The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Vol. 2 (of 4)

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Title: The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Vol. 2 (of 4)

Author: William Milligan Sloane

Release date: December 1, 2010 [eBook #31026]

Language: English

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Travers and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
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[Transcriber's note: Obvious printer's errors have been corrected,
all other inconsistencies are as in the original. The author's
spelling has been maintained.

Unusual subscripts have been marked with { }, e.g.: V{te} for
Vicomte.]

[Illustration: From the collection of W. C. Crane Engraved by Langlois

GENERAL BONAPARTE

Drawn by Raffet.]

THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

WILLIAM MILLIGAN SLOANE
PH.D., L.H.D., LL.D.
_Professor of History in Columbia University_

Revised and Enlarged
With Portraits

VOLUME II

NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1916

_Published, October, 1910_

CONTENTS

CHAPTER Page

I. Rescue of the Directory................................. 1

II. The Treaty of Campo Formio............................. 15

III. Bonaparte and Talleyrand............................... 26

IV. Commotions in European Politics........................ 36

V. The Expedition to Egypt................................ 46

VI. The Landing in Egypt................................... 55

VII. The Disaster at Acre................................... 65

VIII. Aboukir and the Great Desertion........................ 77

IX. "The Return of the Hero"............................... 86

X. Bonaparte Seizes His Opportunity...................... 100

XI. The Overthrow of the Directory........................ 111

XII. Bonaparte the First Consul............................ 121

XIII. Bonaparte Embodies the Revolution..................... 136

XIV. A Constitutional Despotism............................ 149

XV. Statesmanship and Strategy............................ 162

XVI. Marengo............................................... 174

XVII. The Peace of Lunéville................................ 190

XVIII. The Pacification of Europe............................ 203

XIX. The Reorganization of France.......................... 213

XX. The Code and the University........................... 221

XXI. Steps Toward Monarchy................................. 229

XXII. The Life Consulate.................................... 239

XXIII. The Threshold of Monarchy............................. 250

XXIV. Expansion of the Revolutionary System................. 261

XXV. Tension Between England and France.................... 275

XXVI. France and England in Arms............................ 286

XXVII. Warnings To Royalists and Republicans................. 295

XXVIII. Declaration of the Empire............................. 314

XXIX. The Descent Into England.............................. 325

XXX. The Coronation of Napoleon I.......................... 339

XXXI. The Third Coalition................................... 354

XXXII. Trafalgar and Austerlitz.............................. 370

XXXIII. Napoleon, War Lord and Emperor........................ 393

XXXIV. The War With Russia................................... 413

XXXV. The Devastation of Prussia............................ 435

XXXVI. The Continental System................................ 446

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

General Bonaparte _Frontispiece_

Facing Page

Map of Egypt..................................................... 58

Napoleon--by Ingres.............................................. 78

Napoleon working by the glimmer of the lamp..................... 128

Map of the Marengo Campaigns.................................... 176

Two Maps of Marengo, 14th July, 1800........................ 183-184

Napoleon as First Consul........................................ 226

Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul................................ 276

Napoleon as First Consul........................................ 326

Napoleon, First Consul--by Ingres............................... 376

Napoleon Bonaparte as First Consul.............................. 426

LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE

CHAPTER I

RESCUE OF THE DIRECTORY[1]

[Footnote 1: The authorities are as before: Vandal:
L'Avènement de Bonaparte; Aulard: Études et leçons sur la
Révolution Française; Paris pendant la réaction
thermidorienne et sous le Directoire, and Histoire Politique
de la Révolution Française; Sorel: L'Europe et la Révolution
Française, Vol. V; Bonaparte et le Directoire. Much can be
gleaned from the printed letters and despatches of this
period. Important sources are the Souvenirs du baron de
Barante; Mémoires et correspondance de Lafayette; Fiévée:
Correspondance et relations avec Bonaparte; Correspondance de
Mallet du Pan; Mémoires du roi Joseph; likewise the memoirs
of Madame de Chastenay, of Duport de Cheverny, of Marmont,
Marbot, Bourrienne, Carnot, Thiébault, Mathieu Dumas, and
above all the Correspondence of Napoleon himself. Further,
there are the collections of Bailleu, Staël-Holstein, Charles
de Constant, letters of Talleyrand to Napoleon (published by
Bertrand), of Jean Hardy, and Mme. Reinhard. The newspapers
of the day, such as L'Espiègle, Le Surveillant, Le
Publiciste, Le Propagateur, Gazette de France and Moniteur,
and the Journal des Hommes Libres, are accessible only in the
great libraries of London and Paris. The papers of
Cambacérès, Mortier, Barthélemy, Grouvelle, and Jourdan have
been found and used by the latest historians, but they are
not printed. The best bibliography of the period is a
considerable volume edited by Kirchelsen and published in
1902, 2d ed. 1908: that of Lumbroso is not yet completed.]

Deadlock between the French Executive and the Chambers --
Bonaparte's Attitude -- The Celebration of July Fourteenth at
Milan -- Plot of the French Royalists -- Attitude of Moreau and
Hoche -- Bonaparte to the Rescue -- The Eighteenth of Fructidor
-- Effects in Paris -- Bonaparte a European Personage -- His
Statesmanship in Italy -- The Ligurian Republic -- Sardinia,
Switzerland, and Great Britain -- Readiness of Italy for War --
Strength of Bonaparte's Armies.

[Sidenote: 1797]

The fine charter with which France had presumably closed the
revolutionary epoch, in order to live for the first time under a
constitutional government, was about to display its fatal weakness in
the production of a deadlock. This possibility had been clearly
foreseen by acute observers, since there was no provision for the
control of one arm of the government by the other, and in any working
system supreme control must reside somewhere. For fear of usurpation,
anarchy, and tyranny the constitution of the Directorate divided the
powers so completely that they could not work at all. The spring
elections of 1797 were the first held under this new constitution
without any restrictions, and the Jacobin majority in the legislature
disappeared. Barthélemy, the new director chosen to replace
Letourneur, was a moderate democrat with royalistic leanings, who,
like his predecessor, joined his fortunes with those of Carnot. The
Five Hundred, therefore, as well as the Ancients, now represented the
great majority of the French people, who hated Jacobinism, who were
opposed to any republican propaganda in foreign countries, and who,
more than anything else, wanted peace, in order to restore their
fortunes and to secure leisure for their amusements. An attack on the
executive policy which had been dictated by the three radical members
of the Directory, sometimes designated the triumvirate, at once began.
Nothing escaped: assaults were made on their attitude toward the
emigrants and the clergy, on their loss of the colonies, on their
financial failures, and, above all, on their conduct of foreign
affairs, which appeared to have as its aim the continuance of the war,
and the overthrow of monarchy throughout Europe. The leaders of the
majority in the two councils frequented a club in the Clichy quarter
of Paris, which was the center of royalist intrigue. Though no match
in ability for their opponents, these men were quite clever enough to
taunt the directors with their impotence to stop royalist agitations.
Internal affairs were desperate. Suicides from starvation were sadly
frequent among the officers of the navy, while their colleagues in the
Army of Italy were not only growing rich on plunder, but defiant as
well. The French commander in Italy had first made peace on his own
terms, and had then declared war without consulting the chambers, thus
not only annihilating friendly commonwealths, but evincing a contempt
for the constitution, for the duly elected representatives of the
people, and for the popular demand that there should be, not a
particular, but a general pacification. On June twenty-third, 1797, in
a memorable interpellation of the government by Dumorlard, all these
matters were thoroughly ventilated in the Five Hundred. Even
Pontécoulant, Bonaparte's former protector, joined in the demand for
an explanation. Paris and the country in general were left in a
ferment.

The disorders, murmurs, and menaces so rife in Paris had long given
food for thought to the proconsul at Montebello. He was meditating
upon constitutions and their values, while outwardly devoting himself
to fascinating his little court and its visitors. He rode, he danced,
he told weird tales at dusk, he played cards and cheated with merry
effrontery; in the intervals he slept long and deep, as at irregular
hours he worked titanically and efficiently. Was it to maintain the
chaos in Paris that he was conquering, administering, negotiating?
This he flatly asked of Miot de Melito and Melzi, as they narrate. The
directors were meditating a state stroke, and they well knew that
Bonaparte was less their man than they were his creatures. So they
chose a new ministry which included Talleyrand as minister of state
and Hoche as minister of war. The rôle to be played by the latter was
so evident that the plan was thwarted on a technicality, as will be
seen; and with Talleyrand, Bonaparte was soon to be, if he were not
already, in personal correspondence about forms of government.
Interested experts will note the various suggestions from the medieval
constitutions of Italian republics, which in some measure affected the
conceptions of these political theorists.

It was with reference to such conditions that the celebration, in
Milan, of July fourteenth was arranged. Each detail was nicely
calculated to strengthen the self-esteem of every soldier, to
intensify his military pride, and to prejudice him against the
conservatives who wanted peace only that they might restore the
monarchy. The soldiers of Bonaparte were in their own estimation the
soldiers of the same republic which survived in the triumvirate,
Barras, Rewbell, and Larévellière; and it was a republican
constitution which was menaced by the illegal interference of the
legislature with the executive. In such a crisis it was easy to
confuse in the minds of plain men the love of military glory with the
enthusiasm for liberty. "Soldiers, I know that you are deeply moved by
the misfortune which threatens our country"--so ran the proclamation
of their idolized general. "But our country is in no real danger. The
men who have enabled her to triumph over united Europe are on hand.
Mountains separate us from France: you would surmount them with the
swiftness of the eagle, if it were needful, in order to maintain the
constitution, to defend liberty, to protect the government and the
republicans. Soldiers, the government guards the law of which it is
the depositary. If royalists show their heads, that moment is their
last. Dismiss your fears, and let us swear by the spirit of the
heroes who have fallen at our side in defense of liberty--let us swear
by our new banners: 'Never-ending war on the enemies of the republic,
and of the constitution of the year III.'"

This call had exactly the effect desired. From the divisions of the
army, and from the chief garrisons, came addresses declaring the
adhesion of the troops to the principles of the Revolution. As for the
reproaches heaped upon Bonaparte for the overthrow of Venice, he was
little concerned. To pacify the clamor, however, he invented and printed
a number of half-true explanations cleverly adapted to the charges
brought, but of a sardonic nature. The real bolt, the weapon destined to
crush his enemies, was one forged in that very city. On its fall, a
leading emigrant--the Comte d'Antraigues--had been captured. Treated
with the highest distinction by his captors, he was led to write a
confession of all that concerned the hitherto suspected, but unproved,
treachery of Pichegru two years before. From his refuge at Blankenburg,
in the Hartz Mountains, the pretender--Louis XVIII--had slowly and
painfully built up the party which has been mentioned, and from its
meeting-place was known as the Clichy faction; he had also bought
Pichegru's adhesion to his cause, and had laid the complicated train of
a plot whereby, when the fated and foreseen moment should arrive in
which the exasperated Directory would employ force with the legislative
councils, Pichegru, now president of the Five Hundred, was to appear in
his uniform as the conqueror of Holland, and, assuming the chief
command, turn the army, the chosen bulwark of the directors, against
them. The Paris royalists had talked and behaved so as to betray many
details regarding this ingenious scheme; but the possession of such
knowledge by the directors did not render the situation any less
menacing. To save themselves and the constitution, the radical members
felt that they must secure, and that speedily, a capable and devoted
general to command in Paris.

They had consulted Moreau, Hoche, and Bonaparte. Moreau showed little
zeal: the army on the Rhine, which he commanded and whose fortunes he
had retrieved by a signal victory, had not been paid; the men were
destitute, and, like their leader, sullen on account of their enforced
inaction. So unsympathetic and cold was the general's attitude toward
the Directory that although, as appears certain, he had in his
possession positive proof of Pichegru's desertion to the enemy, he
kept silence, and allowed matters to take their course. The brilliant
Hoche was willing to aid the directors. He had worked wonders in
quelling rebellion throughout the Vendée, had won the favor of the
soldiery, and in 1796 had made a gallant though futile expedition to
stir up sedition in Ireland. Having then been transferred to the banks
of the Rhine, he had gladly lent himself to execute a plan arranged by
Barras for bringing troops to Paris under the pretext of a scheme for
the complete transformation of the home and northern armies by a
change of stations for the various divisions. To this end the general
on July sixteenth had been nominated minister of war. It turned out,
however, that, being not yet thirty, he was too young under the
constitution, and could not be confirmed. Simultaneously the new
dispositions in the army began to excite suspicion; the entire plan
was discredited, and Hoche was so closely identified with it that he
became an object of distrust to the masses, and therefore unavailable.

There remained only Bonaparte or one of his lieutenants. His very
strength was a menace to the executive, and they felt the danger; but
a general they must have. Accordingly, bitter as the decision was,
they asked Bonaparte to send them such a commander as they needed--one
of his own men. Bonaparte was ready for the emergency; he had already
sent despatches to Paris promising a new remittance of six hundred
thousand dollars, the strongest French army in the field had been used
in a brilliant demonstration in favor of the Directory, and now most
opportunely the ambitious, blustering, and fearless Augereau asked
leave to depart for Paris on his private affairs. To him was entrusted
an enthusiastic address to the Directory from the army, which had been
prepared as part of the patriotic celebration. No better tool could
have been selected. On his arrival in Paris,--"sent," as he boasted,
"to kill the royalists,"--he was appointed to command the Army of the
Interior; and the confession of d'Antraigues having been communicated
to Barras a short time previously, through Bernadotte, the Directory
felt ready for the coming crisis. Again they owed everything to
Bonaparte; he was free to do as he chose in the further negotiations
with Austria, and in the rearrangement of Italy.

With such weapons in hand, the Directory was for the moment
invulnerable. But the royalist majority in the councils rushed madly
on their fate. Infuriated by the presence so near to Paris of the
soldiers brought in from the Army of the Sambre and the Meuse, they
put their own guard under a royalist commander, closed the
constitutional clubs which had been formed to offset that of Clichy,
and in an irregular meeting of September third a proposition of
General Willot to rise next day and destroy the government was
received with applause. That night Augereau put himself at the head of
about twelve thousand troops. With these he mounted guard throughout
the city, seized the legislative chambers, and thus ended the first
short constitutional régime of his country. The next morning, the
eighteenth of Fructidor, the radical triumvirate of the Directory had
entire control of the city and of the country. Of course all this was
done in the name of public safety. Carnot, who had been kept in
ignorance of Barras's dealings with Hoche, and had been reasoning with
Bonaparte by letter as if his correspondent were an honest patriot,
was rudely awakened from his illusion that others were as honest and
sincere as he, and, seeing too late the snare which had been spread,
took refuge in flight. Barthélemy was seized and imprisoned.

Two new radicals, Merlin and François de Neufchâteau, were appointed to
the vacancies. Barbé-Marbois, the royalist president of the Ancients,
with eleven members of that body; Pichegru with forty-two deputies from
the Five Hundred, and one hundred and forty-eight other persons, mostly
journalists, were proscribed. All these, with the exception of a few who
escaped by flight, were sent to languish in the pestilential swamps of
Cayenne, where there was already a colony of transported priests.
Although the guillotine was not again erected, yet the eighteenth of
Fructidor brought in a revolutionary government, an administration
resting on force, though under the forms of the constitution. The
Fructidorians claimed to be strict constitutionalists, and posed as such
before the country. But facts were more convincing than their
professions. Their rallying-point was the Directory, and the Directory
having twice appealed to the army, the army was now its real support.
The liberty of the press was abolished, and martial law was proclaimed
wherever the executive thought best. Moreover, Bonaparte had shown the
way and furnished the general; he had taken another step toward his
eventual appearance as the ruler of the army, and through it of the
country. Such a forced relation led to mutual distrust, and finally to
hatred.

Augereau, who had fondly hoped to enter the Directory, was made
commander, in Moreau's place, of an army whose campaigns were over.
The premature death of Hoche about the same time quenched the only
military genius in France comparable to that of Bonaparte, and removed
a political rival as well. The Army of the Alps was then combined with
that of Italy, and with this simplification of the military machine he
who until peace was made would be virtually its mover could well say
to his enemies: "I speak in the name of eighty thousand men. The time
is past when scoundrelly lawyers and mere talkers can guillotine
soldiers." Napoleon, in his intimate conversations with Mme. de
Rémusat, said that at this time he "became a personage in Europe. On
one side, by my orders of the day, I supported the revolutionary
system; on the other, I secretly dealt with the emigrants, permitting
them to cherish some hope. It is easy to deceive that party, for it
always sets out not from what actually is, but from what it wishes
there were. I received splendid offers in case I were willing to
follow the example of General Monk. The pretender himself wrote to me
in his halting, florid style. I conquered the Pope more completely by
keeping away from Rome than if I had burned his capital. At last I
became influential and strong."

With many men the success of the eighteenth of Fructidor would have
been glory enough for a single season. But the indomitable and
feverish energy of Bonaparte was not exhausted even by such minute
prevision as was needed for this; in fact, the political campaign was
only a considerable part of the summer's labor. While mastering
France, he was preparing to master Italy, and, after Italy, Europe.
Concurrently with the management of French politics went not only the
negotiations with the Emperor, but the completion of his contemplated
labors in Italy. Two constitutions were needed for new-born states,
the republics known thus far as the Transpadane and the Cispadane.
Neither was strong enough for their creator's purpose. By the
preparation of almost identical charters, based upon the French
constitution of the year III, the way for their union had already been
prepared. These papers were now most carefully elaborated; and not
only that, but an administrator for every post, from the highest to
the lowest, was, after a minute scrutiny of his character, selected
and then instructed according to his abilities. Most of these new
officials were men of integrity and high purpose; but nevertheless
they owed their appointment to the dictator, and were in consequence
his tools, conscious or unconscious. The combination of the two
temporary states into the Cisalpine Republic was thus made ready to be
recognized in the final treaty with Austria.

Then there was Genoa. Bonaparte had told the Directory in May that her
people were clamoring for liberty. She was destined by him for the
same fate which had overtaken Venice. The identical machinery was set
to work for a similar result. Faypoult, the diplomatic agent of
France, began his agitations very much as Lallemant had done, although
in comparison with his Venetian colleague he was but a bungler. The
democratic club of Genoa first demanded from the senate that
aristocracy should be abolished, and when their request was denied,
seized the arsenal and the harbor. The populace rose to the support of
the aristocracy, and temporarily triumphed. La Valette, Bonaparte's
adjutant, appeared in due time on the floor of the Genoese senate with
a peremptory message from his commander like that which in similar
dramatic circumstances Junot read to the patricians of Venice. The
intervention of the French, it said, was only to protect life and
property, while assuring their own communications with France. But
within twenty-four hours all political prisoners must be released, the
people disarmed, and the enemies of France surrendered; otherwise the
senators would answer with their lives. Thus menaced, the government
obeyed every command. Then Faypoult repeated his demand for the
substitution of a democratic constitution in place of the old one. The
senate felt how futile further opposition would be, but sent an
embassy to Montebello. The members were courteously received, and were
probably not greatly amazed to find Bonaparte already occupied with
the details of a constitution which was to reconstruct their
commonwealth under the name of the Ligurian Republic. It was soon
complete in all its parts, and with its adoption Genoa the Superb was
no more.

