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!”
[Illustration: General Bonaparte. Unfinished portrait by Jacques Louis
David. From the collection of the Duke of Bassano.
(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:
“Yours is the first nation in history to win freedom without partisan
struggles, without a revolution, and without a blow. We have given you
liberty, and you will know how to keep it!... Let your minds be full
of the sense of your own strength, and of the self-respect proper to
the free man.... Had the Romans of old used their powers as the French
are using their powers to-day, the Roman eagles would still wave above
the Capitol, and the human race would have escaped being dishonoured by
eighteen centuries of slavery! To consolidate your liberties, and with
the sole end of bringing you happiness, I have completed a task such as
hitherto has only been performed by ambition and the will-to-power....
In a few days I shall leave you.... Your happiness and the glory of your
republic will always be matters very dear to my heart.”
Is this a warrior blowing a trumpet? Is it a poet, into whose mouth the
ecstasy of life puts words that are to arouse popular enthusiasm? During
these very days, in the company of a diplomat belonging to this very
country, he is strolling to and fro in the park of Montebello. His whole
nature is straining towards Paris; his companion is a good listener, and
a man of ability. Napoleon, in one of those bursts of frankness which
genius sometimes allows itself, delivers himself as follows:
“Do you fancy that I have won my triumphs in Italy that I may help the
lawyers of the Directory ... to achieve greatness? Or can you imagine
that I want to stabilise the republic? What a ridiculous notion, a
republic with thirty million inhabitants! With our customs! With our
failings! France will soon forget these whims. The French need glory
and the gratification of their vanity, but they do not understand the
elements of freedom. Look at the army! Our victories have restored the
French soldier to his true self. I am the idol of the soldiers. If the
Directors, for instance, were to try to withdraw my commission, they
would soon see who is master of the army.
“The people needs a chief, made resplendent by fame and victory; it does
not want theories and governments, the phrases and the oratory of the
ideologues. Give the masses a toy! They will play with it, and allow
themselves to be led—provided always that the leader is adroit enough to
hide his true aims! Here in Italy, it is not necessary for me to be so
circumspect.... Still, the time is not yet ripe. For the present, it is
necessary to yield to the fervour of the moment, so here we shall have
two or three republics after the French model.... Peace is opposed to my
interests.... If peace were firmly established, and if I were no longer
at the head of the army, I should have to renounce the power and position
I have gained, and should have to pay homage to the lawyers in the
Luxembourg. If I leave Italy, it is only that I may play the same part
in France. But that fruit, likewise, is not yet ripe. Paris is divided.
There is a Bourbon party, and I cannot fight on its side. In due time I
shall weaken the republicans, but I shall not do so to the advantage of
the old dynasty!”
Such are Bonaparte’s real plans. What he says is true: “Everything has
happened as I foresaw; and I believe that I am the only person in the
world who is not surprised. So will it be in the future; I shall make my
way whithersoever I will.”
A stream of confessions is forcing a way for itself. The words have
come down to us in the memoirs of the man who heard them; of course the
speaker would have denied them, had the hearer then ventured to repeat
them. But it is true that he is far from being satisfied with what he has
hitherto achieved. Seated beside Bourrienne in the carriage in which he
is driving away from Italy after a stay of nearly two years, he says: “A
few more campaigns like this, and we shall have made a fairly great name
for ourselves, a name that will go down to posterity.” When his friend
interposes that Bonaparte has already secured a notable reputation, the
commander laughs him to scorn:
“You flatter me, Bourrienne! If I die to-day, ten centuries hence my
record will not occupy more than half a page in universal history!”
XI
The Luxembourg palace has been transformed into an amphitheatre. Weapons
and colours, the latest trophies, are displayed, side by side with the
gold-blazoned slogans of the revolution, on the venerable walls within
which, of old, the satellite peers used to circle round their central
luminary, the king of France. Paris has assembled, and all are dressed in
gala attire, as if for a May Day festival—though it is chill December.
The front seats are filled with pretty women, friends of the men in
power, for they want to get a close view of the little commander with the
leathery yellow skin, the hero of the occasion.
“He has already been a week in Paris, and not a soul has set eyes on him.
Why does he modestly shun the acclamations of his people?”
“There is the signal for the entry! Look, the five Directors are coming
on to the platform!”
