Guérin. Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.
(From the “Corpus Imaginum” of the Photographic Society, Charlottenburg.)]
What had I better do? Report sick? Apply for leave? The out-of-work
general turns the possibilities over in his mind. Better stay where I am.
Paris is the world’s navel. True, Marmont and Junot, who have joined him
without leave, are also penniless. What’s Bourrienne doing? Speculating?
Well, I can try that too, but assignats are falling. How badly you staged
the last affair. Did you think you could make a coup d’état without
cannon? But to Saliceti, who in his turn has had serious charges brought
against him, and is being sheltered by a fellow-countrywoman, he writes:
“You see, I might have paid you back in your own coin.... Who has played
the better part, you or I? I might have taken vengeance on you, but have
not done so.... Go in peace, to seek a refuge where you can, and meditate
upon your country to better advantage. My lips will always be sealed
about you. Take counsel with yourself, appreciate my motives ... they are
noble and magnanimous.”
During these summer weeks, the flood of life is obscurely murmuring, is
heavily pulsing against the shores. He is profoundly moved by _Ossian_,
the book of melancholy passion; and he is stirred by the tragical end
of plays he witnesses, hastening from the theatre that his mood may
not be jarred by the subsequent farce. “How preposterous, in this new
opera, to give a happy ending to _Paul and Virginie_ by having the girl
rescued!”—“But what is happiness?” asks the lady to whom he says this.
“Happiness?” answers Buonaparte. “The highest possible development of my
talents.”
Just now they are lying fallow, that is what troubles him. He is a
prey to increasing dejection and dumb rancour. When a comedy is being
played (the wife of one of his friends reports this), every one else
is laughing, but Buonaparte sits there in frozen silence. Sometimes he
vanishes, to reappear with gloomy aspect at the other side of the stalls.
Often enough his lips are twisted in an unsuccessful attempt to smile.
He is an irresistible raconteur of campaign stories, but his laughter
on these occasions is rough. He is often to be seen wandering through
the streets, short in the leg, thin, sallow, sickly, irritable of mien,
“awkward, hesitant, wearing an old round hat, from beneath which two
badly powdered ‘dog’s ears’ project, scurf upon his collar, his ungloved
hands are long and lean and dark, ill-fitting boots.”
He now plans a book traffic with foreign lands; but his first attempt,
with a consignment to Basle, miscarries.
Sometimes he visits drawing-rooms, for, as he writes to his brother,
every one here seeks distraction.... There are women all over the place,
at the theatre, in the Bois, at the Library. The prettiest of girls are
to be found in the studies of the learned. Indeed, it is right that women
should rule here, for the men are infatuated, living only through and for
women.
When Buonaparte is in the salon of Barras, the tribune (who outdoes
himself in splendour and extravagance, so that all Paris talks; who can
never have enough women round him), when he stands there among women
famous for their beauty like Tallien and Récamier, he, who is small
and gloomy and angular, can only make an impression by cleverness and
caprice. Even then he seems a freak.
Always the solitary, he only “lets himself go” in his long letters
to his brothers. He is educating Louis, and writes: “The lad is a
good soldier. What especially pleases me is that he combines so many
excellent qualities: ardour, spirit, health, talent, trustworthiness,
good-nature.... He will certainly be the best of us four. Of course,
none of us have enjoyed his advantages in the matter of education.” He
is thinking of having Jerome, the youngest, sent to Paris. He is at odds
with Lucien. This talented brother is his rival. Indeed, Lucien vies with
Napoleon in his knowledge of men, was the first to understand Napoleon,
did so already when he was seventeen while his brother was twenty-three.
“In Napoleon,” wrote young Lucien to Joseph, “I detect an ambition which
is not wholly selfish, but is greater than his love for the public
welfare. In a free State he would certainly be a dangerous man. He seems
to me inclined to become a despot. I think he would become one, were
he king. At any rate, his name would be a terror to posterity and to
sensitive patriots.” In Lucien’s mouth, such grandiose vaticination is no
mere playing with words. His own ambition is so intense that in this age
and country he regards a development of the kind as quite possible for
his brother, and he is mortified at the prospect that Napoleon is likely
to outshine him.
For the nonce, Napoleon is in low spirits. He envies Joseph, whom money
and happiness have made independent. He offers Joseph support in the way
of introductions and papers; advises him to use the depreciated currency
for the economical purchase of an estate. Yet we find him already writing
to his elder brother, apropos of a letter on political questions: “Your
letter was too dry; you must learn to write better than that.”
A home! He wants a home of his own, like Joseph. More eagerly in each
successive letter he urges Joseph to make sure for him of the wealthy
sister-in-law, with whom he has been in affectionate correspondence for
more than a year. When she is slow to make up her mind, he presses for a
decision. His brother and one of his intimate friends have married well;
comrades of his own age occupy prominent positions. Only he, with his
surging thoughts and imaginative schemes, remains lonely and does nothing.
“If you are going away for a long time,” he writes to Joseph, “send me
your portrait. We have lived so long in close companionship that our
hearts are intertwined. No one knows better than you how wholly I am
yours. As I write these lines, I am more moved than almost ever before,
feeling that it will be long before we meet again. I cannot write any
more. Farewell, mon ami.”
He is in a melting mood, and at times he seems utterly discouraged. “To
clamber upwards from step to step, this is rather like an adventurer,
like a man who is trying to make happiness.” Finally he says: “Life is a
trivial dream, which fades away....”
XIII
Suddenly everything is in a flux. A new Minister for War has been
appointed, and he is eager to effect changes on the Italian front. Does
any one know of a new man to whom the command there can be entrusted?
The enquiry passes from one to another, until some one recommends
Buonaparte. He is summoned to the War Office. For years he has been
making himself familiar with the Italian coast and the Italian frontier,
and forthwith he expounds a detailed plan for a campaign in northern
Italy, against Sardinia and Austria. It is substantiated by a display of
intimate knowledge of the Alpine passes; of the weather and the snows;
of seedtime and harvest; of the administration, the temperament, and
the characteristics of the territories and the populations concerned.
After the conquest of Lombardy, between February and July, the powerful
position of Mantua must be wrested from the Austrians. Then the Army of
Italy must move northward, and in Tyrol must effect a junction with the
sister army, the Army of the Rhine. The joint forces will threaten Vienna
and this will compel the emperor to accept a peace which will fulfil all
that France has been expecting or imagining for years past.
Overwhelmed by the cataract that issues from this brain, the minister can
only say: “Your ideas, General, are equally brilliant and bold. We must
examine them closely. Write a report for the committee. You can take your
time.”
“My plan is ready now. I can write it down in half an hour.”
“A notable design,” say the members of the Committee of Public Safety
when the report has been read to them; “notable, even if impracticable.”
In any case, such an intelligence as this must be utilised in the
Operations Department. A few days afterwards he has a seat in this
department, where everything is decided.
The great moment has come, the turning-point of his youth. At length he
stands on the threshold of his career. The chance has come suddenly, for
everything is sudden in this eruptive era. From now, when he is barely
twenty-six, he will for twenty years, with unremitting vigour, move
onwards towards his goal, drawing the chain of thought and action after
him. Suddenly, twenty years hence, the chain will snap.
Napoleon’s work begins. With burning energy, attending carefully to
little things because his aim is the greatest of things, he devotes
himself to “affairs.” The veil is lifted, for here he finds the most
secret reports concerning all the armies of the republic. At the same
time, his daily association with the leading civilian figures in France
gives him authority. The suggestive influence of his personality makes
itself felt.
What is the first thing he aspires to gain for himself? Neither the
command in Vendée nor the command of the Army of the Rhine. These are
attainable, tangible magnitudes. Here, at the centre of all the real
fronts, nothing allures him so much as the thought of a command which
as yet lives only in his imagination; in a battle-ground which does not
exist, but which he wants to create to-day, and which he will again want
to create seventeen years hence. Asia! Directly he gets to work at the
centre of things, he begins to emphasise the importance of galvanising
Turkey into activity, of introducing artillery and the modern art of
war on the Bosphorus, for in due time they can from that centre be used
against the Russians and the Austrians. In fancy, he already sees himself
conversing with the sultan, beyond reach of the eyes of these everlasting
republicans, in an obscure and closed country into which the doctrine of
liberty has never made its way—a land where a man can still do whatever
he pleases. Twelve days after his entry into the ministry, he asks to be
transferred to Turkey.
The application is refused. Powerful opponents are already beginning
to be afraid of this man. They want to get him out of the War Office;
to send him to the front. His protest takes a new tone. As if he were
foreseeing all the successes that are still hidden in his own heart,
he begins to dictate. “General Buonaparte, who commands the artillery
under the most critical circumstances and has contributed to the greatest
successes, expects from the justice of the members of the Committee
that they shall reinstate him in his functions, and shall spare him the
distress of seeing his position usurped by men who have always kept
themselves in the background, ... but who now press forward to snatch the
fruits of victories whose dangers they well knew how to avoid.”
In the third person, in the iron style of the historian. Roman.
It avails nothing. Once more the insubordinate officer’s name is struck
from the lists, and for a second time he has to yield. But he feels that
his hour draws nigh; nothing, now, can seriously shake his position. A
fresh change of government is at hand. Announcing to his brother the
impending transformation, he says that he himself is in the good graces
of all the party leaders who will have military posts at their disposal.
“The prospect is rosy. Even were it otherwise, a man must live in the
present. He who has courage, despises the future.”
Because he despises it, it serves him. Henceforward, men will serve him
for the same reason.
A fortnight after this letter had been written, a conflict broke out
between the government and the moderates, who were backed by the
royalists. Once more, there was fighting on the boulevards, as there had
been three years earlier. The National Guard is four times as strong
as the governmental forces. Either from caution or from cowardice, the
general of the Convention parleys with the leaders of the Guard. He is
declared a traitor, and placed under arrest. The Convention meets in a
panic. It is defenceless, intimidated by the left-wing and right-wing
revolutionaries, who, for various reasons, have joined forces.
In the evening, Buonaparte hastens to the Convention, for a successor
to the arrested general is needed, and he learns that the name of one
of his rivals has been proposed. The heart of the silent onlooker
beats furiously. Will his name now be mentioned? If he is asked to take
command, shall he accept a task which he had refused in the days when
Robespierre was supreme? Does not every one who leads soldiers against
the people make himself hated, precisely because of his success? “Appoint
Buonaparte!” Yes, his name has come up. “I turned the matter over in my
mind for nearly half an hour.” Such a mission will not bring renown, but
it will bring power. He presents himself before the committee. It is past
midnight; the tumult is expected to begin early next morning; everything
must be ready within a few hours.
In this situation, he demands that he shall be absolutely free from
civilian supervision. This seems a monstrous request to make of the
revolution, one of whose new principles it is to lay especial stress upon
supervision of the dreaded military arm. “If you appoint me, I shall be
responsible, and must have a free hand. To-day, it was the fault of the
people’s commissaries that the general found himself in so precarious a
position. Do you expect that the people will give us permission to open
fire upon the people?” The only man he will share the command with is
Barras, who is the most powerful among the leaders, but is in his hands.
The minutes are passing. There is no choice.—Buonaparte was entrusted
with the defence of the government, a fortnight after his name had been
erased from the list of general officers.
For seven years the Parisian populace, when roused to action, has had
to encounter nothing more than extemporised opposition. That is why the
revolution has always made headway. Buonaparte is the first to prepare
for the struggle. In one night, he transforms the Convention into a
fortress. Even the alarmed deputies are supplied with weapons. They are
still more frightened when they hear talk of cannon.
A young cavalry officer, Murat by name, undertakes to bring forty big
guns from the suburbs. Murat thus opens a great career on the same day as
his chief. Out in the streets he finds the masses, who are likewise on
the prowl for artillery. Buonaparte cannot protect the Convention without
ordnance. There are hours of tension, during which he must tranquilly
devote himself to the disposition of his slender forces. At length, at
five in the morning, he hears the rattling wheels of his old friends the
big guns. Murat’s men were mounted, and they have won the prize. Forward!
Within two hours, everything must be ready.
In well-armed companies, the crowd advances threateningly. The lawyers
in the Convention are shaking in their shoes. Speech after speech is
made from the tribune, urging a parley, advocating the withdrawal of the
troops. In the daylight, the situation is so menacing that the civilians
utterly lose heart. They weaken; towards noon, some of the troops want
to fraternise with the people. Night is falling. Now or never! Is
the commander to allow the mob to triumph? In like circumstances, he
had laughed at the weakness of King Louis. Shall he himself play the
weakling, when he is in command of the guns?
It is probable that Buonaparte ordered the firing of the first shot,
or perhaps extorted the order from Barras, although in his report, and
subsequently, he declared that his opponents had this “crime against the
French people” on their consciences. Anyhow, the firing begins. The big
guns win the day; blood besprinkles the pavements; the crowd scatters;
in two hours the streets are clear. That night, Napoleon writes to his
brother: “At length it is over; my first wish is to send you news.... We
posted our troops, the enemy attacked us in the Tuileries. We killed a
lot of them, our own casualties being thirty killed and sixty wounded.
We have disarmed the companies of the National Guard, and everything is
quiet. As usual, I have escaped without a scratch. Brigadier General
Buonaparte. Postscript. Luck is on my side. My compliments to Désirée and
Julie.”
This is Napoleon’s first bulletin of victory. The enemy are Frenchmen;
the battle-field is Paris; the offenders are revolutionists; most of the
fatalities are on the opposing side; the signature, which in earlier and
subsequent letters consists of nothing but the name, includes, to-day,
the writer’s military title. Everything is calculated for effect. But his
feelings break through, and in the postscript he discloses to his brother
the two things he has most at heart: Luck and Woman.
At a later date he said: “I have two men within me, the man of the head
and the man of the heart.”
XIV
On the tribune of the Convention stands Buonaparte with his officers,
hailed by the acclamations of the assembly, to whom the youthful saviour
is being presented. He scarcely notices the applause, for such triumphs
of the moment seem of little value to him. Coldly surveying the hall, he
thinks: “So you are the leaders of the nation. You trembled with fear
when you heard the thunder of the guns! You shall not forget how to
tremble! I have become your protector. I shall go on protecting you until
you have become my humble servants.”
As a matter of course, he is appointed to the command of the Army of the
Interior. He now has a great following: cashiered officers, who hope
to climb in the footsteps of the cashiered general; officials who have
dreaded the reaction; all who feel that they have been rescued. But the
crowd must be learning to hate him; for, in that darkling hour, hundreds
of unarmed citizens, idle spectators, women have perished. What is that
to him? It is not his aim to be loved.
Now, when he suddenly has money and servants and carriages at his
disposal, he wants nothing for himself, everything for his kin. His
younger brothers are given good positions; his mother can once more live
a life after her own heart, and gratify her taste for saving; Joseph
has the offer of several posts; there are places for the most distant
relatives. But the letters become rarer, and the very first of them
sounds a new note: “I shall do everything I can to help you, shall spare
no effort which can contribute to your happiness.” From brother, he has
become protector, head of the family.
During these weeks, when he is tasting the joys of fulfilment, he becomes
involved in the only passion of his life.
Désirée has missed her chance. Only a few weeks before, writing from the
office of the general staff, he had implored Joseph to intervene on his
behalf, to demand a prompt answer. “I am burning with desire to have a
home of my own.” At the same time, in several of his letters, we find
more frequent references to charming women, allusions which betray a
happy prospect of success. He has come to know la femme de trente ans,
in her power and her beauty. He has made advances to two such women, in
quick succession: one of them a Corsican of noble birth, a friend of his
mother’s; the other, a pretty cocotte, Chénier’s mistress. Both of them
are considerably older than he, and neither of them favours his suit. But
the atmosphere surrounding these practitioners of the art of love, the
electric atmosphere of the new salon, has exercised its influence on him:
“A kiss for the two ladies: for the first, on the lips; for the second,
on the cheek.” Since he has hitherto known almost nothing of women, his
lonely heart is susceptible.
Immediately after his appointment, the new generalissimo issues a decree
against bearing arms. A search is made, and all weapons in civilian hands
are confiscated. Now a boy of twelve, with engaging manners, turns up
at the general’s office with a plea for the return of his dead father’s
sword, which has been taken away from his mother. Napoleon concedes the
point, and shortly afterwards the mother comes to thank him. What an
elegant woman—wayward, gracious, captivating! Thirty or more; who can
say? Not so much beautiful, as enthralling; slender; distinguished, but
with a slightly foreign air; the dark skin of the Creole, for she was
born in Martinique, though brought up in Paris; and during the days of
the Terror she has learned to conquer by her charms.
When the general pays her a visit at the little house in an
out-of-the-way suburb, his eyes, sharpened by his own experience of
poverty, detect evidence of an endeavour to put a good face upon poor
circumstances. This does not trouble him. An army officer, who now, at
the age of twenty-seven, can for the first time dispose of means which
enable him to live as he pleases, he prizes money, but he does not prize
rich people. Just as in the life of affairs, men can only move him by
their capacity, by what they can do; so women can only please him by
their capacity—by their personal appearance, their nature, and what they
can make of these.
Josephine makes a great deal, as she needs to do. From Martinique, her
tropical home, she was able to save nothing when she lost her husband,
Vicomte de Beauharnais. For years she was separated from him, but was
reunited with him after her return to Paris from a prolonged visit to her
native island. During the Terror, he was executed as a royalist; and she
spent three terrible months in gaol, to be liberated after Robespierre’s
fall on the very day when Buonaparte was imprisoned. Friends came to her
assistance in her difficulties; but her position and that of her two
lovely young children, Hortense and Eugene, was precarious.
In this genteel poverty, it is expedient for her to make the best use of
her charms. In any case, she is a born coquette, and is urged towards
amorous adventures by the spur of her own love of pleasure. At this time,
she is Barras’ mistress, her handsome friend Tallien having taken up with
a wealthy banker, handing over the man of might to Josephine. However,
the two women hold Barras in joint control. The Committee of Public
Safety supplies them with horses and carriages. But Beauharnais, being of
gentle birth, knows how to give attractive dinner parties, and associates
with members of both factions, although the counts and marquises
who frequent her house leave their wives at home. She has become an
adventuress of the revolution.
Well, what about Buonaparte himself? Any change in the political
situation may cost him his position. What more is he, as yet, than an
adventurer of the revolution? If Murat had failed to shark up those guns
the other night, the general would have been shot. Life is insecure, both
for him and for Josephine.
What can be easier than to befool this misanthropic and misogynistic man
in whose dumb soul the schoolmaster at Brienne had long ago discovered
the hidden volcano? For the first time in his life he is in the toils of
a woman, an expert in love; he is consumed by his passion for the Creole
beauty. To Josephine, it seems a stroke of luck, and in cold blood she
decides on marriage.
“You have seen General Buonaparte at my house. He is to become a father
to my orphaned children, a husband to my widowed self.... I admire
the general’s courage, and I wonder how much he knows.... But, I must
confess, I am alarmed at the energy which animates all his doings. In his
questing glance there is something inexplicable, which intimidates even
our Directors. What ought to please me most, the passionate ardour he
displays, is the very thing which makes me hesitate. Now that I am past
my first youth, can I hope that I shall be able to keep alive in him an
affection so stormy that it borders on madness?”