As for Sardinia, the constant agitation carried on by her radicals
kept the King in fear; and propositions from Bonaparte for an
alliance, which would increase his army by the full effective force of
the excellent Piedmontese troops, were favorably entertained. The
health of the Pope had become so feeble that his death could not long
be postponed. The opportunity was seized to display further respect
for his ecclesiastical power by requesting, on August third, a
reconciliation between the French government and the clergy for the
common advantage of State and Church. A quarrel between the Valtellina
and the Grisons gave the great man at Montebello his first chance to
intervene in Switzerland as an arbiter whose word was law, and thus to
begin the reconstruction of that country. In England, moreover, Leoben
had made a profound impression, and Pitt became more anxious than ever
for peace. In July Malmesbury reopened his negotiations, this time at
Lille. The proffered terms were far more favorable than before.
Belgium might be incorporated in France, and Holland made a
dependency, if the French would renounce their claim to the most
important among the Dutch colonies which England had conquered,
including the Cape of Good Hope. There was no good will on the part of
the French commissioners from the beginning, and the new ones who were
appointed after the eighteenth of Fructidor proved to be utterly
impracticable. The negotiations were marked by caviling over
unimportant trifles and a suspicious indifference on both sides to
really important concessions. Both parties, as later appeared, were
fully aware of the impending revolution at Paris: the British
plenipotentiary was confident in the restoration of royalty, the
French commission was equally sure that the radical triumvirate would
regain their mastery. Naturally it was a dispirited embassy which soon
returned to England, when not merely the facts but the meaning and
ultimate consequences of that revolution were known. Similar
conditions attended the negotiation of Caillard at Berlin with Panine
for a peace with Russia; only there, a treaty was signed. In it the
French republic renounced its right or privilege of propagandism, and
therefore the Directory after Fructidor rejected it. Throwing the
responsibility for the coming war on England and Russia, the
triumvirate without a moment's loss renewed its agitations in both
Holland and Prussia to "fructidorize" both and secure them as allies.
This insanity was merely the pendant of that with which they spurred
Bonaparte to activity in forcing Austria's prompt surrender,
withdrawing their agent from the negotiations and thus delivering
themselves and France more and more completely into his hands. The
process of "ripening the pear" for his enjoyment could not have been
more auspiciously inaugurated.

The season was for Bonaparte, as may well be supposed, just as busy on
the military as it had been on the political side. Day and night the
soldiers in the conquered Venetian lands wrought with ceaseless labor
until the whole territory was in perfect order as a base of military
operations. Not a single strategic point there or elsewhere was
overlooked. Even the little island of St. Peter in the Mediterranean
was taken from Piedmont, and garrisoned with two hundred men. It was
generally understood that war might break out at any moment. Every
contribution under treaty obligations was exacted to the utmost
farthing. As a single illustration of the French dealing, jewels and
gems estimated by the Pope as worth ten millions of francs were
accepted by the French experts at a valuation of five. Within the
previous twelve months Bonaparte had sent to Paris one million four
hundred thousand dollars, of which he destined four hundred thousand
for the outfit of a fleet. It was but a moiety of what he had raised.
During this summer, on the contrary, he kept everything: even the six
hundred thousand dollars promised to Barras were not paid. It is
therefore likely that he had in hand upward of six million dollars in
cash, and commissary stores to the extent of possibly a million more.

The size of his army is difficult to estimate. By the records of the
War Office he had in April one hundred and forty-one thousand two
hundred and twenty-three effectives, of whom one hundred and
twenty-one thousand four hundred and twenty were fit for service. On
September third he wrote to Carnot that he had seventy-five thousand
effective men, of whom fifteen thousand were in garrison; but a
fortnight later he admitted a total of eighty-three thousand eight
hundred, of whom he declared, however, that only forty-nine thousand
were effective. He likewise admitted that he had one thousand Italians
and two thousand Poles. No one can believe that these figures are of
the slightest value. Conservative estimates put his fighting force at
seventy thousand French soldiers ready for the field, and fifteen
thousand Piedmontese, Cisalpines, and Poles in like condition. The
French were by this time such veterans as Europe had seldom seen: the
others were of medium quality only; excepting, of course, the
Piedmontese, who were fine. Bonaparte's correspondence for the period
was intended to convey the idea that he was preparing to enforce the
terms of Leoben by another appeal to arms, if necessary. In fact,
Austria was well-nigh as active as he was, and he had need to be
ready. But subsequent events proved that all these preparations were
really for another end. An advantageous peace was to be made with
Austria, if possible, and Italy was to be properly garrisoned. But, on
the old principle, one member of the coalition having been quieted,
the other was to be humbled. The goal of his further ambition appears
for a time to have been nothing less than the destruction somewhere
and somehow of British power, and ultimately the conquest of Great
Britain herself.

CHAPTER II

THE TREATY OF CAMPO FORMIO[2]

[Footnote 2: Authorities as before.]

Bonaparte and the Mediterranean -- France and the Orient --
Bonaparte's Grand Diplomacy -- Importance of Malta -- Course of
Negotiations with Austria -- Novel Tactics of the French
Plenipotentiary -- The Treaty of Campo Formio -- Results of
Fructidor -- Bonaparte's Interests Conflict with those of the
Directory -- Europe and the Peace.

Bonaparte was a child of the Mediterranean. The light of its sparkling
waters was ever in his eyes, and the fascination of its ancient
civilizations was never absent from his dreams of glory. His
proclamations ring with classic allusions, his festivals were arranged
with classic pomp. In infancy he had known of Genoa, the tyrant of his
island, as strong in the splendid commercial enterprises which
stretched eastward through the Levant, and beyond into the farther
Orient; in childhood he had fed his imagination on the histories of
Alexander the Great, and his conquest of Oriental empires; in youth he
had thought to find an open door for his ambition, when all others
seemed closed, by taking service with England to share the renown of
those who were building up her Eastern empire. Disappointed in this,
he appears to have turned with the same lack of success to Russia,
already England's rival on the continent of Asia. It is perfectly
comprehensible that throughout his early manhood his mind should have
occasionally reverted to the same ideals. The conqueror of Italy and
Austria might hope to realize them. Was he not master of the two
great maritime commonwealths which had once shared the mass of Eastern
trade between them? England's intrusion upon the Mediterranean basin
was a never-ceasing irritation to all the Latin powers. Her commercial
prosperity and her mastery of the seas increased the exasperation of
France, as threatening even her equality in their ancient rivalry.
From the days of the first crusade all Frenchmen had felt that
leadership in the reconstruction of Asia belonged to them by virtue of
preoccupation. Ardent republicans, moreover, still regarded France's
mission as incomplete even in the liberalizing of the Continent; and
the Department of Marine under the Directory stamped its paper with
the motto, "Liberty of the Seas." Imaginative forces, the
revolutionary system, and the national ambition all combined to create
ubiquitous enthusiasm for the conquest of the Mediterranean. To this
the temperament and training of Bonaparte were as the spark to the
tinder. It was with willing ears that the Directory heard his first
suggestions about the Venetian isles, and subsequently his plans for
the capture of Malta, which was to be followed by a death-blow to
England's supremacy in the Levant by the seizure of Egypt and the
dismemberment of Turkey.

As early as May fourteenth, 1797, a letter from the conqueror of Italy
informed the Directory what naval stores they might hope to secure in
the dismemberment of Venice; in the previous year similar estimates
had been made with regard to Genoa, Tuscany, and Naples. It was with a
Franco-Venetian fleet that Gentili established French administration
in the Ionian Isles, whose people, weary of Venetian tyranny, welcomed
him as a liberator. The more intelligent among them desired home rule
under French protection; the gratitude of the ignorant was shown in
the erection of rude shrines where lamps were kept alight before
pictures of Bonaparte. About the same time the discontented Greeks on
the mainland were given to understand that the great annihilator of
tyrants would gladly hear their cries. For months an extensive secret
correspondence was carried on between the French headquarters in Italy
and the disaffected in Turkey, wherever found. No fewer than three
rebellious pashas were ready to seek French assistance; and one of
them, he of Janina, had actually twelve thousand men in the field. The
archives of the French foreign office abound in careful studies by its
diplomatic agents of the revolutionary forces and elements in the
Ottoman empire. Ways and means to dissolve the ancient friendship
between France and the Porte were discussed; a political program,
based on the maltreatment of French merchants in the Levant and the
scandals of Mameluke administration in Egypt, was elaborated; and on
September thirteenth, 1797, the first formal proposition for the
seizure of that country was made by Bonaparte to Talleyrand, now
minister of foreign affairs. The government at Paris redoubled its
energies, and recruited its powers, for the object in view.

In fact, after Fructidor there is a ring in the words of Bonaparte's
letters, especially those to Talleyrand, which shows how risky it
would have been to neglect his unexpressed but evident wishes. The sum
of four hundred thousand dollars, sent from Italy in the previous year
for fitting out the fleet, had been used for another purpose, much to
the irritation of Bonaparte, whose language in regard to the
upbuilding of a sea power had been vigorous. At last, by his
contributions of material from Italy, and the efforts of the
administration at home, something had been accomplished. Admiral
Brueys was in the Adriatic with a force able, it was believed, to
meet even the English. By clever diplomacy the Spaniards and
Neapolitans had been set to neutralize each other. With time the
latter had grown bold, and were making extortionate demands. The
Directory offered to send five thousand French soldiers to reinforce
the Spanish army which was contending with Portugal, if an equal
number of the Spanish troops in Italy would mingle with the French
soldiers to conquer the Papal States. The latter would then be given
to the Duke of Parma, in return for his old duchy, which was to form
part of the new republic.

In this far-reaching design of Bonaparte's--a plan which comprehended
the whole basin of the Mediterranean, and which, by throwing French
troops into Spain, opened the way for further interference in that
peninsula--lies the germ of all his future dealing with the Castilian
monarchy. The focal point of the whole system, he had explained as
early as May, was the island of Malta, the citadel of the
Mediterranean. The grand master of the Knights was at the point of
death; the King of Naples claimed the island as an ancient appanage,
but a German was the most prominent of his order among the candidates
for the succession. Bonaparte's proposal was that the Maltese should
first be bribed to revolt, and that then the French or Spanish fleet
should seize Valetta, compel the election of a Spaniard, and thus
secure a bulwark in the heart of the Mediterranean against Turkey on
one side and England on the other.

Such were some of the summer's avocations; its real business was
supposed to be the conclusion of a peace with the empire. But Austria
was far from being exhausted, and her agents protracted the
negotiations while the Vienna government was recruiting its forces,
hoping all the time for a triumph of the royalist party in Paris.
Until after the eighteenth of Fructidor this was not entirely
distasteful to Bonaparte, in view of the desire of Carnot for peace on
the basis of the preliminaries. Nevertheless, a spirited comedy was
playing all the time, Bonaparte mystifying both Merveldt, one of the
Austrian plenipotentiaries, and Clarke, who had finally been admitted
to the negotiations as agent of the Directory, by outbursts of feigned
impatience, while, by pretended confidences, he coquetted with Gallo,
who, though the second Austrian plenipotentiary, was a Neapolitan,
minister from that kingdom to Vienna, and has by some been thought to
have been Bonaparte's own creature, and to have accepted his bribes.
Attempted bribery and counter-bribery, at any rate, there were; for
the conqueror himself received from Francis the offer of a
principality in the empire with not less than two hundred and fifty
thousand subjects, and an independent income. Had the German emperor
known the projects of his opponent he would have reviled himself as an
artless simpleton. In May it was agreed that the congress to determine
the territorial transfers within the Germanic body should sit, not at
Bern, but at Rastadt in Baden. But the demands of the conqueror in
amplification of the articles signed at Leoben were then so
extortionate that the Austrian minister for foreign affairs doubted
the good faith of his representatives, and recalled from Russia Count
Cobenzl, his most learned, accomplished, and skilful diplomatist, in
order to secure something like equality in the negotiations. This gave
a temporary pause to the proceedings, which dragged on without
significance until after Fructidor, when Barras wrote from Paris:
"Peace, peace, but an honorable and lasting one. No more of Carnot's
worthless suggestions."

When, therefore, the negotiations were again renewed in the first
days of September, Bonaparte earnestly longed for at least a temporary
peace. He arranged that the plenipotentiaries should meet at Udine,
not far from his military headquarters at Passariano, so that he might
secure the greatest possible advantage from the attitude of a
conqueror ready at a moment to resume hostilities. The Directory,
suspecting that Clarke had become too facile an instrument in the
hands of the ambitious soldier, chose this moment to recall him. For a
month the conflict of wits between the formal diplomatists and the
determined, unhampered French general was hot and furious. Even the
veteran Cobenzl, who did not arrive until September twenty-sixth, was
but a toy in Bonaparte's hands. More than once the latter had recourse
to his old tactics of barbaric rudeness, and once, toward the close,
he wilfully brought on a fit of anger, in which by accident he dashed
from its stand a porcelain tray, the gift of Catherine II to Cobenzl.
The legend ran that as he caught up his hat, he hissed out the words:
"In less than a month I shall have shattered your monarchy like this!"
and then flung out of the room, declaring that the truce was ended. In
fact, no one seems to have paid any attention to the crash at all.
Cobenzl wrote that Bonaparte behaved like a crazy man, and the French
officers had difficulty in soothing their general. Whether the nervous
attack were real or feigned no one can say: at subsequent crises in
diplomacy there recurred others, very similar. Both sides were anxious
to make the doubtful language of Leoben as elastic as possible--each,
naturally enough, for its own advantage. Proposition and
counter-proposition, rejoinder and surrejoinder, followed one another
through those weeks so pregnant of consequence to both sides. Twice it
appeared as if no conclusion could be reached, and as if a breach were
imminent. Once, marching orders for the invading army were actually
prepared and in part issued. But the season was inclement and to
Marmont his general confided a sense of uneasiness regarding
Augereau's appointment on the Rhine. Both parties realized that
neither could secure all they claimed without delay, or a possible
renewal of warfare. They determined, therefore, to brave their
respective governments, and entirely to disregard both Prussian and
German feeling as to the Rhine boundary. Finally a compromise was
made, and on the seventeenth of October at midnight, after a long
social reunion of the plenipotentiaries; in the dark, Bonaparte
telling ghost stories, and making the scene generally dramatic and
even theatrical, the treaty was engrossed and signed, being dated from
Campo Formio, a hamlet neutralized for the purpose. The negotiators
parted with the exchange of friendly greetings.

The terms were far more favorable to France than in all probability
Bonaparte had hoped to obtain. The Austrian Netherlands with the Rhine
frontier from Basel to Andernach were surrendered by the Emperor, and
in token of good faith the commanding fortress of Mainz was
immediately to be delivered into French hands. In return Bonaparte
ceded the Italian lands eastward from the Adige, by the head of the
Adriatic, to the frontiers of Dalmatia, including, of course, the city
of Venice. France kept the Ionian Islands and the Venetian factories
opposite on the mainland. All the Venetian territory to the west of
the Adige, together with Mantua, Modena, Lombardy, Massa-e-Carrara,
Bologna, Ferrara, and the Romagna, was incorporated into the new
Cisalpine Republic; and Genoa, receiving from the Emperor the remnants
of his feudal rights in the surrounding country, was transformed into
the Ligurian Republic, with a constitution similar to that of the
Cisalpine. The various arrangements for the redistribution of German
lands necessary to compensate princes who must abandon territories on
the left bank of the Rhine were to be made by the congress to be held
at Rastadt. French plenipotentiaries, under Bonaparte's leadership,
were to be members of the congress; while Rastadt, as a border town,
and therefore more favorable to French interests than Bern, was to be
further neutralized by the departure of the Emperor's troops from all
German lands except his own hereditary dominions. When the news of
Campo Formio reached Vienna, the peace party was delighted, and the
populace broke out in a jubilee. But Thugut was not deceived. "Peace!
Peace!" said he. "Where is it? I cannot recognize it in this treaty."

In Paris the negotiations had produced some uneasiness. It is now
generally said that Fructidor was exclusively the work of Bonaparte:
or, rather, that the thirteenth of Vendémiaire was the work of Barras,
assisted by Bonaparte; that the eighteenth of Fructidor was the work
of Bonaparte, assisted by Barras. This is only a half-truth based on
an exaggerated estimate of the facts. While, on the whole, Bonaparte
was at the moment pleased with the results of this second political
stroke, there was much connected with it utterly repugnant to his
wishes. The so-called Fructidorians, among them Mme. de Staël and her
friends, were still favorable, in the main, to Bonaparte; but they
were thorough republicans, and considered the day as the victory, not
of a man, but of a cause. Later Bonaparte expressed sorrow that he had
taken any share in arranging it, for the cause and its few supporters
proved to be hostile. The wholesale proscription which followed the
success of the Directory and its friends destroyed their personal
popularity, strengthened the adherents of the monarchy, and weakened
the prestige of the army, which was the real support of the new
revolution. As far as the repression of conservative royalist and
moderate republican influence in the Directory and the chambers was
concerned, Bonaparte's interests were identical with those of Barras,
Rewbell, and the bigoted Larévellière. He would gladly have ended
public agitation in a nation the majority of whom had become royalists
again. To this end, he would willingly have broken the presses of the
newspapers and have closed the Clichy club: he was anxious for any
extreme course necessary to preserve the revolutionary model in
government until, in his own phrase, "the pear was ripe" for him. The
events of Fructidor, on the one hand, confirmed the constitutionalists
in the policy of letting other countries alone, and at the same time
put an end to all enthusiasm for republican principles even in the
radical executive, necessarily substituting in its place the merest
self-interest. This new situation, though not inimical to Bonaparte's
interests, made the Fructidorians the most determined opponents of his
ambitions.

Almost immediately after the events of Fructidor the new Directory had
sent instructions to Passariano that Venice was to be preserved from
the hands of Austria. The removal of Clarke had followed. At once
began a war of words and a conflict of purposes. Bonaparte's
despatches depicted the situation of the Italian peoples in the
darkest light, so as to set forth their unfitness for independence,
while in every letter he dwelt on his own feeble and broken health as
a reason for his immediate recall. Meantime he was driving the
machinery of negotiation at its utmost speed and capacity. The
Directory finally took its stand on the determination that Italy must
be free as far eastward as the Isonzo, and the subtle Talleyrand
agreed to win or compel Bonaparte's acquiescence. The courier with
this ultimatum from Paris reached Passariano exactly twelve hours
after Monge and Berthier had carried the treaty of Campo Formio in the
opposite direction for the sanction of the directors. It was bitter,
indeed, for Barras and his colleagues to surrender, but the logic of
their position made resistance impossible. They approved the hateful
stipulations with what grace they could muster, and, the warfare on
the Continent being over, appointed Bonaparte to command what was
significantly entitled the Army of England, but without defining his
duties. Thirty thousand soldiers began their march from Milan to
Picardy on the English Channel. As for the now distracted Venetians,
they asked permission to continue the war against Austria on their own
account. Bonaparte imprisoned the deputies who presented the petition,
and Sérurier delivered Venice into the Emperor's hands, after
destroying the arsenals and such vessels as were no longer useful for
war. Among these was the stately barge in which the officials of the
commonwealth had from immemorial times been wont to espouse the
Adriatic--the famous Bucentaur. Manin, the last doge of Venice, was
compelled to swear allegiance to Austria in the name of his
compatriots. With a broken heart he made ready for the ceremony, but
as he stepped forward at the appointed time to pronounce the fatal
words, his strength and his faculties gave way together. He fell
senseless at the feet of his foes, and died not long afterward.

The effect of Bonaparte's success in forcing such a peace upon Austria
was profound throughout Europe. The war party in Great Britain was
materially strengthened by the treatment which Malmesbury had
received. While the treaty made a pretense of upholding the integrity
of the empire as a principle, yet Prussia and all Germany knew that
that integrity was quickly to be violated. Paul I of Russia
remembered that as guarantor of the peace of Teschen, he too was
deeply concerned in that integrity, and displayed uneasiness. The
British had on October eleventh annihilated the Dutch fleet at
Camperdown: their sea power was again assured and with it the
replenishing of their treasury. These elements of the second coalition
have been repeatedly described, but for all that, events would have
been otherwise than they were, had there been anywhere in Europe a
statesman with moral and material power at his bidding, who could have
propagated a moderate, enlightened liberalism in the countries of the
north. As a sorry radicalism had full play for some years in France, a
blind reactionary conservatism prevailed among all the Teutonic
peoples. The struggle of two extremes made the chaos. England was
determined on war to destruction or exhaustion: France likewise. The
system of national assassinations and territorial compensations begun
in the partition of Poland was exemplified in the peace of Campo
Formio. Then it was three to one against a nation with neither
political nor military strength, and the decision was against
nationality. Hereafter it was to be all absolute Europe against a
nation with some political and immense military aptitudes. The
struggle was to last fifteen years and be decided this time for, not
against, nationality as a fact and a principle.

CHAPTER III

BONAPARTE AND TALLEYRAND[3]

[Footnote 3: Aside from the archives, national and state, and
the Correspondence of Napoleon, official and unofficial
publications, together with documents published by Pallain,
Vivenot, and Bailleu, the best special authorities are
Hüffer: Der Rastadter Congress, and Criste: Rastadt,
L'Assassinat des Ministres Français (original in German).
Then follow the memoirs and studies already enumerated, with
Desbrière: Projets de débarquement aux Îles Britanniques.]

