VENDÉMIAIRE
The next period of Buonaparte's life presents few features of
interest. He was called upon to supervise the guns and stores for the
Army of Italy, and also to inspect the fortifications and artillery of
the coast. At Marseilles his zeal outstripped his discretion. He
ordered the reconstruction of the fortress which had been destroyed
during the Revolution; but when the townsfolk heard the news, they
protested so vehemently that the work was stopped and an order was
issued for Buonaparte's arrest. From this difficulty the friendship of
the younger Robespierre and of Salicetti, the Commissioners of the
Convention, availed to rescue him; but the incident proves that his
services at Toulon were not so brilliant as to have raised him above
the general level of meritorious officers, who were applauded while
they prospered, but might be sent to the guillotine for any serious
offence.
In February, 1794, he was appointed at Nice general in command of the
artillery of the Army of Italy, which drove the Sardinian troops from
several positions between Ventimiglia and Oneglia. Thence, swinging
round by passes of the Maritime Alps, they outflanked the positions of
the Austro-Sardinian forces at the Col di Tenda, which had defied all
attack in front. Buonaparte's share in this turning operation seems to
have been restricted to the effective handling of artillery, and the
chief credit here rested with Masséna, who won the first of his
laurels in the country of his birth. He was of humble parentage;
yet his erect bearing, proud animated glance, curt penetrating speech,
and keen repartees, proclaimed a nature at once active and wary, an
intellect both calculating and confident. Such was the man who was to
immortalize his name in many a contest, until his glory paled before
the greater genius of Wellington.
Much of the credit of organizing this previously unsuccessful army
belongs to the younger Robespierre, who, as Commissioner of the
Convention, infused his energy into all departments of the service.
For some months his relations to Buonaparte were those of intimacy;
but whether they extended to complete sympathy on political matters
may be doubted. The younger Robespierre held the revolutionary creed
with sufficient ardour, though one of his letters dated from Oneglia
suggests that the fame of the Terror was hurtful to the prospects of
the campaign. It states that the whole of the neighbouring inhabitants
had fled before the French soldiers, in the belief that they were
destroyers of religion and eaters of babies: this was inconvenient, as
it prevented the supply of provisions and the success of forced loans.
The letter suggests that he was a man of action rather than of ideas,
and probably it was this practical quality which bound Buonaparte in
friendship to him. Yet it is difficult to fathom Buonaparte's ideas
about the revolutionary despotism which was then deluging Paris with
blood. Outwardly he appeared to sympathize with it. Such at least is
the testimony of Marie Robespierre, with whom Buonaparte's sisters
were then intimate. "Buonaparte," she said, "was a republican: I will
even say that he took the side of the Mountain: at least, that was the
impression left on my mind by his opinions when I was at Nice.... His
admiration for my elder brother, his friendship for my younger
brother, and perhaps also the interest inspired by my misfortunes,
gained for me, under the Consulate, a pension of 3,600 francs."[29]
Equally noteworthy is the later declaration of Napoleon that
Robespierre was the "scapegoat of the Revolution." [30] It appears
probable, then, that he shared the Jacobinical belief that the Terror
was a necessary though painful stage in the purification of the body
politic. His admiration of the rigour of Lycurgus, and his dislike of
all superfluous luxury, alike favour this supposition; and as he
always had the courage of his convictions, it is impossible to
conceive him clinging to the skirts of the terrorists merely from a
mean hope of prospective favours. That is the alternative explanation
of his intimacy with young Robespierre. Some of his injudicious
admirers, in trying to disprove his complicity with the terrorists,
impale themselves on this horn of the dilemma. In seeking to clear
him from the charge of Terrorism, they stain him with the charge of
truckling to the terrorists. They degrade him from the level of St.
Just to that of Barrère.
A sentence in one of young Robespierre's letters shows that he never
felt completely sure about the young officer. After enumerating to his
brother Buonaparte's merits, he adds: "He is a Corsican, and offers
only the guarantee of a man of that nation who has resisted the
caresses of Paoli and whose property has been ravaged by that
traitor." Evidently, then, Robespierre regarded Buonaparte with some
suspicion as an insular Proteus, lacking those sureties, mental and
pecuniary, which reduced a man to dog-like fidelity.