The chorus sings the anthem of liberty, the crowd joining in the refrain.
A pause. The sound of clanking sabres and clinking spurs is heard upon
the perron without. People crane from the windows, look down from the
roofs. He is coming! He is coming!
Napoleon wears a field uniform, for this looks less pretentious. His mien
is grave and unassuming, as with firm step he strides along the gangway
to the dais. He carries a roll of paper, and three adjutants follow in
his train. But, as well as these, hard upon the heels of the plainly
uniformed little figure with the martial gait, comes a man wearing silk
stockings, and resplendent in gold lace; he walks with a limp. At this
moment, a cannon shot is heard, the first shot of a salute; the sometime
lieutenant of artillery is being honoured in appropriate fashion.
Thunders of applause shake the building, and are echoed outside by the
thousands who are waiting to greet Napoleon on his departure. Quiet once
more. Talleyrand is speaking. Brilliantly, smoothly, with undercurrents
of meaning which few can understand, he praises the classical simplicity
of their great general, the saviour of his country, who scorns pomp,
and is a servant of the things of the spirit. The minister closes with
the words: “All France will be free; save only him, perhaps—that is his
destiny.”
Applause, as usual; but is there one among these thousands, even among
those in the inner councils, who realises the profound truth of the
closing phrase? Does any one of the auditors feel the poignancy of the
satire?
Napoleon quietly comes to the front. What is he going to say?
“The French nation had to fight with its kings in order to win
freedom.... Religion, feudalism, monarchy, have in turn ruled Europe for
two thousand years. The era of democratic constitutions has only just
begun. It has been your achievement to extend the domain of the Great
Nation to its natural frontiers. You have done more. The two loveliest
countries of Europe, renowned for science, art, and genius, see the
spirit of freedom, buoyed up by hope, rising out of the tombs of their
ancestors. These are the pedestals on which two mighty nations are
uplifted. I have the honour to present you the treaty of Campo Formio,
ratified by Emperor Francis.... As soon as the fortunes of the French
nation are established upon the best organic laws, Europe, too, will be
free.”
The soldierly voice is silent. For a moment, not a sound is to be heard.
Then come salvos of applause. Are they applauding the speech? It lacks
the charm of the popular orations and the speeches from the tribune with
which the walls of Paris are often placarded. The hearers are astonished;
many of them are positively amazed. Alarm and veneration are the
prevailing sentiments. The applause is not for the speech, but for the
man. He has spoken on many fronts, has harangued a crowd in Corsica, but
has never before addressed society folk, or politicians.
His speech was that of a statesman. At first perhaps not a soul but
Talleyrand understood it. All that he had said of their own epoch,
seemed false. England and America had been democracies for many, many
years. France had been fighting nearly a decade for her recognition as
a democracy. Now, at last, recognition had come, in this peace with
Germany. There was the tangible proof of it in the parchment which
betokened peace on the Continent.
But the story was not finished—such was the implied menace that sounded,
with a metallic ring, from the concluding words of the statesman hidden
in the soldier. The Directors understood his meaning, knew that the
threat was for them. But Barras pulled himself together, delivered a
fulsome speech, and then, for the first and last time embraced the little
general, whose wife he would infinitely rather have held in his arms.
Josephine, where was Josephine? Why was she absent on the great
occasion? No one knows with certainty how or where she spent these weeks.
She did not reach Paris until a month after Napoleon. When she came, she
was serene, charming, rather tired. In Paris, she promptly resumed her
old life, and took up the threads of some of her old amours.
Meanwhile, another woman had entered Napoleon’s orbit. She was handsome,
but was too intelligent to please him. This was Necker’s daughter,
Madame de Staël. An influential woman, as well as an interesting; it
was at her suggestion that Talleyrand had been appointed Minister for
Foreign Affairs. She besieged Bonaparte with letters; she would fain
have harnessed him to her chariot wheels, but he jibbed at the prospect.