Bonaparte in Switzerland -- Arrival at Rastadt -- A Royalist
Portrait of Him -- His Affectation of Simplicity -- Reception by
the Directory -- First Threat of Invading England -- Career of
Talleyrand -- His Relations with Bonaparte -- Men and Parties in
Paris.

In the complications of his far-reaching designs, the return of
Bonaparte to Paris was a matter of consequence to him, an affair to be
managed with diplomacy and an eye to dramatic effect. To appease the
Directory, the insubordinate plenipotentiary explained in his
despatches that he had acted as he did because Austria had made
herself stronger than ever in the long interval, which was probably
true; and that the possibility of further successful warfare had been
jeopardized by the early arrival of winter, which had left him no
choice in hastening the conclusion. This was not flatly untrue, for
Marmont noted in his diary that it was October thirteenth when the
first new snow fell on the mountain peaks, and that he had marked his
general's surprise at the fact: the treaty was signed on the
seventeenth. Nevertheless, the season was later than usual, and the
plea of weather was a pretext to hide the negotiator's own purposes.
In his rôle as an Italian deliverer, Bonaparte remained until the
middle of November to consolidate the new republics and await the
assembling of delegates at Rastadt. Then, traveling sedately by Turin
and the Mont Cenis pass through Chambéry, he reached Geneva.
Switzerland was ripe for his presence. The first step was to arrest
Bontemps, a Genevese banker who had assisted Carnot in his flight to
Nyon, where he was still in concealment. The second was to focus the
revolutionary movement in the district of Vaud, and to strengthen its
preparations for throwing off the Bernese dominion by organizing an
ovation for himself at Lausanne: a democrat must be fêted only by
democrats.

"Nothing too far" being manifestly his motto at this period, he then
passed by easy stages to Rastadt, where he arrived on November
twenty-fifth, and immediately asserted for himself a nominal
supervision of the arrangements. The King of Sweden had claimed
representation both as Duke of Pomerania and as a guarantor of the
peace of Westphalia; for that reason he had sent as his delegate Count
Fersen, a shrewd agent, once Swedish ambassador in Paris, the friend
of Marie Antoinette, and known everywhere as an intimate counselor of
the Bourbons. Bonaparte, outraged at such effrontery, summoned the
envoy to his presence, and, trampling on the forms of a hollow
politeness, informed him with a few biting words that his presence was
not desired. The envoy tarried long enough to assure himself that
Austria was quite as hostile as France, and returned to Stockholm. It
annoyed Bonaparte even more to find that the imperial delegates had
not yet arrived. But he passed the interval with considerable
satisfaction in an exchange of pleasantries with the various
personages who were on the ground. "How," said he to Stadion, garbed
as a canon of Würzburg, "can the station of an ecclesiastical prince
of the empire, a man who is both warrior and spiritual minister,
accord with the precepts of the Scriptures, with the poverty and the
lowliness of early Christianity?" "Where will your master live?" he
said to the agent from the Bishop of Mainz, "when he loses his present
residence?" The hollow shells of worn-out institutions rattled
wherever this innovator stepped. At last Cobenzl arrived, and the
urgent affair of the transfer of Mainz was promptly concluded. That
fortress was to be occupied by French troops on the thirtieth, the day
in which Austria was to take possession of Venice. Then, leaving
Treilhard and Bonnier, the rude and insolent French plenipotentiaries,
in a position of arrogant superiority to their colleagues, he set out
for Paris, and after a triumphal progress throughout northern France,
a region not before familiar to him, arrived, on December fifth, at
his residence on Chantereine street. With its usual facility in that
line, the Paris municipality soon after dubbed this rather
insignificant byway the Street of Victory. Mme. Bonaparte, who had
been visiting Rome, where her brother-in-law Joseph was now French
minister, rejoined her husband at Christmas.

In the papers of the Comte d'Antraigues was found a pen-portrait of
Bonaparte as he appeared at Venice, and it will no doubt, with due
allowances, stand for the few months later when he became the idol of
Paris. Sucy, a government commissioner of much sense, overpowered by
the importance of passing events, wrote in August to a friend that he
could not enter upon such voluminous details as would be necessary to
depict Bonaparte, but warned his correspondent against supposing that
the general had attained the height of his ambition, using the words
previously quoted in another connection, "I can even add that I know
no other end for him but the throne or the scaffold." But Antraigues
was fortunately more communicative: "Bonaparte is a man of small
stature, of sickly hue, with piercing eyes, and something in his look
and mouth which is cruel, covert, and treacherous; speaking little,
but very talkative when his vanity is engaged or thwarted; of very
poor health because of violent humors in his blood. He is covered with
tetter, a disease of such a sort as to increase his vehemence and his
activity. He is always full of his projects, and gives himself no
recreation. He sleeps but three hours every night, and takes no
medicine except when his sufferings are unendurable. This man wishes
to master France, and, through France, Europe. Everything else, even
in his present successes, seems but a means to the end. Thus he steals
without concealment, plunders everything, is accumulating an enormous
treasure of gold, silver, jewels, and precious stones. But he cares
for it only as a means. This same man, who will rob a community to the
last sou, will without a thought give a million francs to any person
who can assist him. If such a person has hate or vengeance to gratify,
he will afford every opportunity to do so. Nothing stands in the way
of his prevailing with a man he thinks will be useful; and with him a
bargain is made in two words and two minutes, so great is his
seductive power. The reverse side of his methods is this: the service
rendered, he demands a complete servility, or he becomes an implacable
enemy; and when he has bought traitors, their service rendered, he
observes but little secrecy concerning them. This man abhors royalty:
he hates the Bourbons, and neglects no means to wean his army from
them. If there were a king in France other than himself, he would like
to have been his maker, and would desire royal authority to rest on
the tip of his own sword; that sword he would never surrender, but
would plunge it into the king's heart, should the monarch cease for a
moment to be subservient."

On Bonaparte's passage through Chambéry, he had been visibly affected
by a shout from the multitude hailing him as the father of his
soldiers. There were countless homes in France into which the letters
of absent sons had sent the same epithet, and the nation at large
thought of him in that rôle as a simple, benevolent man, devoted to
his country and to her liberties. His histrionic talents, like his
other gifts, were of the highest order, and for the moment this ideal
must not be shattered. He therefore appeared to the French public as
devoted to the principle of equality, which the Revolution considered
the guarantee of free institutions. In the "Moniteur," the official
journal of the time, may be read every detail of his conduct. Instead
of waiting for visits from those in place, he made the advances. His
clothes were plain, his manners were simple, his dignity was moderated
to a proper respect for himself and others. The carriage in which he
drove had but two horses, and there was no suite in attendance, either
abroad or at home. Often the passers-by saw him walking alone in the
small garden of his unostentatious dwelling, apparently resting from
the fatigues of his campaigns. In short, there was nothing
recognizable of the conquering potentate who had kept such state at
Milan, except the affected simplicity of his personal life and
conduct. "At first sight," wrote Talleyrand, whose acquaintance
Bonaparte sought immediately on reaching Paris, "he struck me as a
charming figure; the laurels of twenty victories are so becoming to
youth, a handsome eye, a pale complexion, and a certain tired look."

There were a few proper assumptions of great dignity, as for instance
when, on December tenth, 1797, a grand festival was celebrated in the
classic style for the formal reception by the Directory of the treaty
of Campo Formio from the hands of its negotiator. Talleyrand
pronounced a glowing eulogium. Bonaparte, with impressive mien,
replied in a few short, terse sentences, which closed with the
significant utterance: "When the happiness of the French people shall
rest upon the _best_ organic laws, all Europe will become free."
Barras closed with a long, dreary tribute to the Directory, and at the
end imprinted the kiss of fraternity on the young general's brow. The
other members of the executive hurried to display a feigned cordiality
in following his example. The two councils united in a banquet to the
hero of the hour. The public was overpowered by the harmony of its
rulers. Bonaparte's studied modesty might have shown the directors how
false was their position. As had been said long before to Pepin, the
title of king belongs to him who has the power. In private the skilful
minister of foreign affairs was no less adroit than the young
conqueror, and lavished his courtier arts in the preservation of
apparent unity.

The greatest danger to Bonaparte's ambitions was that he should by
some mishap become identified with a party. Thus far, chiefly by
absence from the seat of government, he had successfully avoided that
pitfall. The Parisian populace did not even identify him with the
Fructidorians; and, though not entirely forgetful of the Day of the
Sections, they flocked to see him wherever it was known he would be.
When asked if their interest did not gratify him, he replied that it
meant nothing; they would crowd in the same way to stare if he were on
his way to the scaffold. He appears to have felt that long residence
would diminish his prestige, which for his purposes would be a
disaster, and consequently he seems carefully to have conveyed the
impression that he was but a visitor. Sandoz-Rollin, the Prussian
minister in Paris, believed that the soldiers sent into France from
Italy were intended for use in the capital. Exactly what was planned
he did not know, for Bonaparte was not yet thirty, and therefore
ineligible, at least under the constitution, to the Directory. Others
believed that, Austria having been vanquished, England was to be
struck--first through a fight between the two fleets, and then by the
landing on her shores of a large body of veterans from the Army of
Italy, under their victorious commander. In fact, Monge had formally
stated, on December tenth, that "the government of England and the
French republic cannot both continue to exist"; and during the winter
Thomas Paine exercised his powers as a pamphleteer on the theme of
England's approaching bankruptcy, while the public crowded one of the
theaters to stare at stage pictures representing the invasion of
England. As Bonaparte's almost superhuman diligence had ever open and
ready two or more possibilities, this direct invasion may already have
been a third choice. In the report which he made in February of the
following year after a visit to Dunkirk, he distinctly set forth the
studied policy of his whole career; viz., to keep three possibilities
in working order, a pretense of invasion, a system of barring England
from continental commerce, and a blow at the trade of Great Britain in
the Orient. Otherwise there is nothing for it but a peace. But his
dealings with every Italian power and with Austria had shown a
definite policy of striking, not at the heart to produce desperation,
but at the limbs, where the blow would be quite as deadly and
resistance less furious. All the natural and successive steps of
preparation for such an enterprise had been taken by the government
during the summer of 1797. Corfu and Zante, and with them the
possessions of Venice in the Levant, were secured and kept; a fleet
was collected and equipped from the spoils of northern Italy; Naples
was temporarily neutralized; and plans had then been carefully
elaborated with experts, among whom was Monge, for the seizure of
Malta and the disruption of Turkey by an attack on Egypt.

In all this Talleyrand had been a brilliant and unscrupulous agent.
Born of a noble family, his lameness closed other careers and drove
him for distinction into the Church, where, under the old régime, the
traditions of ecclesiastical feudalism still lingered. In his youth he
was the friend of the infamous Mme. du Barry, and owed his early
promotion to her influence. When he was treasurer of the French clergy
and bishop of Autun, Mirabeau said of him that he would "offer his
very soul at a price, and he would do well, for he would exchange dung
for gold." During the first years of the Revolution he led the liberal
clergy; finally he went to such extremes in secularizing the Church
that the Pope excommunicated him. His private life had been scandalous
from the first, and he was avowedly a passionate gambler. It was with
a sense of relief that he abandoned the Church to become the most
unscrupulous statesman and the most adroit diplomatist of his time. It
was he who in 1791 laid before the Legislative Assembly the dazzling
scheme of national education which afterward was modified and adopted
by Napoleon. He forecast the years of radical excess, and had himself
sent in 1792 as a secret diplomatic agent to London, where, with
occasional visits to Paris, he resided in the main for two years. The
English could not endure his duplicity, and finally drove him from
their country. The Convention having declared him an emigrant, he
sailed for America, and spent some time in the United States, where,
being coldly treated in political and social circles, he devoted
himself to an analytical study of the people and their institutions.
The revocation in 1796 of the decree pronouncing him an emigrant was
obtained by Mme. de Staël's influence, and he immediately returned to
France. It is characteristic of him that during these years he was
successively a representative of the King, of Danton, and of the
Directory.

To the Institute of France, of which learned body he had been made a
member during his absence, he presented on his return his brilliant
studies of colonization in general, and of the respective relations
between the United States and the rival powers of France and England.
But politics, not literature, was his trade. At once he began to study
the situation of his own land, and observed with profound penetration
both the instability of the government and the straits of the
Directory. Accordingly, though nominally their man, and accepting from
them the ministry of foreign affairs, he attached himself at once to
Bonaparte, in the hope, as he explains in his memoirs, of using the
conqueror to restore the monarchy. The latter had the perspicacity to
encourage the relation, and from that moment possessed in the very
center of affairs an able and congenial representative. It is known
that Talleyrand's public letters to Bonaparte were accompanied with
private supplements which often ran in a sense quite opposite to that
of the main sheet. For instance, nothing could be more satisfactory to
the directors than his open account of Fructidor; but it is known that
the private letter mercilessly analyzed the situation as impossible
and unstable. Attempting a corrupt bargain with the American envoys,
Pinckney, Marshall, and Gerry, in regard to the protection of American
commerce, he was mercilessly exposed by the indignant ministers, and
finally compelled by public opinion to resign from his office. But
even in disgrace he continued in Paris as the unscrupulous prime
mover of French politics, until restored to power by Bonaparte, when
he again accepted the position from which he had been driven, and
successfully elaborated in practice the schemes of his superior.

There were, however, two other men, Barras and Sieyès, who, after the
eighteenth of Fructidor, were left in an unendurable position. Both
these men were also boundlessly venal. The former was Bonaparte's
"ancient friend"; Fructidor made him the general's creature. Like
Talleyrand, both were for the present the devoted satraps of a master
who could pay not only with prospective power, but with present cash;
ultimately they also hoped to use him for their own ends in the
restoration of monarchy. Sieyès, now president of the Ancients, was
both weak and vain. But, posing as an oracular constitution-maker, he
was admitted as such to the councils of Talleyrand and Barras. Both
his pride and his interests being thus engaged, he had apparently
become as ardent a follower of Bonaparte as were the other two.
Rewbell was so occupied with the foreign policy of the Revolution, and
Merlin with the internal administration on Jacobin lines, that neither
one nor the other gave any thought to the ulterior consequences of
Fructidor. François de Neufchâteau was posing as the wit of the epoch,
Larévellière was its prophet; neither was of even the slightest
importance. Augereau, seeing himself duped by the disbanding of the
Rhine army, had been disenchanted, and was for a while the relentless
enemy of his old chief. A few mediocrities both in the army and in
politics were in sympathy with Augereau; but as England was the one
foe left, the general of the Army of England was virtually the
commander of the whole. Not one of the division generals disobeyed his
orders.

CHAPTER IV

COMMOTIONS IN EUROPEAN POLITICS

The Directory and the Legislature -- Motives of the French Army
-- Augereau's Blunders -- Humiliation of the Batavian Republic --
Seizure of Piedmont -- Proclamation of the Roman Republic --
Swiss Territory Remodeled -- Antagonism of Prussia and Austria --
Bernadotte's Mission to Vienna -- Prussian Neutrality -- Unstable
Equilibrium of Europe.

During the winter of 1797-98 it was the custom of Bonaparte, as the
constructive commander-in-chief of the French forces, to share in the
deliberations of the various civil authorities; sometimes they seemed
uneasy under his influence, but a threat of retirement generally
brought them to terms. They yielded because every faction believed
that the unrelenting attitude of the Directory toward royalists,
emigrants, and ecclesiastics would revive in the country the hatred of
Jacobinism and give its enemies a victory in the spring elections of
1798. Animosity was all the more fierce since the press had been
virtually throttled by closing during the winter the offices of some
sixteen papers, in addition to many already silenced. Should the
chambers be hostile to the executive, they would certainly attempt a
civil revolution, and Bonaparte with his troops would be the
arbitrator. The royalists, therefore, made approaches to him once
more, this time through Mme. Bonaparte, who diplomatically
procrastinated, and kept the suitors in expectancy. But while all was
movement and plot under the surface, the Parisian populace only
occasionally had evidence of aught but perfect harmony in all parts
of the government. They were fond of contrasting the brilliant results
of Campo Formio with the unostentatious demeanor of the great general
who had humbled Austria, and, as he himself had said in his festival
speech, had brought two centers of light, "the finest parts of
Europe,"--Italy and the Netherlands,--under the brighter rays of
French illumination.

In later years the unexampled capability of Bonaparte for scheming and
machination unfolded itself to such unheard-of limits that it is
customary in our day to attribute every detail of European history in
those times to his manipulation. This is the more natural because the
events of that winter, beyond the boundaries of France, contributed in
the highest degree to that political conflagration which preceded the
ascendancy of Napoleon and the complete rebuilding of the European
state system. And yet the most acute historians often overlook the
evident causes in their search for hidden ones; in this case the
former are sufficient to account for the results. With the Italian
campaign republican armies ceased to fight either for the integrity of
France, for her "natural" frontiers, or for the revolutionary system.
They were often self-deceived, and thought themselves to be
propagating liberal ideas; but glory and plunder were thenceforward
the mainsprings of action in the majority of both officers and men.

[Sidenote: 1797--98]

Accordingly, what might have been foreseen actually occurred.
Augereau, during the autumn of 1797, sought to emulate in southwestern
Germany the political policy initiated by Bonaparte in Italy. But his
rude blundering compelled his recall, a step which was softened by his
transfer to the Pyrenees, where an army stood ready to intervene in
Spain whenever opportunity should be ripe. The movement in Germany
spent itself in shameless plundering both east and west of the
Rhine--a double disgrace in view of the fact that the war was ended,
that Mainz was surrendered, that the whole left bank, though not yet
formally ceded, was in French control; and that the Congress of
Rastadt was discussing how the princes who had surrendered their
possessions to France should be compensated within the boundaries of
the empire.

The course of affairs in the Low Countries was equally disastrous to
the prestige of the Revolution. Holland had not only lost all her
colonies, including the Cape of Good Hope, by her compulsory enrolment
in the republican system, but at Camperdown on October eleventh, 1797,
the fleet of the Batavian Republic was battered to pieces by that of
England under Duncan. The new commonwealth was thus rendered
contemptible, and made entirely dependent on France. Twenty-five
thousand soldiers were already quartered on the Dutch, and now they
were held to enormous contributions of ships, money, and men for the
proposed landing in England. Delacroix and Joubert were the respective
civil and military agents in these exactions.

Bonaparte's departure from Italy made no change in French policy or
conduct with regard to her. The Venetian possessions had been
literally stripped by Berthier of every valuable article before their
definitive surrender to Austria. Formal negotiations for a treaty of
offensive and defensive alliance with the Cisalpine Republic were
opened as soon as the new state was recognized, but the same pillage
continued as during its conquest. By that treaty, which was not
concluded until March, 1798, the new "free" state was bound to support
twenty-five thousand French troops, and to raise nearly four million
dollars a year to pay them. As to the new Ligurian Republic, its
boundaries were incomplete without Piedmont. Before the end of June,
1798, revolutionary fires having been kindled in Turin by the old
efficient methods, two French armies under Jacobin generals seized
Piedmont, and incorporated it with the other "free" state, which was
then bound to France in the same terms as Cisalpina. Charles Emmanuel,
having thus lost all his possessions on the mainland, retired to
Sardinia, where he was destined to become, under protection of the
English fleet, the focus of a new coalition against France.

Rome had called to her service, for the reorganization of her army,
Provera, one of the Austrian generals who had been active in the last
campaign. Joseph Bonaparte demanded his dismissal. This spark fired
the revolutionary spirit of the few determined liberals at the
capital, and a rising took place in which General Duphot, who was
expecting soon to become Joseph's brother-in-law, was killed. The
insurgents were defeated, and sought refuge in the French Embassy. The
papal authorities humbled themselves to make restitution, but Joseph
would not be appeased, and demanded his passports. Within a month, on
February tenth, 1798, Berthier and his soldiers entered the Eternal
City, and proclaimed the Roman Republic. With no consideration for his
estimable personal character, the French agents stripped Pius VI, the
aged and feeble Pope, of all his jewels: his very rings were drawn
from his fingers by their hands. The papal government was declared at
an end, and the cardinals were forbidden to elect a successor. The
Pope himself was allowed to withdraw to Siena; but disappointing his
captors' expectations of his speedy demise, he was removed at their
convenience from place to place, until at last he died in the
following year at Valence. Naples, of course, was in an agony of fear,
but her hour had not yet struck.

