securing the Imperial dignity. Austriawas to be partly compelled, partly bribed, into a continental coalition against Great Britain by adjustment of her possessions both north and south of the Alps. Into a general alliance against Great Britain, Spain must be dragged by working on the fears of the queen's paramour Godoy, prime minister and controller of Spanish destinies. This done, Great Britain, according to the time-honored, well-worn device of France, royal or radical, should be invaded and brought to her knees. The plan was as old as Philippe le Bel, and had appeared thereafter once and again at intervals either as abona fidepolicy or a device to stir the French heart and secure money from the public purse for the public defense. For this purpose of the Directory the ruined maritime power of the republic must be restored, new ships built and old ones refitted; in the meantime, as did Richelieu or Mazarin, rebellion against the British government must be roused and supported among malcontents everywhere within the borders of Great Britain, especially in Ireland. Such was the stupid plan of the Directory: two well-worn expedients, both discredited as often as tried. To the territorial readjustment of Europe, Prussia, though momentarily checked, was already pivotal; but the first efforts of French diplomacy at Berlin resulted in a flat refusal to go farther than the peace already made, or entertain the chimerical proposals now made. Turning then to Austria, the Directory concluded the armistice of February first, 1796, but at Vienna the offer of Munich and two thirds of Bavaria, of an outlet to the Adriatic and of an alliance against Russia for the restoration of Poland—of course without Galicia, which Austria should retain—was treated only as significant of what French temerity dared propose, and when heard was scornfully disdained. The program for Italy was retained substantially as laid downin 1793: the destruction of the papal power, the overthrow of all existing governments, the plunder of their rich treasures, the annihilation of feudal and ecclesiastical institutions, and the regeneration of its peoples on democratic lines. Neither the revolutionary elements of the peninsula nor the jealous princes could be brought to terms by the active and ubiquitous French agents, even in Genoa, though there was just sufficient dallying everywhere between Venice and Naples to keep alive hope and exasperate the unsuccessful negotiators. The European world was worried and harassed by uncertainties, by dark plots, by mutual distrust. It was unready for war, but war was the only solvent of intolerable troubles. England, Austria, Russia, and France under the Directory must fight or perish.
It must not be forgotten that this was the monarchical, secular, and immemorial policy of France as the disturber of European peace; continued by the republic, it was rendered more pernicious and exasperating to the upholders of the balance of power. Not only was the republic more energetic and less scrupulous than the monarchy, her rivals were in a very low estate indeed. Great Britain had stripped France and Holland of their colonies, but these new possessions and the ocean highway must be protected at enormous expense. The Commons refused to authorize a new loan, and the nation was exhausted to such a degree that Pitt and the King, shrinking from the opprobrious attacks of the London populace, and noting with anguish the renewal of bloody disorder in Ireland, made a feint of peace negotiations through the agent they employed in Switzerland to foment royalist demonstrations against France wherever possible. Wickham asked on March eighth, 1796, on what terms the Directory would make an honorable peace, and inless than three weeks received a rebuff which declared that France would under no circumstances make restitution of its continental conquests. In a sense it was Russia's Polish policy which kept Prussia and Austria so occupied with the partition that the nascent republic of France was not strangled in its cradle by the contiguous powers. Provided she had the lion's share of Poland, Catherine was indifferent to the success of Jacobinism. But she soon saw the danger of a general conflagration and, applying Voltaire's epithet for ecclesiasticism to the republic, cried all abroad: Crush the Infamous! Conscious of her old age, distrusting all the possible successors to her throne: Paul the paranoiac, Constantine the coarse libertine, and the super-elegant Alexander, she refused a coalition with England and turned her activities eastward against the Cossacks and into Persia; but she consented to be the intermediary between Austria and Great Britain. Austria wanted the Netherlands, but only if she could secure with them a fortified girdle wherewith to protect and hold them. She likewise desired the Milanese and the Legations in Italy, as well as Venetia. As the price of continued war on France, these lands and a subsidy of three million pounds were the terms exacted from Great Britain. With no army at his disposal and his naval resources strained to the utmost, GeorgeIIIagreed to pay a hundred and fifty thousand pounds per month until parliament would make the larger grant. Thugut, the Austrian minister, accepted. Cobenzl, the Austrian ambassador atSt.Petersburg, arranged affairs with Catherine concerning Bavaria, the French royalists under Condé bribed Pichegru into a promise of yielding the fortresses of the north to their occupation, the Austrian army on the Rhine was strengthened. In retort Jourdan was stationed on the lower and Moreauon the upper Rhine, each with eighty thousand men, Bonaparte was despatched to Italy, and Hoche made ready a motley crew of outlaws and Vendeans wherewith to enter Ireland, join Wolfe Tone and his United Irishmen, and thus let loose the elements of civil war in that unhappy island. Europe at large expected the brunt of the struggle north of the Alps in central Germany: the initiated knew better.[Back to Contents]
Bonaparte and the Army of Italy — The System of Pillage — The General as a Despot — The Republican Armies and French Politics — Italy as the Focal Point — Condition of Italy — Bonaparte's Sagacity — His Plan of Action — His Army and Generals — Strength of the Army of Italy — The Napoleonic Maxims of Warfare — Advance of Military Science — Bonaparte's Achievements — His Financial Policy — Effects of His Success.