Yet, however warily Buonaparte picked his steps along the slopes of
the revolutionary volcano, he was destined to feel the scorch of the
central fires. He had recently been intrusted with a mission to the
Genoese Republic, which was in a most difficult position. It was
subject to pressure from three sides; from English men-of-war that had
swooped down on a French frigate, the "Modeste," in Genoese waters;
and from actual invasion by the French on the west and by the
Austrians on the north. Despite the great difficulties of his task, the
young envoy bent the distracted Doge and Senate to his will. He
might, therefore, have expected gratitude from his adopted country;
but shortly after he returned to Nice he was placed under arrest, and
was imprisoned in a fort near Antibes.
The causes of this swift reverse of fortune were curiously complex.
The Robespierres had in the meantime been guillotined at Paris (July
28th, or Thermidor 10th); and this "Thermidorian" reaction alone would
have sufficed to endanger Buonaparte's head. But his position was
further imperilled by his recent strategic suggestions, which had
served to reduce to a secondary _rôle_ the French Army of the Alps.
The operations of that force had of late been strangely thwarted; and
its leaders, searching for the paralyzing influence, discovered it in
the advice of Buonaparte. Their suspicions against him were formulated
in a secret letter to the Committee of Public Safety, which stated
that the Army of the Alps had been kept inactive by the intrigues of
the younger Robespierre and of Ricord. Many a head had fallen for
reasons less serious than these. But Buonaparte had one infallible
safeguard: he could not well be spared. After a careful examination of
his papers, the Commissioners, Salicetti and Albitte, provisionally
restored him to liberty, but not, for some weeks, to his rank of
general (August 20th, 1794). The chief reason assigned for his
liberation was the service which his knowledge and talents might
render to the Republic, a reference to the knowledge of the Italian
coast-line which he had gained during the mission to Genoa.
For a space his daring spirit was doomed to chafe in comparative
inactivity, in supervising the coast artillery. But his faults were
forgotten in the need which was soon felt for his warlike prowess. An
expedition was prepared to free Corsica from "the tyranny of the
English"; and in this Buonaparte sailed, as general commanding the
artillery. With him were two friends, Junot and Marmont, who had clung
to him through his recent troubles; the former was to be helped to
wealth and fame by Buonaparte's friendship, the latter by his own
brilliant gifts.[31] In this expedition their talent was of no avail.
The French were worsted in an engagement with the British fleet, and
fell back in confusion to the coast of France. Once again Buonaparte's
Corsican enterprises were frustrated by the ubiquitous lords of the
sea: against them he now stored up a double portion of hate, for in
the meantime his inspectorship of coast artillery had been given to
his fellow-countryman, Casabianca.
The fortunes of these Corsican exiles drifted hither and thither in
many perplexing currents, as Buonaparte was once more to discover. It
was a prevalent complaint that there were too many of them seeking
employment in the army of the south; and a note respecting the career
of the young officer made by General Schérer, who now commanded the
French Army of Italy, shows that Buonaparte had aroused at least as
much suspicion as admiration. It runs: "This officer is general of
artillery, and in this arm has sound knowledge, but has somewhat too
much ambition and intriguing habits for his advancement." All things
considered, it was deemed advisable to transfer him to the army which
was engaged in crushing the Vendéan revolt, a service which he loathed
and was determined, if possible, to evade. Accompanied by his faithful
friends, Marmont and Junot, as also by his young brother Louis, he set
out for Paris (May, 1795).
