Bonaparte on a Great Stage[66].
[Footnote 66: The state of Europe may be studied in the
Correspondence of Mallet du Pan and in the Archives
Woronzoff; in Vivenot: Thugut and Clerfayt; Daudet: Les
Bourbons et la Russie; La Conspiration de Pichegru;
Sorel: L'Europe et la Révolution Française; Lecky:
England in the XVIII century; Stanhope's Life of Pitt;
the memoirs of Prince Adam Czartoryski; also the
diplomatic papers of Thugut, Clerfayt, Hermann, and
Sandoz.]
Bonaparte and the Army of Italy -- The System of Pillage --
The General as a Despot -- The Republican Armies and French
Politics -- Italy as the Focal Point -- Condition of Italy
-- Bonaparte's Sagacity -- His Plan of Action -- His Army
and Generals -- Strength of the Army of Italy -- The
Napoleonic Maxims of Warfare -- Advance of Military Science
-- Bonaparte's Achievements -- His Financial Policy --
Effects of His Success.
[Sidenote: 1796.]
The struggle which was imminent was for nothing less than a new lease
of national life for France. It dawned on many minds that in such a
combat changes of a revolutionary nature--as regarded not merely the
provisioning and management of armies, as regarded not merely the
grand strategy to be adopted and carried out by France, but as
regarded the very structure and relations of other European
nations--would be justifiable. But to be justifiable they must be
adequate; and to be adequate they must be unexpected and thorough.
What should they be? The OEdipus who solves this riddle for France is
the man of the hour. He was found in Bonaparte. What mean these
ringing words from the headquarters at Nice, which, on March
twenty-seventh, 1796, fell on the ears of a hungry, eager soldiery and
a startled world? "Soldiers, you are naked, badly fed. The government
owes you much; it can give you nothing. Your long-suffering, the
courage you show among these crags, are splendid, but they bring you
no glory; not a ray is reflected upon you. I wish to lead you into the
most fertile plains of the world. Rich provinces, great towns, will be
in your power; there you will find honor, glory, and riches. Soldiers
of Italy, can you be found lacking in honor, courage, or constancy?"
Such language has but one meaning. By a previous understanding with
the Directory, the French army was to be paid, the French treasury to
be replenished, at the expense of the lands which were the seat of
war. Corsicans in the French service had long been suspected of
sometimes serving their own interests to the detriment of their
adopted country. Bonaparte was no exception, and occasionally he felt
it necessary to justify himself. For example, he had carefully
explained that his marriage bound him to the republic by still another
tie. Yet it appears that his promotion, his engagement with the
directors, and his devotion to the republic were all concerned
primarily with personal ambition, though secondarily and incidentally
with the perpetuation of a government professedly based on the
Revolution. From the outset of Napoleon's independent career,
something of the future dictator appears. This implied promise that
pillage, plunder, and rapine should henceforth go unpunished in order
that his soldiers might line their pockets is the indication of a
settled policy which was more definitely expressed in each successive
proclamation as it issued from his pen. It was repeated whenever new
energy was to be inspired into faltering columns, whenever some
unparalleled effort in a dark design was to be demanded from the rank
and file of the army, until at last a point-blank promise was made
that every man should return to France with money enough in his pocket
to become a landowner.
There was magic in the new spell, the charm never ceased to work; with
that first call from Nice began the transformation of the French army,
fighting now no longer for principle, but for glory, victory, and
booty. Its leader, if successful, would be in no sense a
constitutional general, but a despotic conqueror. Outwardly gracious,
and with no irritating condescension; considerate wherever mercy would
strengthen his reputation; fully aware of the influence a dramatic
situation or a pregnant aphorism has upon the common mind, and using
both with mastery; appealing as a climax to the powerful motive of
greed in every heart, Bonaparte was soon to be not alone the general
of consummate genius, not alone the organizing lawgiver of conquered
lands and peoples, but, what was essential to his whole career, the
idol of an army which was not, as of old, the servant of a great
nation, but, as the new era had transformed it, the nation itself.
