The seas were infested with hostile ships, and a more perilous voyage
than Napoleon’s from Egypt few men ever risked. His little sailing
vessels had but one element of security--their insignificance. They
could hope to slip by where larger ships would be sighted; and they
could retreat into shoal water where men-of-war could not follow.
Napoleon had with him some four or five hundred picked troops and a
few cannon; his plan was to run ashore on the African coast, and make
his way overland, if he should find his escape cut off on the ocean by
English ships. Keeping close to the shore, he made tedious progress
against contrary winds, and did not arrive off Corsica till the last
days of September, 1799. He had not intended to land on his native
soil, but the adverse gales made it necessary to put into the harbor of
Ajaccio. Sending ashore for fruit and the latest journals, he sat up
all night on board reading. He now learned that the battle of Novi had
been fought, and Joubert killed.
The presence of Napoleon in the harbor of Ajaccio created a sensation
on shore, and the people thronged the streets and the quays, eager
for a sight of the hero of Italy and of Egypt. His victories in the
East were known, for he himself had dictated the reports, and had not
weakened them with any dashes of modesty. Around his name, therefore,
had formed a halo, and even those Corsicans who had scorned him when
feeble, admired him now that he was strong. Yielding to popular
pressure, Napoleon landed. His reception was enthusiastic. The square
was filled with shouting multitudes, the windows and the roofs crowded
with the curious, everybody wanting to catch sight of the wondrous
little man who had so quickly become the first soldier of the world.
Crowds of admiring islanders remembered that they were his cousins. The
number of god-children laid to him was immense. His old nurse hobbled
to him, hugged him, gave him a blessing, and a bottle of goat’s milk.
He walked St. Charles Street, into the little square, and into the
old Bonaparte home, which the English troops had used as a barrack.
He visited the country-seat, the grotto of Milleli, all the old
familiar scenes. He showed his staff, with some pride, the estates of
his family; and to the tenants and the herdsmen he gave cattle and
land. The soldiers of the garrison, drawn up to receive him, were in
a wretched condition; they had received no pay for more than a year.
Napoleon gave them $8000, all he had, saving necessary travelling
expenses. To his nurse he gave a vineyard and a house in Ajaccio.
The Corsicans tell the story that during the time when the young
Lieutenant Bonaparte was trying to revolutionize the island, a priest,
standing at the window of a house overlooking the street, aimed a gun
at the little Jacobin’s head. Napoleon, ever watchful, saw the movement
just in time to dodge. The bullet struck the wall, and Napoleon
scurried off.
This priest, having remained in Ajaccio, and the situation having
undergone a change, was very uncomfortable; for Napoleon now had it in
his power to make his old enemy do the dodging. But he bore no malice.
He offered the embarrassed priest his hand, made a joke of the shot out
of the window, and put the good man quite at his ease.
It was while attending a ball given in his honor in Ajaccio that
Admiral Ganteaume sent word that the wind had changed, and the voyage
could be resumed. Hurriedly bidding adieu to friends, he quitted
Corsica for the last time.
On October 8, 1799, the four vessels entered the roads of Fréjus, and
immediately upon its becoming known that Napoleon was on board, the
water was covered with the boats of hundreds crowding to meet him.
It was in this spontaneous rush of the people to greet the returning
hero that the quarantine law was violated. The joy of the people was
unbounded. They rang the bells, they filled the streets with shouting
multitudes, they hailed him as the deliverer of France. A king in the
best of Bourbon days had never drawn a warmer welcome. On his way from
the coast he met with a prolonged ovation. At Lyons it was as though
Napoleon had already become the ruler of France.
General Marbot, late commander of Paris, now passing through Lyons on
his way to Italy, was somewhat scandalized and offended to see that
Bonaparte was treated like a sovereign. Says his son in his _Memoirs_:--
“The houses were all illuminated, and decorated with flags, fireworks
were being let off; our carriage could hardly make its way through the
crowd. People were dancing in the open spaces, and the air rang with
cries of: ‘Hurrah for Bonaparte! He will save the country!’”