Finally the flames caught in Switzerland, where the democratic
district of Vaud declared its independence of the Bernese aristocracy.
The fire was fanned by Bonaparte's agent, Peter Ochs, the liberal
burgomaster of Basel. France intervened, nominally in order to compel
Bern to liberate all her political prisoners and to emancipate Vaud,
but really to plunder and remodel the whole country. The entering army
pillaged friend and foe alike. The desperate resistance of Bern, in
which even women and children shared, was of no avail. At its close
the Helvetian Republic was constituted under a new charter, like those
of Cisalpina and Batavia; it likewise entered at once into an
offensive and defensive alliance with France. Bern's indemnity was the
surrender of her "treasure," or cash reserve--a sum of one million
three hundred thousand dollars. Swiss historians state that besides
the cash there were nearly two and a half million dollars in bonds. A
fifth of this was sent at once to Toulon, where the fleet was fitting
out; the rest went to the army and its commander, General Brune.
Fribourg, Solothurn, and Zurich were likewise stripped for the benefit
of the military chest. It is thought that from all the enormous sums
seized during the winter nothing reached the national treasury.
Napoleon in exile declared that Paris knew nothing of all this. But
more serious still were the contemplated changes of territory. The
Valtellina had already been incorporated with the Cisalpine Republic;
the Frick valley was soon to be delivered to Austria along with the
Inn Quarter; and eventually Geneva, with the upper Rhone valley, was
to become a part of France itself, in order that the Simplon, another
gateway into Italy, might be assured to her armies in case the
difficult passes on the Mediterranean shore should ever be closed.[4]

[Footnote 4: See Dändliker: Geschichte der Schweiz, Vol. III,
p. 350.]

The effect of all this upon the politics of Europe was like that of a
torch in dead stubble. The German-Roman Empire was an antiquated
institution. Prussia had risen to importance as the representative of
a new Protestant German nationality. Frederick the Great, inheriting
his shrewd father's army and policy, thoroughly understood that for
the attainment of this end Roman Catholic Austria must be humbled and
reduced to a secondary position. His success was only partial, but it
was so far effective. The relations between these two great rivals in
the Germanic body, therefore, were so strained that Prussia, in her
antagonism to Austria, naturally leaned toward France. But the seizure
of German lands not only on the west bank of the Rhine, but of some
even on the eastern side, together with the behavior of the French
armies not only in southwestern Germany, but again in Bern, created
consternation at Berlin. Sieyès was sent to allay, if possible, the
fears of Frederick William III, and to woo him to the French alliance.
Meantime, the radical Directory, looking on the ecclesiastical
principalities of the empire as anachronisms, had been planning their
entire secularization. This would indemnify the secular powers; and
the sentiment of both Prussia and Austria favored this solution of the
problem. But Bonaparte, foreseeing that temporarily it would also
unify public opinion in Germany, and give France no ground for
meddling, had declared in Italy that if the Germanic body were
non-existent, France should create it for her own purposes; and he
impressed upon the French plenipotentiaries at Rastadt how important
it was that they should at least prevent a complete secularization of
the great bishoprics.

This was the first bone of contention thrown into that Congress; and
Austria soon began to see that the treaty of Campo Formio was to be
not merely an armistice, but a very short one. Bonaparte had formed
in Italy a legion of five thousand Poles. They were still under arms,
awaiting the event. It was notorious that French agents were fomenting
discontent in both Poland and Hungary. The Army of Italy had carefully
spared the hereditary dominions of the Emperor while hurrying toward
Leoben, and Bonaparte, repressing pillage with relentless severity,
had explained that France made war not with the good people of Europe,
but with their tyrannical dynasties. Even in Carinthia some enthusiasm
for revolutionary principles had been created. Thugut had cleverly
prevented Clarke from entering Vienna, because he feared the presence
of a republican among the inflammable elements of that city. Francis
had refused, on the conclusion of peace, to send a diplomatic agent to
Paris, because he did not wish for reciprocity, and was anxious lest a
French minister, if received at Vienna, might there create such a
focus of revolutionary agitation as existed wherever a French embassy
had been established. But now it was suddenly announced that the
French republic had accredited Bernadotte to his court. The report was
true, instructions having been given that the envoy suggest a
dismemberment of Turkey in lieu of the further indemnity Francis
expected, and ascertain how the reconstruction of Poland would be
regarded. He was to prevent Austria's interference in behalf of Rome,
and to insist on being treated with the same punctilio as had been
shown to the royal ambassadors of France. On the other hand, for the
sake of the radicals among the Fructidorians, he was to be
conciliatory, because it was of vital importance that France should
learn the inner workings of the court of Vienna before war broke out
again, especially if the directors were to forestall Bonaparte's
complete ascendancy. There is not a scintilla of evidence that, as
some have suggested, Barras, Sieyès, or Talleyrand tampered with
Bernadotte. He was still a rude soldier, and not the adroit man of
affairs he afterward became. They could rely upon his making a mess of
his mission, and he did so. In a haughty tone he at once demanded, as
he had been instructed to do, the suppression of the Bourbon orders in
Austria, and likewise the omission from the royal almanac of that
family as reigning sovereigns of France. At the same time he made such
an undue display of the tricolor and the republican cockade as to
arouse all latent antagonisms to the Revolution. These and other
similar indiscretions were successful in agitating the populace to
such a degree that finally the embassy was attacked by a mob.
Thoroughly frightened, and knowing that his mission regarding Poland
and Turkey was in vain, Bernadotte demanded his recall. He returned to
Paris, having, as was expected, brought the relations of France and
Austria to the verge of rupture. Arriving in April, 1798, he was
married soon afterward to Joseph Bonaparte's sister-in-law, who
quickly comforted herself after the death of Duphot.[5]

[Footnote 5: See Masson: Les Diplomates de la Révolution.]

By that time Prussia had been virtually checkmated; for although
Sieyès could not bring the court of Berlin to make an alliance with
the Directory, yet he had prevented her adhesion to its enemies,
promising that revolutionary propaganda should cease in Germany. In
return she agreed to observe the old strict neutrality, and to
recognize the Cisalpine Republic. This decision has been severely
criticized in recent years as a virtual delivery of herself to
Napoleon after he should have devoured Austria. It has even been
suggested that her statesmen ought to have looked a hundred years
ahead, and should have anticipated by a century the Prussian (p.~044)
alliance with the house of Savoy, which was at this later date the
only liberal monarchy in Europe. As Europe was in 1798, such a
conception was impossible.

In the spring of that year, therefore, everything presaged the general
outbreak which was soon to occur. It may be that Bonaparte had
foreordained it, and to the minutest detail had regulated events as
they took place. Taking each division of them into separate
consideration, a credulous admirer might believe that so much was
within the ability of a single man; but the complexity of the whole
makes the demoniac power to produce a crash in this way seem beyond
the capacities of even a Bonaparte, although he may have cherished the
desire for one. It is clear that he rode triumphant in the swift rush
of the times, and took every possible advantage from the instability
of European institutions in their moribund condition. To complete the
picture of Europe in 1798, we must recall that Augereau was in the
Pyrenees with forty thousand men, ready, when French agents should
have done their work of agitation, to cross the border at a moment's
notice, and liberate Spain from her Bourbon rulers. Such arbitrary
emancipation was possible elsewhere. Why did it eventually fail in
Spain? The answer is that there were no favorable antecedent
conditions beyond the Pyrenees. All the strange story of
transformation in Italy, in western and in northern Europe, would seem
a lying fiction except for the memory of a still more thorough
antecedent transformation in the spirit of their inhabitants by the
intellectual ferment of the century. This spiritual and rationalizing
movement had left Spain, Russia, and eastern Europe almost untouched.
It was for this reason that the schemes of Bonaparte as to Poland and
Turkey at once healed the breach between Russia and Austria, neither
of which was deeply influenced by the idealism of the age, and both
of which were prompted only by dynastic motives. Elsewhere Napoleon
seemed like a magician; in those lands his spell was vain. In culture
and intelligence England was an age ahead of him, as the others were
an age behind him; and the two opposing forces of ignorance and
enlightenment crushed him in the end like the upper and the nether
millstone.

CHAPTER V

THE EXPEDITION TO EGYPT[6]

[Footnote 6: Boulay de la Meurthe: Le Directoire et
l'expédition d'Égypte. De Villiers du Terrage: Journal et
Souvenirs sur l'expédition d'Égypte. Otherwise as before.]

French Policy Regarding Egypt -- Bonaparte's Use of It -- His
Military Dispositions and Expectations -- His "Complete Code of
Politics" -- The Alternatives He Saw -- Friction Between
Bonaparte and the Directory -- The Fleet and the Army--The
Departure.

Taken in its largest sense, the social life of the world has been due
to the relations of commerce, thought, and religion between the Orient
and the Occident. The short road from one to the other is by way of
the Red Sea, the Isthmus, and the Mediterranean. The controlling site
on that thoroughfare is Egypt. From the crusades onward the domination
of the countries and lands in that great basin was the prize for which
France and England were always contending. Pierre du Bois proposed the
seizure of Egypt to Philip le Bel in the fourteenth century; Leibnitz
sought to draw Louis XIV out of Germany by explaining to him the
dazzling advantage of the same enterprise; d'Argenson suggested the
Suez Canal in 1738; and Choiseul kept alive the plan of occupying
Egypt. The republic had inherited the notion of world conquest which
had occupied both Philip le Bel and Louis XIV, although in another
form. Bonaparte, in the double rôle of Raynal´s disciple and
supplanter of the Revolution, was full of the same idea. It was his
early study of the "Philosophical and Political History of the Two
Indies" which made him, in one of his conversations before Campo
Formio, designate Europe as a mole-hill when compared with the six
hundred millions of men in the East. In these same pages, as in
Plutarch, he had read of Alexander the Great, and had learned to
admire his example; there, too, he was told that with a proper
population and a firm administration Alexandria would rise to greater
eminence than London, Paris, Constantinople, or Rome. These opinions
he imbibed and never changed, reiterating them even at St. Helena,
where he confessed that but for the repulse at Acre he would have
founded an Oriental empire. The policy of the Directory was no doubt
partly his; but to a far greater extent it mirrored the feeling abroad
in the entire nation, and among all its agents, that the times were
ripe for the seizure of Egypt. Talleyrand had called the attention of
the Institute to its feasibility, and Magallon, the French consul at
Cairo, filled his despatches with suggestions as to ways and means. By
the spring of 1798 the plan of the Directory was formed and their
preparations were finished. Under Talleyrand's supervision a statement
of policy, with its historical justification, had been made ready for
publication, while the secret outfit of ships and men at Toulon and
other points was complete.

[Sidenote: 1798]

The justification of the expedition to the Sultan and to Europe was
the plea that Egypt no longer belonged to Turkey. Mameluke usurpers
were holding it in disgraceful bondage; France would liberate it. To
enforce this view with the Porte, every insurgent of the steadily
disintegrating Ottoman empire had for months been receiving
encouragement from Bonaparte's letters and agents, and now the grand
vizir was given to understand that if an attempt were made to
interfere with the French forces, these rebels would be unchained in
his rear; on the other hand, he was encouraged to regard the invaders
as auxiliaries to suppress rebellion both on the Danube and on the
Nile. Bonaparte was playing for high stakes; he probably hoped to win
Turkey as an ally, and thus draw Russia and Austria away from France,
but was determined in case of failure to hold Egypt as the French
share when ultimately the expected partition of the Sultan's domains
should be made.

Otherwise it is impossible to explain why he so managed as to leave
France helpless against her Continental enemies; why all the gathered
treasures of Italy and Switzerland were spent in his own preparations;
why almost every general of ability and every regiment of prowess was
destined for Egypt, while in the face of an impending European crash
the national treasury was depleted, the inferior troops at his own
disposal were left at home, and the remaining veterans of Hoche and
Moreau were scattered in various divisions between the Rhine and the
Pyrenees. The Army of England assembled in the north was temporarily
in a state of atrophy. It was kept at Boulogne with depleted ranks,
but ready to be recruited for a landing in England as a subordinate
move, if the British should be overpowered in the Levant and compelled
to divide their fleet. Otherwise, as Bonaparte thought and said after
a visit in February to the shores of the Channel, it would be too
hazardous to attempt a landing in face of the tremendous armament
afloat under the English flag. "To invade England without the mastery
of the seas is an enterprise the boldest and most difficult that has
been undertaken. If it be possible, it is only by a surprise passage
(of the Channel)." He felt that in any case it would be best to spend
the summer in fitting out the fleet at Brest for an invasion of
Ireland during the autumn. Two questions which present themselves in
this connection cannot be answered categorically: Was it of his own
free will that Bonaparte accepted the command of the Egyptian
expedition, or did the directors force it on him? What was the
ultimate design of the great schemer if the imminent war broke out
while the best French troops were in Africa?

In considering the probabilities as to both these queries, it appears
as if Bonaparte had convinced himself that the open assumption of
authority was for the moment impossible. He could not be a director:
candidates for that office must be forty years old. He dared not take
Barras's suggestion and seize the dictatorship, even temporarily,
because the Jacobin members of the Directory made it plain, in certain
very disorderly sessions of that body, that they would not tolerate
such a plan and were strong enough to thwart it. These scenes, which
were not kept secret, and were described in the coffee-houses, led the
Paris populace to suspect Bonaparte. They were enjoying a temporary
repose which it would have been dangerous at the moment for any
aspirant to disturb. It must have seemed plain that a change in the
constitution was essential to anything like the speedy realization of
his personal ambition, which had already taken definite form. As early
as September nineteenth, 1797, Bonaparte wrote Talleyrand a letter
containing what he called his complete code of politics. His
sphinx-like demeanor and the mysterious allusions already quoted from
the festival speech, taken in connection with that outline, confirm
the notion that Talleyrand, Barras, and Sieyès were preparing for a
new constitution, which should be ready for use when the spring
elections had increased the number of royalist delegates, as they were
sure to do, and had thus produced a clash between the executive and
the legislature.

The "complete code of politics" expresses the same contempt for all
antecedent French political speculation as that felt by Sieyès. Even
Montesquieu had but arranged and analyzed the results of his reading
and travels; though doubtless capable, he had done nothing really
constructive. The English had confused the respective functions of the
various powers in government. In view of their history, it was easy to
see why the taxing power was in the House of Commons. But why should
that body also declare war or make peace? Great Britain, being a state
whose constitution was compounded of privileges, "a black ceiling with
a gilt edge," was quite different from France, where these had been
abolished, and all power proceeded directly from the sovereign people.
Why, then, as under the present constitution, should the French
legislature alone have rights which belonged to government in its
totality? This sovereign power, he continued, "naturally falls, I
think, into two magistracies quite distinct: one supervises, but does
not act, and to this what we now call the executive power should be
compelled to submit important measures--the legislation of execution,
so to speak. This great magistracy would be truly the chief council of
the nation; it would have all that part of administration or of
execution which is by our constitution intrusted to the legislative."
This assembly should be numerous, and composed only of men who had
already held positions of public trust. The legislative should make
and change the organic laws, but not in two to three days, as at
present; for after an organic law has once been made operative, it
should not be changed without four or five months of discussion. "This
legislative power, without rank in the Republic, impassive, without
eyes or ears for what is about it, would have no ambition, and would
not inundate us with more than a thousand specific statutes which, by
their absurdity, destroy their own validity, and make us, with three
hundred tomes of laws, a nation without laws." Is this effusion a
recurrence to youthful crudities of ideal politics, or does it hint at
the exercise by that upper magistracy of its unchecked powers through
a single executive agent like himself? Certain it is, this very
concept, though sensibly changed, had a direct influence on the
institutions of the empire.

In the absence of sufficient evidence as to the facts, there is but
one complex theory which explains subsequent occurrences. The Egyptian
expedition, as its commander publicly said in leaving Toulon, was the
right wing of the Army of England; at the same time it was consonant
with the ancient French policy, and appealed to the romantic, Oriental
side of Bonaparte's own temperament; finally, as a practical measure
it gave him a chance to await with distinction the outcome of affairs
in Paris, whether it should be, as he said to Bourrienne, "for a few
months or for six years." At the same time it was an anchor to
windward. In consequence of the Bernadotte incident, the Austrian
plenipotentiaries at Rastadt had refused even the entire left bank of
the Rhine to France, and European sentiment was apparently
consolidating for another coalition. "I go to the Orient," Napoleon
said to Joseph, "with every means to guarantee success. If France
needs me; if the number of those who think like Talleyrand, Sieyès,
and Roederer increases; if war breaks out, and is unlucky for France,
then I shall return, more certain of public opinion than now. If, on
the other hand, the Republic is successful in war; if a political
general like me appears and centers the hopes of the people in
himself, good; then still in the Orient I shall perhaps do greater
service to the world than he."

Everything indicates that in the months immediately (p.~052)
preceding his departure there was friction between Bonaparte and the
Directory. It is said that in one of their sessions, called to
consider the situation, Bonaparte proposed to reknit the negotiations
of Rastadt by himself returning thither, but that François was
designated to go in his stead. Thereupon the worn-out scene of
threatening resignation was rehearsed by him once more. "Here is a
pen," said Rewbell; "you need rest." But Merlin snatched it; and as
the furious aspirant, seeing his supremacy jeopardized, left the room,
the others heard the words, "The pear is not yet ripe." "Believe me,
it is good advice I give you," said Barras, in a private interview
immediately after: "leave the country as soon as you can." There was
abundant room for such scenes in a committee which considered as its
own the policy of indirect attack on England through the East, while
all its members were chafing under the dictatorial presence of an
embodied and dissatisfied ambition which Talleyrand declares had
really devised the scheme, but was now uncertain as to which was the
best to take of not two or three, but half a dozen courses. The cast
of the die decided for Egypt. The secrecy of preparation had kept even
the French in doubt. England for a time was entirely misled, and made
the nearly fatal blunder of concentrating her naval force in the
Channel, and of guarding the entrance to the Mediterranean with only
the few ships she could spare, while on the waters of that sea itself
she had virtually no force.

Meantime the great fleet at Toulon, nearly the equal of any which
France had ever launched, was entirely ready. To convoy the four
hundred overloaded transports, there were fifteen ships of the line,
fifteen frigates, seven corvettes, and thirty minor armed vessels. It
was a surprise even to the initiated that at the last moment the
soldiers were found to number not twenty-five thousand, as originally
proposed, but forty thousand, comprising the flower of the republican
armies. Of division generals there were D'Hilliers, Vaubois, Desaix,
Kléber, Menou, Reynier, and Dugua; of brigade generals, Lannes,
Davout, Murat, and Andréossy; of colonels, Marmont, Junot,
Lefebvre-Desnouettes, and Bessières. The most novel feature of all was
a carefully organized and equipped expedition of a hundred or more
scholars, who, according to what was then the fashion, were destined
to gather the treasures of the Pharaohs and of the Ptolemies for the
collections of Paris. Their apparatus for discovery was the best
obtainable, their learning was at least respectable, and their library
was a mixture of the ancient classics with those of the modern
romanticism, of medieval lore with modern atheism. There were of
course the great military memoirs, of Turenne, Condé, Luxembourg,
Eugene, and Charles XII; more interesting is the inclusion of fifteen
volumes of geography and discovery. Whither bound? Was this another
Alexander? Homer and Vergil jostled Ossian, Ariosto, and Tasso, while
Rousseau's "Héloïse" stood neighbor to Goethe's "Werther." Among other
"political" works were Montesquieu, the Vedas, the Koran, and the
Bible. Caroline Bonaparte gave her brother as a farewell gift a little
pocket library, among the volumes of which were Bacon's "Essays," Mme.
de Staël's "Influence of the Passions," and Mercier's "Philosophic
Visions." The curious have examined these volumes, and found in their
well-worn pages a few passages specially marked. In his hours of
solitude the great solitary read in Bacon how he who dominates others
loses his own liberty; in Mme. de Staël how hard it is to keep the
acquisitions of ambition; in Mercier of an Oriental visionary who,
after the glories of temporary success, ended his days in exile and
forgetfulness.

