We have said that Moreau, furnished no doubt with instructions, left the
little house in the Rue de la Victoire, while Bonaparte returned alone
to the salon. Everything furnished an object of comment in such a
company as was there assembled; the absence of Moreau, the return of
Bonaparte unaccompanied, and the visible good humor which animated his
countenance, were all remarked upon.
The eyes which fastened upon him most ardently were those of Josephine
and Roland. Moreau for Bonaparte added twenty chances to the success of
the plot; Moreau against Bonaparte robbed him of fifty. Josephine’s
eyes were so supplicating that, on leaving Lucien, Bonaparte pushed his
brother toward his wife. Lucien understood, and approached Josephine,
saying: “All is well.”
“Moreau?”
“With us.”
“I thought he was a Republican.”
“He has been made to see that we are acting for the good of the
Republic.”
“I should have thought him ambitious,” said Roland.
Lucien started and looked at the young man.
“You are right,” said he.
“Then,” remarked Josephine, “if he is ambitious he will not let
Bonaparte seize the power.”
“Why not?”
“Because he will want it himself.”
“Yes; but he will wait till it comes to him ready-made, inasmuch as he
doesn’t know how to create it, and is afraid to seize it.”
During this time Bonaparte had joined the group which had formed around
Talma after dinner, as well as before. Remarkable men are always the
centre of attraction.
“What are you saying, Talma?” demanded Bonaparte. “It seems to me they
are listening to you very attentively.”
“Yes, but my reign is over,” replied the artist.
“Why so?”
“I do as citizen Barras has done; I abdicate?”
“So citizen Barras has abdicated?”
“So rumor says.”
“Is it known who will take his place?”
“It is surmised.”
“Is it one of your friends, Talma?”
“Time was,” said Talma, bowing, “when he did me the honor to say I was
his.”
“Well, in that case, Talma, I shall ask for your influence.”
“Granted,” said Talma, laughing; “it only remains to ask how it can
serve you.”
“Get me sent back to Italy; Barras would not let me go.”
“The deuce!” said Talma; “don’t you know the song, general, ‘We won’t go
back to the woods when the laurels are clipped’?”
“Oh! Roscius, Roscius!” said Bonaparte, smiling, “have you grown a
flatterer during my absence?”
“Roscius was the friend of Cæsar, general, and when the conqueror
returned from Gaul he probably said to him about the same thing I have
said to you.”
Bonaparte laid his band on Talma’s shoulder.
“Would he have said the same words after crossing the Rubicon?”
Talma looked Bonaparte straight in the face.
“No,” he replied; “he would have said, like the augur, ‘Cæsar, beware of
the Ides of March!’”
Bonaparte slipped his hand into his breast as if in search of
something; finding the dagger of the Companions of Jehu, he grasped
it convulsively. Had he a presentiment of the conspiracies of Arena,
Saint-Regent, and Cadoudal?
Just then the door opened and a servant announced: “General Bernadotte!”
“Bernadotte,” muttered Bonaparte, involuntarily. “What does he want
here?”
Since Bonaparte’s return, Bernadotte had held aloof from him, refusing
all the advances which the general-in-chief and his friends had made
him. The fact is, Bernadotte had long since discerned the politician
beneath the soldier’s greatcoat, the dictator beneath the general, and
Bernadotte, for all that he became king in later years, was at that time
a very different Republican from Moreau. Moreover, Bernadotte believed
he had reason to complain of Bonaparte. His military career had not
been less brilliant than that of the young general; his fortunes were
destined to run parallel with his to the end, only, more fortunate than
that other--Bernadotte was to die on his throne. It is true, he did not
conquer that throne; he was called to it.
Son of a lawyer at Pau, Bernadotte, born in 1764--that is to say, five
years before Bonaparte--was in the ranks as a private soldier when only
eighteen. In 1789 he was only a sergeant-major. But those were the days
of rapid promotion. In 1794, Kléber created him brigadier-general on the
field of battle, where he had decided the fortunes of the day. Becoming
a general of division, he played a brilliant part at Fleurus and
Juliers, forced Maestricht to capitulate, took Altdorf, and protected,
against an army twice as numerous as his own, the retreat of Joubert.
