Chapter VI: Book TWO: The Torrent (2)

He knows all this. He knows, likewise, that the rapid growth of his popularity is alarming the Directors, who feel that he has long ceased to be their creature. “The fellow’s perpetual victories will be the death of us,” they think, and put their heads together. A people’s army is invincible, but it is dangerous unless its officers are genuinely devoted to the government. For the last seven years, it has been the rulers’ way to threaten with the guillotine any general who has dared to meddle in politics on his own account. “A commander who does not comply with our orders, who makes light of the commissaries we send to his camp, must be dismissed, even if his name be Napoleon Bonaparte. Saliceti is too much under his thumb, being a fellow-Corsican, and having an uneasy conscience because he betrayed Bonaparte not very long ago. Let us send another commissary, Clarke, who is both prudent and ambitious.”

Elegant and high-spirited, himself a general, Clarke, while on the journey to Milan, looks forward to twisting Bonaparte round his fingers. That gawky little fellow in the threadbare uniform whom he had often met at Barras’ should be easy enough to deal with. But in the Palazzo Serbelloni, the envoy is abashed before the commander. Napoleon has not grown any taller, certainly; but the manner of his entries and exits, while all wait for his coming or make way for his going, suggests the ruler rather than the simple warrior. The commissary has a courteous reception, but he is far from being able to penetrate Bonaparte’s secret plans and report them to his masters. On the contrary, within a couple of days the commander-in-chief has full knowledge of the Directors’ private designs, about which Clarke ought to have kept his mouth shut. The commissary has bowed before the higher authority. “Here is the man of the future,” says he to himself; and promptly changes sides. Napoleon’s suspicions are now confirmed. He knows that the Directors are using his conquests as mere pawns in the game they are playing to secure peace with the Austrians. They have no intention of keeping Italy, and still less do they think of revolutionising it. Now that he is fore-warned, he will make all his preparations to thwart the government’s plans.

But he still has need of the Directors. “Reinforcements! Reinforcements! Not in name only, not on paper merely, but armed men in the flesh.... My best soldiers are wounded; none of my staff officers and generals are fit for active service. The new levies are raw and unsteady. The army is reduced to a handful of exhausted warriors. We are forsaken in the middle of Italy. The few brave fellows left to me, are marked out for death unless you send ample reinforcements. Soon may strike the hour of the valiant Augereau, the indomitable Masséna, Berthier, myself. What will happen then to the lads in the ranks? This thought makes me cautious. I no longer dare to defy death, for if I were to fall it would demoralise those who are the object of all my care.”

Could anything be more artfully phrased?

Yes, he has another string to his bow. When he does not threaten imminent destruction, he cajoles with gifts. Month after month, to this government whose only resources have for some time been piles of almost worthless paper currency, he sends a consignment of hard cash, gold extorted from princes and republics by the terms of truce. He is the first commander to send money home, instead of continually demanding money. And in addition he has little presents to spare for the Directors. “I am sending a hundred of the finest horses I can lay my hands on, to replace any you may have that are not really good enough to draw your carriages.”

He asks for the troops quartered in the southern provinces of France, and is told that they are needed for home service. “It is better,” he rejoins, “that there should be broils in Lyons, while we keep Italy, than conversely.” When told to leave all diplomatic negotiations to the commissaries, his answer runs: “For such matters, you do not merely need a one and only general; you must see to it that no one and nothing interfere with him in his work.... My advance is no less precise than my thought process.... We have to do everything with a weak army: thrust back the German troops; lay siege to fortresses; keep our lines of communication open; threaten Genoa, Venice, Tuscany, Rome, and Naples; show our strength here, there, and everywhere. For this, absolute unity of the military, political, and financial command is indispensable.... Unless the general remains the great centre, you will be exposed to incessant danger. I hope this language will not be ascribed to personal ambition. For my own part, I am unfortunately overburdened with honours, and my health has been so seriously undermined that I may soon have to ask you to appoint my successor. I can no longer mount a horse; nothing is left to me but courage.... I am continuing the negotiations. Troops! troops!—if you want to keep Italy. Bonaparte.”

The more popular he becomes, the more often does he tender his resignation, though his health is in truth excellent, and day after day he rides until his horse stumbles from fatigue. Woe to the Parisian lawyers if they run counter to his wishes! While he strengthens France’s power in Italy, he is consolidating his own influence in Paris; this is his new idea. Although he neither champions popular freedom nor believes Italy ripe for it, he insists upon the formation of the “Cisalpine Republic,” against the wishes of the Directors—among whom Carnot, at least, is a convinced democrat, though he wants to use Italy as a pawn in the French game.

This is the first occasion on which Bonaparte builds up an organism out of centrifugal forces. In days to come, he will repeat the process again and again, on an ever grander scale of creation, his aim being to establish a United Europe. He now welds together the half dozen petty States of northern Italy, prescribes their constitution, appoints and dismisses their officials. Throughout, he is the dictator, and yet all the time he acts on rational principles and allows for elasticity in matters of detail. He issues brilliant proclamations, announcing that these States are to be free whether they like it or not, and that they are to pay him promptly in hard cash for the privilege.