In reality Fortune never favoured him more than when she removed him
from the coteries of intriguing Corsicans on the coast of Provence and
brought him to the centre of all influence. An able schemer at Paris
could decide the fate of parties and governments. At the frontiers men
could only accept the decrees of the omnipotent capital. Moreover, the
Revolution, after passing through the molten stage, was now beginning
to solidify, an important opportunity for the political craftsman. The
spring of the year 1795 witnessed a strange blending of the new
fanaticism with the old customs. Society, dammed up for a time by the
Spartan rigour of Robespierre, was now flowing back into its wonted
channels. Gay equipages were seen in the streets; theatres, prosperous
even during the Terror, were now filled to overflowing; gambling,
whether in money or in stocks and _assignats_, was now permeating all
grades of society; and men who had grown rich by amassing the
confiscated State lands now vied with bankers, stock-jobbers, and
forestallers of grain in vulgar ostentation. As for the poor, they
were meeting their match in the gilded youth of Paris, who with
clubbed sticks asserted the right of the rich to be merry. If the
_sansculottes_ attempted to restore the days of the Terror, the
National Guards of Paris were ready to sweep them back into the slums.
Such was their fate on May 20th, shortly after Buonaparte's arrival at
Paris. Any dreams which he may have harboured of restoring the
Jacobins to power were dissipated, for Paris now plunged into the
gaieties of the _ancien régime_. The Terror was remembered only as a
horrible nightmare, which served to add zest to the pleasures of the
present. In some circles no one was received who had not lost a
relative by the guillotine. With a ghastly merriment characteristic of
the time, "victim balls" were given, to which those alone were
admitted who could produce the death warrant of some family
connection: these secured the pleasure of dancing in costumes which
recalled those of the scaffold, and of beckoning ever and anon to
their partners with nods that simulated the fall of the severed head.
It was for this, then, that the amiable Louis, the majestic Marie
Antoinette, the Minerva-like Madame Roland, the Girondins vowed to the
utter quest of liberty, the tyrant-quelling Danton, the incorruptible
Robespierre himself, had felt the fatal axe; in order that the mimicry
of their death agonies might tickle jaded appetites, and help to weave
anew the old Circean spells. So it seemed to the few who cared to
think of the frightful sacrifices of the past, and to measure them
against the seemingly hopeless degradation of the present.
Some such thoughts seem to have flitted across the mind of Buonaparte
in those months of forced inactivity. It was a time of disillusionment.
Rarely do we find thenceforth in his correspondence any gleams of
faith respecting the higher possibilities of the human race. The
golden visions of youth now vanish along with the _bonnet rouge_ and
the jargon of the Terror. His bent had ever been for the material and
practical: and now that faith in the Jacobinical creed was vanishing,
it was more than ever desirable to grapple that errant balloon to
substantial facts. Evidently, the Revolution must now trust to the
clinging of the peasant proprietors to the recently confiscated lands
of the Church and of the emigrant nobles. If all else was vain and
transitory, here surely was a solid basis of material interests to
which the best part of the manhood of France would tenaciously adhere,
defying alike the plots of reactionaries and the forces of monarchical
Europe. Of these interests Buonaparte was to be the determined
guarantor. Amidst much that was visionary in his later policy he never
wavered in his championship of the new peasant proprietors. He was
ever the peasants' General, the peasants' Consul, the peasants'
Emperor.
The transition of the Revolution to an ordinary form of polity was
also being furthered by its unparalleled series of military triumphs.
When Buonaparte's name was as yet unknown, except in Corsica and
Provence, France practically gained her "natural boundaries," the
Rhine and the Alps. In the campaigns of 1793-4, the soldiers of
Pichegru, Kléber, Hoche, and Moreau overran the whole of the Low
Countries and chased the Germans beyond the Rhine; the Piedmontese
were thrust behind the Alps; the Spaniards behind the Pyrenees. In
quick succession State after State sued for peace: Tuscany in
February, 1795; Prussia in April; Hanover, Westphalia, and Saxony in
May; Spain and Hesse-Cassel in July; Switzerland and Denmark in
August.