1796.
The struggle which was imminent was for nothing less than a new lease of national life for France. It dawned on many minds that in such a combat changes of a revolutionary nature—as regarded not merely the provisioning and management of armies, as regarded not merely the grand strategy to be adopted and carried out by France, but as regarded the very structure and relations of other European nations—would be justifiable. But to be justifiable they must be adequate; and to be adequate they must be unexpected and thorough. What should they be? The Œdipus who solves this riddle for France is the man of the hour. He was found in Bonaparte. What mean these ringing words from the headquarters at Nice, which, on March twenty-seventh, 1796, fell on the ears of a hungry, eager soldiery and a startled world? "Soldiers, you are naked, badly fed. The government owes you much; it can give you nothing. Your long-suffering, the courage youshow among these crags, are splendid, but they bring you no glory; not a ray is reflected upon you. I wish to lead you into the most fertile plains of the world. Rich provinces, great towns, will be in your power; there you will find honor, glory, and riches. Soldiers of Italy, can you be found lacking in honor, courage, or constancy?"
Such language has but one meaning. By a previous understanding with the Directory, the French army was to be paid, the French treasury to be replenished, at the expense of the lands which were the seat of war. Corsicans in the French service had long been suspected of sometimes serving their own interests to the detriment of their adopted country. Bonaparte was no exception, and occasionally he felt it necessary to justify himself. For example, he had carefully explained that his marriage bound him to the republic by still another tie. Yet it appears that his promotion, his engagement with the directors, and his devotion to the republic were all concerned primarily with personal ambition, though secondarily and incidentally with the perpetuation of a government professedly based on the Revolution. From the outset of Napoleon's independent career, something of the future dictator appears. This implied promise that pillage, plunder, and rapine should henceforth go unpunished in order that his soldiers might line their pockets is the indication of a settled policy which was more definitely expressed in each successive proclamation as it issued from his pen. It was repeated whenever new energy was to be inspired into faltering columns, whenever some unparalleled effort in a dark design was to be demanded from the rank and file ofthe army, until at last a point-blank promise was made that every man should return to France with money enough in his pocket to become a landowner.
There was magic in the new spell, the charm never ceased to work; with that first call from Nice began the transformation of the French army, fighting now no longer for principle, but for glory, victory, and booty. Its leader, if successful, would be in no sense a constitutional general, but a despotic conqueror. Outwardly gracious, and with no irritating condescension; considerate wherever mercy would strengthen his reputation; fully aware of the influence a dramatic situation or a pregnant aphorism has upon the common mind, and using both with mastery; appealing as a climax to the powerful motive of greed in every heart, Bonaparte was soon to be not alone the general of consummate genius, not alone the organizing lawgiver of conquered lands and peoples, but, what was essential to his whole career, the idol of an army which was not, as of old, the servant of a great nation, but, as the new era had transformed it, the nation itself.
The peculiar relation of Bonaparte to Italy, to Corsica, and to the Convention had made him, as early as 1794, while yet but chief of artillery, the real director of the Army of Italy. He had no personal share in the victorious campaign of that year, but its victories, as he justly claimed, were due to his plans. During the unsuccessful Corsican expedition of the following winter, for which he was but indirectly responsible, the Austro-Sardinians in Piedmont had taken advantage of its absorbing so many French troops to undo all that had so far been accomplished. During the summer of 1795 Spain and Prussia had made peace with France. In consequence all northern Europe had been declared neutral, and the field of operations on the Rhine hadbeen confined to the central zone of Germany, while at the same time the French soldiers who had formed the Army of the Pyrenees had been transferred to the Maritime Alps. In 1796, therefore, the great question was whether the Army of the Rhine or that of Italy was to be the chief weapon of offense against Austria.