It was on April twelfth that Bonaparte received his final instructions
from the executive. He was to seize Malta, drive the British from all
their Oriental possessions which he could hope to capture, destroy
their factories on the Red Sea, pierce the Isthmus of Suez, improve
the condition of all the native populations, and keep a good
understanding with the Sultan. Meantime from twenty-five to thirty
thousand men were to be assembled at some point on the Channel as a
feint against Great Britain so that her attention should be withdrawn
for the time being from the Mediterranean. The very next day the
departing general deposited with the Directory his secret plan for the
camp at Boulogne and a scheme for the surprise passage. The scholar
troop was ordered to Toulon and the commander-in-chief prepared to
follow. But the Bernadotte incident at Vienna raised the war cloud and
he waited a month until it disappeared from the horizon. Throughout
that period Bonaparte kept the directors on tenterhooks by repeated
offers to return to Rastadt, where he alone could secure reparation
for the insult to the republic in the person of her ambassador. But
the Austrians were unready for another appeal to arms, Thugut offered
reparation, and the dangerous marplot of the Directory was at last
free to remove his troublesome presence from Europe. He left Paris on
the night of May third.

CHAPTER VI

THE LANDING IN EGYPT[7]

[Footnote 7: Mahan: Life of Nelson. Jurien de la Gravière:
Guerres Maritimes. Harcourt: Égypte et les Égyptiens.
Gourgaud: Journal. Desvernois: Memoirs, ed. Defourg. (The
editor has enriched his pages from Arab sources.)
Desgenettes: Histoire médicale de L'Armée d'Orient. Ducasse:
Les rois frères de Napoléon. The memoirs of de Rémusat,
Belliard, Savary, and Berthier.]

Visions of Oriental Conquest -- The Surrender of Malta -- Nelson
Deceived -- The Mamelukes -- The Skirmishes at Shebreket and the
Pyramids -- The Emptiness of Success -- Plans for Conquering Asia
-- The Battle of the Nile -- Effects on European Policies.

The departure of the Egyptian expedition from Toulon, on May
nineteenth, 1798, was thus far the greatest occasion of Bonaparte's
life. Josephine, apparently no longer the light Creole, but seemingly
transformed by the successes and responsibilities of the last two
years into a fond and outwardly judicious helpmate, bade him a tender
farewell. There had been checks in his brilliant career, but so far
they had been temporary; as for the present hour, he believed, as he
afterward told Mme. de Rémusat, that it might be his last in France.
Mental fabrics of an Oriental splendor, visions of an empire
bestriding three continents, dreams of potentates and powers far
eclipsing those of western Europe--license like this intoxicates the
imagination and disorders common minds. Such plans seem fantastic to
the multitude, but what else than their realization is in sober
reality the British empire of to-day? The rank and file of Bonaparte's
army might not see a reward for this hazardous expedition in
sentimental or distant returns, but they understood perfectly the
words of a harangue delivered at Toulon before embarking, which,
besides being a reminder of the plunder they had taken in Italy,
contained the blunt promise that this time every man should return
with money enough to buy seven acres of land. Sailors and soldiers
alike were thrilled by the call to establish liberty on the plains of
the ocean, as they had on the plains of Lombardy. They even dimly
apprehended the meaning of a proclamation, issued at sea, in which
their destination was finally revealed, and certain success was
foretold, if they would respect the women, the goods, and the faith of
the Mohammedans.

Yes; it was a sanguine expedition which, relying on an apparent
relaxation of England's vigilance, set sail for Malta. The
geographical situation of that island makes it in proper hands the
citadel of the Mediterranean, the bulwark of Christendom against
heathendom. But the military monks to whom it had been intrusted were
grown corrupt and licentious. The Maltese loathed their masters.
French agents had already been among them, winning thousands of the
people and some of the French knights; and such was the internal
disorder at the approach of Bonaparte that after the merest show of
resistance to his demands, the gates of an almost impregnable fortress
were dishonorably opened to the French republic without a blow. The
order, neither monastic nor military in any true sense, was virtually
annihilated by the sequestration of its goods, though nominally it
survived as vassal to the crown of Naples under the protection of
Russia. The spoils of the treasury and the Church were quickly seized,
a goodly treasure, and added to the French war chest. Waiting only to
garrison his easy conquest, and to establish a French administration,
Bonaparte hastened on, and the entire fleet in good condition anchored
off Alexandria on June thirtieth. With a few casualties the troops
were landed.

News of the great preparations at Toulon had finally convinced the
English admiralty that their supremacy in the Mediterranean was
endangered. Nelson, with a small squadron, sailed in due time from
Cadiz, and arrived off the French coast before the departure of
Bonaparte's expedition. Driven from his position by a storm, he took
refuge in the lee of Sardinia, where he remained until reinforced.
Such was the overcharge of the French ships in troops and stores that
even with a few active vessels Nelson could have crippled, if not
entirely disabled, his enemy's great armament. With a new force which
in the mean time he had received, he was prepared to dispute their
passage wherever found, and his orders were stringent to destroy the
enemy's fleet at any hazard. Returning to Toulon only to find that the
French had escaped him, he sailed thence to Sicily, and perceiving at
last the destination of the foe to be Egypt, passed swiftly to the
south of Crete, and arrived off Alexandria to be disappointed in
finding its roadstead empty. Supposing that he had been deceived, he
hastened away toward Syria. In the desire to find his foe, he had
passed him. Bonaparte, learning off Crete that he was pursued, sailed
northward through the Candian Sea, while Nelson took the direct line
on the other side. So it happened that thus far the good fortune of
the invaders had not deserted them.

[Illustration: Map of Egypt.]

The denizens of the great Egyptian towns were not a warlike people;
the great mass of the population, the down-trodden agricultural
workers, or fellaheen, were even less so. Their strongest weapon was
that Oriental stolidity which, like a fortress of mud, closes over
hostile missiles without crumbling under their blows. Accordingly,
the city of Alexandria, after a feeble and ineffectual resistance,
yielded. Bonaparte, ever conciliatory, issued a proclamation to the
people, which was translated by one of his savants into the
vernacular. It was clear and concise, but had little influence on the
populace. The condition of Egypt at the time seeks in vain a parallel
in history. Saladin had followed a tradition of Eastern despotism in
the formation of a body-guard destitute of all ties except those which
bound them to his person. Purchased as infants in Georgia or
Circassia, its members were, like the janizaries at Constantinople,
trained to arms as an exclusive profession, and, mounted on the finest
steeds of Arabia, they became the elite of his army. In time this
force of acute and powerful men transformed itself into a warrior
caste, was divided into twenty-four companies, and obeyed no authority
except that of its captains. These were known in Oriental phrase as
Beys, the subordinates were themselves what we call the Mamelukes; the
whole, in number about eight thousand, formed a kind of chivalry
which, though reduced to nominal submission in 1517, still governed
the land with despotic power, and bade defiance to the Sultan's shaky
authority. The first portion of Bonaparte's proclamation sketched the
evils of Mameluke tyranny, the second called on the populace to aid
their liberators. "We, too, are true Mussulmans. Is it not we who have
destroyed the Pope that said war must be made on the Mussulmans? Is it
not we who have destroyed the Knights of Malta because those insensate
chevaliers believed God wanted them to make war on the Mussulmans?
Thrice happy they who are on our side! They shall prosper in their
fortune and in their place. Happy those who are neutral! They shall
have time to understand us, and shall array themselves with us. But
woe, thrice woe, to those who shall take up arms for the Mamelukes and
fight against us! There shall be no hope left for them; they shall
perish." The contrast between this language and that which its author
had used in Italy concerning the Church shows how much sincerity there
was in either case. Here as there he used religion as a political
expedient.

The capture of Alexandria was a bitter disillusionment to the French
soldiery, for the once rich and famous city had shrunk into poverty
and insignificance. There was no booty and the squalor was repellent.
With this unpropitious start their struggle on to Cairo was an awful
trial. The sky was brass, their feet sank in the dry, hot soil, and
mounted skirmishers tormented them from behind the low hillocks on
each side of their line of march. No enemy more redoubtable than a few
half-naked fellaheen really disputed their progress; but even when, on
July tenth, they came within sight of the Nile and their sufferings
were about to be mitigated, it was in vain that their general sought
to silence their bitter cries of disheartened anger. Three days later
they were attacked at Shebreket by the outposts of the Mamelukes,
under Murad, chief Bey of the force. The irregular and individual
attacks of the well-armed and gorgeously equipped cavalry broke
harmlessly against the serried ranks of the French veterans, and the
desultory firing of the Turkish artillery was quickly silenced; the
rusty cannon, though aimed point-blank at the gunboat flotilla which
was ascending the river, did little or no damage. The enemy withdrew,
and concentrated their forces for a final stand at Om Dinar before
Cairo, behind the lines of Embabeh. On July twenty-first Bonaparte
ordered his troops in squares six men deep, as before. They were to
advance so as to cut off the enemy's retreat southward, and were to
halt only to receive a charge. "Soldiers," cried the general, "forty
centuries look down upon you from the summit of the Pyramids!" The
resistance was scarcely worthy of the name. Five thousand horsemen and
as many fellaheen were behind the weak ramparts. Murad and his men
dashed forward with desperate courage against the phalanx of Desaix,
but only to rebound from its iron sides against the equally impassive
lines of Reynier and Dugua. Ibrahim, the other Mameluke leader, fled
eastward across the river, and Murad retreated toward the south; the
undisciplined infantry scattered and ran like frightened sheep. Many
of the Mamelukes were drowned in the Nile. It was their custom to
carry their wealth on their persons, and the French soldiers, bending
their bayonets into grappling-hooks, spent much time in fishing for
the corpses. It was estimated that each body thus recovered would
afford about ten thousand francs to the lucky finder.

The so-called battle of the Pyramids will ever have a fictitious and
romantic fame, largely due, of course, to the quality of Bonaparte's
wonderful proclamations, which long after he admitted to Gourgaud were
"un peu charlatan." Its results, however, were temporarily very
important. Cairo was delivered by it into French hands, and the
possession of Egypt's capital seemed of the first importance both to
the soldiers and to their friends at home. The idea that East and West
were fighting under the shadow of those monuments which, now hoary
with age, were among the first achievements of civilized human
intelligence, thrilled the "great nation," and added new luster to
Bonaparte's laurels in the minds of a people wont to revel in great
conceptions. Yet but thirty French soldiers were killed, and only one
hundred and twenty were wounded. It was a skirmish; much more
decisive than that at Shebreket, to be sure, and somewhat more bloody,
but only a skirmish. Both were represented to the Directory as great
battles, the five Mamelukes killed in the first being magnified to
three hundred. The camp at Embabeh furnished rich spoils to the
victorious leaders, but the fabled wealth of Cairo, destined for the
soldiery, proved to be like apples of Sodom. The army had been angry
and disheartened; deprived of its accustomed booty, it became sullen
and mutinous. There was no news from home. Oriental apathy long defied
even Bonaparte's administrative powers. Egypt was subdued, but the
situation of the general and of his troops was apparently desperate.
Long afterwards the Emperor said to Gourgaud that, horrible as was the
confession, he believed it fortunate that the French fleet was
destroyed at Aboukir, "otherwise the army would have reëmbarked." If
he had commanded Mamelukes, he would have been master of the East, he
added.

Nothing daunted by what would have broken a feebler spirit, the
disillusioned conqueror turned to the conquest of another world.
Africa had failed him, but Asia was near, and a revolution might be
effected there. The maltreatment of French merchants in Syria had been
one of the Directory's original grounds of complaint; it must serve
another turn, and if the Sultan were sufficiently humbled, he might be
compelled to an alliance against the menacing league of Russia and
Austria. The need for carrying out this plan was further confirmed by
the awful news which soon came from Alexandria. Nelson, having scoured
in vain the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, had returned first to
Sicily, then to Greece, and finally to Egypt. Bonaparte had left
instructions for Admiral Brueys to work the fleet into the old port of
the Ptolemies; but if the anchorage or water-draft should prove
insufficient, he was to sail for Corfu. It was believed that with his
splendid new eighty-gun ships, and unhampered by the transports, he
was more than a match for the inferior squadron of Nelson, whose
largest vessels had but seventy-four guns. But Brueys, finding it
impossible to enter the harbor with his warships, and fearing to sail
for Corfu without the provisions promised by the general, disobeyed
his orders, and took up what he believed to be an impregnable position
near by in the bay of Aboukir, his line being parallel with the
shoaling beach, and his van protected by insufficient batteries on
Aboukir island to the northwest. The strongest ships in the center and
van were those stationed seaward.

Nelson descried the anchored fleet on August first, about midday;
before evening his daring scheme was formed and carried out. The
English ships advanced in two divisions, one attacking the enemy's
center and rear from the sea side, while the other, performing by
skilful steering what Brueys had believed an impossible feat, entered
the shoal waters, and, cutting off the shore defense, simultaneously
attacked on that side. The French van, like the rest of the fleet, was
at anchor, and could not come to the assistance of its sister ships.
Thus entrapped, the French sailors fought with desperate courage, but
they were out-manoeuvered, and the English cross-fire was deadly.
Moreover, with Nelson a new temper had entered the British navy. At
Bastia he had determined the result by his personal daring, for the
men of the _Agamemnon_, when led by him, "minded shot as little as
peas"; at Calvi he had lost an eye in a desperate venture; at Cape St.
Vincent he had boarded two opposing Spanish ships at the head of his
own _Captain's_ crew, with the cry, "Westminster Abbey or victory!"
and now, in the battle of the Nile, his greatest fight, he inspired
the whole fleet with such audacious bravery that to this day his
countrymen sing the proud boast of the ballad-writer, "At the battle
of the Nile, I was there all the while." Though he had as many vessels
as the French, they were of inferior quality and strength; but the
result was never doubtful. The brave Brueys went down in his own
_Orient_ as the dauntless crew shouted, "Long live the Republic!" and
Rear-Admiral Villeneuve barely escaped with two ships of the line and
two frigates. Two other vessels of the latter class had been towed
into the harbor; all the rest were destroyed. From that awful day the
modern maritime ascendancy of England was considered a menace by
continental Europe. France had struck Great Britain deadly blows in
the annihilation of her allies ashore, and was to do so again.
England, however, on her own chosen element, seemed thenceforward
indomitable.

Any plan which Bonaparte may have entertained for the use of fleets to
transport himself or his armies either on the Mediterranean or on the
Atlantic during the expected Continental convulsion had to be
abandoned. As was explained in a despatch from the Directory, which he
did not receive until long after, he must either make Egypt
self-sufficient without aid from France, or march on Constantinople to
intimidate or wheedle the Grand Turk, or invade India, collect all the
elements hostile to British rule, and establish himself there. Any
thought of immediate return to France must be abandoned, however
disposed he might be to pluck his "pear." On the other hand, France
without Bonaparte was a different subject for European consideration,
military or political. The wild schemes of her government for aiding
the Irish rebels or invading British soil were necessarily either
futile in their inception or never tried; the coalition was shaping
itself, and with Bonaparte and Hoche both removed from the scene, the
statesmen and generals of the other great powers were only too ready
to try conclusions with France.

CHAPTER VII

THE DISASTER AT ACRE[8]

[Footnote 8: References as before. Add Masson: Napoléon et
les femmes, Josephine. Ernouf: Le Général Kléber. Larrey:
Relation historique. Belliard: Bourrienne et ses erreurs.
Guitry: L'Armée en Égypte. Memoirs of Lavalette, Bourrienne,
Miot de Melito, and Lucien de Bonaparte.]

Islam and the French -- Plans to Revolutionize the East -- The
News from Europe -- Bonaparte's Recommendations to the Directory
-- The Invasion of Syria -- Murder of Turkish Prisoners --
Importance of Acre -- The Battle of Mount Tabor -- The Siege of
Acre -- Desperate Courage of Besiegers and Besieged -- Defeat of
Bonaparte -- His Estimate of Human Life -- The Retreat to Egypt.

[Sidenote: 1798--99]

"This is the moment," said Bonaparte, on hearing how Brueys's splendid
fleet had been annihilated, and the line of retreat to France cut off,
"when characters of a superior order assert themselves." "The
English," he cried on another occasion, "will compel us to do greater
things than we intended." So far from his activity being diminished in
the isolation of Egypt, it was redoubled. To preserve the fiction of
his mission as the restorer of Ottoman power, the tricolor and the
crescent floated everywhere side by side, while prayers were said for
both France and Turkey in the mosques. The utmost respect was paid to
the Koran and its precepts. Menou and a number of others made an open
profession of Islam. To soothe all popular apprehension, existing
institutions were changed only to strengthen them, while contemplated
reforms were to follow in proportion as increasing public
enlightenment demanded them. In particular, the utmost respect was
paid to marriage customs, and no license among the common soldiers was
tolerated. In marked contrast was Bonaparte's own conduct. An
intercepted letter written from Alexandria to his brother Joseph
expressed jealous doubts of Josephine's fidelity--or, rather, a
certainty of her infidelity. From that instant his own licentiousness
became a scandal even to the loose notions of his train. But outwardly
he affected the inflated speech of a semi-divine messenger; once,
while visiting the burial crypt in the pyramid of Cheops, he pretended
to a mufti that he was a proselyte, and pronounced with an air of
conviction the Mohammedan creed. Every element in the population,
however,--Copts, Turks, Greeks, and Arabs,--was courted, and made to
share in the administration. Printing-presses were established, and
the French scholars, though surprised and disenchanted by what they
found, united into an institute, and began the study of every possible
improvement in political, social, and domestic economy. Nor was the
army forgotten: the captured Mamelukes and other available youth were
enrolled in the French battalions, and taught the drill and discipline
of war. Even the scattered Bedouin received the conqueror's flattering
attentions with ever lessening distrust.

All this was part of a plan to effect a religious and political
revolution in the East, the two to move hand in hand, by an appeal to
Mohammedan zeal for coöperation with those who had already destroyed
Christianity in Europe. Talleyrand was to have been the representative
in Constantinople of the same idea. But in disregard of his promise he
stayed at home, and neither the Sultan, as the political and religious
head of Islam, nor its devotees, were for a moment deceived. On the
well-known principle that offers of peace come best while war is
hottest, Bonaparte's iron hand was shown in certain most stringent
regulations, and one determined insurrection was put down with
merciless rigor. The domestic relations of the people were sacred, but
they must buy indemnity with the payment of all their cash; and
treasure, wherever found, was seized for the army chest. The old city
barriers of Cairo were broken down, and fortified turrets were built
in their places. Resistance of any kind met with quick punishment, and
heads fell throughout the land with such regularity and frequency as
to force from the natives a recognition of Bonaparte as el Kebir, the
Exalted.

The utter isolation of summer, autumn, and winter would have been
intolerable but for such occupations. Only a single official despatch,
and that a most insignificant one, reached Egypt from France during
this interval; and the rush of events in Europe was for months utterly
unknown to the castaway army. In fact, but two efforts were made to
forward news--an astounding proof of the feeling in Paris. The
Directory had failed in their attempts to cajole the Sultan, and a
message from Bonaparte arrived too late to influence him; for, on
receipt of news from Nelson's victorious fleet, the Turkish monarch
hesitated no longer, and accepted the proffered alliance of Russia.
The only certain news from Europe which was generally disseminated in
Cairo was contained in a package of Italian newspapers brought into
Alexandria by a blockade-runner. Through them it was known that the
invasion of Ireland, having been precipitated by a misunderstanding
between the secret society of United Irishmen and the Directory, had
failed; that Malta and Corfu were blockaded; that the Spanish fleet
was significantly inactive; and that all Europe was arming for the
renewal of hostilities in the spring. Bonaparte made every effort to
communicate with Paris. Some of his frequent despatches certainly
reached their destination; but, going by circuitous routes, they were
belated. This very fact, however, went far in France to surround him
with a halo of romance, and to glorify the legend, never eradicated
from French imaginations, that the national arms had subjugated the
land of the Pharaohs. As every day revealed the incapacity of the
Directory in the face of an exasperated and united Europe, the fancied
splendor of Bonaparte's feats neutralized any remnants of suspicion
remaining in the minds of the people regarding their absent victor.
The conquering republic was over the sea; it was a spurious one which
had remained at home to be humiliated.