“The French Republic has sworn hatred of the tyrants, brotherhood with the peoples. This principle of the constitution is the principle of the army as well. The despot who has so long kept Lombardy enslaved, has done great injury to France.... The victorious army of an insolent monarch was compelled to spread terror among the conquered. But the republican army, while waging war to the death against its enemies, the kings, gives a pledge of friendship to the peoples it has set free. Respect for property, humanity, and religion—this is our animating principle. But the Lombards owe us, who are their brothers, a fair return.... Lombardy must support us with all her resources. We need provisions, for France is so far away that we cannot supply our requirements thence. We are entitled to them by the right of conquest; friendship must hasten to offer them to us. We have to requisition twenty million francs from the provinces. They are so rich that this will not be a serious burden.”

Then he takes whatever he wants out of the taxes, the countryside, the camps, the arsenals, and the domains. In the articles of every truce, he demands money, oxen, and pictures. If he sends pictures and statues to Paris, this will not, of course, stabilise the currency; but it will tickle the vanity of the Parisians, and win him popular favour. In a period of intense financial stringency, Bonaparte, with Italy as his source of supply, stocks the Louvre with precious works of art, contributing far more than the most resplendent of kings.

But all the time, while he is ruthlessly extorting money from the Italians, he is not less ruthless with Frenchmen who are trying to feather their own nests. In one of his early despatches, he writes: “The army consumes five times as much as it should, because the commissariat officers are falsifying their accounts.... Prodigality, venality, and peculation are rife. There is only one thing to do: a committee of three must be appointed, with power, during from three to five days, to shoot every dishonest administrator.” When the deliveries of hay are found to be short weight, he declares: “It is of the utmost importance that not one of these rascals shall escape. Too long have the army and the country been the victims of cupidity.” Innumerable are the documents bearing his signature which are directed against these plunderers. When the influx of women camp-followers exceeds all bounds, he issues the following order: “Any woman found among the troops without a permit twenty-four hours after the posting of this notice, will be blackwashed and publicly exposed for two hours.”

On the other hand, this strict disciplinarian was humane in his desire to put an end to some of the barbarities which still characterised war in those days: “The infamous practice of flogging men to make them disclose secrets, must come to an end. The only result of torturing people in this way is that the poor wretches say whatever they think will please their captors. I forbid the use of means that are equally repugnant to humanity and reason.”

VII

As a diplomat, he strengthens all the instruments of diplomacy: flattery and threats; lying and frankness—or sometimes, even in diplomatic negotiations, he will play the bluff soldier. He is especially shrewd in his dealings with the Vatican.

As thorough-going revolutionists, the Directors wish to put an end to the temporal power of the pope; for the Papal States are the focus of the religion which revolutionary France has rejected. The prospect of this moral success, to be gilded by the wealth of the Vatican, charms them more than all Bonaparte’s activities in the formation of border States. They insist upon his advancing against Rome. Now he will be able to see it close at hand, this city with which, from childhood onwards, his imagination has associated power, greatness, and fame. Like Cæsar, he will be able to pluck laurels from the Capitol, for the papal troops cannot stand against him for a moment.

But he holds his hand. For him, the pope is the only ruler who cannot be dethroned by big guns. He sees the idea behind the papacy, with its millennial influence on France and Europe; he knows the moral repercussions of martyrdom, and he has determined not to wage war upon the pope, unless it be a make-believe. “The influence of Rome is incalculable. It was a serious error to break with this power, which will profit by our mistake.”

He moves southward, and, literally, crosses the Rubicon, but there he stops. Because he is the stronger, he offers a truce; henceforward this will be his technique. The aged pope accepts the offer, for Bonaparte is wise enough to leave all ecclesiastical questions open. Pius VI promises to pay France several millions; to hand over one hundred pictures, busts, vases, or statues as the French commissioners shall determine. There are only two articles for which the commander-in-chief makes a specific demand: He wants the busts of Junius Brutus and Marcus Brutus from the Capitol. He is a Roman from Corsica; he crosses the Rubicon, spares Rome, and does not enter the city; but he requisitions the busts of the two heroes of antiquity.

When the pope fails to pay up, and makes difficulties, Napoleon sets out towards Rome a second time, but does not go to the city. After a trifling skirmish, he is willing to make peace. He will soon want to use his soldiers in the north. A pope on the run would carry his treasures with him, and what would there be left then for the poor Directors in Paris? On his own initiative, he actually pardons the French priests who have refused to take the oath of allegiance to the constitution and have sought refuge in Rome. He makes friends everywhere among the clergy, compares a “citizen archbishop” to one of the apostles, and writes as follows in several of his letters to high ecclesiastics: “The teaching of the Gospels is based on equality, and is therefore the most suitable for any republic.” What will they say to that in Paris, where Christ has been done away with?

Finally, he sends to the pope, who is on the point of taking to flight, an assurance that there is nothing to be afraid of. “Tell the Holy Father that I am not an Attila; and that even if I were, the Holy Father should not forget that he is a successor of Leo.” He thus dresses himself in historical trappings when he is dealing with the oldest of the thrones. But when the nuncio is slow to sign the new agreement, the polished man of the world is suddenly metamorphosed into a soldier, who tears up the draft and throws it into the fire. “We are not discussing terms of peace, Monsignore; there is merely a suspension of hostilities.” The other side is alarmed. He doubles his demands, and this time he gets what he wants. Thereupon the pope writes his “dear son” a letter, and gives the child of the revolution his blessing.