In 1797 the Directory ordered him to take seventeen thousand men to
Bonaparte. These seventeen thousand men were his old soldiers, veterans
of Kléber, Marceau and Hoche, soldiers of the Sambre-et-Meuse; and yet
Bernadotte forgot all rivalry and seconded Bonaparte with all his might,
taking part in the passage of the Tagliamento, capturing Gradiska,
Trieste, Laybach, Idria, bringing back to the Directory, after
the campaign, the flags of the enemy, and accepting, possibly with
reluctance, an embassy to Vienna, while Bonaparte secured the command of
the army of Egypt.
At Vienna, a riot, excited by the tri-color flag hoisted above the
French embassy, for which the ambassador was unable to obtain redress,
forced him to demand his passports. On his return to Paris, the
Directory appointed him Minister of War. An underhand proceeding of
Sièyes, who was offended by Bernadotte’s republicanism, induced the
latter to send in his resignation. It was accepted, and when Bonaparte
landed at Fréjus the late minister had been three months out of office.
Since Bonaparte’s return, some of Bernadotte’s friends had sought to
bring about his reinstatement; but Bonaparte had opposed it. The result
was a hostility between the two generals, none the less real because not
openly avowed.
Bernadotte’s appearance in Bonaparte’s salon was therefore an event
almost as extraordinary as the presence of Moreau. And the entrance of
the conqueror of Maestricht caused as many heads to turn as had that of
the conqueror of Rastadt. Only, instead of going forward to meet him, as
he had Moreau, Bonaparte merely turned round and awaited him.
Bernadotte, from the threshold of the door, cast a rapid glance around
the salon. He divided and analyzed the groups, and although he must have
perceived Bonaparte in the midst of the principal one, he went up to
Josephine, who was reclining on a couch at the corner of the fireplace,
like the statue of Agrippina in the Pitti, and, addressing her with
chivalric courtesy, inquired for her health; then only did he raise his
head as if to look for Bonaparte. At such a time everything was of too
much importance for those present not to remark this affectation of
courtesy on Bernadotte’s part.
Bonaparte, with his rapid, comprehensive intellect, was not the last
to notice this; he was seized with impatience, and, instead of awaiting
Bernadotte in the midst of the group where he happened to be, he
turned abruptly to the embrasure of a window, as if to challenge the
ex-minister of war to follow him. Bernadotte bowed graciously to right
and left, and controlling his usually mobile face to an expression
of perfect calmness, he walked toward Bonaparte, who awaited him as
a wrestler awaits his antagonist, the right foot forward and his lips
compressed. The two men bowed, but Bonaparte made no movement to extend
his hand to Bernadotte, nor did the latter offer to take it.
“Is it you?” asked Bonaparte. “I am glad to see you.”
“Thank you, general,” replied Bernadotte. “I have come because I wish to
give you a few explanations.”
“I did not recognize you at first.”
“Yet I think, general, that my name was announced by your servant in a
voice loud enough to prevent any doubt as to my identity.”
“Yes, but he announced General Bernadotte.”
“Well?”
“Well, I saw a man in civilian’s dress, and though I recognized you, I
doubted if it were really you.”
For some time past Bernadotte had affected to wear civilian’s dress in
preference to his uniform.
“You know,” said he, laughing, “that I am only half a soldier now. I was
retired by citizen Sièyes.”
“It seems that it was lucky for me that you were no longer minister of
war when I landed at Fréjus.”
“How so?”
“You said, so I was told, that had you received the order to arrest me
for violating quarantine you would have done so.”
“I said it, and I repeat it, general. As a soldier I was always a
faithful observer of discipline. As a minister I was a slave to law.”
Bonaparte bit his lips. “And will you say, after that, that you have not
a personal enmity to me?”
“A personal enmity to you, general?” replied Bernadotte. “Why should
I have? We have always gone together, almost in the same stride; I was
even made general before you. While my campaigns on the Rhine were less
brilliant than yours on the Adige, they were not less profitable for the
Republic; and when I had the honor to serve under you, you found in
me, I hope, a subordinate devoted, if not to the man, at least to the
country which he served. It is true that since your departure, general,
I have been more fortunate than you in not having the responsibility of
a great army, which, if one may believe Kléber’s despatches, you have
left in a disastrous position.”
“What do you mean? Kléber’s last despatches? Has Kléber written?”