Disquieting rumors of Bonaparte's death, said to have been spread by
English and Russian agents, were prevalent during a part of December;
but while at their height they were allayed by the arrival, direct
from the seat of war, of a budget dated October seventh. The condition
of the colony was described in glowing terms, but the gist of the
despatches was that the Spanish admiral must be goaded to activity,
and that the fleet from Brest must be sent to coöperate with him in
the Mediterranean, in order to restore the prestige of France in the
East. As for the writer himself, he hoped, should war break out again
in Europe, to return in the spring. Meantime, the Neapolitans were
marching on Rome, a fact which inclined the vacillating and harassed
directors to act on the suggestions of their real master, although
they kept his recommendations secret.

It was, therefore, not entirely without a coördination of plans that
the Army of Egypt, strengthened and refreshed, made ready to move in
February. The Turks, under the viceroy, Achmet, styled Jezzar, the
Butcher, were mustering in Syria, and it was necessary to anticipate
them. Kléber was put at the head of twelve thousand men, and, after
dispersing the eight hundred Mamelukes who had retreated in the
direction of Rahmaniyeh, he advanced some days' march to El Arish,
which was at once beset. Bonaparte tarried at Cairo for a few days,
and then having learned that the congress at Rastadt was still
sitting, and that war, though imminent, was not yet declared, set out,
reaching El Arish on February seventeenth, 1799. Three days later the
Turkish garrison, composed largely of volunteers, surrendered. They
were paroled, and ordered to march toward Damascus. Gaza fell with the
exchange of a few musket-balls, and important munitions of war were
delivered into the hands of the French. On March fourth the invaders
were before Jaffa, which had a garrison of four thousand men, a part
of Jezzar's army. After three days' bombardment a breach was made in
the walls, and two thousand troops who had taken refuge behind
caravansary walls surrendered under promise of their lives; the rest,
it is said, had been killed in a massacre which immediately followed
the assault.

No French victory was ever marked by more unbridled license than that
which the victorious troops practised at Jaffa. But what followed was
worse. Although the prisoners of war were too numerous for the
ordinary usage, yet they should have been treated according to the
terms of quarter they had exacted. On the seventh a council of war
unanimously voted that the old rule under which no quarter is given to
defenders in an assault should be applied to them. For two days
Bonaparte hesitated, but on the ninth his decision was taken. A few
Egyptians were sent home, and the remainder of the prisoners, together
with the eight hundred militia from El Arish, were marched to the
beach, and shot. In the report to the Directory the total number was
put at twelve hundred. Two eye-witnesses estimated it--one at three
thousand, the other at four thousand. "I have been severe with those
of your troops who violated the laws of war," wrote the author of the
deed to Jezzar. No mention of the fact or excuse for it was made in
any other portion of his correspondence at the time. All winter long
he had been dealing as an Oriental with Orientals, and this was but a
piece of the same conduct. The code of Christian morality was far from
his mind. In January, for instance, he had ordered Murat to kill all
the prisoners of a hostile tribe in the desert, whom he could not
bring away; and in the same month identical orders were issued to
Berthier concerning another horde. The plea which is made by the
eulogists of Napoleon, and by some recent military writers, for this
wholesale execution, is that among these slaughtered men the garrison
of El Arish, which had surrendered, had been found again with arms in
their hands; that they were deserving of death according to all the
laws of war; and that, as to the rest, there were no French prisoners
for whom to exchange them, and no provisions to support them;
consequently their presence with the army would jeopardize its
success, and it was therefore justifiable to diminish the enemy's
resisting power by their execution. Those who believe that in any war,
whether just or unjust, the practice of barbarity is excusable if it
lead to speedy victory will agree with that opinion.

Bonaparte had foreseen that of all the Syrian towns the Pasha's
capital, St. Jean d'Acre, which was on the shore, and not inland like
the places so easily taken, would make the strongest resistance.
Accordingly he had provided a siege-train, and had despatched it by
sea from Alexandria. The English squadron in those waters, now in
command of Sir Sidney Smith, was in the offing when the French army
arrived on the coast. Approaching in order to open fire, the English
admiral became aware after a few shots that his enemy had no
artillery. Divining the reason, he swiftly put to sea, and easily
captured their transports. Phélippeaux, a French emigrant who had
graduated from the military school at Paris only two days before
Bonaparte, was sent by Smith to superintend the fortification of the
city with the very guns destined for its destruction. The siege of
Acre thus became a task quite different from any hitherto imposed on
the French. Supported by an English fleet, and easily provisioned
under protection of their guns, the city might have made a determined
stand even against an enemy with cannon; but to one without artillery
it was likely that its resistance would be effectual. And so it
proved; for under the ancient Gothic walls of a city whose name
recalled the fleeting dominion of the Frank crusaders, Bonaparte's
dreams of an Oriental empire vanished forever. On March nineteenth he
sat down before them, with really no dependence except on fate. In
spite of discouragements, however, a breach was effected on the
twenty-eighth by means of a mine, but the assault was repulsed.

Day followed day without an important incident, until in the third
week an army of twenty-five thousand men, under Abdullah, approached
from Damascus to relieve Jezzar. Kléber set out to check their march,
and the first skirmish of advance-guards occurred at Nazareth. For
eight hours Junot, in the van with a few hundred men, stood firm
against a tenfold force; and even when the whole French division
arrived the overwhelming superiority of the Turkish numbers was not
perceptibly diminished. Bonaparte was not far behind. Leaving a
respectable array before the town to keep up appearances, he hurried
away with the rest, and by a forced march debouched on April sixteenth
into the plain of Esdraelon. In the distance, at the foot of Mount
Tabor, he could see a cloud of dust and smoke, in the midst of which
the ranks of Kléber's division seemed buried beneath the masses of his
foe. Throwing his fine cavalry on the Turkish flanks, the
commander-in-chief, at the head of the infantry, caught his enemy
unawares from behind the whirling sand which had concealed his
presence. The result was an utter rout of the Turks, who fled by the
mountain passes in complete disorder.

Bonaparte returned victorious to Acre, and resumed the siege with a
grim determination such as even he had not often felt. He had good
cause. Another messenger from the Directory, traveling with
comparative directness by way of Genoa, had arrived with despatches
and newspapers dated as late as February. Two Austrian generals, Mack
and Sachsen, had put themselves at the head of the Neapolitan army,
and were about to march on Rome. An Austrian army division had already
begun hostilities by entering the Grisons, thus violating the
neutrality of the allied Helvetian Republic. Russia, Turkey, and
Austria were in coalition: Russia would despatch troops to defend the
Turkish capital and to aid in conquering Italy. Two new French armies
were in the field. Moreau, the only first-rate general in France, was
still under suspicion of complicity with Pichegru, and although
permitted to accompany the Army of Italy as a volunteer, had been
passed over in the choice of commanders. Jourdan, whose consistent
democracy as a member of the Five Hundred had restored him to favor
and rank, was to command the Army of the Danube; Joubert was to
succeed Bonaparte in Italy. As for himself, he was left unhampered by
instructions, but three alternatives had suggested themselves to the
Directory--that he should either remain in Egypt and complete his
colonial organization, or else press on to India and there supplant
the English power, or, finally, march straight to Constantinople and
attack the Russians. The tone of the despatches was one of anxiety.
From earliest times Acre had been the key of Palestine; if Bonaparte
should secure it, he would become the arbiter of his own destiny and
of the world's. With Palestine, Egypt, and India at his feet, the
tricontinental monarchy of his dreams was realizable; or else, in the
same case, he could return to Paris with laurels unknown since the
crusades, and put the copestone on the nearly completed structure of
military domination in France and Europe. To the end of his days he
imagined, or represented himself as imagining, that he would have
altered the world's career by choosing the part of Oriental conqueror.
We may call these notions dreams, or fancies, or visions, or what we
will; they were sane conceptions in themselves, although it is not
likely that England would have been conquered in the loss of India.
She had been vigorous without it; she could have survived even that
blow. For the moment the fall of Acre appeared to be an antecedent
condition to either of the courses which were in the mind of
Bonaparte.

But the siege was not prosperous. The assault and the defense during
the attack in March had been alike desperate, and French valor had
been futile. A fleet was now on its way from Constantinople to throw
additional men and provisions into the town. At the same time
Phélippeaux had constructed a new girdle of forts inside the walls,
and had barricaded the streets. In the interval, however, the French
had brought up some heavy guns from Jaffa, and were making
preparations to renew operations. A breach was easily effected, and a
few gallant fellows seized the tower which controlled the outworks and
curtain; but the storming party was repulsed, and the men in the
tower, though they held it for two days, were finally so reduced in
numbers that they succumbed. This exasperated the French soldiers
intensely. For the first two weeks of May there was scarcely a break
in the succession of assaults. The fierce struggles which occurred in
the breaches, on the barricades, even in the streets, to which the
French once or twice penetrated, resulted in an appalling loss of
life; but neither party quailed. Before long a pestilence broke out in
the French camp, and the hospitals established at Jaffa and elsewhere
were crowded with sick and dying.

On May seventh Kléber's division was called in for a conclusive
onslaught, and in the face of a double fire from Sir Sidney Smith's
cannon and the guns on the walls, both the first and second works were
scaled and taken. All was in vain. Every house rained bullets from
embrasures made for the purpose, and the entering columns retreated on
the very threshold of their goal. Three days later a second equally
desperate attempt likewise failed. In all, the siege lasted sixty-two
days; the French assaulted forty times, and twenty-six sallies were
made by the garrison; four thousand soldiers and four good generals
from his splendid army were the sacrifice of human life which
Bonaparte offered at Acre to his ambition. Finally, the squadron from
Constantinople having safely arrived, news came that another was
fitting out at Rhodes to retake Egypt itself. Nothing was left but to
draw off, and on the seventeenth the siege was abandoned. The retreat
began on the twentieth. At Jaffa Bonaparte passed through the hospital
wards calling out in a loud voice: "The Turks will be here in a few
hours. Whoever feels strong enough, let him rise and follow us."

As a votary at the shrine of science he believed, both then and later,
in the lawfulness of suicide; and he now coldly suggested murder to
his surgeon-general, hinting that an overdose of opium would end the
sufferings of those plague-stricken men who would have to be
abandoned. It was long believed that such a dose actually had been
administered to the sixty or more who were left behind. But the
conclusive evidence that the report was false is in the fact that when
Sir Sidney Smith occupied Jaffa the sufferers were still alive.
Napoleon to the last defended the suggestion as proper, though he
falsely denied having made it himself, and untruthfully declared at
St. Helena that he had delayed three days to protect the dying
patients. With cynical good nature, he told the fine story of how the
noble French army surgeon Desgenettes had rejected the criminal
suggestion, replying that a physician's profession was to save, not to
destroy, human life. The rebuke was particularly scathing because the
heroic doctor, in spite of his conviction that the plague was
contagious, had already inoculated himself with the disease in order
to allay the panic of the terror-stricken soldiers. The army was
reduced to eight thousand. After a nine days' march through the
burning sands, the exhausted columns of the French reached Cairo. Such
was the unparalleled vigor of the survivors that a few days' rest and
proper food sufficed to recuperate their strength.

More wonderful still, they soon believed themselves to have returned
with crowns of victory. Their crafty general explained that but for
the terrible heats of Syria, the pest, and the expedition from Rhodes,
which threatened their rear, they would have leveled the walls of
Acre and destroyed Jezzar's palace, returning with standards and
spoils to confirm France's dominion in the hearts and fears of the
Egyptians. The volatile and sanguine soldiery, unwilling to admit
defeat even to themselves, half believed this was true, and soon by an
easy transition came to hold the mere suggestions as actual facts.
Berthier was instructed that the native authorities at Cairo were to
be so informed by an advance agent, General Boyer. The few important
prisoners whose lives had been spared were to be conveyed, with due
display of captured standards, to the citadel of Cairo, and there
imprisoned with the public announcement "that a great number of such
were coming." The litters of the wounded French officers Lannes,
Duroc, Croizier, and Arrighi were to be quietly carried in on
different days. In one emphatic paragraph are the instructions for
Boyer: "He is to write, to say, to do everything which may secure a
triumphal entry." So adroitly were truth and fiction intermingled and
confused by Bonaparte and his agents, that in spite of various
attempted risings the country as a whole remained quiet. Murad,
however, who had fled to Nubia, and had there remained in concealment
until informed of the proposed Turkish expedition, soon reappeared
with the remnants of his cavalry, for the purpose of coöperating with
the Sultan's forces. For weeks he came and went among the people so
mysteriously that the French guards could never seize him. Bonaparte's
superstition was awakened by the stealthy and uncanny movements of his
enemy, and in July he gave vent to his nervous irritation in a request
to one of his subordinates either to kill or worry to death the object
of his dread. "Let him die one way or another, I shall be equally
obliged," were his words.

CHAPTER VIII

ABOUKIR AND THE GREAT DESERTION[9]

[Footnote 9: Authorities as before.]

The Last of the Mamelukes -- Aboukir -- The News from Paris -- An
Adventurer's Decision -- Preparations for Departure -- His Plans
Concealed -- The Last Visit to Corsica -- A Narrow Escape --
Reception in France -- Conjugal Estrangement.

[Sidenote: 1799]

The Turkish army which had sailed from Rhodes numbered about twelve
thousand men. The fleet which transported them appeared off Alexandria
on July twentieth, and a landing was attempted. Repulsed by the forts,
the ships drew off to Aboukir, where the effort was successful. The
force was composed of infantry, and as nothing further could be done
without cavalry, they began immediately to throw up breastworks,
hoping to make a successful stand until the arrival of Murad. But this
romantic personage, the last of the Mamelukes to enjoy undisputed
sway, was able to come no farther than the Pyramids; the land at which
he gazed from the summit of Cheops was never again to be his. Before
he could reach his allies they had been overwhelmed, and before the
evacuation of Egypt by its invaders he fell a victim to the plague.
Mehemet Ali and the Albanians were to inherit his power. By July
twenty-fourth the Turks had strongly fortified the peninsula of
Aboukir with a double line of works. Not only did they hear nothing
from Murad, but Ibrahim, who was expected from Syria, also failed
them, and the lack of cavalry threw them on the defensive. (p.~078)
But their presence, they hoped, would be sufficient to fan the
rebellious spirit of the country, and they might maintain themselves
until reinforcements should come by sea, or the belated cavalry arrive
by land.

With his accustomed rapidity Bonaparte made ready to strike. Ibrahim
was checked, Murad was finally driven back, and Desaix was called in
from upper Egypt to keep order below while the contest was going on in
the Delta. With six thousand men in the main army, and two thousand
reserves under Kléber, Bonaparte set out. On July twenty-fifth the
battle was joined. It was short and murderous. The enemy was first
outflanked on the left, and that wing driven into the sea; then the
right was caught in the same manner, and suffered a like fate.
Finally, with a rush the infantry of Lannes surmounted a redoubt in
the center. What was their surprise to find Murat with his cavalry
already on the other side! The dashing riders had madly circumvented
the line of intrenchment. There were but three thousand Turks now
left, and these took refuge in a citadel which they had constructed at
the apex of the peninsula. On August first, 1799, the anniversary of
the battle of the Nile, the entire force surrendered. Bonaparte told
the Directory that twelve thousand Turks were drowned. As he said in
his despatch to Cairo, "Not a single man of the hostile army which had
landed escaped." The French troops were now convinced that their
general had always been invincible, and that somehow he would open the
doors of their prison-house, and find a way for their return.

[Illustration: Napoleon Exposition, 1895

NAPOLEON--BY INGRES

(Belonging to Germain Bapst).]

It was nearly six months since the date of the latest authentic news
from Paris. At least so thought the general's adjutants and
companions, and they were possibly right. They knew that he had been
constantly forwarding news of their enterprise, and probably
regular instructions, to the authorities at Paris. Bonaparte
mentions in his correspondence the despatch of sixty vessels of
various kinds with his letters, and some of them, at least, reached
their destination. This certainty, with the wise adaptation of his
subsequent course to his ultimate ends, has led to the supposition
that he was in constant receipt of secret information from his
brothers, by way of Genoa and Tunis. This he never explicitly denied,
although he said at St. Helena that newspapers were sent ashore from
the English fleet after the battle of Aboukir, adding, as a kind of
ingenuous generalization, that, besides, news did not come from France
by way of Tunis. Joseph declares in his memoirs that he himself sent a
messenger to tell the sorry tale of French affairs to Napoleon. But
there is no proof and no likelihood that this courier ever reached his
destination. It is certain that Bonaparte learned at Acre of the new
coalition against France from Phélippeaux in a parley held across the
trenches; it is probable that his private news came by way of the
Barbary States; it is unquestioned that his best information was
obtained through the English fleet, which was now off Alexandria,
negotiating for exchanges on behalf of Turkey. According to Marmont,
Sir Sidney Smith, hoping to discourage his enemy, sent a packet of
papers ashore, and declared that if the French army should strive to
escape, in accordance with the desire of the Directory, he would
endeavor to give an account himself to the fugitives.

In any case, what was now definitely made known to Bonaparte was not
unwelcome information. He was assured that war had broken out, as he
expected and perhaps knew; that the French arms had suffered disgrace
in Italy; and that a fleet under Admiral Bruix had been despatched to
conquer the Mediterranean and to bring home the Army of Egypt. No
doubt he guessed that the Directory was showing hopeless incapacity.
What he could not know was that on May twenty-sixth they had actually
despatched a special courier to express the hope that he himself would
return to take command of the armies of the republic. This messenger,
we know, never landed in Egypt, but his services were not required;
for no sooner was Bonaparte convinced that the crisis he had long
foreseen was actually occurring than the resolution he had twice
foreshadowed in his letters to Paris was finally taken. He told
Marmont that the state of things in Europe compelled him to return:
the French armies defeated, all the fruits of his hard-earned
victories in Italy lost! Of what use were these incapables who were at
the head of affairs? With them all was hesitation, stupidity, and
corruption. "I--I alone have borne the burden, and by constant victory
have given strength to this administration, which without me would
never have lifted its head. On my departure everything had, of
necessity, to crumble. Let us not wait until the destruction is
complete; the evil would be irremediable.... The news of my return
will be heard in France simultaneously with that of the destruction of
the Turkish army at Aboukir. My presence will elevate men's spirits,
restore to the army its lost confidence, and to the good people the
hope of a prosperous future." No commentary could make this language
clearer.

His arrangements were quickly made. A few trusted men were
confidentially informed of the situation, and Kléber was appointed to
the chief command of the army, which was so dishonorably to be
abandoned in a most critical situation, reduced as it was to half its
original numbers, destitute of provisions and ammunition, surrounded
by a hostile, fanatical population, and confronted by the powerful
fleet of its most unrelenting enemy. Secretly, and by night, the two
frigates in the harbor of Alexandria were prepared, and anchored off a
remote point of the shore. In the early hours of August twenty-second
the fugitive general embarked, accompanied by a few devoted and choice
friends--capable generals like Murat, Lannes, Marmont, Berthier,
Duroc, Bessières, Lavalette, Ganteaume, and Andréossy; equally fine
political scholars like Monge, Denon, and Berthollet. It was arranged
that Junot and Desaix should come later.

The great deserter could easily persuade himself that this was an act
of heroism--risking his life on hostile waters in order to save
France. It was not hard to reason speciously that it was a colony
which had been intended, and a colony which had been planted; that in
his return he was using the discretion granted by the Directory, and
carrying out a plan announced from the outset. But it needed no
verdict of posterity to declare that it would have been more heroic to
remain and share the consequences of a scheme so largely his own. His
conscience asserted as much, for he deceived the brilliant and acute
Kléber in an appointment to say farewell, which was not kept; while
the Grand Council of Cairo was told that he had gone to take command
of his fleet, and would return in three months. Orders were left that
if fifteen hundred soldiers should die of the pest, Kléber should open
negotiations for evacuating the country. An angry and emphatic protest
was written by the victimized general; but it was intercepted by the
English cruisers, and did not fall into the hands of his betrayer
until after he had become First Consul. At St. Helena, Napoleon
declared that the failure of the expedition was clear to him from the
moment of Nelson's victory; for any force which cannot be recruited
must melt away and eventually surrender.