He never wraps up his doings in mystery, as the diplomats of those days were wont to do. An hour after his first truce has been arranged, he discussed recent happenings with the freedom of a historian in the next generation. Talking to the conquered Piedmontese over the dinner table, he says: “My attack on the castle of Cossaria was needless; but your movement of the 17th was a sound tactical manœuvre.”

At the end of the second campaign, he again shows himself a master in respect of both self-confidence and moderation. He has moved forward out of Lombardy in the beginning of March, and by the end of the month he is already in Styria, a few days’ march from Vienna. If the Army of the Rhine follows up his blow by similar victories, they will be able to dictate peace to Emperor Francis. Yet he chooses to halt, and to offer peace to the vanquished. True, the Army of the Rhine is still a good way off, whilst Austria and Hungary are arming themselves in frenzied haste. To stay where he is as a menace, this is the conqueror’s logic.

Bonaparte, however, is a statesman. The Directors want peace before the elections, and he still has need of the Directors. How would it be if he, he alone, the soldier, were to bring France the peace for which she has been waiting five years? Is he to share the glory of this achievement with his rivals in the Army of the Rhine? The fortune of war is uncertain, and none but the foolhardy will tempt it unless they must. Once more he has broken the troops of the Empire, cut off as they are from the Rhenish armies. For a year, Europe has been afraid of the new commander; it will become him now to make a gesture of peace, so that people may learn to revere the new statesman. Without courtly periphrases, and as an equal, he writes to the defeated Austrian leader, Emperor Francis’ brother:

“Commander-in-Chief, Sir! Our valiant soldiers are waging war and want peace. Has not the war lasted six years? Have we not killed enough people; have we not brought enough suffering upon mankind? Everywhere there is a reaction towards humaneness, and almost everywhere the enemies of France have laid down their arms. Your nation is the only exception. The omens of this new campaign are sinister. However it may end, each of us will slay a few thousands of the other’s soldiers; and yet, in the end, we shall make peace, for everything comes to an end, even the fiercest hatred.... You, who stand so near to the throne, uplifted above the petty emotions of statesmen and governments, are not you disposed to win for yourself the title of benefactor of mankind, saviour of Germany? I regard it as quite possible for you to save your country by force of arms. But, even then, Germany will be laid waste. If these lines could save the life of but one man, I should pride myself more upon my civic crown than upon the melancholy renown of the battle-field.”

This letter makes a strong appeal to Archduke Charles. A highly cultured man, declared enemy of all wars, and only acting as commander-in-chief from a sense of duty, with this document in his hand he will be able to make headway against the war party in Vienna and to influence the emperor. For what would happen should they refuse? Bonaparte would certainly publish his letter and their reply. He would have another chance of parading before Europe the humanist ideals of the republic, and contrasting with them the feudal militarism of the empire. He would lay the country waste with fire and sword, while censuring us before the world for our truculence. He is following up his letter by advancing his troops, and he has already occupied Leoben.

The emperor’s envoys arrive. The French commander meets them at the foot of the stairs, speaks of the emperor and the archduke with respect. When they beg for a ten days’ truce (during which Vienna will be able to continue preparations for war), he answers by inviting them to supper. After the meal, he agrees to a five days’ suspension of hostilities.

While comparative calm now reigns in Vienna, the Directors in Paris are much perturbed. Is this general of ours going to make the Great Peace all by himself? If he can do that, he will only have to come to Paris afterwards, and with one hand he will be able to push us from our seats. Most politely, therefore, they instruct him to await the coming of the envoy they are sending. All the more does Bonaparte press the other side for a decision. He knows what reports concerning him are current in Paris, and he cracks his whip over the Directors’ heads: “I should like to have a rest. I have justified your confidence in me; in all my undertakings I have hazarded my life; I have covered myself with more glory than the most fortunate man could wish; now I have advanced upon Vienna, leaving Italy’s lovely plains behind me, as I advanced once before in search of bread for the army which the republic could no longer feed. Calumny vainly attempts to discredit my intentions. My civic career, like my military career, will be unique and simple.”

Ironies, beneath whose mask the writer is moving towards unnamed goals.

Endless negotiations. But why should the matter drag on? Give us Belgium and Lombardy. You can compensate the dispossessed princes with possessions in the Holy Roman Empire! Habsburg accepts this principle, for neither the emperor nor any one of the German princes is concerned any longer about the Holy Roman Empire. It is very old, in poor health, and will soon be laid in the tomb. This plan will give France a finger in the pie across the Rhine. But how Habsburg is to be compensated for the loss of Lombardy, remains uncertain.