Now, when she had met him in the flesh, he parried her advances with a
few civilities; but he could not prevent this talented woman from seeing
further into his mind than most men had succeeded in doing. Here is her
pen picture of the commander, an early impression:
“His face is thin and pale, but not unpleasing. Being short of stature,
he looks better on horseback than on foot. In social life, he has rather
awkward manners, though he is by no means shy. When he is on the alert,
he is a little contemptuous in his bearing; whereas his natural demeanour
is a trifle common. The contemptuous pose suits him better.... When he is
speaking, I am enthralled by an impression of his pre-eminence, though
he has none of the qualities of the men of the study and of society.
If he recounts his personal experiences, he often discloses the lively
imagination of an Italian.... But I always become aware of a profound
irony, which nothing escapes, neither the sublime, nor the beautiful, nor
even his own fame.... I have known not a few men of note, some of them
savage by disposition, but the dread with which this man fills me is a
thing apart. He is neither good nor bad, neither gentle nor cruel. He is
unique; he can neither inspire nor feel affection; he is more and less
than a man. Character, mind, speech—all have a strange stamp. This very
strangeness helps him to win over the French.
“He neither hates nor loves; for him, no one exists but himself; all
other people are merely ‘number so-and-so.’ A great chessplayer, for whom
humanity-at-large is the adversary he hopes to checkmate. His success
is quite as much due to the qualities he lacks as to the qualities he
possesses.... Where his own interest is involved, he pursues it as the
just man seeks virtue; if his aim were good, his perseverance would be
exemplary.... He despises the nation whose applause he seeks; there
is not a spark of fervour intermingled with his craving to astound
mankind.... I have never been able to breathe freely in his presence.”
If we discount in these sentences all that may reasonably be regarded as
due to the mortified vanity of a notable and much admired woman, enough
will still remain to be worthy of careful study. Each moment she tries
to pierce his armour, only in the next breath to acknowledge herself
his prisoner. She moves in a Rousseauist world of abstract virtue and
goodness, with which a dictator can have nothing to do, and she therefore
cannot regard Bonaparte with enthusiasm; but nevertheless she foresees
his aim, which was not publicly disclosed till near the end of his
career, and hers is the credit of having been the first to recognise his
genius.
“Picture to yourself a little man,” writes a German at this date in one
of his letters home. “No taller than Frederick the Great; very regularly
and slenderly built; lean, but sturdy; a large head; high forehead;
dark-grey eyes; thick, dark-brown hair; Grecian nose, so long that it
almost hangs down over the mouth; his mouth is full of humaneness and
grace; the firm chin is rather prominent. His movements are brisk, but
he has a fine and dignified bearing. You may see him run down a long
staircase in five or six strides, and yet, as he finishes the last
stride, he stands before you as graceful as ever. Unless he is fixing his
gaze upon some object he particularly wishes to examine, he is generally
looking upwards. It was always a delight to me to contemplate his
beautiful, deep, sensitive eyes, at once severe and kindly, like those of
our own Frederick.”
XII
On the way to Paris, Napoleon had had to spend a few days in Rastatt,
to discuss with the imperial envoys certain details connected with the
carrying out of the peace treaty and the evacuation of Mainz. Here,
expected with mingled curiosity and scepticism, he had assumed royal
airs. He had alternately scolded and made much of the envoys, as best
suited his plans at the moment, giving one of these Austrian counts a
watch and the other a jewelled hat-buckle. “The two poor envoys were
amazed that I had so much money to spend, for they were as poor as church
mice.”
This oriental lavishness in present-giving, the outcome of kindliness
quite as much as of arrogance, will be a persistent characteristic. He
will become known as a caliph who loves to shower gifts, displaying a
mingled disdain and generosity which throw a searching light upon his own
spiritual make-up. But if he has to acknowledge some genuine service,
then this same man (who from underlings exposed to danger demands
scrupulous exactitude in the fulfilment of duty) will express his thanks
in the most courtly fashion, as if he were one of Arthur’s knights, and
the world a jousting-place. The warrior who has captured so many of the
enemy colours is given one of the flags from Arcola, as a keepsake. He
passes it on to General Lannes, writing:
“At Arcola, there was a moment when the fortune of the day was so
uncertain that nothing but the utmost bravery on the part of the leaders
could have saved the situation. Thereupon, bleeding from three terrible
wounds, you left the field hospital, resolved to conquer or die. Again
and again I saw you in the foremost ranks of the brave. You were the
first ... to cross the Adda. Yours must be the honour of owning and
guarding this glorious flag.”