The Day of the Paris Sections.
The Warfare of St. Roch and the Pont Royal -- Order Restored
-- Meaning of the Conflict -- Political Dangers --
Buonaparte's Dilemma -- His True Attitude -- Sudden Wealth
-- The Directory and Their General -- Buonaparte in Love --
His Corsican Temperament -- His Matrimonial Adventures.
[Sidenote: 1795.]
In this general position the opposing forces confronted each other on
the morning of October fifth, the thirteenth of Vendémiaire. In point
of numbers the odds were tremendous, for the Convention forces
numbered only about four thousand regulars and a thousand volunteers,
while the sections' force comprised about twenty-eight thousand
National Guards. But the former were disciplined, they had cannon, and
they were desperately able; and there was no distracted, vacillating
leadership. What the legend attributes to Napoleon Buonaparte as his
commentary on the conduct of King Louis at the Tuileries was to be the
Convention's ideal now. The "man on horseback" and the hot fire of
cannon were to carry the day. Both sides seemed loath to begin. But at
half-past four in the afternoon it was clear that the decisive moment
had come. As if by instinct, but in reality at Danican's signal, the
forces of the sections from the northern portion of the capital began
to pour through the narrow main street of St. Honoré, behind the
riding-school, toward the chief entrance of the Tuileries. They no
doubt felt safer in the rear of the Convention hall, with the high
walls of houses all about, than they would have done in the open
spaces which they would have had to cross in order to attack it from
the front. Just before their compacted mass reached the church of St.
Roch, it was brought to a halt. Suddenly becoming aware that in the
side streets on the right were yawning the muzzles of hostile cannon,
the excited citizens lost their heads, and began to discharge their
muskets. Then with a swift, sudden blast, the street was cleared by a
terrible discharge of the canister and grape-shot with which the
field-pieces of Barras and Buonaparte were loaded. The action
continued about an hour, for the people and the National Guard rallied
again and again, each time to be mowed down by a like awful discharge.
At last they could be rallied no longer, and retreated to the church,
which they held. On the left bank a similar mêlée ended in a similar
way. Three times Laffont gathered his forces and hurled them at the
Pont Royal; three times they were swept back by the cross-fire of
artillery. The scene then changed like the vanishing of a mirage.
Awe-stricken messengers appeared, hurrying everywhere with the
prostrating news from both sides of the river, and the entire Parisian
force withdrew to shelter. Before nightfall the triumph of the
Convention was complete. The dramatic effect of this achievement was
heightened by the appearance on horseback here, there, and everywhere,
during the short hour of battle, of an awe-inspiring leader; both
before and after, he was unseen. In spite of Barras's claims, there
can be no doubt that this dramatic personage was Buonaparte. If not,
for what was he so signally rewarded in the immediate sequel? Barras
was no artillerist, and this was the appearance of an expert giving
masterly lessons in artillery practice to an astonished world, which
little dreamed what he was yet to demonstrate as to the worth of his
chosen arm on wider battle-fields. For the moment it suited
Buonaparte to appear merely as an agent. In his reports of the affair
his own name is kept in the background. It is evident that from first
to last he intended to produce the impression that, though acting with
Jacobins, he does so because they for the time represent the truth: he
is not for that reason to be identified with them.
Thus by the "whiff of grape-shot" what the wizard historian of the
time "specifically called the French Revolution" was not "blown into
space" at all. Though there was no renewal of the reign of terror, yet
the Jacobins retained their power and the Convention lived on under
the name of the Directory. It continued to live on in its own stupid
anarchical way until the "man on horseback" of the thirteenth
Vendémiaire had established himself as the first among French generals
and the Jacobins had rendered the whole heart of France sick. While
the events of October twenty-fifth were a bloody triumph for the
Convention, only a few conspicuous leaders of the rebels were
executed, among them Laffont; and harsh measures were enacted in
relation to the political status of returned emigrants. But in the
main an unexpected mercy controlled the Convention's policy. They
closed the halls in which the people of the mutinous wards had met,
and once more reorganized the National Guard. Order was restored
without an effort. Beyond the walls of Paris the effect of the news
was magical. Artois, afterward Charles X, though he had landed three
days before on Île Dieu, now reëmbarked, and sailed back to England,
while the other royalist leaders prudently held their followers in
check and their measures in abeyance. The new constitution was in a
short time offered to the nation, and accepted by an overwhelming
majority; the members of the Convention were assured of their
ascendancy in the new legislature; and before long the rebellion in
Vendée and Brittany was so far crushed as to release eighty thousand
troops for service abroad. For the leaders of its forces the
Convention made a most liberal provision: the division commanders of
the thirteenth of Vendémiaire were all promoted. Buonaparte was made
second in command of the Army of the Interior: in other words, was
confirmed in an office which, though informally, he had both created
and rendered illustrious. As Barras almost immediately resigned, this
was equivalent to very high promotion.