Such was the state of France when Buonaparte came to seek his
fortunes in the Sphinx-like capital. His artillery command had been
commuted to a corresponding rank in the infantry--a step that deeply
incensed him. He attributed it to malevolent intriguers; but all his
efforts to obtain redress were in vain. Lacking money and patronage,
known only as an able officer and facile intriguer of the bankrupt
Jacobinical party, he might well have despaired. He was now almost
alone. Marmont had gone off to the Army of the Rhine; but Junot was
still with him, allured perhaps by Madame Permon's daughter, whom he
subsequently married. At the house of this amiable hostess, an old
friend of his family, Buonaparte found occasional relief from the
gloom of his existence. The future Madame Junot has described him as
at this time untidy, unkempt, sickly, remarkable for his extreme
thinness and the almost yellow tint of his visage, which was, however,
lit up by "two eyes sparkling with keenness and will-power"--evidently
a Corsican falcon, pining for action, and fretting its soaring spirit
in that vapid town life. Action Buonaparte might have had, but only of
a kind that he loathed. He might have commanded the troops destined to
crush the brave royalist peasants of La Vendée. But, whether from
scorn of such vulture-work, or from an instinct that a nobler quarry
might be started at Paris, he refused to proceed to the Army of the
West, and on the plea of ill-health remained in the capital. There he
spent his time deeply pondering on politics and strategy. He designed
a history of the last two years, and drafted a plan of campaign for
the Army of Italy, which, later on, was to bear him to fortune.
Probably the geographical insight which it displayed may have led to
his appointment (August 20th, 1795) to the topographical bureau of the
Committee of Public Safety. His first thought on hearing of this
important advancement was that it opened up an opportunity for
proceeding to Turkey to organize the artillery of the Sultan; and in a
few days he sent in a formal request to that effect--the first
tangible proof of that yearning after the Orient which haunted him all
through life. But, while straining his gaze eastwards, he experienced
a sharp rebuff. The Committee was on the point of granting his
request, when an examination of his recent conduct proved him guilty
of a breach of discipline in not proceeding to his Vendéan command. On
the very day when one department of the Committee empowered him to
proceed to Constantinople, the Central Committee erased his name from
the list of general officers (September 15th).
This time the blow seemed fatal. But Fortune appeared to compass his
falls only in order that he might the more brilliantly tower aloft.
Within three weeks he was hailed as the saviour of the new republican
constitution. The cause of this almost magical change in his prospects
is to be sought in the political unrest of France, to which we must
now briefly advert.
All through this summer of 1795 there were conflicts between Jacobins
and royalists. In the south the latter party had signally avenged
itself for the agonies of the preceding years, and the ardour of the
French temperament seemed about to drive that hapless people from the
"Red Terror" to a veritable "White Terror," when two disasters checked
the course of the reaction. An attempt of a large force of emigrant
French nobles, backed up by British money and ships, to rouse Brittany
against the Convention was utterly crushed by the able young Hoche;
and nearly seven hundred prisoners were afterwards shot down in cold
blood (July). Shortly before this blow, the little prince styled Louis
XVII. succumbed to the brutal treatment of his gaolers at the Temple
in Paris; and the hopes of the royalists now rested on the unpopular
Comte de Provence. Nevertheless, the political outlook in the summer
of 1795 was not reassuring to the republicans; and the Commission of
Eleven, empowered by the Convention to draft new organic laws, drew up
an instrument of government, which, though republican in form, seemed
to offer all the stability of the most firmly rooted oligarchy. Some
such compromise was perhaps necessary; for the Commonwealth was
confronted by three dangers, anarchy resulting from the pressure of
the mob, an excessive centralization of power in the hands of two
committees, and the possibility of a _coup d'état_ by some pretender
or adventurer. Indeed, the student of French history cannot fail to
see that this is the problem which is ever before the people of
France. It has presented itself in acute though diverse phases in
1797,1799,1814, 1830, 1848, 1851, and in 1871. Who can say that the
problem has yet found its complete solution?
In some respects the constitution which the Convention voted in
August, 1795, was skilfully adapted to meet the needs of the time.