The hotel keeper had given to Napoleon the rooms for which General
Marbot had spoken, and Napoleon was in them. Learning how General
Marbot had been treated, Napoleon invited him to come and share the
rooms comrade-like. Marbot went to another hotel, rather in a huff, it
would seem; and Napoleon, determined not to make an enemy out of such
an occurrence, went on foot and at once to apologize and express his
regrets to General Marbot in his rooms at the other hotel. As he passed
along the street he was followed by a cheering crowd.
“General Marbot,” says his son, “was so shocked at the manner in which
the people of Lyons were running after Napoleon, as though he were
already king, that the journey to Italy was resumed as speedily as
possible.”
Napoleon’s route led him through Valence, where there was not only the
miscellaneous crowd to cheer him, but some true and tried personal
friends. For example, there was old Mademoiselle Bou, who had credited
him for board. Napoleon greeted her affectionately and made her some
valuable presents, which are now to be seen in the museum of the town.
Indeed, the news, flashed to all parts of France, “Bonaparte has come!”
created a kind of universal transport. One deputy, Baudin by name, died
of joy. Chancellor Pasquier relates that he was at the theatre one
evening in Paris, when he saw two very pretty women, sitting in the box
next to him, receive a message. They rose in excitement and hurried
away. These very pretty women, as Pasquier learned, were the sisters of
Bonaparte. A courier had brought the news that their brother had landed
at Fréjus. Béranger says in his autobiography: “I was sitting in our
reading room with thirty or forty others, when suddenly the news was
brought in that Bonaparte had returned from Egypt. At the words every
man in the room started to his feet, and burst into one long shout of
joy!”
By the signal telegraph of that day, the news had flown to the capital,
and in a short while carriages were rumbling along the road out of
Paris toward Lyons, bearing relatives and friends to meet the returning
hero. One of these lumbering vehicles bore the uneasy Josephine.
At Lyons, Napoleon, suspicious of political foes perhaps, changed
his course, and hastened toward Paris by a different road. Would-be
assassins, if there were any, as well as faithful friends, would fix
their plans for nothing.
When Napoleon got down from his carriage before his house in the street
which was called, in compliment to him, the street of Victory, there
was no wife, no relative, no friend to greet him. His home was a dismal
picture of darkness, silence, desertion; and it chilled him with a
painful shock which he never ceased to remember. The anxious Josephine,
the faithless wife, had gone to meet him, to weep away her sins on his
breast, had missed him because of his change of route; and Napoleon,
not knowing this, believed she had fled his home to escape his just
anger. Bitter days and nights this eminently human Bonaparte had known;
bitter days and nights he was to know again; but it may be doubted
whether any of them gave to him a bitterer cup to drink than this of
his return from Egypt.
Josephine came posting back as fast as she could, worn out with fear
and fatigue. Napoleon refused to see her. Locked in his room, he paced
the floor, his mind in a tempest of wrath, grief, mortification,
wounded love. The guilty wife grovelled at the door, assaulting the
barriers with sobs, plaintive cries, soft entreaties. Her friends,
Madame Tallien, the Director Gohier, her children, Eugène and Hortense,
and some of Napoleon’s friends, besieged the infuriated husband,
appealing to his pride, his generosity, his self-interest, his fondness
for the children,--in short, using every conceivable inducement,--and
at length Napoleon, worn out and softened, allowed Eugène and Hortense
to put Josephine into his arms.
Bourrienne relates that many years afterward, strolling along the
boulevard with Napoleon, he felt the Emperor’s hand suddenly close on
his arm with spasmodic grip. A carriage had just passed, and within
it Napoleon had recognized Hypolite Charles, Josephine’s old-time
paramour. That this coxcomb still lived, is proof enough that Napoleon
the Great scorned personal revenge.
While the hope of the Bonaparte family was in the East, its interest
had not been neglected in France. Joseph had been established in
state at Paris (town house, country house, etc.) and had cultivated
influential men of all parties. Lucien had been elected in Corsica as
deputy to the Council of Five Hundred. Bold, and gifted with eloquence,
he had become a power in the council, and had been elected its
president. Josephine herself had been effective, so splendid had been
her establishment, so charming her tact and gracious ways. Therefore,
when the returning soldier cast his eye over the political field,
there was much to give him satisfaction. He was committed to no party;
he was weighed down by no record; he was held in no rigid grooves.