“Are you ignorant of that, general? Has the Directory not informed you
of the complaints of your successor? That would be a great weakness on
their part, and I congratulate myself to have come here, not only to
correct in your mind what has been said of me, but to tell you what is
being said of you.”
Bonaparte fixed an eye, darkling as an eagle’s, on Bernadotte. “And what
are they saying of me?” he asked.
“They say that, as you must come back, you should have brought the army
with you.”
“Had I a fleet? Are you unaware that De Brueys allowed his to be
burned?”
“They also say, general, that, being unable to bring back the army, it
would have been better for your renown had you remained with it.”
“That is what I should have done, monsieur, if events had not recalled
me to France.”
“What events, general?”
“Your defeats.”
“Pardon me, general; you mean to say Schérer’s defeats.
“Yours as well.”
“I was not answerable for the generals commanding our armies on the
Rhine and in Italy until I was minister of war. If you will enumerate
the victories and defeats since that time you will see on which side the
scale turns.”
“You certainly do not intend to tell me that matters are in a good
condition?”
“No, but I do say that they are not in so desperate state as you affect
to believe.”
“As I affect!--Truly, general, to hear you one would think I had some
interest in lowering France in the eyes of foreigners.
“I don’t say that; I say that I wish to settle the balance of our
victories and defeats for the last three months; and as I came for that,
and am now in your house, and in the position of an accused person--”
“Or an accuser.”
“As the accused, in the first instance--I begin.”
“And I listen,” said Bonaparte, visibly on thorns.
“My ministry dates from the 30th Prairial, the 8th of June if you
prefer; we will not quarrel over words.”
“Which means that we shall quarrel about things.”
Bernadotte continued without replying.
“I became minister, as I said, the 8th of June; that is, a short time
after the siege of Saint-Jean-d’Acre was raised.”
Bonaparte bit his lips. “I did not raise the siege until after I had
ruined the fortifications,” he replied.
“That is not what Kléber wrote; but that does not concern me.” Then he
added, smiling: “It happened while Clark was minister.”
There was a moment’s silence, during which Bonaparte endeavored to make
Bernadotte lower his eyes. Not succeeding, he said: “Go on.”
Bernadotte bowed and continued: “Perhaps no minister of war--and the
archives of the ministry are there for reference--ever received the
portfolio under more critical circumstances: civil war within, a foreign
enemy at our doors, discouragement rife among our veteran armies,
absolute destitution of means to equip new ones. That was what I had
to face on the 8th of June, when I entered upon my duties. An active
correspondence, dating from the 8th of June, between the civil and
military authorities, revived their courage and their hopes. My
addresses to the armies--this may have been a mistake--were those, not
of a minister to his soldiers, but of a comrade among comrades, just
as my addresses to the administrators were those of a citizen to his
fellow-citizens. I appealed to the courage of the army, and the heart of
the French people; I obtained all that I had asked. The National Guard
reorganized with renewed zeal; legions were formed upon the Rhine, on
the Moselle. Battalions of veterans took the place of old regiments
to reinforce the troops that were guarding our frontiers; to-day our
cavalry is recruited by a remount of forty thousand horses, and one
hundred thousand conscripts, armed and equipped, have received with
cries of ‘Vive la Republique!’ the flags under which they will fight and
conquer--”
“But,” interrupted Bonaparte bitterly, “this is an apology you are
making for yourself.”
“Be it so. I will divide my discourse into two parts. The first will
be a contestable apology; the second an array of incontestable facts.