Though democratic in spirit, it granted a vote only to those citizens
who had resided for a year in some dwelling and had paid taxes, thus
excluding the rabble who had proved to be dangerous to any settled
government. It also checked the hasty legislation which had brought
ridicule on successive National Assemblies. In order to moderate the
zeal for the manufacture of decrees, which had often exceeded one
hundred a month, a second or revising chamber was now to be formed on
the basis of age; for it had been found that the younger the deputies
the faster came forth the fluttering flocks of decrees, that often
came home to roost in the guise of curses. A senatorial guillotine, it
was now proposed, should thin out the fledglings before they flew
abroad at all. Of the seven hundred and fifty deputies of France, the
two hundred and fifty oldest men were to form the Council of Ancients,
having powers to amend or reject the proposals emanating from the
Council of Five Hundred. In this Council were the younger deputies,
and with them rested the sole initiation of laws. Thus the young
deputies were to make the laws, but the older deputies were to amend
or reject them; and this nice adjustment of the characteristics of
youth and age, a due blending of enthusiasm with caution, promised to
invigorate the body politic and yet guard its vital interests.
Lastly, in order that the two Councils should continuously represent
the feelings of France, one third of their members must retire for
re-election every year, a device which promised to prevent any violent
change in their composition, such as might occur if, at the end of
their three years' membership, all were called upon to resign at once.
But the real crux of constitution builders had hitherto been in the
relations of the Legislature to the Executive. How should the brain of
the body politic, that is, the Legislature, be connected with the
hand, that is, the Executive? Obviously, so argued all French
political thinkers, the two functions were distinct and must be kept
separate. The results of this theory of the separation of powers were
clearly traceable in the course of the Revolution. When the hand had
been left almost powerless, as in 1791-2, owing to democratic jealousy
of the royal Ministry, the result had been anarchy. The supreme needs
of the State in the agonies of 1793 had rendered the hand omnipotent:
the Convention, that is, the brain, was for some time powerless before
its own instrument, the two secret committees. Experience now showed
that the brain must exercise a general control over the hand, without
unduly hampering its actions. Evidently, then, the deputies of France
must intrust the details of administration to responsible Ministers,
though some directing agency seemed needed as a spur to energy and a
check against royalist plots. In brief, the Committee of Public
Safety, purged of its more dangerous powers, was to furnish the model
for a new body of five members, termed the Directory. This
organism, which was to give its name to the whole period 1795-1799,
was not the Ministry. There was no Ministry as we now use the term.
There were Ministers who were responsible individually for their
departments of State: but they never met for deliberation, or
communicated with the Legislature; they were only heads of
departments, who were responsible individually to the Directors. These
five men formed a powerful committee, deliberating in private on the
whole policy of the State and on all the work of the Ministers. The
Directory had not, it is true, the right of initiating laws and of
arbitrary arrest which the two committees had freely exercised during
the Terror. Its dependence on the Legislature seemed also to be
guaranteed by the Directors being appointed by the two legislative
Councils; while one of the five was to vacate his office for
re-election every year. But in other respects the directorial powers
were almost as extensive as those wielded by the two secret
committees, or as those which Bonaparte was to inherit from the
Directory in 1799. They comprised the general control of policy in
peace and war, the right to negotiate treaties (subject to
ratification by the legislative councils), to promulgate laws voted by
the Councils and watch over their execution, and to appoint or dismiss
the Ministers of State.
Such was the constitution which was proclaimed on September 22nd,
1795, or 1st Vendémiaire, Year IV., of the revolutionary calendar. An
important postscript to the original constitution now excited fierce
commotions which enabled the young officer to repair his own shattered
fortunes. The Convention, terrified at the thought of a general
election, which might send up a malcontent or royalist majority,
decided to impose itself on France for at least two years longer. With
an effrontery unparalleled in parliamentary annals, it decreed that
the law of the new constitution, requiring the re-election of
one-third of the deputies every year, should now be applied to itself;
and that the rest of its members should sit in the forthcoming
Councils. At once a cry of disgust and rage arose from all who were
weary of the Convention and all its works. "Down with the
two-thirds!" was the cry that resounded through the streets of Paris.