Opportune is the arrival of letters from Venice reporting insurrections against the French and the murder of a number of French soldiers. At length the day of vengeance has come! Venice, too, is outworn, and ripe for destruction. “Since the discovery of the Cape route to the Indies and the rise of Triest and Ancona, Venice has been on the decline,” he writes to the Directors, to soothe their conscientious scruples—i.e., for use in a justificatory campaign. “It will hardly survive the blow. This wretched and cowardly population, unfitted for freedom, without land or water, must, of course, be handed over to those to whom the hinterland is allotted. First of all, we shall take the ships, empty the arsenal, carry off the big guns, and close the banks; we shall also keep Corfu and Ancona.” Thus weakened, the Lagoons were to pass to Habsburg.

Bonaparte dealt in summary fashion with the old lords of the region, with the few patrician families which, as the successors of strong men, had ruled Venice for centuries, and had made of it one of the most reactionary States in the world. “You have stirred up the peasants against us,” he wrote to the doge while the negotiations with the Austrians were in progress. “Thanks to you, every one is shouting: ‘Death to the French!’ Hundreds of our soldiers have already perished through your machinations. Do not lie to me! You incited these disturbances. Do you imagine that because I am in the heart of Germany I shall be unable to enforce respect for the greatest nation in the world? I shall take vengeance for the blood of my companions-in-arms. War or peace! Unless you instantly hand over the ringleaders, I shall declare war.”

This is his tone when he wishes to terrify a dozen tottering old patricians. When the envoys from the Senate come to his camp, he pretends to fly into a passion: “I shall have no more constitution and no more Senate. For Venice, I shall be a second Attila. Make me no more proposals. I will be your lawgiver.” When the city is being handed over, the doge, a man of ninety, falls dead—the last doge of Venice. Bonaparte never forgot this scene.

Has he done with Italy now? Has not he got all he wants; has not he reached his end?

There is no end, for every step forward opens a new vista. Venice is merely a springboard, whence he can start his swim into the open sea. The islands first; then the Adriatic; and now he contemplates a more distant horizon. When he was in Ancona a while back, forcing his terms of peace upon Rome, he stood on the shore, looking seaward. There were the Ionian Islands, and beyond them lay Turkey. He wrote: “From this point, we could reach Macedonia in twenty-four hours; the place would be invaluable for our influence upon the destinies of the Turkish Empire.” As brigadier on the general staff he had thought of engulfing himself in Turkey. From Ancona he sends agents to open up relationships with powerful pashas in Janina, Scutari, and Bosnia.

Now, when he is in Leoben, he makes sure of the island possessions of Venice, arranges for the occupation of Corfu and Zante, “to control simultaneously the Adriatic and the East. No one will be able to save the Turkish Empire. We shall watch its death agony. The occupation of the Ionian Islands leaves us the choice between supporting Turkey and making sure of our own share of the spoils.”

The political reality underlying this is an attack on England. France has long looked forward to the acquisition of strongholds in the Mediterranean, and to thus imposing a barrier between England and India. In Bonaparte, this general aim acquires the impulsive energy of a personal ambition. He does not want the East that he may inflict a mortal wound on England as his arch enemy; he is in search of means to injure England that thereby he may win the East. Since his imagination always runs far ahead of his achievements, Europe, of which but yesterday he first seized a corner, is already beginning to seem too small for him. He says to Bourrienne:

“Only in the East have there been great empires and mighty changes; in the East, where six hundred million people dwell. Europe is a mole-hill!”

VIII

A high-arched room, in the baroque style; the walls are white, picked out with gold. On a long couch upholstered in green silk, a sixteen-year-old lieutenant, a spoiled darling, with the fawning manners of a page, is sitting between two women of ripe beauty. One of them is the youth’s mother; but when her smiling glance roves coquettishly over the surrounding group of smartly dressed officers, we gather that she is thinking far less of maternal obligations than of hours in which such boys as hers are engendered. Without words, she seems to add: “Creole women are adepts in the art of love!” Another connoisseur in the same art is the handsome general who stands behind her, craning forward over her shoulder that he may see far down into her corsage—as fashion and the lady’s pride in her charms make it easy for him to do. This is Masséna, whose talent as a soldier is to be ever prompt to attack, being too unrestrained and uncultured to count the cost; but his flaming impetuosity often saves his troops in moments of danger. His temperament is so ardent, that he must always have at least two women in his train; and his appetite for money is no less keen. Money and women—he steals both, whenever he has the chance.

All the qualities that Masséna lacks, you will find in the little man with the big head who stands in front of the ladies making conversation. He is ugly, touchingly grotesque in his movements, and at the moment intoxicated by his success in winning—no one knows how—the love of a pretty member of the Visconti family. This is Berthier, chief of general staff, unresting in his activity; a man who will do administrative work one day, and take a fortress by storm the next; a great student of maps, for he is one of the few among these officers who is well grounded in the theory of his profession.

There is Murat, theatrically decked out in green satin, twisting the huge plumed hat he holds in his hands. Of proletarian birth, like most of the men at this remarkable headquarters, he is fond of talking in asides. Now he laughs too loudly because the ribald Augereau, the avaricious and extravagant peasant’s son, has been telling him an after-dinner story. Murat, though he fears neither artillery fire nor the frowns of princes, is now painfully embarrassed because Josephine calls to him across the room. She wants to hear the joke!