This memorable "day of the sections," as it is often called, was an
unhallowed day for France and French liberty. It was the first
appearance of the army since the Revolution as a support to political
authority; it was the beginning of a process which made the
commander-in-chief of the army the dictator of France. All purely
political powers were gradually to vanish in order to make way for a
military state. The temporary tyranny of the Convention rested on a
measure, at least, of popular consent; but in the very midst of its
preparations to perpetuate a purely civil and political
administration, the violence of the sections had compelled it to
confide the new institutions to the keeping of soldiers. The idealism
of the new constitution was manifest from the beginning. Every chance
which the Directory had for success was dependent, not on the inherent
worth of the system or its adaptability to present conditions, but on
the support of interested men in power; among these the commanders of
the army were not the least influential. After the suppression of the
sections, the old Convention continued to sit under the style of the
Primary Assembly, and was occupied in selecting those of its members
who were to be returned to the legislature under the new constitution.
There being no provision for any interim government, the exercise of
real power was suspended; the elections were a mere sham; the
magistracy was a house swept and garnished, ready for the first comer
to occupy it.
As the army and not the people had made the coming administration
possible, the executive power would from the first be the creature of
the army; and since under the constitutional provisions there was no
legal means of compromise between the Directory and the legislature in
case of conflict, so that the stronger would necessarily crush the
weaker, the armed power supporting the directors must therefore
triumph in the end, and the man who controlled that must become the
master of the Directory and the ruler of the country. Moreover, a
people can be free only when the first and unquestioning devotion of
every citizen is not to a party, but to his country and its
constitution, his party allegiance being entirely secondary. This was
far from being the case in France: the nation was divided into
irreconcilable camps, not of constitutional parties, but of violent
partizans; many even of the moderate republicans now openly expressed
a desire for some kind of monarchy. Outwardly the constitution was the
freest so far devised. It contained, however, three fatal blunders
which rendered it the best possible tool for a tyrant: it could not be
changed for a long period; there was no arbiter but force between a
warring legislative and executive; the executive was now supported by
the army.
It is impossible to prove that Buonaparte understood all this at the
time. When at St. Helena he spoke as if he did; but unfortunately his
later writings, however valuable from the psychological, are worthless
from the historical, standpoint. They abound in misrepresentations
which are in part due to lapse of time and weakness of memory, in
part to wilful intention. Wishing the Robespierre-Salicetti episode of
his life to be forgotten, he strives in his memoirs to create the
impression that the Convention had ordered him to take charge of the
artillery at Toulon, when in fact he was in Marseilles as a mere
passer-by on his journey to Nice, and in Toulon as a temporary adjunct
to the army of Carteaux, having been made an active participant partly
through accident, partly by the good will of personal friends. In the
same way he also devised a fable about the "day of the sections," in
order that he might not appear to have been scheming for himself in
the councils of the Convention, and that Barras's share in his
elevation might be consigned to oblivion. This story of Napoleon's has
come down in three stages of its development, by as many different
transcribers, who heard it at different times. The final one, as given
by Las Cases, was corrected by Napoleon's own hand.[54] It runs as
follows: On the night of October third he was at the theater, but
hearing that Menou had virtually retreated before the wards, and was
to be arrested, he left and went to the meeting of the Convention,
where, as he stood among the spectators, he heard his own name
mentioned as Menou's successor. For half an hour he deliberated what
he should do if chosen. If defeated, he would be execrated by all
coming generations, while victory would be almost odious. How could he
deliberately become the scapegoat of so many crimes to which he had
been an utter stranger? Why go as an avowed Jacobin and in a few hours
swell the list of names uttered with horror? "On the other hand, if
the Convention be crushed, what becomes of the great truths of our
Revolution? Our many victories, our blood so often shed, are all
nothing but shameful deeds. The foreigner we have so thoroughly
conquered triumphs and overwhelms us with his contempt; an incapable
race, an overbearing and unnatural following, reappear triumphant,
throw up our crime to us, wreak their vengeance, and govern us like
helots by the hand of a stranger. Thus the defeat of the Convention
would crown the brow of the foreigner, and seal the disgrace and
slavery of our native land." Such thoughts, his youth, trust in his
own power and in his destiny, turned the balance.
[Footnote 54: Mémorial de Sainte Hélène, II, 246.]
Statements made under such circumstances are not proof; but there is
this much probability of truth in them, that if we imagine the old
Buonaparte in disgrace as of old, following as of old the promptings
of his curiosity, indifferent as of old to the success of either
principle, and by instinct a soldier as of old,--if we recall him in
this character, and remember that he is no longer a youthful Corsican
patriot, but a mature cosmopolitan consumed with personal
ambition,--we may surely conclude that he was perfectly impartial as
to the parties involved, leaned toward the support of the principles
of the Revolution as he understood them, and saw in the complications
of the hour a probable opening for his ambition. At any rate, his
conduct after October fourth seems to uphold this view. He was a
changed man, ardent, hopeful, and irrepressible, as he had ever been
when lucky; but now, besides, daring, overbearing, and self-confident
to a degree which those characteristic qualities had never reached
before.
His first care was to place on a footing of efficiency the Army of the
Interior, scattered in many departments, undisciplined and
disorganized; the next, to cow into submission all the low elements in
Paris, still hungry and fierce, by reorganizing the National Guard,
and forming a picked troop for the special protection of the
legislature; the next, to show himself as the powerful friend of
every one in disgrace, as a man of the world without rancor or
exaggerated partizanship. At the same time he plunged into
speculation, and sent sums incredibly large to various members of his
family, a single remittance of four hundred thousand francs being
mentioned in his letters. Lucien was restored to the arms of his
low-born but faithful and beloved wife, and sent to join his mother
and sisters in Marseilles; Louis was brought from Châlons, and made a
lieutenant; Jerome was put at school in Paris; and to Joseph a
consular post was assured. Putting aside all bashfulness, General
Buonaparte became a full-fledged society man and a beau. No social
rank was now strange to him; the remnants of the old aristocracy, the
wealthy citizens of Paris, the returning Girondists, many of whom had
become pronounced royalists, the new deputies, the officers who in
some turn of the wheel had, like himself, lost their positions, but
were now, through his favor, reinstated--all these he strove to court,
flatter, and make his own.
Such activity, of course, could not pass unnoticed. The new government
had been constituted without disturbance, the Directory chosen, and
the legislature installed. Of the five directors--Barras, Rewbell,
Carnot, Letourneaux de la Manche, and Larévellière-Lépeaux,--all had
voted for the death of Louis XVI, and were so-called regicides; but,
while varying widely in character and ability, they were all,
excepting Barras, true to their convictions. They scarcely understood
how strong the revulsion of popular feeling had been, and, utterly
ignoring the impossibility of harmonious action among themselves,
hoped to exercise their power with such moderation as to win all
classes to the new constitution. They were extremely disturbed by the
course of the general commanding their army in seeking intimacy with
men of all opinions, but were unwilling to interpret it aright. Under
the Convention, the Army of the Interior had been a tool, its
commander a mere puppet; now the executive was confronted by an
independence which threatened a reversal of rôles. This situation was
the more disquieting because Buonaparte was a capable and not
unwilling police officer. Among many other invaluable services to the
government, he closed in person the great club of the Panthéon, which
was the rallying-point of the disaffected.[55] Throughout another
winter of famine there was not a single dangerous outbreak. At the
same time there were frequent manifestations of jealousy in lower
circles, especially among those who knew the origin and career of
their young master.
[Footnote 55: This important exploit has been
questioned. But see the American edition of Martin's
History of France, II, 16. Baboeuf reopened at the
Panthéon the club which had been closed at the Évêché by
the Convention and reorganized a secret society in
connection with it. This Panthéon club was shut by
Napoleon in person on February 26, 1796. See likewise
the Mémorial, II, 257, 258.]
Toward the close of the year the bearing and behavior of the general
became constrained, reserved, and awkward. Various reasons were
assigned for this demeanor. Many thought it was due to a consciousness
of social deficiency, and his detractors still declare that Paris life
was too fierce for even his self-assurance, pointing to the change in
his handwriting and grammar, to his alternate silence and loquacity,
as proof of mental uneasiness; to his sullen musings and coarse
threats as a theatrical affectation to hide wounded pride; and to his
coming marriage as a desperate shift to secure a social dignity
proportionate to the career he saw opening before him in politics and
war. In a common man not subjected to a microscopic examination, such
conduct would be attributed to his being in love; the wedding would
ordinarily be regarded as the natural and beautiful consequence of a
great passion.
Men have not forgotten that Buonaparte once denounced love as a
hurtful passion from which God should protect his creatures; and they
have, for this, among other reasons, pronounced him incapable of
disinterested affection. But it is also true that he likewise
denounced Buttafuoco for having, among other crimes committed by him,
"married to extend his influence"; and we are forced to ask which of
the two sentiments is genuine and characteristic. Probably both and
neither, according to the mood of the man. Outward caprice is, in
great natures, often the mask of inward perseverance, especially among
the unprincipled who suit their language to their present purpose, in
fine disdain of commonplace consistency. The primitive Corsican was
both rude and gentle, easily moved to tears at one time, insensate at
another; selfish at one moment, lavish at another; and yet he had a
consistent character. Although disliking in later life to be called a
Corsican, Napoleon was nevertheless typical of his race: he could
despise love, yet render himself its willing slave; he was fierce and
dictatorial, yet, as the present object of his passion said, "tenderer
and weaker than anybody dreamed."[56]
[Footnote 56: The best references for the history of
Josephine de Beauharnais are Masson: Joséphine de
Beauharnais, 1763-1796, and Joséphine, impératrice et
reine; Hall: Napoleon's letters to Josephine; Lévy:
Napoléon intime; together with the memoirs of Joseph,
Bourrienne, Ducrest, Dufort de Cheverney, and Rémusat.]
And thus it was in the matter of his courtship: there were elements in
it of romantic, abandoned passion, but likewise of shrewd, calculating
selfishness. In his callow youth his relations to the other sex had
been either childish, morbid, or immoral. During his earliest manhood
he had appeared like one who desired the training rather than the
substance of gallantry. As a Jacobin he sought such support as he
could find in the good will of the women related to men in power; as
a French patriot he put forth strenuous efforts to secure an
influential alliance through matrimony. He appears to have addressed
Mme. Permon, whose fortune, despite her advanced age, would have been
a great relief to his destitution. Refused by her, he was in a
disordered and desperate emotional state until military and political
success gave him sufficient self-confidence to try once more. With his
feet firmly planted on the ladder of ambition, he was not indifferent
to securing social props for a further rise, but was nevertheless in
such a tumult of feeling as to make him particularly receptive to real
passion. He had made advances for the hand of the rich and beautiful
Désirée Clary;[57] the first evidence in his correspondence of a
serious intention to marry her is contained in the letter of June
eighteenth, 1795, to Joseph; and for a few weeks afterward he wrote at
intervals with some impatience, as if she were coy. In explanation it
is claimed that Napoleon, visiting her long before at the request of
Joseph, who was then enamoured of her, had himself become interested,
and persuading his brother to marry her sister, had entered into an
understanding with her which was equivalent to a betrothal. Time and
distance had cooled his ardor. He now virtually threw her over for
Mme. Beauharnais, who dazzled and infatuated him. This claim is
probably founded on fact, but there is no evidence sufficient to
sustain a charge of positive bad faith on the part of Napoleon.
Neither he nor Mlle. Clary appears to have been ardent when Joseph as
intermediary began, according to French custom, to arrange the
preliminaries of marriage; and when General Buonaparte fell madly in
love with Mme. Beauharnais the matter was dropped.
[Footnote 57: See Hochschild: Désirée, reine de Suède.]