The movement was not so much definitely royalist as vaguely
malcontent. The many were enraged by the existing dearth and by the
failure of the Revolution to secure even cheap bread. Doubtless the
royalists strove to drive on the discontent to the desired goal, and
in many parts they tinged the movement with an unmistakably Bourbon
tint. But it is fairly certain that in Paris they could not alone have
fomented a discontent so general as that of Vendémiaire. That they
would have profited by the defeat of the Convention is, however,
equally certain. The history of the Revolution proves that those who
at first merely opposed the excesses of the Jacobins gradually drifted
over to the royalists. The Convention now found itself attacked in the
very city which had been the chosen abode of Liberty and Equality.
Some thirty thousand of the Parisian National Guards were determined
to give short shrift to this Assembly that clung so indecently to
life; and as the armies were far away, the Parisian malcontents seemed
masters of the situation. Without doubt they would have been but for
their own precipitation and the energy of Buonaparte.
But how came he to receive the military authority which was so
potently to influence the course of events? We left him in Fructidor
disgraced: we find him in the middle of Vendémiaire leading part of
the forces of the Convention. This bewildering change was due to the
pressing needs of the Republic, to his own signal abilities, and to
the discerning eye of Barras, whose career claims a brief notice.
Paul Barras came of a Provençal family, and had an adventurous life
both on land and in maritime expeditions. Gifted with a robust frame,
consummate self-assurance, and a ready tongue, he was well equipped
for intrigues, both amorous and political, when the outbreak of the
Revolution gave his thoughts a more serious turn. Espousing the
ultra-democratic side, he yet contrived to emerge unscathed from the
schisms which were fatal to less dextrous trimmers. He was present at
the siege of Toulon, and has striven in his "Mémoires" to disparage
Buonaparte's services and exalt his own. At the crisis of Thermidor
the Convention intrusted him with the command of the "army of the
interior," and the energy which he then displayed gained for him the
same position in the equally critical days of Vendémiaire. Though he
subsequently carped at the conduct of Buonaparte, his action proved
his complete confidence in that young officer's capacity: he at once
sent for him, and intrusted him with most important duties. Herein
lies the chief chance of immortality for the name of Barras; not that,
as a terrorist, he slaughtered royalists at Toulon; not that he was
the military chief of the Thermidorians, who, from fear of their own
necks, ended the supremacy of Robespierre; not even that he degraded
the new _régime_ by a cynical display of all the worst vices of the
old; but rather because he was now privileged to hold the stirrup for
the great captain who vaulted lightly into the saddle.
The present crisis certainly called for a man of skill and
determination. The malcontents had been emboldened by the timorous
actions of General Menou, who had previously been intrusted with the
task of suppressing the agitation. Owing to a praiseworthy desire to
avoid bloodshed, that general wasted time in parleying with the most
rebellious of the "sections" of Paris. The Convention now appointed
Barras to the command, while Buonaparte, Brune, Carteaux, Dupont,
Loison, Vachot, and Vézu were charged to serve under him.[32] Such was
the decree of the Convention, which therefore refutes Napoleon's later
claim that he was in command, and that of his admirers that he was
second in command.
Yet, intrusted from the outset by Barras with important duties, he
unquestionably became the animating spirit of the defence. "From the
first," says Thiébault, "his activity was astonishing: he seemed to be
everywhere at once: he surprised people by his laconic, clear, and
prompt orders: everybody was struck by the vigour of his arrangements,
and passed from admiration to confidence, from confidence to
enthusiasm." Everything now depended on skill and enthusiasm. The
defenders of the Convention, comprising some four or five thousand
troops of the line, and between one and two thousand patriots,
gendarmes, and Invalides, were confronted by nearly thirty thousand
National Guards. The odds were therefore wellnigh as heavy as those
which menaced Louis XVI. on the day of his final overthrow. But the
place of the yielding king was now filled by determined men, who saw
the needs of the situation. In the earlier scenes of the Revolution,
Buonaparte had pondered on the efficacy of artillery in
street-fighting--a fit subject for his geometrical genius. With a few
cannon, he knew that he could sweep all the approaches to the palace;
and, on Barras' orders, he despatched a dashing cavalry officer,
Murat--a name destined to become famous from Madrid to Moscow--to
bring the artillery from the neighbouring camp of Sablons. Murat
secured them before the malcontents of Paris could lay hands on them;
and as the "sections" of Paris had yielded up their own cannon after
the affrays of May, they now lacked the most potent force in
street-fighting. Their actions were also paralyzed by divided
counsels: their commander, an old general named Danican, moved his men
hesitatingly; he wasted precious minutes in parleying, and thus gave
time to Barras' small but compact force to fight them in detail.