Divided interests and warped convictions quickly created two opinions in the French nation, each of which was held with intensity and bitterness by its supporters. So far the Army of the Rhine was much the stronger, and the Emperor had concentrated his strength to oppose it. But the wisest heads saw that Austria might be flanked by way of Italy. The gate to Lombardy was guarded by the sturdy little army of Victor Amadeus, assisted by a small Austrian force. If the house of Savoy, which was said to wear at its girdle the keys of the Alps, could be conquered and brought to make a separate peace, the Austrian army could be overwhelmed, and a highway to Vienna opened first through the plains of Lombardy, then by the Austrian Tyrol, or else by the Venetian Alps. Strangely enough, the plainest and most forcible exposition of this plan was made by an emigrant in London, a certain Dutheil, for the benefit of England and Austria. But the Allies were deaf to his warnings, while in the mean time Bonaparte enforced the same idea upon the French authorities, and secured their acceptance of it. Both he and they were the more inclined to the scheme because once already it had been successfully initiated; because the general, having studied Italy and its people, thoroughly understood what contributions might be levied on them; because the Army of the Rhine was radically republican and knew its own strength; because therefore the personal ambitions of Bonaparte, and in fact the very existence of the Directory, alike depended on success elsewhere than in central Europe.
Having been for centuries the battle-field of rival dynasties, Italy, though a geographical unit with natural frontiers more marked than those of any other land, and with inhabitants fairly homogeneous in birth, speech, and institutions, was neither a nation nor a family of kindred nations, but a congeries of heterogeneous states. Some of these, like Venice and Genoa, boasted the proud title of republics; they were in reality narrow, commercial, even piratical oligarchies, destitute of any vigorous political life. The Pope, like other petty rulers, was but a temporal prince, despotic, and not even enlightened, as was the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Naples and the Milanese both groaned under the yoke of foreign rulers, and the only passable government in the length and breadth of the land was that of the house of Savoy in Piedmont and Sardinia, lands where the revolutionary spirit of liberty was most extended and active. The petty courts, like those of Parma and Modena, were nests of intrigue and corruption. There was, of course, in every place that saving remnant of high-minded men which is always providentially left as a seed; but the people as a whole were ignorant and enervated. The accumulations of ages, gained by an extensive and lucrative commerce, or by the tilling of a generous soil, had not been altogether dissipated by misrule, and there was even yet rich store of money in many of the venerable and still splendid cities. Nowhere in the ancient seats of the Roman commonwealth, whose memory was now the cherished fashion in France, could anything more than a reflection of French revolutionary principles be discerned; the rights of man and republican doctrine were attractive subjects of debate in many cities throughout the peninsula, but there was little of that fierce devotion to their realization so prevalent beyond the Alps.
The sagacity of Bonaparte saw his account in theseconditions. Being a professed republican, he could announce himself as the regenerator of society, and the liberator of a people. If, as has been supposed, he already dreamed of a throne, where could one be so easily founded with the certainty of its endurance? As a conqueror he would have a divided, helpless, and wealthy people at his feet. If the old flame of Corsican ambition were not yet extinguished, he felt perhaps that he could wreak the vengeance of a defeated and angry people upon Genoa, their oppressor for ages.
His preparations began as early as the autumn of 1795, when, with Carnot's assistance, the united Pyrenean and Italian armies were directed to the old task of opening the roads through the mountains and by the sea-shore into Lombardy and central Italy. They won the battle of Loano, which secured the Maritime Alps once more; but a long winter amid these inclement peaks had left the army wretched and destitute of every necessity. It had been difficult throughout that winter to maintain even the Army of the Interior in the heart of France; the only chance for that of Italy was movement. The completed plan of action was forwarded from Paris in January. But, as has been told, Schérer, the commanding general, and his staff were outraged, refusing to consider its suggestions, either those for supplying their necessities in Lombardy, or those for the daring and venturesome operations necessary to reach that goal.