But Joseph, a man of the world, who dreads what the enfant terrible may blurt out, nods meaningly to Murat, implying to him that for God’s sake he must hold his tongue. Elise is sitting in the embrasure of one of the windows. Not so good-looking as the other women, and finding her husband a bore, she is apt to be censorious, and would carry tales to Mother Letizia, who abhors Josephine’s loose morals.

Now comes the bright sound of laughter from the garden. That is Pauline’s birdlike voice. She is making the most of the days of freedom left to her before her marriage to General Leclerc, the husband chosen for her by Napoleon. She is playing blind-man’s-bluff with Hippolyte, and her pleasure in the game is doubled by the knowledge that she is annoying Josephine.

Here is the chief, coming slowly along the passage. For two long hours he has been walking up and down with the Parisian dramatist Arnault. This companion has been carefully chosen. The newcomer has asked many questions about the army and the battles. Bonaparte has answered them with a detailed report of his own doings, which he knows that Arnault will spread far and wide. Now he has steered the conversation to the topic of the governmental crisis, long drawn out. As the two come into the reception room, he says, ostensibly with indifference, and yet with emphasis enough to fix the words in Arnault’s memory: “I can hardly conceive any other way out of their difficulties than that they should bend before the power of one strong man. But where is such a man to be found?”

As Bonaparte enters, the officers rise to their feet, break off all conversation, and look expectantly at this man of twenty-seven, though most of them are older than he and all of them a good deal taller. Only the page continues to loll on the couch, for Eugene knows that his mother is unchallenged mistress of the house.

We are at Montebello, the huge castle near Milan, where Bonaparte is passing the summer. He is almost wholly the statesman now, for the war has been ended by the arrangement entered into at Leoben, and nothing more is needed than a formal ratification. He might be in Paris, receiving the adulation of which he dreamed in youth; but he prefers to stay in Italy. He will not return to Paris until the political consequences of his victories have assumed a concrete form, until the new States are consolidated and the Italian business over and done with. Meanwhile, during the many months he spends at Montebello, the life there is not so much that of a military headquarters, as that of a minor court.

But in no respect does he behave like an upstart. There are no pretences. In everything he will make his influence felt as one who is a child of the revolution that established a regime of equality. He has appointed sons of the people to the leading positions in his army; but he has no fear of what his noble guests, the dukes and princes of Italy, may think of it, should one of his valiant generals commit a solecism. He sees no reason for hiding his origin like a parvenu, although his adoption of French nationality might well incline him to conceal his Corsican birth. In actual fact, he parades it. Before the close of the previous year, he had summoned the whole family to Milan. Now, with lavish oriental hospitality, he has invited them all to Montebello, and those who seek his favour must show his relatives due honour. Half Italy pays court to him, for his name is already acquiring the mythical power of that of a man of destiny. Besides the numerous persons who wish to harness their fortunes to his chariot, not a few come from afar to ask the sage’s advice concerning family matters and private affairs.

He has found it hard to persuade his mother, proud and a woman of strict principles, to make friends with Josephine, whose reputation is an offence to her. Josephine reciprocates Madame Letizia’s dislike; but Napoleon, though he idolises his wife and can refuse her nothing, compels her to observe the outward forms of respect. Now, the friction between the two women has become even greater than at first. “This Creole says soft nothings to every man, and kisses every woman, instead of attending to her business of bearing children.” The Corsican mother has given birth to thirteen. Josephine’s barrenness dishonours Napoleon and his family. Letizia fancies that in the eyes of many of his adversaries she can read satisfaction and mockery because the great man cannot procreate a child. But it is not his fault. Josephine has led, and still leads, too loose a life. That is what is amiss.

When Letizia first met Napoleon again, after his battles and victories, she embraced him and said:

“You are thinner than ever! You are wearing yourself out!”

“Not a bit of it. I am really living, now!”

“Yes, for posterity....”

“Well, do you call that dying?”

When he leaves her, he says to her: “Do take good care of yourself, Mother. If you die, there will be no one left with any authority over me.” His Corsican clannishness is almost as strong as his cosmopolitan self-confidence.

Three sisters, three brothers, and Uncle Fesch are, in their various ways, enjoying themselves at Montebello. The fascinating Pauline, sixteen years of age, cannot forgive Josephine, who, in deference to Napoleon’s wishes, has interfered with her plans for a love marriage. She weds Leclerc in the castle chapel, and at the same time Elise and Bacciochi have to resolemnise their union in church, for the chief is eager to keep in the good graces of the Vatican. After the ceremony Letizia, who has no interest in these intrigues, returns to Corsica.

“This island, this province,” as Bonaparte now calls it, as if it were an island or a province like any other, has now been regained from the English, who had occupied it in response to Paoli’s call for aid. Bonaparte managed the affair from a distance, while busied in his campaign on the mainland. One foggy night, a couple of dozen Frenchmen, taking with them plenty of money and an abundance of weapons, landed in Corsica “to encourage the patriots,” circulate pamphlets, and so on. Napoleon also sent Saliceti, his friend and his opponent of earlier days. Thus, by proxy and from afar, he was able to achieve what he had thrice failed to do in person.