Buonaparte had skilfully disposed his cannon to bear on the royalist
columns that threatened the streets north of the Tuileries. But for
some time the two parties stood face to face, seeking to cajole or
intimidate one another. As the autumn afternoon waned, shots were
fired from some houses near the church of St. Roch, where the
malcontents had their headquarters.[33] At once the streets became the
scene of a furious fight; furious but unequal; for Buonaparte's cannon
tore away the heads of the malcontent columns. In vain did the
royalists pour in their volleys from behind barricades, or from the
neighbouring houses: finally they retreated on the barricaded church,
or fled down the Rue St. Honoré. Meanwhile their bands from across the
river, 5,000 strong, were filing across the bridges, and menaced the
Tuileries from that side, until here also they melted away before the
grapeshot and musketry poured into their front and flank. By six
o'clock the conflict was over. The fight presents few, if any,
incidents which are authentic. The well-known engraving of Helman,
which shows Buonaparte directing the storming of the church of St.
Roch is unfortunately quite incorrect. He was not engaged there, but
in the streets further east: the church was not stormed: the
malcontents held it all through the night, and quietly surrendered it
next morning.
Such was the great day of Vendémiaire. It cost the lives of about two
hundred on each side; at least, that is the usual estimate, which
seems somewhat incongruous with the stories of fusillading and
cannonading at close quarters, until we remember that it is the custom
of memoir-writers and newspaper editors to trick out the details of a
fight, and in the case of civil warfare to minimise the bloodshed.
Certainly the Convention acted with clemency in the hour of victory:
two only of the rebel leaders were put to death; and it is pleasing to
remember that when Menou was charged with treachery, Buonaparte used
his influence to procure his freedom.
Bourrienne states that in his later days the victor deeply regretted
his action in this day of Vendémiaire. The assertion seems
incredible. The "whiff of grapeshot" crushed a movement which could
have led only to present anarchy, and probably would have brought
France back to royalism of an odious type. It taught a severe lesson
to a fickle populace which, according to Mme. de Staël, was hungering
for the spoils of place as much as for any political object. Of all
the events of his post-Corsican life, Buonaparte need surely never
have felt compunctions for Vendémiaire.[34]
After four signal reverses in his career, he now enters on a path
strewn with glories. The first reward for his signal services to the
Republic was his appointment to be second in command of the army of
the interior; and when Barras resigned the first command, he took that
responsible post. But more brilliant honours were soon to follow, the
first of a social character, the second purely military.
Buonaparte had already appeared timidly and awkwardly at the _salon_
of the voluptuous Barras, where the fair but frail Madame
Tallien--Notre Dame de Thermidor she was styled--dazzled Parisian
society by her classic features and the uncinctured grace of her
attire. There he reappeared, not in the threadbare uniform that had
attracted the giggling notice of that giddy throng, but as the lion of
the society which his talents had saved. His previous attempts to gain
the hand of a lady had been unsuccessful. He had been refused, first
by Mlle. Clary, sister of his brother Joseph's wife, and quite
recently by Madame Permon. Indeed, the scarecrow young officer had not
been a brilliant match. But now he saw at that _salon_ a charming
widow, Josephine de Beauharnais, whose husband had perished in the
Terror. The ardour of his southern temperament, long repressed by his
privations, speedily rekindles in her presence: his stiff, awkward
manners thaw under her smiles: his silence vanishes when she praises
his military gifts: he admires her tact, her sympathy, her beauty: he
determines to marry her. The lady, on her part, seems to have been
somewhat terrified by her uncanny wooer: she comments questioningly on
his "violent tenderness almost amounting to frenzy": she notes
uneasily his "keen inexplicable gaze which imposes even on our
Directors": How would this eager nature, this masterful energy,
consort with her own "Creole nonchalance"? She did well to ask herself
whether the general's almost volcanic passion would not soon exhaust
itself, and turn from her own fading charms to those of women who
were his equals in age. Besides, when she frankly asked her own heart,
she found that she loved him not: she only admired him. Her chief
consolation was that if she married him, her friend Barras would help
to gain for Buonaparte the command of the Army of Italy. The advice of
Barras undoubtedly helped to still the questioning surmises of
Josephine; and the wedding was celebrated, as a civil contract, on
March 9th, 1796. With a pardonable coquetry, the bride entered her age
on the register as four years less than the thirty-four which had
passed over her: while her husband, desiring still further to lessen
the disparity, entered his date of birth as 1768.