I will set aside the apology and proceed to facts. June 17 and 18, the
battle of the Trebbia. Macdonald wished to fight without Moreau; he
crossed the Trebbia, attacked the enemy, was defeated and retreated
to Modena. June 20, battle of Tortona; Moreau defeated the Austrian
Bellegarde. July 22, surrender of the citadel of Alexandria to the
Austro-Russians. So far the scale turns to defeat. July 30, surrender of
Mantua, another check. August 15, battle of Novi; this time it was more
than a check, it was a defeat. Take note of it, general, for it is
the last. At the very moment we were fighting at Novi, Masséna was
maintaining his position at Zug and Lucerne, and strengthening himself
on the Aar and on the Rhine; while Lecourbe, on August 14 and 15, took
the Saint-Gothard. August 19, battle of Bergen; Brune defeated the
Anglo-Russian army, forty thousand strong, and captured the Russian
general, Hermann. On the 25th, 26th and 27th of the same month, the
battles of Zurich, where Masséna defeated the Austro-Russians under
Korsakoff. Hotze and three other generals are taken prisoners. The enemy
lost twelve thousand men, a hundred cannon, and all its baggage; the
Austrians, separated from the Russians, could not rejoin them until
after they were driven beyond Lake Constance. That series of victories
stopped the progress the enemy had been making since the beginning of
the campaign; from the time Zurich was retaken, France was secure from
invasion. August 30, Molitor defeated the Austrian generals, Jellachich
and Luiken, and drove them back into the Grisons. September 1, Molitor
attacked and defeated General Rosenberg in the Mutterthal. On the 2d,
Molitor forced Souvaroff to evacuate Glarus, to abandon his wounded,
his cannon, and sixteen hundred prisoners. The 6th, General Brune again
defeated the Anglo-Russians, under the command of the Duke of York.
On the 7th, General Gazan took possession of Constance. On the 8th you
landed at Fréjus.--Well, general,” continued Bernadotte, “as France will
probably pass into your hands, it is well that you should know the state
in which you find her, and in place of receipt, our possessions bear
witness to what we are giving you. What we are now doing, general,
is history, and it is important that those who may some day have an
interest in falsifying history shall find in their path the denial of
Bernadotte.”
“Is that said for my benefit, general?”
“I say that for flatterers. You have pretended, it is said, that you
returned to France because our armies were destroyed, because France was
threatened, the Republic at bay. You may have left Egypt with that fear;
but once in France, all such fears must have given way to a totally
different belief.”
“I ask no better than to believe as you do,” replied Bonaparte, with
sovereign dignity; “and the more grand and powerful you prove France to
be, the more grateful am I to those who have secured her grandeur and
her power.”
“Oh, the result is plain, general! Three armies defeated; the Russians
exterminated, the Austrians defeated and forced to fly, twenty thousand
prisoners, a hundred pieces of cannon, fifteen flags, all the baggage of
the enemy in our possession, nine generals taken or killed, Switzerland
free, our frontiers safe, the Rhine our limit--so much for Masséna’s
contingent and the situation of Helvetia. The Anglo-Russian army twice
defeated, utterly discouraged, abandoning its artillery, baggage,
munitions of war and commissariat, even to the women and children who
came with the British; eight thousand French prisoners; effective men,
returned to France; Holland completely evacuated--so much for Brune’s
contingent and the situation in Holland. The rearguard of General Klénau
forced to lay down its arms at Villanova; a thousand prisoners and three
pieces of cannon fallen into our hands, and the Austrians driven back
beyond Bormida; in all, counting the combats at la Stura and Pignerol,
four thousand prisoners, sixteen cannon, Mondovi, and the occupation of
the whole region between la Stura and Tanaro--so much for Championnet’s
contingent and the situation in Italy. Two hundred thousand men under
arms, forty thousand mounted cavalry; that is my contingent, mine, and
the situation in France.”
“But,” asked Bonaparte satirically, “if you have, as you say, two
hundred thousand soldiers under arms, why do you want me to bring back
the fifteen or twenty thousand men I have in Egypt, who are useful there
as colonizers?”
“If I ask you for them, general, it is not for any need we may have of
them, but in the fear of some disaster over taking them.”
“What disaster do you expect to befall them, commanded by Kléber?”
“Kléber may be killed, general; and who is there behind Kléber? Menou.
Kléber and your twenty thousand men are doomed, general!”
“How doomed?”
“Yes, the Sultan will send troops; he controls by land. The English will
send their fleet; they control by sea. We, who have neither land nor
sea, will be compelled to take part from here in the evacuation of Egypt
and the capitulation of our army.
“You take a gloomy view of things, general!”
“The future will show which of us two have seen things as they are.”
“What would you have done in my place?”
“I don’t know. But, even had I been forced to bring them back by way
of Constantinople, I should never have abandoned those whom France had
intrusted to me. Xenophon, on the banks of the Tigris, was in a much
more desperate situation than you on the banks of the Nile. He brought
his ten thousand back to Ionia, and they were not the children of
Athens, not his fellow citizens; they were mercenaries!”