“Can it really be only four years?” thinks Signora Letizia, when those who had driven her and hers into exile receive her with acclamations. Is this the very citadel which was for so long the centre of Napoleon’s thoughts and feelings? Now, simply because he orders it, Elise’s husband is to be commandant there. For a long while, already, Lucien has been intendant of the forces. To Napoleon, in Italy, his native island now seems an ancient family seat, a romantic and medieval spot where his kindred can dwell when convenient. With a contemptuous smile, not long ago, he had read a letter from the Bourbon pretender, in which Louis offered him the title of duke, or even hereditary viceroy, of Corsica, if he would espouse the royalist cause.

In Montebello, Bonaparte first learns how to separate his private life from his public life—a lesson which those born in the purple learn from childhood upwards.

The guardianship of the castle, strangely enough, is entrusted, not to French soldiers, but to three hundred Polish legionaries. In several of his battles, there had been danger that he would be taken prisoner, so he has formed a bodyguard, forty strong. They are called guides, are chosen from among the tallest and best of his soldiers, and have a dare-devil for their leader.

The castle is thronged with orderlies and couriers. Envoys are flocking from all quarters. The lion of St. Mark and the key of St. Peter gleam on foreign epaulettes; Vienna, Leghorn, and Genoa are also represented at Montebello. Napoleon lives in state. Following the custom of the country, he keeps open house. Interested spectators are admitted to the gallery of the banqueting hall; and he drops a hint, lest they should forget to spread the news when they return home, that like them he drinks the wine of the country.

The reports of those who come to see him on service matters or other official business express astonishment that this young commander-in-chief is never embarrassed. He is dignified and yet perfectly natural; always the most simply dressed man in the company. None the less, he knows quite well how to keep people at a distance. Though nearly every one who comes to see him towers over him in stature, he never tries to appear taller than he is. Instead, those conversing with him are inclined to stoop a little, and thus seem to be paying court to him. Henceforward, throughout life, he is able from his natural defect to derive an advantage whose ultimate psychical consequences are incalculable. One of the visitors to Montebello wrote: “Should this man have the luck to escape death in battle, within four years he will be in exile or seated on a throne.” The writer was only three years out in his reckoning.

A student of his epoch, one who knows how fame is manufactured, he has in attendance an able journalist, the first publicity agent in history, whose business it is to blow Napoleon’s trumpet in Paris and subtly to discredit the Directors. Being a disciple of Plutarch, Bonaparte knows through whose agency the story of great men’s deeds is handed down to posterity; that is why the faces of poets, historians, artists, and men of science are so often seen at his Italian castle. A year before, a few days after the triumphal entry into Milan, and when overwhelmed with urgent business, he had found time to pen the following remarkable lines to a great astronomer:

“The sciences which are the glory of the human mind, the arts which beautify the world and bequeath great deeds to our offspring, must be cherished with especial care in free States. All men of genius, all those who are famous in the world of learning, are Frenchmen, no matter to what country they may belong.” Hitherto, such men have had to lead a retired life. Now, freedom of thought prevails; intolerance is a thing of the past, there are no despots left. The talented can foregather under his patronage, and fearlessly tell him all their wishes. Any such person who wants to go to France may be sure of a cordial reception, “for the French people would rather win a great mathematician, painter, or other man of note, than win the wealthiest of provinces. That is why, Citizen, I ask you to make these sentiments widely known among the great men of Milan!”

He commissions an attaché, who, like most of his tribe, has little to think about and nothing to do, to make a register of the art treasures in the possession of the petty States of Italy. In subsequent treaties, he demands the best of these for Paris.

For the Paris Conservatoire, he instructs experts to make copies of the best Italian music. Writing on this topic, he says: “Of all the arts, music has the strongest influence on the passions, and for that reason the legislator must make it one of his chief concerns. An inspired symphony composed by a master cannot fail to stir our feelings, and has far more influence than a treatise on morality, which convinces our reason without affecting our conduct.” When he becomes a member of the Institute, he flaunts this title at the head of all the letters he writes as commander-in-chief, and declares: “The true power of the French Republic must henceforward consist in this, that no new idea shall arise anywhere which is not the property of France.” In confidential talk he says: “The soldier must, above all, regard his commander as wiser and more cultured than himself; and the soldier will regard this title with respect for the very reason that its meaning is obscure to him.”

Such actions disclose, not the statesman alone, but the man born to rule, the prince who regulates every gesture, every word that he says or writes, with an eye to the legend as to his personality which he wishes to inculcate upon his people. But when the door is closed, and he is among intimates, he opens his heart.

Here is a description of Napoleon as he was in those days, penned by an exceptionally shrewd observer: “The power of the man impressed every one with whom he came in contact.... His demeanour was still rather ungainly at times; but there was something imperious in his nature, his glance, and his speech. Every one obeyed his orders. In public, he deliberately tried to heighten this impression. In private life, on the other hand, he was unconstrained, genial, and even confidential; with a taste for witticisms, which were never ill-natured, but were merry and discreet. Frequently, he shared in our amusements. He did not take his work too strenuously, not finding it necessary at that time to measure out his hours; and in leisure moments he was always accessible. But when he had withdrawn to his work-room, his door was closed to every unauthorised intruder, without distinction of rank.—He needed a great deal of sleep, like all people of nervous temperament and very active mind. I have often known him to stay in bed for ten or eleven hours at a stretch; but if it was necessary to wake him up, he was unperturbed, and could easily make up for the lost hours afterwards—or could store up reserves of sleep in expectation of a strenuous time. He had the precious faculty of being able to go to sleep wherever and as often as he pleased. Fond of vigorous exercise, he rode very often, and at a great pace, though he had an exceedingly bad seat.”