Sir Sidney Smith, not thinking either that a general would abandon his
army, or that vessels would sail for Europe against the adverse winds
of that season, had made for Cyprus to renew his supply of water. In
this interval the two French frigates gained the open sea, their
captains entertaining the vague hope of reaching Toulon direct, by
some reversal of nature's laws. But the prevalent breezes continued,
and compelled them to coast along the African shore. It was three
weeks before they even sighted the headlands of Tunis. At last a
favoring wind began to blow. With lights extinguished, they passed at
night the strait which separates Africa from Sicily, escaping the
observation of the English cruisers sent from Nelson's fleet to patrol
those waters. Skirting Sardinia, the flotilla reached Corsica early in
October. Though, as Bonaparte declared, he was "deeply moved by the
sight of his native town," no remnant of his early enthusiasm could
sweeten for him the enforced delay of several days in the harbor of
Ajaccio. He had left far behind the emotions of that primitive
society, and, evidently fretting to be gone, was rather impatient at
the abounding caresses of all the friends who thronged the town when
he was ashore and crowded the decks when he was afloat. Some deeds
have been recorded to his credit: all the money he had by him, about
forty thousand francs, he distributed to the garrison, which had not
been paid for over a year and a half; his features, it is also said,
relaxed with evident joy as he tenderly returned the greeting of the
old woman who had been his earliest attendant. It was his last visit
to the island of his birth, but not the last time the accents of its
dialect fell on his ears, for it was a Corsican who troubled his dying
hours at St. Helena.

What moved him really and deeply was the news of French disasters on
the Trebbia and at Novi, of Joubert's death, of the dissolution of the
Italian republics, and of Moreau's last stand in the Piedmont
fortresses. What probably moved him most was the further news that the
old Directory had virtually fallen on the thirtieth of Prairial, and
that Sieyès, who had returned but partly successful from Berlin, had
been chosen as a member of the new one, to preserve at least a
semblance of respect for the institution. Finally, the favoring breeze
sprang up, and on October eighth sail was made again, not for Italy,
to restore the fortunes of the army, as Bourrienne says had been
planned during the voyage, but direct for France. Suddenly, at sunset,
a British squadron loomed on the horizon. Was Fortune at last to
desert her child? It seemed so. The captain of Bonaparte's vessel gave
orders to make again for Ajaccio, and prepared a long-boat for the
solitary landing of his passenger on the wild shores of the island in
case of extremity. But a dark night revived his courage. The English,
deceived by the apparent angle of their enemy's yards, mistook his
course, and sailed in a wrong direction. The French kept directly on.
Next morning the adventurer set foot once more on French soil near
Fréjus. A few nights later news of Bonaparte's landing was brought to
his sisters in their box at the theater. They received it with
exultation, but apparently with no manifestation of surprise.

How was he received, this thwarted leader of a costly fiasco, this
general who for nothing had left the bones of thousands to whiten upon
Eastern deserts, who had deserted in a plague-stricken land many
thousands more of the finest troops which France could furnish? With a
passion of delight! From Fréjus through Lyons to Paris, along the old
familiar route, the people knew nothing of their hero's failures. They
had not forgotten his Italian victories, which only a short year
before had made them masters where now their armies were in disgrace
and their name was execrated; they knew only too well the widespread
legends of the same man's triumphs in the romantic East, before Cairo
and at the feet of the Pyramids. With all this they contrasted the
valley of humiliation through which the republic had been dragged by
the incapacity of their leaders. Was it wonderful that at Lyons the
fêtes were like a jubilee, through which Bonaparte, aware that his
goal was near, moved like one already elevated among his
fellows--conciliating, deprecating, mysterious?

It was on October sixteenth that he arrived at his house on Victory
street, in Paris. Mme. Bonaparte was not there to give him a welcome.
During the absence of her husband she had made her house the center of
a brilliant society which numbered among its members the ablest men of
the time. This circle was untiring in its devotion to Bonaparte's
interests, making friends for him at home, plotting in his behalf
abroad, turning every political incident to his advantage, and
building up a strong party which believed that he was the only
possible savior of France. In conduct the associates were gay and even
dissolute; occasionally a select inner coterie withdrew to Plombières,
nominally for repose, but probably for a seclusion not altogether
innocent. Into this loyal but licentious company the sudden
announcement of Bonaparte's approach brought something like
consternation. Josephine, in particular, having been recklessly
unfaithful during his absence, was now over-anxious to display a
feigned devotion to her husband. Doubtless she had heard of his
desperate licentiousness in Egypt; she must have recalled her own
orgies of faithlessness during his absence, in Italy first and now
again in Egypt; she may have learned that his family were already
hinting divorce and that his ears were only too attentive to the
suggestion. But she knew her powers and resolved to stake all on
another cast. Learning of his approach, she went out some distance to
meet him, but took the wrong road, and passed him unawares. Hurrying
back, she found the door of his chamber barred, her absence being of
course a confirmation of the general's jealous suspicions. For hours
her entreaties and tears were vain. At last Eugène and Hortense joined
theirs with their mother's, and the door was opened. The breach was
apparently healed, but rather to avoid a scandal than from sincere
forgiveness.

CHAPTER IX

"THE RETURN OF THE HERO"[10]

[Footnote 10: The fullest accounts are those of Sorel and
Vandal. Further authorities are the memoirs of Duport de
Cheverny, of Larévellière-Lepeaux, of Lafayette, of Mme. de
Chastenay, and of Pasquier, the works of Roederer, the
studies of Aulard, the contemporary journals and reviews.
Also, E. and I. de Goncourt: Histoire de la Société Française
pendant le Directoire. Stenger: La Société Française pendant
le Consulat. Rocquain: L'État de la France au 18 Brumaire.]

The Second Coalition -- Failures and Defeats of the Directory --
The Rastadt Congress -- Murder of the French Plenipotentiaries --
The Crisis in France -- The Revolution of Prairial -- The
Conscription -- The Schemes of the Directors -- The Successes of
the Bonapartists -- The Attitude of Paris -- "The Return of the
Hero" -- The Man of Destiny.

The situation of affairs in Europe at the close of 1799 was, as
Bonaparte had anticipated, by no means simple. England having been
scorned in the propositions for peace which she made in 1797 at Lille,
a second coalition of France's enemies was formed in 1798, largely
through the efforts of Paul I, the new Czar of Russia. The
organization of the Helvetian Republic in Switzerland had brought the
Revolution into the very heart of central Europe, and thus had further
estranged the trembling dynasties of both Austria and Prussia. The
organization on February eighteenth, 1798, of the Roman Republic had
brought the Revolution to the frontiers of Naples; when her king,
having joined the coalition, renewed hostilities and inaugurated a
general war by throwing an army into Rome, the French troops in Italy
were divided, and a portion of them, under Championnet, overturned the
Neapolitan throne in a kind of pleasure excursion. In January, 1799,
the Parthenopean Republic was proclaimed. By a skilfully devised
complot in which Lucien Bonaparte was active, the Directory charged
the feeble King of Sardinia with unfriendliness, the Cisalpine
Republic picked a quarrel with him, Tuscany became involved in the
ensuing disorders, and Charles Emmanuel IV was compelled on December
ninth, 1798, to abandon all his territories on the mainland, while the
Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinand III, fled shortly after, in 1799, to
his relatives in the court of Vienna, leaving his dominions
temporarily at the disposal of France.

It was doubtless a pleasant delusion for sincere republicans to
imagine that in these events free governments were rising on the wreck
of absolutism; but unfortunately the fact was otherwise: every one of
these so-called free states was founded, not in the hearts of its
people, but in the power of French arms. With the waning of this
military ascendancy, they must of necessity lose all vitality.
Bonaparte had stated to the Directory, in defense of his own conduct,
and of course both repeatedly and emphatically, that to divide the
Army of Italy and leave the Austrians on the Adige would be to lose
Italy. And yet this was precisely the blunder the directors made in
sending Championnet to Naples. Angered by the unexpected renewal of
hostilities, their preparations for the coming war, though vigorous
and energetic, were made unadvisedly and in haste. Brune was sent to
command in Holland, Bernadotte to the middle Rhine, Jourdan into
central Germany, Masséna to Switzerland, Macdonald to Naples, and
Schérer to upper Italy. Two hundred thousand men were raised under
the new conscription law, and these conscripts-a word then used in
that sense for the first time-were sent to fill the depleted ranks of
the respective armies. Brune and Masséna were destined to show ability
and win success; the others were marked for overwhelming defeat: the
crowning example of folly was the appointment of the incapable Schérer
to the post of greatest importance. He had once before shown his
inability to master the rudiments of warfare in Italy, and this time
his command was as inefficient as might have been expected. Jourdan,
having been defeated toward the close of March, by the Archduke
Charles, both at Ostrach and at Stockach, was succeeded by Lenouf, who
was at once compelled to retreat behind the Rhine. On the heels of
this disaster, Schérer was driven first behind the Mincio, then to the
Oglio; he was shamefully beaten at Magnano in April, and then
voluntarily made way for Moreau, laying down his command amid the
jeers of his disgusted troops.

Meantime the congress at Rastadt had been keeping up the forms of
negotiation, its proceedings being in the main perfunctory, and its
sessions deriving their interest mainly from the attempts of the
French plenipotentiaries to overawe their colleagues. In this they
were largely successful, because they had in their possession the
clearest evidence of Austria's earlier determination to secure her
importance by the dismemberment of Bavaria. They were now three in
number: two of them, Roberjot and Bonnier, were honest supporters of
the Directory; the third, Debry, was an old friend of Bonaparte's, and
had never swerved from his allegiance. As chief of the embassy he had
attracted great attention, and having displayed a spirit far from
conciliatory, he gave some cause for the special dislike in which he
was held, not only by the other delegates, but even by his (p.~089)
own colleagues. There was the utmost tension in the congress when
hostilities were renewed. With the successes of Charles, Austria grew
so bold that she determined to break off all negotiation. Already one
imperial representative had withdrawn in dudgeon; the others were
ready to follow. Aware that war was imminent, both French and Austrian
troops had begun early in 1799 to scour the suburbs of Rastadt, and
had in frequent forays not merely attacked each other, but had
molested the citizens and even the ambassadors. Finally, in April, the
imperial troops beset the town, and ordered the remaining members of
the congress to leave within a term which, according to usage, was to
be fixed by the assembly itself.

The French ministers, in obedience to orders received from Paris,
waited until the very last, leaving with their train only at nightfall
on April twenty-eighth. In a few moments, and almost before the gates,
they were surrounded and hustled, by whom is not altogether certain,
though at the time some were believed to be Austrian hussars. In the
ensuing tumult the three plenipotentiaries were dragged from their
carriages and furiously assaulted; Roberjot and Bonnier were killed,
Debry escaped. Next morning he appeared in Rastadt wounded and bloody,
but not seriously injured. This murder has become one of the standing
historical puzzles. Some have attributed its instigation to the
British cabinet, some to Bonaparte, some again to Caroline of Naples,
and some to the French émigrés. Many claim that the blows were struck
by Debry himself, who, it is thought, was one of those Bonapartist
agents, like Garat in Naples and Ginguené in Turin, whose business, as
is claimed, was to bring on anarchy at any price, and discredit the
Directory. The royalists, supported by the declarations of Mme.
Roberjot, who was in the carriage with her husband, asserted this at
the time, and the numerous hewers at the greatness of Napoleon have
again repeated it in our day. There are circumstances which could be
twisted into corroborative evidence if even the slightest positive
proof existed; but no satisfactory testimony has ever been offered
from Austrian sources to prove that these attacks, like others of the
time and in other lands, were not instigated by the authorities, and
made both to conceal inconvenient shortcomings, and to bring on the
war for which Austria was now thoroughly prepared.[11]

[Footnote 11: There is a small library of books and pamphlets
devoted to the subject. The latest is that of the Austrian
officer, Criste, to which reference has already been made: he
searched the Vienna archives to learn, if possible, the
truth, and confesses that he cannot find it, though he
discusses all the theories and asserts the innocence of
Austria. Even finer, however, is the volume of Helfert: Der
Rastadter Gesandten Mord. The other sources are Gentz: Ueber
die Ermordung der Französisch Congress-gesandten, a
contemporary opinion, 1799; Böhtlingk's three discussions in
Napoleon, Seine Jugend and Sein Emporkommen; Napoleon
Bonaparte und der Rastadter Gesandten Mord; Der Rastadter
Gesandten Mord vor dem Karlsruher Schöffengericht; Hüffer:
Der Rastadter Gesandten Mord. By Müller,
Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, and von Reichelin Meldegg, there are
monographs of the same title. Further material is contained
in Schlitz: Denkwürdigkeiten; Obser: Politische Correspondenz
Carl Friederich's von Baden; Delaure: Esquisses historiques;
Gohier: Memoirs; Arnault: Souvenirs d'un Sexagénaire;
Vivenot: Zur Geschichte des Rastadter Congresses; Jomini: Vie
politique et militaire de Napoléon; Erzherzog Karl:
Ausgewählte Schriften.]

The second coalition was stronger than the first, because, although
Prussia remained neutral for reasons already mentioned, it included
not only England and Austria, but also both Turkey and Russia, with
Portugal and Naples. The long frontier, from Holland to Naples, which
France was called on to defend in the absence of her best troops and
generals in Egypt, made her weak and vulnerable as never before.
England appeared in Holland with an Anglo-Russian army; the Russians
poured into Switzerland and Italy; the Austrians were again on the
Rhine and the Adige; while Turkey was showing unexpected energy in
repelling the invaders from lands which, slack as was the tie, she
still considered her own. Worse than all, the false position of the
French republic and the Church with reference to each other had kept
alive smoldering coals of discontent, and as a result civil war again
broke out in Brittany and Vendée. To meet this appalling emergency
there was needed either a capable, homogeneous administration heartily
supported by the nation, or else a military despotism such as was the
logical result of Vendémiaire and Fructidor. The former did not exist.
Instead of gaining strength by wise self-denial, the Directory had
grown steadily weaker, usurping authority of every kind, and actually
seating in the councils of 1798, by the basest arts, creatures of
their own as representatives of no less than forty-nine departments.
The May elections of 1799 expressed the popular discontent in an
uprising of extreme Jacobinism, which sent an opposition delegation
into the councils too strong to be thus supplanted or overthrown.

The new legislature met the executive, and at once, with their own
weapons. Aided by public clamor, and by the influence of a widely read
pamphlet which Carnot had written in justification of his course, they
obtained in June a virtual reconstruction of the Directory. Barras,
who had become known as a weak trimmer, was suffered to remain.
Rewbell, as a supporter of the unsuccessful Schérer and the
pertinacious associate of Rapinat, a dishonest contractor connected
with the Army of Italy, had been himself suspected of peculation,
although unjustly, and his time having expired, he was not reëlected.
The others went as a matter of course; Merlin and Larévellière were
permitted to resign because, although troublesome, they were
nonentities; Treilhard, though honest and able, could not make himself
felt, and a flaw in his election was used as a pretext to replace him
by Gohier, who, though he had been formerly minister of justice, was a
feeble creature. Sieyès was put in Rewbell's place in order to secure
a better constitution. He carried into his new sphere the same habits
of supercilious mystery which he had always had, continuing likewise
the scheming for radical change which he had so long carried on. He
looked to Joubert as the popular general most likely to become an easy
tool, and formed an intimacy with him. The two other places were
filled by utter mediocrities: Roger-Ducos, a moderate, and Moulins, a
radical. This revolution of the thirtieth of Prairial, another "day,"
was held to be a Jacobin counterstroke to that of the eighteenth of
Fructidor. The legislature had shown itself as lawless as the
Directory; the constitution was proved to be worthless: another must
be enacted. With Fouché at the head of the police, and other
Robespierrians restored to office, it appeared to the majority of the
nation as if all constitutional government were jeopardized, as if the
Terror were to be revived, as if such madness could be repressed only
by military force.

But where was the general? Championnet had disgraced himself by
permitting unbridled license among his soldiery after the capture of
Naples on January twenty-third, 1799, and his army fell into a state
of disreputable disorganization. Macdonald had gathered together and
reorganized the remnants, but only to be defeated by Suvoroff with his
Russians on the Trebbia. The army of Joubert, who succeeded Moreau,
had been overwhelmed, and its leader killed, by an Austro-Russian
force at Novi, on August fifteenth. Mantua was already lost. Moreau,
having saved some remnants of Joubert's troops, made a successful
stand in the Apennines, where his army still was. Masséna was defeated
at Zurich, in June, by the Austrians under the archduke Charles; but
on September twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth he routed the Russians
under Korsakoff at the same place. Brune had defeated on September
nineteenth, at Bergen, an Anglo-Russian army under the Duke of York,
who was forced to capitulate at Alkmaar on October tenth, and to
evacuate the Batavian Republic. Bernadotte was the new secretary of
war, more successful in that office than as a diplomat. Although he
was Joseph Bonaparte's brother-in-law, he was not a Bonapartist, being
first, last, and always a Bernadottist. Under his administration
Jourdan had devised and carried out the new conscription measure which
filled once more the empty army lists. This sweeping measure was the
extreme development of the system introduced by Carnot, whereby all
able-bodied French citizens were declared liable to military service,
and drafts were made only when voluntary enlistment failed. The
conscription law was passed on September fifth, 1798, and compelled
the service of all young men, or at least of as many as the government
saw fit to draw, between the ages of twenty and twenty-five. This
procedure differed but little from that now universal in modern
Europe, and created the Napoleonic armies as distinguished from those
of the republic. Organized into divisions, brigades, and half-brigades
as before, the new ranks appear to have been quite as enthusiastic as
the old, for the young of the nation now looked to war as the quickest
road to glory. Bernadotte expressed the common conviction of all
ambitious young men when he said: "Children, there are certainly great
captains among you." The treasury was replenished by a (p.~094)
forced loan disguised under the form of an arbitrary tariff. Besides
all this, a frightful measure had been passed, known as the Hostage
Law, which made the innocent relatives of every Chouan or emigrant
responsible for his conduct.

These measures were indicative of a dangerous and rising tide of the
new Jacobinism, which was represented by a majority in the Five
Hundred, in the Directory by Gohier and Moulins, and outside by a
recognized club of terrorists, which began to sit in the famous
riding-school where the Convention had held its sessions. The
well-to-do men like Talleyrand, Regnault de St.-Jean-d'Angély, and
Roederer, the philosophers Cambacérès, Sémonville, Benjamin Constant,
and even Daunou, were outraged at the thought of a new Terror, and
looked to Sieyès and Barras to prevent it. In view of these disturbing
circumstances, many also asked, Where is the statesman? The Jacobins,
as of old, had perfect faith that the chapter of accidents would
reveal a statesman; a general they had either in the calm Jourdan or
in the hotspur Augereau. Their policy was to repeat republican
victories, and fortify democracy in the coming constitution, whatever
shape it should take. Sieyès and his friends naturally would have
turned to the conqueror of Italy, with whom they had already plotted;
but he was absent, and, besides, they wanted a tool, not a master.
They actually tried Moreau with the offer of a dictatorship to be
equally shared with Bonaparte; but he was already under the spell of
royalism, and proved coy. It has been suggested that but for the
arrival of Bonaparte himself, Masséna, who much resembled Monk in
character, might have repeated that general's rôle in France.
Certainly the advocates of a limited monarchy would, in the extremity,
have welcomed even the Bourbons as a constitutional dynasty, and this
although they were so distrustful that Sieyès, when ambassador in
Prussia, had dreamed of choosing a foreign royal house for that
purpose, selecting as his own preference that of Brunswick.

Such, then, was the complicated web of defeat and victory in war, of
plot and counterplot in politics, of cross-purposes everywhere, which
was displayed to Bonaparte on his return to the capital. Should he,
the hitherto avowed republican whose devoted soldiers still believed
themselves to be fighting for freedom's cause, continue the farce
still further, and throw in his fate with the Jacobins? Or should he
put down the mask? It soon became clear to him that Paris and the
people would never again tolerate a Terror, and that success in the
long run lay in an alliance with them. If they would accept his
leadership, the game was won. But was this possible? The cool heads,
like Baron de Pasquier, had noted the real character of the Egyptian
and Syrian campaigns; but even they had an admiration for an
adventurer's effrontery, and they were too few to make much impression
upon the masses. By large numbers of the hitherto indifferent it was
now believed that Bonaparte and his army had been deported to Egypt
from jealousy on the part of the Directory; and to some of the
conservatives he was a martyr returning from exile, yet bringing new
trophies to his country. This rumor was not only never contradicted,
but was rather increased by the significant hints of those among the
Bonaparte family who were now in the thick of events. Joseph, having
three years previously been elected to the Five Hundred, had risen
high in the public esteem; and Lucien for two years past had likewise
been one of the most influential members. Both were changed men.
Polished, at least superficially, and apparently devoted to letters,
they were known as solid citizens. Their social gifts had made their
homes, like that of Mme. Bonaparte herself, centers of influence among
many important people of the capital. Hers, however, was far more
exclusive, and affected a lofty superiority to all others. Between it
and the other two there existed intense jealousy concerning the
general's favor, but all were heartily united in furthering his
interests.