From the instant Bernadotte uttered the word Constantinople, Bonaparte
listened no longer; the name seemed to rouse a new train of ideas in his
mind, which he followed in solitary thought. He laid his hand on the arm
of the astonished Bernadotte, and, with eyes fixed on space, like a man
who pursues through space the phantom of a vanished project, he said:
“Yes, yes! I thought of it. That is why I persisted in taking that
hovel, Saint-Jean-d’Acre. Here you only thought it obstinacy, a useless
waste of men sacrificed to the self-love of a mediocre general who
feared that he might be blamed for a defeat. What should I have cared
for the raising of the siege of Saint-Jean-d’Acre, if Saint-Jean-d’Acre
had not been the barrier in the way of the grandest project ever
conceived. Cities! Why, good God! I could take as many as ever did
Alexander or Cæsar, but it was Saint-Jean-d’Acre that had to be taken!
If I had taken Saint-Jean-d’Acre, do you know what I should have done?”
And he fixed his burning eyes upon Bernadotte, who, this time, lowered
his under the flame of this genius.
“What I should have done,” repeated Bonaparte, and, like Ajax, he
seemed to threaten Heaven with his clinched fist; “if I had taken
Saint-Jean-d’Acre, I should have found the treasures of the pasha in the
city and three thousand stands of arms. With that I should have raised
and armed all Syria, so maddened by the ferocity of Djezzar that each
time I attacked him the population prayed to God for his overthrow. I
should have marched upon Damascus and Aleppo; I should have swelled my
army with the malcontents. Advancing into the country, I should, step by
step, have proclaimed the abolition of slavery, and the annihilation of
the tyrannical government of the pashas. I should have overthrown the
Turkish empire, and founded a great empire at Constantinople, which
would have fixed my place in history higher than Constantine and
Mohammed II. Perhaps I should have returned to Paris by way of
Adrianople and Vienna, after annihilating the house of Austria. Well,
my dear general, that is the project which that little hovel of a
Saint-Jean-d’Acre rendered abortive!”
And he so far forgot to whom he was speaking, as he followed the shadows
of his vanished dream, that he called Bernadotte “my dear general.” The
latter, almost appalled by the magnitude of the project which Bonaparte
had unfolded to him, made a step backward.
“Yes,” said Bernadotte, “I perceive what you want, for you have just
betrayed yourself. Orient or Occident, a throne! A throne? So be it; why
not? Count upon me to help you conquer it, but elsewhere than in France.
I am a Republican, and I will die a Republican.”
Bonaparte shook his head as if to disperse the thoughts which held him
in the clouds.
“I, too, am a Republican,” said he, “but see what has come of your
Republic!”
“What matter!” cried Bernadotte. “It is not to a word or a form that I
am faithful, but to the principle. Let the Directors but yield me the
power, and I would know how to defend the Republic against her internal
enemies, even as I defended her from her foreign enemies.”
As he said these words, Bernadotte raised his eyes, and his glance
encountered that of Bonaparte. Two naked blades clashing together never
sent forth lightning more vivid, more terrible.
Josephine had watched the two men for some time past with anxious
attention. She saw the dual glance teeming with reciprocal menace. She
rose hastily and went to Bernadotte.
“General,” said she.
Bernadotte bowed.
“You are intimate with Gohier, are you not?” she continued.
“He is one of my best friends, madame,” said Bernadotte.
“Well, we dine with him the day after to-morrow, the 18th Brumaire; dine
there yourself and bring Madame Bernadotte. I should be so glad to know
her better.”
“Madame,” said Bernadotte, “in the days of the Greeks you would have
been one of the three graces; in the Middle Ages you would have been a
fairy; to-day you are the most adorable woman I know.”
And making three steps backward, and bowing, he contrived to retire
politely without including Bonaparte in his bow. Josephine followed him
with her eyes until he had left the room. Then, turning to her husband,
she said: “Well, it seems that it was not as successful with Bernadotte
as with Moreau, was it?”
“Bold, adventurous, disinterested, sincere republican, inaccessible
to seduction, he is a human obstacle. We must make our way around him,
since we cannot overthrow him.”
And leaving the salon without taking leave of any one, he went to his
study, whither Roland and Bourrienne followed. They had hardly been
there a quarter of an hour when the handle of the lock turned softly,
the door opened, and Lucien appeared.