He has a taste for talking, and chooses politics or general questions of life as his theme; if the conversation flags, he suggests the telling of stories; should this be followed by a general silence, he spins a yarn of his own, pregnant and humorous.

The loveliest women set their caps at him in vain; he is wholly devoted to Josephine. Not, indeed, so frenzied in his adoration as he was a year back, when she betrayed or disillusioned him; it is she, and she alone, who has trifled away this passion for self-surrender. Now there is a moving note in his tone towards her; a fervent courtship, a smile, a petition: “You are sad,” he wrote to her while still in the field. “You do not write; are you longing to get back to Paris? Have you ceased to care for me? The thought makes me wretched. My life has become unbearable since I have known that you are not happy. Perhaps I shall soon make peace with the pope; then I shall join you at once.” Three days later: “The peace with Rome has just been signed. Bologna, Ferrara, and Romagna are ceded to us.—But there is not a word from you! Good God, how have I offended you?—I fear you know only too well how absolute is your power over me! For life, wholly yours.”

Now, at Montebello, he is for the first time tasting the joys of uninterrupted connubiality, while he is delighted to watch Josephine’s winning charm in social intercourse. Occasionally he steals time for a brief love festival. They drive across to Lake Maggiore; and when, among the rhododendron bushes beneath the baroque stone edifices on Isola Bella, Grassini, the heroine of La Scala, uplifts her thrilling voice and sings an appassionata by Monteverde, Napoleon sits wrapped in thought, his companion’s hand clasped in his own.

“In the carriage”—so his adjutant relates—“he would take marital liberties which were apt to be rather embarrassing to Berthier and me. But it was all so simple and natural, that there was no ground for offence.”

IX

What is Paris saying?

Since yesterday, there has been a watchman on duty there. Hitherto, the cabinet ministers had all been nothing more than lawyers; now, a statesman was at work in that innermost circle. Sprung from the old nobility of France, a bishop, then as a republican placed under the ban of the Church by the pope, Talleyrand had recently spent years of waiting in the United States. Now he was back in Paris, and had grasped a share of power. The recently elected Chambers were predominantly “right,” and had been railing against the Directors; the commander-in-chief in Italy wanted to revolutionise Europe; he wished to perpetuate the war; the rape of Venice was an infamy. Perhaps many of the accusations were only too true, but when the echoes of what was being said in the place of words made their way into the place of deeds, they could not fail to arouse the contempt of the man of might. He sent the Chambers a memorial, or, rather, a memento: “Speaking in the name of eighty thousand men, I warn you that the days when cowardly lawyers and pitiful chatterers could allow valiant soldiers to be butchered are over and done with!”

(Photograph by Braun, Paris and Dornach.)]

At this date, Bonaparte had dispatched Augereau to defend the Directors, as he himself had defended them a year or two before; for the growing power of royalists and priests were becoming an ever greater menace to the new constitution of the Republic. If either of the Bourbon brothers should venture to set foot on French soil, all the malcontents would flock to his standard, and in a hand’s turn he would win his way to the throne. But the Bourbons stayed in their safe retreats, and the Directors could risk a little coup d’état. Now, they were five instead of three, and felt more self-confident.

Called to office after this coup, an expert was for the first time in charge of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. From afar, he measured the strength of his only rival. Though he had never seen Bonaparte face to face, he knew him for the coming man. To begin with, at any rate, he was willing to play second fiddle, and set to work that he might win the confidence of one greater than himself.

In all respects, Talleyrand was Napoleon’s counterpart. Not a born negotiator; passionless, except for his avarice; cold and crafty, never natural and frank; always adapting himself to the mood of those he wished to use as his tools. His cynic’s head, his long, pointed, prying nose, now surmounted the gold-braided collar of the republic; they would surmount the imperial and the royal uniform; and then, for a fourth time in the service of the ruler of the French, he would don the livery of the bourgeois king. For forty years he served the man who happened to be in power; but never unreservedly, and therefore he was never tied to any ruler’s fortunes. Lamed by an accident in childhood, he was unable to enter the army, and became a priest, remembering that, in this guise, the great Richelieu had been master of France. Talleyrand was the only man in the country able to measure his strength against that of Bonaparte. Never would the man of destiny be able to shake off Talleyrand even when he had come to hate the subtle diplomat; and when the final breach between the two men occurred, it was at the very time when Talleyrand, with a smile, could limp across the body of the master he had cast down and enter the cabinet of the enemy. Talleyrand was the man who overthrew Napoleon; but, if we think of elemental forces, Napoleon was felled by his own hand.