Towering above all other heads, he alone could draw strength from all
parties. As he himself said, in his march to power he was marching
with the nation. Barras admits that all France was rushing to him as
to a new existence. That he would become the ruler was expected, was
desired; it was only a question of when and how. The almost unanimous
voice of the people would have made him Director. Details alone caused
differences of opinion. Should the constitution be set aside? Should
Bonaparte be one of five Directors? Or should he be vested with a
virtual dictatorship? Should the powers of government be distributed,
as under the Directory, or should they be concentrated? It was on
details like these that differences arose; but as to the importance of
having the benefit of Napoleon’s services, the great mass of Frenchmen
were agreed. True, the brilliant triumphs of Masséna around Zurich,
and the overthrow of the English and Russians in Holland, by Brune,
had saved the Republic from the pressing dangers of foreign invasion;
but the foreign invasion was not the only cause of disquiet in France.
The root of the evil was thought to be weakness of the government.
The constitution had been violated by the Directors in Fructidor when
Augereau had broken in upon the councils and arrested so many members.
Three Directors, it will be remembered, had driven out two, Carnot and
Barthélemy. Afterward, in Floréal (May 11, 1798), the elections had
been set aside to get rid of objectionable members. In each of these
cases the vacancies made by force had been filled by the victors.
Then, finally, the reaction had become too strong, and in Prairial
(June 18, 1799) the Fructidorians had in turn been beaten, and the
Directory changed by the putting in of Sieyès, Gohier, Moulins, and
Roger-Ducos.
People grew weary of so many convulsions, so much uncertainty, so much
vacillation, so much disorder. Besides, the finances were in hopeless
confusion. National bankruptcy virtually existed, and a forced loan
of 100,000,000 francs, the law of hostages, and the vexatious manner
in which the new Sunday law was enforced gave offence in all classes.
Barras had managed to keep his place in the Directory, but not his
power. Sieyès had entered the Directory, but wished to overthrow
it. Even had there been no Bonaparte to plan a change, a change was
inevitable. Sieyès had said, “France needs a head and a sword.” With
Sieyès present, only the sword was lacking, and he had tried to find
one. Joubert was chosen, but got killed. Bernadotte was mentioned, but
he would not take the risk. Moreau was sounded, but would not agree to
act. Nevertheless, it was but a question of time when the man and the
opportunity would meet. It might possibly have happened that Sieyès
with his new constitution and his new executive would have saved the
Republic. Better men, coming to the front and casting out the scum
which had floated to the top of the revolutionary current, might have
established the Republic on a solid basis, and saved the world from the
hideous revel of blood and carnage which marked the era of Napoleon.
No one can tell. It is easy to say that the directorial régime had
failed; it is no less easy to say that a change could have been made
without rushing into imperialism. Republics, being merely human, cannot
be perfected in a day; and there is some injustice in cutting down the
tree because it is not laden with fruit as soon as it is planted.
While Napoleon was exploring the ground and selecting his point of
attack, the Directory adopted no measures of self-defence. In a general
way they suspected Bonaparte and dreaded him, but they had no proofs
upon which they could act. Their minister of war, Dubois de Crancé told
them a plot was brewing, and advised the arrest of Napoleon. “Where
are your proofs?” demanded Gohier and Moulins. The minister could not
furnish them. Then a police agent warned them. Locking the informer in
a room, the Directors began to discuss the matter. The agent became
alarmed for his own safety, and escaped through a window.
Anxious to get Napoleon away from Paris, the Directors offered him
his choice of the armies. He pleaded shattered health, and declined.
There were two parties, possibly three, with the aid of either of which
Napoleon might have won his way to power. There were the Jacobins, the
remnants of the thorough-going democrats, who had made the Revolution.
These were represented in the Directory by Gohier and Moulins, men of
moderate capacity and fine character. But Napoleon had been cured of
his youthful Jacobinism, and believed that if he now conquered with
the democrats, he would soon be called on to conquer against them.
Again, there were the moderates, the politicians, who were sincere
republicans, but who opposed the radicalism of the democrats on the
one hand, and the weakness of the Directory on the other. Sieyès and
Roger-Ducos represented these in the Directory, and their following
among the rich and middle-class republicans was very large. Lastly came
the Barras following, the Rotten, as Napoleon called them, who would
agree to pretty much any change which would not take from them the
opportunities of jobbery.