Bonaparte, who could invent such schemes, alone could realize them; and the task was intrusted to him. For the next ten weeks no sort of preparation was neglected. The nearly empty chest of the Directory was swept clean; from that source the new commander received forty-seven thousand five hundred francs in cash, and drafts for twenty thousand more; forced loans for considerable sums were made in Toulon and Marseilles;and Salicetti levied contributions of grain and forage in Genoa according to the plan which had been preconcerted between him and the general in their Jacobin days. The army which Bonaparte finally set in motion was therefore a fine engine of war. Its immediate necessities relieved, the veterans warmed to their work, and that notable promise of booty worked them to the pitch of genuine enthusiasm. The young commander, moreover, was as circumspect as a man of the first ability alone could be when about to make the venture of his life and play for the stake of a world. His generals of division were themselves men of mark—personages no less than Masséna, Augereau, Laharpe, and Sérurier. Of Masséna some account has already been given. Augereau was Bonaparte's senior by thirteen years, of humble and obscure origin, who had sought his fortunes as a fencing-master in the Bourbon service at Naples, and having later enlisted in the French forces sent to Spain in 1792, rose by his ability to be general of brigade, then division commander in the Army of Italy. He was rude in manner and plebeian in feeling, jealous of Bonaparte, but brave and capable. In the sequel he played an important part and rose to eminence, though he distrusted both the Emperor and the empire and flinched before great crises. Neither Laharpe nor Sérurier was distinguished beyond the sphere of their profession, but in that they were loyal and admirable. Laharpe was a member of the famous Swiss family banished from home for devotion to liberty. Under Luckner in Germany he had earned and kept the sobriquet of "the brave"; until he was mortally wounded in a night attack, while crossing the Po after Millesimo, he continued his brilliant career, and would have gone far had he been spared. Sérurier was a veteran of the Seven Years' War and of Portugal, already fifty-four years old.Able and trustworthy, he was loaded with favors by Napoleon and survived until 1819. It might have been very easy to exasperate such men. But what the commander-in-chief had to do was done with such smoothness and skill that even they could find no ground for carping; and though at first cold and reticent, before long they yielded to the influences which filled with excitement the very air they breathed.
At this moment, besides the National Guard, France had an army, and in some sense a navy: of both the effective fighting force numbered upward of half a million. Divided nominally into nine armies, instead of fourteen as first planned, there were in reality but seven; of these, four were of minor importance: a small, skeleton Army of the Interior, a force in the west under Hoche twice as large and with ranks better filled, a fairly strong army in the north under Macdonald, and a similar one in the Alps under Kellermann, with Berthier and Vaubois as lieutenants, which soon became a part of Bonaparte's force. These were, if possible, to preserve internal order and to watch England, while three great active organizations were to combine for the overthrow of Austria. On the Rhine were two of the active armies—one near Düsseldorf under Jourdan, another near Strasburg under Moreau. Macdonald was of Scottish Jacobite descent, a French royalist converted to republicanism by his marriage. He was now thirty-one years old. Trained in the regiment of Dillon, he alone of its officers remained true to democratic principles on the outbreak of the Revolution. He was made a colonel for his bravery at Jemmapes, and for his loyalty when Dumouriez went over to the Austrians he was promoted to be general of brigade. For his services under Pichegru in Holland he had been further rewarded by promotion, and after the peace of Campo Formio was transferredfrom the Rhine to Italy. He was throughout a loyal friend of Bonaparte and received the highest honors. Kellermann was a Bavarian, and when associated with Bonaparte a veteran, sixty-one years old. He had seen service in the Seven Years' War and again in Poland during 1771. An ardent republican, he had served with distinction from the beginning of the revolutionary wars: though twice charged with incapacity, he was triumphantly acquitted. He linked his fortunes to those of Bonaparte without jealousy and reaped abundant laurels. Of Berthier and the other great generals we have already spoken. Vaubois reached no distinction. At the portals of Italy was Bonaparte, with a third army, soon to be the most active of all. At the outset he had, all told, about forty-five thousand men; but the campaign which he conducted had before its close assumed such dimensions that in spite of its losses the Army of Italy contained nearly double that number of men ready for the field, besides the garrison troops and invalids. The figures on the records of the war department were invariably much greater; but an enormous percentage, sometimes as high as a third, was always in the hospitals, while often as many as twenty thousand were left behind to hold various fortresses. Bonaparte, for evident reasons, uniformly represented his effective force as smaller than it was, and stunned the ears of the Directory with ever reiterated demands for reinforcement. A dispassionate estimate would fix the number of his troops in the field at any one time during these operations as not lower than thirty-five thousand nor much higher than eighty thousand.