The peculiar relation of Bonaparte to Italy, to Corsica, and to the
Convention had made him, as early as 1794, while yet but chief of
artillery, the real director of the Army of Italy. He had no personal
share in the victorious campaign of that year, but its victories, as
he justly claimed, were due to his plans. During the unsuccessful
Corsican expedition of the following winter, for which he was but
indirectly responsible, the Austro-Sardinians in Piedmont had taken
advantage of its absorbing so many French troops to undo all that had
so far been accomplished. During the summer of 1795 Spain and Prussia
had made peace with France. In consequence all northern Europe had
been declared neutral, and the field of operations on the Rhine had
been confined to the central zone of Germany, while at the same time
the French soldiers who had formed the Army of the Pyrenees had been
transferred to the Maritime Alps. In 1796, therefore, the great
question was whether the Army of the Rhine or that of Italy was to be
the chief weapon of offense against Austria.
Divided interests and warped convictions quickly created two opinions
in the French nation, each of which was held with intensity and
bitterness by its supporters. So far the Army of the Rhine was much
the stronger, and the Emperor had concentrated his strength to oppose
it. But the wisest heads saw that Austria might be flanked by way of
Italy. The gate to Lombardy was guarded by the sturdy little army of
Victor Amadeus, assisted by a small Austrian force. If the house of
Savoy, which was said to wear at its girdle the keys of the Alps,
could be conquered and brought to make a separate peace, the Austrian
army could be overwhelmed, and a highway to Vienna opened first
through the plains of Lombardy, then by the Austrian Tyrol, or else by
the Venetian Alps. Strangely enough, the plainest and most forcible
exposition of this plan was made by an emigrant in London, a certain
Dutheil, for the benefit of England and Austria. But the Allies were
deaf to his warnings, while in the mean time Bonaparte enforced the
same idea upon the French authorities, and secured their acceptance of
it. Both he and they were the more inclined to the scheme because once
already it had been successfully initiated; because the general,
having studied Italy and its people, thoroughly understood what
contributions might be levied on them; because the Army of the Rhine
was radically republican and knew its own strength; because therefore
the personal ambitions of Bonaparte, and in fact the very existence of
the Directory, alike depended on success elsewhere than in central
Europe.
Having been for centuries the battle-field of rival dynasties, Italy,
though a geographical unit with natural frontiers more marked than
those of any other land, and with inhabitants fairly homogeneous in
birth, speech, and institutions, was neither a nation nor a family of
kindred nations, but a congeries of heterogeneous states. Some of
these, like Venice and Genoa, boasted the proud title of republics;
they were in reality narrow, commercial, even piratical oligarchies,
destitute of any vigorous political life. The Pope, like other petty
rulers, was but a temporal prince, despotic, and not even enlightened,
as was the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Naples and the Milanese both groaned
under the yoke of foreign rulers, and the only passable government in
the length and breadth of the land was that of the house of Savoy in
Piedmont and Sardinia, lands where the revolutionary spirit of liberty
was most extended and active. The petty courts, like those of Parma
and Modena, were nests of intrigue and corruption. There was, of
course, in every place that saving remnant of high-minded men which is
always providentially left as a seed; but the people as a whole were
ignorant and enervated. The accumulations of ages, gained by an
extensive and lucrative commerce, or by the tilling of a generous
soil, had not been altogether dissipated by misrule, and there was
even yet rich store of money in many of the venerable and still
splendid cities. Nowhere in the ancient seats of the Roman
commonwealth, whose memory was now the cherished fashion in France,
could anything more than a reflection of French revolutionary
principles be discerned; the rights of man and republican doctrine
were attractive subjects of debate in many cities throughout the
peninsula, but there was little of that fierce devotion to their
realization so prevalent beyond the Alps.
The sagacity of Bonaparte saw his account in these conditions. Being
a professed republican, he could announce himself as the regenerator
of society, and the liberator of a people. If, as has been supposed,
he already dreamed of a throne, where could one be so easily founded
with the certainty of its endurance? As a conqueror he would have a
divided, helpless, and wealthy people at his feet. If the old flame of
Corsican ambition were not yet extinguished, he felt perhaps that he
could wreak the vengeance of a defeated and angry people upon Genoa,
their oppressor for ages.
His preparations began as early as the autumn of 1795, when, with
Carnot's assistance, the united Pyrenean and Italian armies were
directed to the old task of opening the roads through the mountains
and by the sea-shore into Lombardy and central Italy. They won the
battle of Loano, which secured the Maritime Alps once more; but a long
winter amid these inclement peaks had left the army wretched and
destitute of every necessity. It had been difficult throughout that
winter to maintain even the Army of the Interior in the heart of
France; the only chance for that of Italy was movement. The completed
plan of action was forwarded from Paris in January. But, as has been
told, Schérer, the commanding general, and his staff were outraged,
refusing to consider its suggestions, either those for supplying their
necessities in Lombardy, or those for the daring and venturesome
operations necessary to reach that goal.
Bonaparte, who could invent such schemes, alone could realize them;
and the task was intrusted to him. For the next ten weeks no sort of
preparation was neglected. The nearly empty chest of the Directory was
swept clean; from that source the new commander received forty-seven
thousand five hundred francs in cash, and drafts for twenty thousand
more; forced loans for considerable sums were made in Toulon and
Marseilles; and Salicetti levied contributions of grain and forage in
Genoa according to the plan which had been preconcerted between him
and the general in their Jacobin days. The army which Bonaparte
finally set in motion was therefore a fine engine of war. Its
immediate necessities relieved, the veterans warmed to their work, and
that notable promise of booty worked them to the pitch of genuine
enthusiasm. The young commander, moreover, was as circumspect as a man
of the first ability alone could be when about to make the venture of
his life and play for the stake of a world. His generals of division
were themselves men of mark--personages no less than Masséna,
Augereau, Laharpe, and Sérurier. Of Masséna some account has already
been given. Augereau was Bonaparte's senior by thirteen years, of
humble and obscure origin, who had sought his fortunes as a
fencing-master in the Bourbon service at Naples, and having later
enlisted in the French forces sent to Spain in 1792, rose by his
ability to be general of brigade, then division commander in the Army
of Italy. He was rude in manner and plebeian in feeling, jealous of
Bonaparte, but brave and capable. In the sequel he played an important
part and rose to eminence, though he distrusted both the Emperor and
the empire and flinched before great crises. Neither Laharpe nor
Sérurier was distinguished beyond the sphere of their profession, but
in that they were loyal and admirable. Laharpe was a member of the
famous Swiss family banished from home for devotion to liberty. Under
Luckner in Germany he had earned and kept the sobriquet of "the
brave"; until he was mortally wounded in a night attack, while
crossing the Po after Millesimo, he continued his brilliant career,
and would have gone far had he been spared. Sérurier was a veteran of
the Seven Years' War and of Portugal, already fifty-four years old.
Able and trustworthy, he was loaded with favors by Napoleon and
survived until 1819. It might have been very easy to exasperate such
men. But what the commander-in-chief had to do was done with such
smoothness and skill that even they could find no ground for carping;
and though at first cold and reticent, before long they yielded to the
influences which filled with excitement the very air they breathed.
At this moment, besides the National Guard, France had an army, and in
some sense a navy: of both the effective fighting force numbered
upward of half a million. Divided nominally into nine armies, instead
of fourteen as first planned, there were in reality but seven; of
these, four were of minor importance: a small, skeleton Army of the
Interior, a force in the west under Hoche twice as large and with
ranks better filled, a fairly strong army in the north under
Macdonald, and a similar one in the Alps under Kellermann, with
Berthier and Vaubois as lieutenants, which soon became a part of
Bonaparte's force. These were, if possible, to preserve internal order
and to watch England, while three great active organizations were to
combine for the overthrow of Austria. On the Rhine were two of the
active armies--one near Düsseldorf under Jourdan, another near
Strasburg under Moreau. Macdonald was of Scottish Jacobite descent, a
French royalist converted to republicanism by his marriage. He was now
thirty-one years old. Trained in the regiment of Dillon, he alone of
its officers remained true to democratic principles on the outbreak of
the Revolution. He was made a colonel for his bravery at Jemmapes, and
for his loyalty when Dumouriez went over to the Austrians he was
promoted to be general of brigade. For his services under Pichegru in
Holland he had been further rewarded by promotion, and after the peace
of Campo Formio was transferred from the Rhine to Italy. He was
throughout a loyal friend of Bonaparte and received the highest
honors. Kellermann was a Bavarian, and when associated with Bonaparte
a veteran, sixty-one years old. He had seen service in the Seven
Years' War and again in Poland during 1771. An ardent republican, he
had served with distinction from the beginning of the revolutionary
wars: though twice charged with incapacity, he was triumphantly
acquitted. He linked his fortunes to those of Bonaparte without
jealousy and reaped abundant laurels. Of Berthier and the other great
generals we have already spoken. Vaubois reached no distinction. At
the portals of Italy was Bonaparte, with a third army, soon to be the
most active of all. At the outset he had, all told, about forty-five
thousand men; but the campaign which he conducted had before its close
assumed such dimensions that in spite of its losses the Army of Italy
contained nearly double that number of men ready for the field,
besides the garrison troops and invalids. The figures on the records
of the war department were invariably much greater; but an enormous
percentage, sometimes as high as a third, was always in the hospitals,
while often as many as twenty thousand were left behind to hold
various fortresses. Bonaparte, for evident reasons, uniformly
represented his effective force as smaller than it was, and stunned
the ears of the Directory with ever reiterated demands for
reinforcement. A dispassionate estimate would fix the number of his
troops in the field at any one time during these operations as not
lower than thirty-five thousand nor much higher than eighty thousand.
Another element of the utmost importance entered into the coming
campaign. The old vicious system by which a vigilant democracy had
jealously prescribed to its generals every step to be taken was swept
away by Bonaparte, who as Robespierre's "man" had been thoroughly
familiar with its workings from the other end. He was now
commander-in-chief, and he insisted on the absolute unity of command
as essential to the economy of time. This being granted, his equipment
was complete. It will be remembered that in 1794 he had explained to
his patrons how warfare in the field was like a siege: by directing
all one's force to a single point a breach might be made, and the
equilibrium of opposition destroyed. To this conception of
concentration for attack he had, in concert with the Directory, added
another, that of expansion in a given territory for sustenance. He had
still a third, that war must be made as intense and awful as possible
in order to make it short, and thus to diminish its horrors. Trite and
simple as these aphorisms now appear, they were all original and
absolutely new, at least in the quick, fierce application of them made
by Bonaparte. The traditions of chivalry, the incessant warfare of two
centuries and a half, the humane conceptions of the Church, the regard
for human life, the difficulty of communications, the scarcity of
munitions and arms,--all these and other elements had combined to make
war under mediocre generals a stately ceremonial, and to diminish the
number of actual battles, which took place, when they did, only after
careful preparation, as an unpleasant necessity, by a sort of common
agreement, and with the ceremony of a duel.
Turenne, Marlborough, and Frederick, all men of cold-blooded
temperament, had been the greatest generals of their respective ages,
and were successful much in proportion to their lack of sentiment and
disregard of conventionalities. Their notions and their conduct
displayed the same instincts as those of Bonaparte, and their minds
were enlarged by a study of great campaigns like that which had fed
his inchoate genius and had made possible his consummate achievement.
He had much the same apparatus for warfare as they. The men of Europe
had not materially changed in stature, weight, education, or morals
since the closing years of the Thirty Years' War. The roads were
somewhat better, the conformation of mountains, hills, and valleys was
better known, and like his great predecessors, though unlike his
contemporaries, Bonaparte knew the use of a map; but in the main
little was changed in the conditions for moving and manoeuvering
troops. News traveled slowly, the semaphore telegraph was but slowly
coming into use, and the fastest couriers rode from Nice to Paris or
from Paris to Berlin in seven days. Firearms of every description were
little improved: Prussia actually claimed that she had been forced to
negotiate for peace because France controlled the production of
gun-flints. The forging of cannon was finer, and the artillery arm was
on the whole more efficient. In France there had been considerable
change for the better in the manual and in tactics; the rest of Europe
followed the old and more formal ways. Outside the republic, ceremony
still held sway in court and camp; youthful energy was stifled in
routine; and the generals opposed to Bonaparte were for the most part
men advanced in years, wedded to tradition, and incapable of quickly
adapting their ideas to meet advances and attacks based on conceptions
radically different from their own. It was at times a positive misery
to the new conqueror that his opponents were such inefficient fossils.
Young and at the same time capable; using the natural advantages of
his territory to support the bravery of his troops; with a mind which
was not only accurate and decisive, but comprehensive in its
observations; unhampered by control or by principle; opposed to
generals who could not think of a boy of twenty-six as their equal;
with the best army and the finest theater of war in Europe; finally,
with a genius independently developed, and with conceptions of his
profession which summarized the experience of his greatest
predecessors, Bonaparte performed feats that seemed miraculous even
when compared with those of Hoche, Jourdan, or Moreau, which had
already so astounded the world.
Within eleven days the Austrians and Sardinians were separated, the
latter having been defeated and forced to sign an armistice. After a
rest of two days, a fortnight saw him victorious in Lombardy, and
entering Milan as a conqueror. Two weeks elapsed, and again he set
forth to reduce to his sway in less than a month the most of central
Italy. Against an enemy now desperate and at bay his operations fell
into four divisions, each resulting in an advance--the first, of nine
days, against Wurmser and Quasdanowich; the second, of sixteen days,
against Wurmser; the third, of twelve days, against Alvinczy; and the
fourth, of thirty days, until he captured Mantua and opened the
mountain passes to his army. Within fifteen days after beginning
hostilities against the Pope, he forced him to sign the treaty of
Tolentino; and within thirty-six days of their setting foot on the
road from Mantua to Vienna, the French were at Leoben, distant only
ninety miles from the Austrian capital, and dictating terms to the
Empire. In the year between March twenty-seventh, 1796, and April
seventh, 1797, Bonaparte humbled the most haughty dynasty in Europe,
toppled the central European state system, and initiated the process
which has given a predominance apparently final to Prussia, then
considered but as a parvenu.
It is impossible to estimate the enormous sums of money which he
exacted for the conduct of a war that he chose to say was carried on
to emancipate Italy. The soldiers of his army were well clad, well
fed, and well equipped from the day of their entry into Milan; the
arrears of their pay were not only settled, but they were given
license to prey on the country until a point was reached which seemed
to jeopardize success, when common pillage was promptly stopped by the
severest examples. The treasury of the Directory was not filled as
were those of the conquering officers, but it was no longer empty. In
short, France reached the apex of her revolutionary greatness; and as
she was now the foremost power on the Continent, the shaky monarchies
in neighboring lands were forced to consider again questions which in
1795 they had hoped were settled. As Bonaparte foresaw, the destinies
of Europe had indeed hung on the fate of Italy.
Europe had grown accustomed to military surprises in the few preceding
years. The armies of the French republic, fired by devotion to their
principles and their nation, had accomplished marvels. But nothing in
the least foreshadowing this had been wrought even by them. Then, as
now, curiosity was inflamed, and the most careful study was expended
in analyzing the process by which such miracles had been performed.
The investigators and their readers were so overpowered by the
spectacle and its results that they were prevented by a sort of
awe-stricken credulity from recognizing the truth; and even yet the
notion of a supernatural influence fighting on Bonaparte's side has
not entirely disappeared. But the facts as we know them reveal
cleverness dealing with incapacity, energy such as had not yet been
seen fighting with languor, an embodied principle of great vitality
warring with a lifeless, vanishing system. The consequences were
startling, but logical; the details sound like a romance from the land
of Eblis.