The people of Paris did not, like those of Lyons, run to meet
Bonaparte as if he were already a sovereign; but they received him
warmly. In particular the malcontents who were plotting in his behalf,
as if under his personal direction, welcomed him with effusion.
Without a moment's delay he took charge of their councils. Sieyès had
lost his mainstay in Joubert, and his prestige by the defeat at Novi.
With the help of Talleyrand and Roederer he was soon brought to terms,
and under Bonaparte's immediate direction the careful, daring plan for
a complete change both in the constitution and in the administration
which had been already discussed by Sieyès and his followers, the
so-called reformists, was revised and finished. It was on its face a
determined attempt to remedy the radical defects of the constitution
of the year III, and to organize a strong constitutional government.
In fact, its author had already shown a certain executive ability in
preparing the way. Waving the red signal of the Terror, he had by a
series of arbitrary measures suppressed the Jacobin papers and
banished their editors. Jourdan at this crisis demanded from the
assemblies a vote that the "country was in danger," but his appeal
fell flat. Then came the stirring news that under Masséna and Brune
the armies of France were renewing their pristine glories, and that
the Rhine and the Alps at least were safe. A few days later a
messenger from the executive read to the councils, in solemn state,
the despatch, composed by Bonaparte for the purpose, containing his
exaggerated narrative of the battle of Aboukir. Tremendous enthusiasm
swept over both chambers. Gohier, who had fallen a victim to the
charms of Josephine in her frequent visits to his flattered wife, was
the president of the Directory. To him Bonaparte had paid his first
official visit, and on the following day the Directory received in
formal audience the general, who, as he himself declared to Gohier,
had "left his army to come and share the national perils," reports of
which had so disquieted him in Egypt.

The official and the popular good will were therefore before long
alike intense: Paris was within a few days as much dazzled by
Bonaparte's return as the country had been. The "Return of the Hero"
was the catchword of the nation. Recent events had shattered parties
into fragments: here was a leader who had never been identified with
any one of them. The newspapers took up the pæan of his virtues.
Meanness and mediocrity were to disappear; the French people, avid of
great things, had found again the favorite of fortune who alone could
accomplish them. First Talleyrand, then Sieyès, then all the other
well-known men, from Gohier down, openly joined in the train of
admirers. The shifty course of large numbers who, like Roederer, were
opportunists at heart had become wearisome to the moneyed classes, and
they also soon arrayed themselves under Bonaparte's banner. Doubtful
or distant persons of influence were courted, and, as in the case of
Moreau, were by consummate art often won. Roederer thought the
revolution virtually completed by October thirtieth; the work, he
said, was three quarters done. Next day Lucien Bonaparte was elected
president of the Five Hundred, among whom, though the majority were
vacillating and uncomprehending, there was a strong minority of
unreconstructed Jacobins. Within the fortnight the defeated general
had drawn together at Paris a court more powerful than that which he
had had at Montebello in the hour of victory. His personal demeanor
was much the same as then--quiet and reserved, but conciliatory,
simple, and frank. He affected the simple garb of the civilian,
sometimes wearing an Oriental scarf with a small scimitar; frequented
the Institute, of which he had been made a member; and associated by
preference with men like Volney, discussing questions of philosophy
and science. Soon it was whispered that his plans were maturing. What
could they be? The answer was not long in suspense. The pear was ripe.

We felt ourselves the associates of an all-powerful destiny, wrote
Marmont, concerning the voyage from Egypt. Bonaparte himself was the
author of this sentiment, which for long was to be the controlling
thought of millions. The Orient had quickened in him a latent
conviction as to the value of a destiny and a star. When, in
threatening crises, others forgot it, the great adventurer reminded
them of it, meaning thereby his own clear vision, unclouded by
adversity, penetrating in the confusion of circumstances. In no sense
was he an Oriental fatalist; on the contrary, his destiny was the
power to discern and to dare which resided in himself. It was his
presence in France which was to dispel doubts, restore confidence,
control events. "My presence," he had said on shipboard, "by raising
their spirits will restore to the army its lacking self-reliance, and
to good citizens the hope of a better future. There will be a movement
of opinion to the benefit of France. We must struggle to arrive, and
we shall arrive." To Kléber, the ablest of his generals, he had left
the command and with it a masterly set of directions for the guidance
of affairs. He could not be charged with failure, for the end was not
yet; disaster could not be retrieved in Egypt: he had hastened to the
scene where alone succor could be found, and he had arrived with a
heart ready for the decision, under conditions the most favorable,
with a definite goal and a clear, simple plan for its attainment. To
outsiders and to posterity the result has appeared a happy chance. It
was not so, though unforeseen circumstances contributed. It was a
foregone conclusion.

CHAPTER X[12]

[Footnote 12: The references for Chapters X and XI are as
before, with these additions: the memoirs of Hyde de
Neuville, Duport de Cheverny, Thiébault, Marmont (duc de
Raguse), Sarrazin, Mathieu Dumas, Barras, Allonville, Gaudin
(duc de Gaëte), and Pasquier; the Mémorial de Norvins,
Cahiers du Capitaine Coignet, the Souvenirs of Macdonald, the
Commentaries of Napoleon, the letters of Mme. de Reinhard,
and the correspondence of Fiévée. Likewise, Lescure: Mémoires
sur les journées révolutionnaires et les coups d'état de
1789-1799. Lucien Bonaparte: Révolution de Brumaire. Madelin:
Fouché. Aulard: Le lendemain du 18 Brumaire and Délibérations
du Consulat provisoire. Béranger: Ma Biographie. Guillois: Le
Salon de Mme. Helvetius. Montier: Robert Lindet. Vatout: Le
Palais de Saint Cloud. Stourm: Les finances du Consulat.]

BONAPARTE SEIZES HIS OPPORTUNITY

The Banquet to Bonaparte and Moreau -- Plans of the Bonapartists
-- Terrors of Bonaparte and Talleyrand -- The Rôle of the
Ancients -- The Generals at Bonaparte's House -- His Address to
the Ancients -- The Five Hundred -- Sieyès and Roger-Ducos Resign
from the Directory -- Barras Intimidated -- Gohier and Moulins
Imprisoned -- Bernadotte's Counterplot.

On November first, 1799, Sieyès formally surrendered all control. By
agreeing, as he did in a conference with Bonaparte, that the outline
of the "perfect" constitution which he had written--it was his own
epithet--should not be laid directly before the councils, but should
be submitted to a committee, he abdicated the public leadership, and
became the dupe of his colleagues. On the sixth a banquet was given to
Bonaparte in the church of St. Sulpice. It had originally been
intended that the tribute should come from both chambers; in reality
the affair was arranged entirely by a few of the Ancients, who were
now almost to a man Bonapartists. Moreau was present as a guest.
Embittered against the Directory by the impossible labors they had
assigned to him, he had entered Paris cautiously and quietly;
Bonaparte, equally embittered, but by his own failures, had come amid
the plaudits of a nation; but the two were for all that justly ranked
together as the great captains of the hour. The occasion, however,
fell flat; for both Jourdan and Augereau, the Jacobin generals,
remained away, and they were the intimates of Bernadotte. Moreau
himself was sullen, and the only incident of importance was
Bonaparte's toast to the "harmony of all the French." He drank it in
wine that was brought in a bottle by Duroc, his aide-de-camp; for his
guilty conscience made him suspicious that the meat and drink provided
in his honor were poisoned.

Immediately after the close of the gloomy ovation he had a meeting
with Sieyès, who produced his draft for three measures, the general
tenor of which had been previously agreed upon. In the revolutionary
movement now arranged, the Council of the Ancients, in which a
majority was certain, were, at the proper time, to take the initiative
according to constitutional provision, and pass all three as
preliminary to the overthrow of the constitution. They were first to
declare the existence of a plot, the nature and size of which were not
to be mentioned; then to ordain the session of both councils at St.
Cloud; and lastly to appoint Bonaparte commander of the troops in
Paris. When assembled next day at St. Cloud, they were to accept the
resignations from the Directory of Sieyès and Roger-Ducos, the latter
having been persuaded to join the new movement. Finally Gohier,
Barras, and Moulins were to be cowed into resigning, and thereupon a
provisional consulate, consisting of Bonaparte, Sieyès, and
Roger-Ducos, was to be intrusted with the work of reconstruction.

A sufficient military force having been made ready, it was determined
at a secret meeting of the Bonapartists, held on the fifteenth of
Brumaire (November seventh), that the blow should be struck three days
later. To that end the Ancients were to meet, according to the
program, on the seventeenth of Brumaire in the morning, and summon
both assemblies to hold a session on the eighteenth at St. Cloud.
Under a provision of the constitution, whenever an amendment to that
document was to be considered, the bodies were to sit outside the
walls of Paris. This move would naturally excite considerable
suspicion among the uninitiated; and although there might be no
disorder, there would certainly be much heated discussion in the
streets. Still greater was the danger which lay in the temper of the
troops. Enthusiastic for what they felt to be still the republic,
every appearance of offering violence to any and all avowed
republicans like those who sat among the Five Hundred must be avoided.
The solution of this latter problem was really the key to the whole
combination. Success would depend entirely on the momentary instinct
of plain, honest republican soldiers taken unawares. Minor troubles
there were also. Sieyès, sensitive under the evident determination of
Bonaparte to use him only so long as he was necessary, became restive,
and it required the nicest balancing of interests to keep him
temporarily in the traces. It was a time of terrible anxiety to the
conspirators. Talleyrand never forgot a scene which took place at his
house in the Rue Taitbout a few nights before the crisis. He and
Bonaparte were still deep in conversation at about one in the morning,
when they heard the rumbling of carriage-wheels and the ring of
cavalry hoofs in the street. Suddenly both ceased; the cavalcade had
stopped at the door. Bonaparte turned pale, and Talleyrand also, as
they paused and listened, fully convinced that both were to be
arrested. The latter blew out the candles, and hurried through a
passageway to gain a view of the street. After some delay he
discovered that the carriage of a gambling-house keeper, returning
under police escort from the Palais Royal with his spoils, had broken
down. His fears relieved, he returned to joke with Bonaparte about the
scare. Before the appointed day, however, everything which
master-schemers could foresee was carefully adjusted. The apparent
resurrection of Jacobinism was actually the last appearance of its
ghost; for the Directory, shorn of all prestige, was divided and
shaky; the army, republican to the core, was weary with its
inefficiency and furious with its bankruptcy; the mass of the nation,
conservative and royalist, despaired of a restoration, and, sick of
war, were for the moment in a humor to accept any strong government.
The majority of the administration, the nation, and the army were,
therefore, in readiness, while the numerous malcontents in each were
at least temporarily silenced. Every little hidden wire of private
interest was in hand, and plans were ripe to coerce those who could
not be cajoled.

All night long, from the sixteenth to the seventeenth of Brumaire, a
committee of the Ancients was in session, minutely perfecting its
plans. Next morning at seven the faithful majority, having been
summoned according to form, convened as the council; the doubtful
members had either not been summoned at all, or had received notice of
a later hour. As soon as a quorum was present, Cornet, a well-known
butt for the wits, rose and denounced the terrible conspiracy which
was menacing them. Regnier then moved that according to articles one
hundred and two, three and four of the constitution both branches of
the legislature should meet next day at noon, and not before, in the
palace of St. Cloud; that General Bonaparte should be intrusted with
the execution of their decree, and that to that end he be appointed
commander of the Paris garrison, of their own special guard, and of
the National Guard; that he therefore appear and take the oath; and
that these resolutions be duly communicated to the Directory, to the
Five Hundred, and also to the public by printed proclamation. The
motion was carried unanimously.

During these proceedings, all the generals present in Paris except
Jourdan and Augereau, who had not been invited, but including the
stanch republican Lefebvre, commander of the garrison, had gathered in
and before Bonaparte's house. They had been requested to come in
uniform in order to arrange for a review. It was noticed that
Bernadotte, though present, was not in uniform. He had so far yielded
to the blandishments of his brother-in-law as to come, but declared
that he would obey only what was at that moment the chief authority in
the state. Lefebvre was in uniform, but having met on the way bodies
of troops moving without his orders, and not being initiated, he was
naturally startled. But Bonaparte knew his man. "Would you, a
supporter of the republic, leave it to perish in the hands of these
lawyers?" was his greeting. "See, here is the sword I carried at the
Pyramids. I give it to you as a mark of my esteem and confidence."
"Let us throw the lawyers into the river," came the expected answer.

A few moments later arrived the authoritative summons from the
Ancients. Bonaparte stepped out on the porch, and read their
proceedings aloud. By a united impulse the officers flourished their
swords in response. It was but an instant before they were mounted,
and with Bonaparte in front, the cavalcade, headed by men either
already famous or destined to become so,--Macdonald, Sérurier, Murat,
Lannes, Andréossy, Berthier, and Lefebvre,--proceeded to the
council-chamber. It needed but a hasty glance, as they passed through
the city, to see that preconcerted orders had already been carefully
executed. The troops were all under arms and at their stations in
commanding places throughout the town. Arrived at the Tuileries, the
general and his glittering escort entered the chamber. "Citizen
delegates," he said, "the republic was falling. You understood the
situation; your course has saved it. Woe to them who cause disorder or
disturbance! With the help of General Lefebvre, of General Berthier,
and my other brethren in arms, I will arrest them. Let no man look for
precedents in the past. Nothing in history is comparable to the end of
the eighteenth century, nothing to the present moment. Your wisdom
passed this motion, our arms will execute it. We desire a republic
founded in true liberty, in civil liberty, in popular representation.
We are going to have it. I swear it in my own name and in that of my
brethren in arms!" "We swear it!" was the antiphonal response of the
assembled generals. Some one indiscreetly suggested that Bonaparte had
sworn, but not the oath of allegiance to the constitution required by
their previous action. At once the president hurriedly declared all
further proceedings out of order, the assembly having adjourned by its
own act.

By this time it was eleven o'clock, and the members of the Five
Hundred were gathering. Their meeting was soon called to order, with
Lucien in the chair. The recent action of the Ancients was announced
amid a deep silence, broken only at the conclusion by numerous calls
for an explanation. In strict legality, and according to the letter of
the constitution, the lower house had on such an occasion no function
but to listen, and the president pronounced the session ended. Amid
cheers for the constitution of the year III the representatives then
dispersed. A more impressive and dramatic scene was the reception of
Bonaparte a few seconds later by the soldiers who had been assembled
in the courtyard below for the purpose. Their cheers rang out in
volleys as he mounted and rode away, the hero of the hour. A few
moments later he reached his headquarters to find all his chosen
subordinates assembled. Fouché, the Jacobin minister of police, having
seen how the weathercock was veering, was there likewise,
conciliatory, obsequious, and superserviceable.

In fact, the incidents of that day were all uncommon. The "Moniteur"
published an article hinting that the Jacobins contemplated merging
the two councils into a convention. The populace, far from being
uneasy and riotous, seemed dazzled by the military display, and were
not alarmed by the movements of the soldiery. It was only with languid
interest that they read a pamphlet scattered everywhere, which had
been written by Roederer to prove the need for renewing the
constitution. Bonaparte as commandant, and therefore temporary
dictator, received according to prearrangement the resignations of
Sieyès and Roger-Ducos, to be presented on the morrow at St. Cloud.
The Gohiers had been invited to breakfast with Mme. Bonaparte that
morning at the unusual hour of eight o'clock. Pleading official
duties, the director himself did not go; his wife, amazed by the
dazzling assemblage of generals which she found before the Bonapartes'
door, hurried back to announce what she had seen. We may surmise that
had Gohier accompanied his wife, both might have been won to the
support of the movement in hand; in the other event, perhaps, both
might have been forcibly detained.

As it was, Gohier's first instinct was to consult Barras, and he
hurried in search of his colleague; but the fallen statesman was in
his bath, and could see nobody. He sent word to Gohier to count on
him; but before his toilet was complete he was forced to receive Bruix
and Talleyrand, who had come as emissaries from Bonaparte. A guilty
conscience made him like wax in the hands of Talleyrand, who
successfully pleaded with him to resign, and secured his signature to
a form, prepared in advance by Roederer under Bonaparte's supervision,
which declared that all danger to freedom was past, thanks to the
illustrious warrior for whom he had had the honor to open the way to
glory. Such was the haste that even before Moulins, the remaining
director, could reach the Tuileries, where Bonaparte had established
an office, this paper of Barras had been delivered, and the Directory
had ceased to exist. "What have you done," said the dictator to
Barras's messenger--"what have you done with the France I made so
brilliant? I left you victory: I find nothing but defeat. I left you
the millions from Italy: I find plundering laws and misery. Where are
the hundred thousand warriors who have disappeared from the soil of
France? They are dead, and they were my comrades! Such conditions
cannot last; in three years anarchy will land us in despotism. We want
a republic founded on the basis of equality, of morality, of civil
liberty, of political long-suffering." It is needless to say that a
reporter was present, the poet Arnault, who printed this fine language
next day in the newspapers.

Finally Moulins and Gohier were admitted. Welcomed as if they, too,
were about to join in the movement "to save the commonwealth," it was
with feigned astonishment that Bonaparte heard them plead for the
laws, for the constitution, for the sanctity of oaths, and for good
faith to the republican armies, once again victorious. Their adversary
was of course immovable. With Gohier he tried argument; to Moulins he
menacingly remarked that if Santerre, the notorious demagogue and his
relative, should this time make a move to raise the populace, his fate
would be death. To a point-blank demand for their resignation both
firmly answered, "No," and withdrew to the Luxembourg, where the now
defunct Directory had had its seat. With no knowledge or intention on
their part, they were to serve as a means for the immolation of
Bonaparte's last victim and most dangerous rival. In the military
dispositions of that day, Lannes had been put in command at the
Tuileries, Sérurier at the Point-du-Jour, Marmont at the military
school, Macdonald at Versailles, and Murat at St. Cloud. To the
central point, the seat of government, the home of the Directory,
Moreau had been assigned. If Bonaparte became the statesman of the
impending revolution, Moreau reasoned that he himself would of
necessity become the general of the new government, and, regarding his
selection for this post as a distinction, he accepted. By the order of
his temporary superior, Gohier and Moulins, the two unyielding and
incorruptible members of the executive, though not shamefully treated,
were yet deprived of their liberty. With the proverbial fickleness of
humanity, the agent was held by the public solely responsible for this
conduct, and was harshly judged. To him was imputed the stain of
arbitrarily applying force at the critical moment, and his influence
disappeared like a mirage. During these closing hours of the day,
Augereau, too, appeared to make his peace, asking with perplexed
jocularity, and with the use of the familiar "thou," if Bonaparte
could count no more on his "little Augereau." His fears were scarcely
allayed by the brusque advice that both he and Jourdan should keep the
peace.

All afternoon the bill-posters were busy, according to the
time-honored French custom, covering the blank walls with a carefully
worded announcement that the Revolution, having gone astray through
incompetence, was to be concluded by its friends. There was a
conspiracy: it must be met by united action to secure civil liberty,
equality, victory, peace; by a last supreme effort the people must
come to its own. The counter-revolution would be the real one.
Meantime the papers were printing for their morning issue of the
nineteenth the program of the new government. Away with the hostage
law, forced loans, the proscription of emigrants: enter peace, an
enduring peace, secured if needs be by a new series of victories over
the enemies of France, but a peace, solid and permanent. Did ever the
wheels of conspiracy run so smoothly? The officious Fouché had closed
the city barriers. Bonaparte was so secure that he ordered them thrown
wide open. The night was apparently as serene as his spirit. In
reality there was a counterplot, and that in a dangerous quarter.
Bernadotte met with a little junta, comprising a few members of the
Five Hundred, at Salicetti's house, and planned, with himself in
uniform as commander

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