Each of these parties courted Napoleon, who listened to them all,
used them all, and deceived them all. Barras he despised, yet lulled
to the last moment. Gohier and Moulins were carefully manipulated and
elaborately duped. Sieyès and his associates were used as tools, and
then, after the bridge had been crossed, thrown over.
Even the royalists were taken in; they were beguiled with hints that
Napoleon was preparing a way for the return of the Bourbons--he to act
the part of Monk to the exiled King.
Napoleon’s first plan was to oust from the Directory the hateful
Sieyès,--“that priest sold to Prussia,” and this proposition he urged
upon Gohier and Moulins. As there were no legal grounds upon which
the election of Sieyès could be annulled, and as Napoleon himself had
not reached the age of forty, required by the constitution, Gohier
and Moulins refused to have anything to do with the scheme. Its mere
mention should have put them on guard; but it did not. Then Napoleon
seemed, for a moment, to consider an alliance with Barras. Fouché and
other friends of that Director brought the two together, and there
was a dinner which was to have smoothed the way to an agreement.
Unfortunately for Barras he blundered heavily in proposing an
arrangement which meant that he should have the executive power, while
Napoleon should merely be military chief. Napoleon, in disgust, looked
the Director out of countenance, and, taking his carriage, returned
home to tell Fouché what a fool Barras had made of himself. The friends
of the Director, going to him at once, were able to convince even him
that he had bungled stupidly; and next day he hastened to Bonaparte
to try again. He was too late. Napoleon, upon leaving Barras the day
before had called in to see Sieyès, and to tell him that the alliance
of the Bonapartes would be made with him alone.
Naturally these two men were antagonistic. When Napoleon, quitting
the army without orders, had landed at Fréjus, Sieyès had proposed to
his colleagues in the Directory to have the deserter shot. The weak
Directory had no such nerve as such a plan required, and the advice was
ignored. Sieyès detested the abrupt, imperious soldier; and Napoleon
despised the ex-priest as a confirmed, unpractical, and conceited
visionary. Before he had failed with Gohier and Moulins, Napoleon had
treated Sieyès with such contempt as to ignore his presence, when they
were thrown together at one of the official banquets. The enraged
ex-priest exclaimed to his friends, “See the insolence of that little
fellow to a member of the government which ought to have had him shot!”
Napoleon, intent upon the plan of ousting Sieyès from the Directory,
asked _his_ friends, “What were they thinking about to put into the
Directory that--priest sold to Prussia?”
Powerful as were these feelings of reciprocal dislike, they were
overcome. Talleyrand, Joseph Bonaparte, Cabanis, and others plied both
the warrior and the priest with those arguments best suited to each.
The promptings of self-interest, as well as the necessities of the
case, drew them together. With Sieyès--jealous, irritable, suspicious,
impracticable--the task had been most difficult. He knew he was being
ensnared,--emphatically said so,--but yielded.
“Once Napoleon gets in he will push his colleagues behind him, like
this,” and Sieyès forcibly illustrated what he meant by bustling
between Joseph and Cabanis, and then thrusting them back. Among the
civilians the Bonaparte campaign at this crisis was actively aided
by Talleyrand, Cambacérès, Roger-Ducos, Roederer, Boulay, Regnier,
Cabanis, the friend of Mirabeau. Among the soldiery the leading
canvassers were Sébastiani, Murat, Leclerc, Marmont, Lannes, Macdonald.
The plan agreed on was that the Council of Ancients, a majority having
been gained over, should decree the removal of the legislative sessions
to St. Cloud, name Napoleon commander of all the troops in Paris,
appoint a provisional consulate (Napoleon, Sieyès, and Roger-Ducos),
during which the councils should stand adjourned and a new constitution
be framed. The day fixed upon was the 18th of Brumaire (November 9,
1799), and the Ancients were to meet at seven and pass the decrees
agreed on by the Bonaparte steering committee. The Five Hundred, a
majority of which had not been won, were to meet _after_ the Ancients
should have voted the removal of the councils to St. Cloud. Hence they
would be powerless to prevent Napoleon from doing what he proposed for
the 18th. Whether they would be able to resist him after they formed
themselves at St. Cloud on the 19th, was another matter.