Talleyrand’s breadth of view and utter lack of principle make their due impression on the distant Bonaparte. These September days, the commander has gone to Udine, to sign the peace whose preliminaries had been arranged in the spring. In this sprig of the old nobility, in this connoisseur of the rococo, in this cold nihilist, Napoleon sees the tool he will need. Hitherto, he has wanted none but soldiers. Now, when he has become a statesman, he wants and finds a statesman. While he is discussing matters with the Austrians, he sends the new Minister for Foreign Affairs a long letter (a letter of betrothal, we might call it), disclosing his whole political programme:

“The organisation of French power has only just begun—Despite our good opinion of ourselves,—we Frenchmen are still tyros in political matters. As yet we do not even understand the difference between executive, legislature, and judiciary. In such a State as ours, where all authority issues from the nation, where the people is sovereign—governmental power, in the full comprehensiveness I ascribe to it, must be regarded as the true representative of the nation, who rules in accordance with the constitution.”

“Does your heart express itself so openly, Bonaparte?” thinks the inscrutable recipient, smiling to himself as he reads.

“It is an immeasurable misfortune that, in the eighteenth century, a nation of thirty million persons should still be compelled to take up arms in order to save the country. These forcible means are a burden upon the legislator, seeing that a constitution for human beings must take human beings into account.”

“Is your aim so high?” muses the reader, with astonishment. “He is already sated with martial fame, and aspires, under the new constitution, to become dictator!” Talleyrand reads on:

“Why should we not make sure of Malta?—I had good reason for confiscating the estates of the Knights of Malta.—With Malta and Corfu in our hands, we should be masters of the Mediterranean. If we cannot dislodge England from the Cape, we must take Egypt. With twenty-five thousand men and from eight to ten ships of the line, the expedition could be risked. Egypt does not belong to the sultan. I wish you could find out what impression an Egyptian expedition would make upon the Porte.—The break-up of the huge Turkish Empire, day by day more imminent, must lead us to think of our trade in the East.”

As he sits in the Foreign Office, reading this, the diplomat raises his eyebrows yet higher. He feels that the writer is a man of genius, if not the very devil. A week or two later, comes another letter.

“If our doings are guided by a sound policy, which is nothing else than the calculation of combinations and chances, we shall for a long time to come be the Great Nation and the arbiter of Europe. The scales are in our hands, and, should fate be propitious, within a few years there may be great happenings. To-day, these may seem the vague anticipations of a visionary enthusiast; but a cold, pertinacious, and far-sighted man will be able to make them a reality.”

X

How slow these German diplomats are to make up their minds. For weeks we have been at it, discussing matters far on into the night, and still the titled negotiators hesitate to sign the document, though any reasonable man would come to a decision in an hour or two! Throughout, the Austrians are looking over their shoulders at the emperor in Vienna. In the room where the conversations take place, there is an empty throne on which the shadowy Francis is supposed to be sitting beneath the canopy. “Better carry that chair away before we begin,” says the commander. “I have never been able to see a raised seat without wanting to sit in it.”

His letters to the enigmatical Minister for Foreign Affairs, those fervid preludes, had been nothing more than the soliloquies of a man chafing at idleness, to whom weeks spent in thinking about peace seem wasted, even though the peace be one for which Europe has been longing for years. His patience is exhausted, and he assumes a menacing tone: “I have been too lenient with you,” he growls to the Austrians. “I might have made the conditions much harsher! You are frittering away my time. I stand before you as the equal in rank of any of your princes. Don’t talk to me about congresses.... With the means at our disposal, in a couple of years we Frenchmen can conquer the whole of Europe. Not that we want to do so. Our wish is to give our citizens peace, and quickly.... You tell me that this, that, and the other are your instructions. If, when the sun is shining, your instructions said that night had fallen, would you insist that it was dark?”

At last, to give them a salutary fright, he bursts into a rage, dashes a vase to the ground, and thus forces them to sign the peace in which every one gets what Napoleon had promised six months before in Leoben.

When Europe learns the news, there will be a sigh of relief. But what is going on in Bonaparte’s mind? The day after he has signed at Campo Formio the peace which ends a six years’ war, the peace he has fought for and won, he writes to the Directors, in the most matter-of-fact way: “It is absolutely indispensable to our government that we should speedily overthrow the English monarchy. Unless we succeed in doing this, we can be sure that the corruption and the intrigues of these active islanders will ruin us. The moment is favourable. Let us concentrate our energies upon increasing our navy, so that we may crush England. Then Europe will be at our feet.” He issues a manifesto to the navy: “Comrades! Now that we have established peace on land, let us conquer the freedom of the seas. Without your aid, the glory of the French name could be carried only through a corner of the Continent. With your help, we shall cross the ocean, and the fame of our nation will reach the most distant lands!”

His mind is full of titanic schemes. As he gallops along the causeway of his great deeds, fame vanishes behind him in the dust raised by his charger’s thundering hoofs, but fame ever looms in front of him, beckoning from the mirage of his fresh designs. In this spirit he hastens back to Milan, to Montebello, whence he is to give Italy her final orders; for now, carrying the peace treaty, he will go to Paris. In the tone of a prince speaking to his people, Bonaparte issues a proclamation to the newly formed Cisalpine Republic: