chief. He seems to be thinking with thirty heads these days, when the
battle of Arcola is impending. It is in a crazy mood of despair that
he writes to her in the evening, his pen storming over the paper: “I
no longer love you, I hate you. You are hateful, stupid, inept. You do
not write to me, do not love your husband. What are you doing all day,
Madame? What important business makes it impossible for you to write to
the man who loves you?... Who is the fairy prince that claims all your
time, so that you cannot write to your husband? Take care, Josephine:
some fine night, the door will burst open, and I shall be there! Quite
seriously, I am uneasy, my pretty one. Do write me four pages full of
sweet words which will warm my heart with joy and happiness. In a few
days I hope to clasp you in my arms, and to cover you with a million
kisses, hot as the equator.”
How his heart flutters, uncertain whether she is still to be trusted,
miserable if she be unworthy of trust. There is a crisis in his own soul
as well as out there on the battle-field. Responsibility, uncertainty,
storm in the heart of this man, who has perhaps already been dishonoured
in his private life, and to-morrow may be dishonoured as a military
commander—the man who still hopes to rule the world. During these days,
when a suicide occurs among the troops, he issues an order: “The soldier
must conquer the pain and the melancholy of the passions.”
Two days after the date of the letter last quoted, he is standing near
Arcola on a bridge spanning the Adige. The enemy is bombarding this
bridge. The French troops shrink back; there seems no way of forcing
a passage across the river. At length, after repeated summonses, the
soldiers advance once more, but there are calls from the ranks to
Napoleon: “Do not go any farther, General. You will be killed, and then
we shall be lost!” Marmont is a little in the van. Turning round to see
if his men are following, he notices that the commander is in the arms
of Muiron, the adjutant, apparently wounded. Around them a group of
motionless figures. Now that the movement of the vanguard is arrested,
the troops seek the shelter of the embankment. Bonaparte, who has
recovered, stumbles and falls into the ditch at the foot of the dyke. His
brother Louis and Marmont drag him out. A horse! Confusion, shots; Muiron
covers the general with his own body, is hit, and falls. Bonaparte saves
himself on horseback.
That evening in camp, he is greatly depressed. Second day’s fighting,
and a vain attempt to storm the enemy’s position. This abominable river.
Seems impossible to get across it. For a long time, the fortunes of the
third day are no better than those of the first two.
At the eleventh hour, he has recourse to cunning. While the fight on the
river rages uncertainly, he sends all the trumpeters and drummers he can
get together, with part of the guard, in a wide half-circle to reach a
position in the enemy’s rear. There the charge is sounded. The wearied
Austrians are panic-stricken, and one of their divisions draws back. The
French, encouraged by the rout of part of the foe, assume that all the
opposing army is retreating, and act accordingly. Courage and ruse have
snatched victory out of a morass of despair. The name of another village
becomes famous. Arcola medals are struck in Paris. A picture is painted,
showing the commander on the bridge of Arcola, waving imaginary colours.
The danger is over for a time. The enemy supports are withdrawn from
Mantua, and soon the town must fall. Bonaparte makes a fresh disposition
of his troops, and hastens to Milan. At length he will be able to
administer the province from the capital, and have Josephine and hold her
fast.
But Josephine is harder to catch than Wurmser. “I reach Milan, rush to
your house, having thrown aside everything in order to clasp you in my
arms. You are not there! You are gadding about somewhere, running away
when I come to seek you. You care nothing about your Napoleon. A whim led
you to give me your love, and now fickleness has made you indifferent.
Inured to dangers, I know how to meet reverses of fortune.... Don’t put
yourself about, amuse yourself, happiness is made for you, all the world
is happy to have the chance of pleasing you, your husband alone is most
unhappy.”
Next morning. “You have no reason to trouble yourself about the happiness
or unhappiness of a man whom you do not love. But it is my fate to love
you.... Take no part in the unhappiness of your husband, who lives only
for you. It would be unjust if I were to ask you to love me as I love
you. Who can expect delicate lace to weigh as heavy as gold.... My fault
is that nature has denied me the charms which might bind you to me. What
I do deserve is nothing more than this, that Josephine should show me
a little consideration, a little respect, for I love her to the verge
of madness, her and her alone. Farewell, adorable woman.... If I were
certain that she could no longer love me, I would hide my pain, and would
content myself with being useful to her whenever I could.... I open the
letter once more, to send you a kiss. Ah, Josephine! Josephine!”
What a confession! With ardour and ambition he pushes forward to the
goal, but the enemy has escaped, and what is to be done? Resignation must
be the first aim after a failure, not raging and cursing. A man must
retain his self-respect, and act prudently. A little mockery, embellished
with courtesy, will have its due effect. Next day, he has turned things
over in his mind. I must have her. How shall I lure her back? To extol
my exploits does not move her in the least. What does influence her?
Flattery and service. Such is his calculation. A miscalculation: for he,
who is masterful with kings, fails to see that the charming Josephine
would fear a master, even though she would not worship him; that nothing
makes her more secure in her own position than his confessed passion.
Napoleon’s mistake is the outcome of his pride. His pride will lead him
to the limits of what is humanly possible, but will in the long run
mislead him into the greatest of his blunders. Now, it is pride that
prevents his veiling a passion which he does not master because he does
not wish to do so. After all his carefully planned phrases to the effect
that he wishes to be of use to her, the foolish human heart drives him,
with the gesture of a love-sick youth, to tear open his letter that he
may “send a kiss.”
VI
What is Paris saying?
Paris is radiant, for, after long years, it once more has a hero to
worship. Bonaparte’s picture is in all the shops; rhymed comparisons of
him with the heroes of antiquity are in every one’s mouth; the actors
speak of him when instructions are sent to announce a new victory; the
colours he has taken from the enemy are on show at the Luxembourg; his
reports, cut about by the Directors, appear in the “Moniteur.” Songs,
medals, caricatures (a recent importation from across the Channel),
enliven the boulevards.
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.