Another element of the utmost importance entered into the coming campaign. The old vicious system by which a vigilant democracy had jealously prescribed to its generals every step to be taken was swept awayby Bonaparte, who as Robespierre's "man" had been thoroughly familiar with its workings from the other end. He was now commander-in-chief, and he insisted on the absolute unity of command as essential to the economy of time. This being granted, his equipment was complete. It will be remembered that in 1794 he had explained to his patrons how warfare in the field was like a siege: by directing all one's force to a single point a breach might be made, and the equilibrium of opposition destroyed. To this conception of concentration for attack he had, in concert with the Directory, added another, that of expansion in a given territory for sustenance. He had still a third, that war must be made as intense and awful as possible in order to make it short, and thus to diminish its horrors. Trite and simple as these aphorisms now appear, they were all original and absolutely new, at least in the quick, fierce application of them made by Bonaparte. The traditions of chivalry, the incessant warfare of two centuries and a half, the humane conceptions of the Church, the regard for human life, the difficulty of communications, the scarcity of munitions and arms,—all these and other elements had combined to make war under mediocre generals a stately ceremonial, and to diminish the number of actual battles, which took place, when they did, only after careful preparation, as an unpleasant necessity, by a sort of common agreement, and with the ceremony of a duel.
Turenne, Marlborough, and Frederick, all men of cold-blooded temperament, had been the greatest generals of their respective ages, and were successful much in proportion to their lack of sentiment and disregard of conventionalities. Their notions and their conduct displayed the same instincts as those of Bonaparte, and their minds were enlarged by a study of great campaignslike that which had fed his inchoate genius and had made possible his consummate achievement. He had much the same apparatus for warfare as they. The men of Europe had not materially changed in stature, weight, education, or morals since the closing years of the Thirty Years' War. The roads were somewhat better, the conformation of mountains, hills, and valleys was better known, and like his great predecessors, though unlike his contemporaries, Bonaparte knew the use of a map; but in the main little was changed in the conditions for moving and manœuvering troops. News traveled slowly, the semaphore telegraph was but slowly coming into use, and the fastest couriers rode from Nice to Paris or from Paris to Berlin in seven days. Firearms of every description were little improved: Prussia actually claimed that she had been forced to negotiate for peace because France controlled the production of gun-flints. The forging of cannon was finer, and the artillery arm was on the whole more efficient. In France there had been considerable change for the better in the manual and in tactics; the rest of Europe followed the old and more formal ways. Outside the republic, ceremony still held sway in court and camp; youthful energy was stifled in routine; and the generals opposed to Bonaparte were for the most part men advanced in years, wedded to tradition, and incapable of quickly adapting their ideas to meet advances and attacks based on conceptions radically different from their own. It was at times a positive misery to the new conqueror that his opponents were such inefficient fossils. Young and at the same time capable; using the natural advantages of his territory to support the bravery of his troops; with a mind which was not only accurate and decisive, but comprehensive in its observations; unhampered by control or by principle; opposed togenerals who could not think of a boy of twenty-six as their equal; with the best army and the finest theater of war in Europe; finally, with a genius independently developed, and with conceptions of his profession which summarized the experience of his greatest predecessors, Bonaparte performed feats that seemed miraculous even when compared with those of Hoche, Jourdan, or Moreau, which had already so astounded the world.
Within eleven days the Austrians and Sardinians were separated, the latter having been defeated and forced to sign an armistice. After a rest of two days, a fortnight saw him victorious in Lombardy, and entering Milan as a conqueror. Two weeks elapsed, and again he set forth to reduce to his sway in less than a month the most of central Italy. Against an enemy now desperate and at bay his operations fell into four divisions, each resulting in an advance—the first, of nine days, against Wurmser and Quasdanowich; the second, of sixteen days, against Wurmser; the third, of twelve days, against Alvinczy; and the fourth, of thirty days, until he captured Mantua and opened the mountain passes to his army. Within fifteen days after beginning hostilities against the Pope, he forced him to sign the treaty of Tolentino; and within thirty-six days of their setting foot on the road from Mantua to Vienna, the French were at Leoben, distant only ninety miles from the Austrian capital, and dictating terms to the Empire. In the year between March twenty-seventh, 1796, and April seventh, 1797, Bonaparte humbled the most haughty dynasty in Europe, toppled the central European state system, and initiated the process which has given a predominance apparently final to Prussia, then considered but as a parvenu.
It is impossible to estimate the enormous sums of money which he exacted for the conduct of a war thathe chose to say was carried on to emancipate Italy. The soldiers of his army were well clad, well fed, and well equipped from the day of their entry into Milan; the arrears of their pay were not only settled, but they were given license to prey on the country until a point was reached which seemed to jeopardize success, when common pillage was promptly stopped by the severest examples. The treasury of the Directory was not filled as were those of the conquering officers, but it was no longer empty. In short, France reached the apex of her revolutionary greatness; and as she was now the foremost power on the Continent, the shaky monarchies in neighboring lands were forced to consider again questions which in 1795 they had hoped were settled. As Bonaparte foresaw, the destinies of Europe had indeed hung on the fate of Italy.