A fortnight before the wedding, he had been appointed to command the
Army of Italy: and after a honeymoon of two days at Paris, he left his
bride to take up his new military duties. Clearly, then, there was
some connection between this brilliant fortune and his espousal of
Josephine. But the assertion that this command was the "dowry" offered
by Barras to the somewhat reluctant bride is more piquant than
correct. That the brilliance of Buonaparte's prospects finally
dissipated her scruples may be frankly admitted. But the appointment
to a command of a French army did not rest with Barras. He was only
one of the five Directors who now decided the chief details of
administration. His colleagues were Letourneur, Rewbell, La
Réveillière-Lépeaux, and the great Carnot; and, as a matter of fact,
it was the last-named who chiefly decided the appointment in question.
He had seen and pondered over the plan of campaign which Buonaparte
had designed for the Army of Italy; and the vigour of the conception,
the masterly appreciation of topographical details which it displayed,
and the trenchant energy of its style had struck conviction to his
strategic genius. Buonaparte owed his command, not to a backstairs
intrigue, as was currently believed in the army, but rather to his own
commanding powers. While serving with the Army of Italy in 1794, he
had carefully studied the coast-line and the passes leading inland;
and, according to the well-known savant, Volney, the young officer,
shortly after his release from imprisonment, sketched out to him and
to a Commissioner of the Convention the details of the very plan of
campaign which was to carry him victoriously from the Genoese Riviera
into the heart of Austria.[35] While describing this masterpiece of
strategy, says Volney, Buonaparte spoke as if inspired. We can fancy
the wasted form dilating with a sense of power, the thin sallow cheeks
aglow with enthusiasm, the hawk-like eyes flashing at the sight of the
helpless Imperial quarry, as he pointed out on the map of Piedmont and
Lombardy the features which would favour a dashing invader and carry
him to the very gates of Vienna. The splendours of the Imperial Court
at the Tuileries seem tawdry and insipid when compared with the
intellectual grandeur which lit up that humble lodging at Nice with
the first rays that heralded the dawn of Italian liberation.
With the fuller knowledge which he had recently acquired, he now in
January, 1796, elaborated this plan of campaign, so that it at once
gained Carnot's admiration. The Directors forwarded it to General
Schérer, who was in command of the Army of Italy, but promptly
received the "brutal" reply that the man who had drafted the plan
ought to come and carry it out. Long dissatisfied with Schérer's
inactivity and constant complaints, the Directory now took him at his
word, and replaced him by Buonaparte. Such is the truth about
Buonaparte's appointment to the Army of Italy.
To Nice, then, the young general set out (March 21st) accompanied, or
speedily followed, by his faithful friends, Marmont and Junot, as well
as by other officers of whose energy he was assured, Berthier, Murat,
and Duroc. How much had happened since the early summer of 1795, when
he had barely the means to pay his way to Paris! A sure instinct had
drawn him to that hot-bed of intrigues. He had played a desperate
game, risking his commission in order that he might keep in close
touch with the central authority. His reward for this almost
superhuman confidence in his own powers was correspondingly great; and
now, though he knew nothing of the handling of cavalry and infantry
save from books, he determined to lead the Army of Italy to a series
of conquests that would rival those of Cæsar. In presence of a will so
stubborn and genius so fervid, what wonder that a friend prophesied
that his halting-place would be either the throne or the scaffold?
* * * * *