BONAPARTE AND TALLEYRAND[3]
[Footnote 3: Aside from the archives, national and state, and
the Correspondence of Napoleon, official and unofficial
publications, together with documents published by Pallain,
Vivenot, and Bailleu, the best special authorities are
Hueffer: Der Rastadter Congress, and Criste: Rastadt,
L'Assassinat des Ministres Francais (original in German).
Then follow the memoirs and studies already enumerated, with
Desbriere: Projets de debarquement aux Iles Britanniques.]
Bonaparte in Switzerland -- Arrival at Rastadt -- A Royalist
Portrait of Him -- His Affectation of Simplicity -- Reception by
the Directory -- First Threat of Invading England -- Career of
Talleyrand -- His Relations with Bonaparte -- Men and Parties in
Paris.
In the complications of his far-reaching designs, the return of
Bonaparte to Paris was a matter of consequence to him, an affair to be
managed with diplomacy and an eye to dramatic effect. To appease the
Directory, the insubordinate plenipotentiary explained in his
despatches that he had acted as he did because Austria had made
herself stronger than ever in the long interval, which was probably
true; and that the possibility of further successful warfare had been
jeopardized by the early arrival of winter, which had left him no
choice in hastening the conclusion. This was not flatly untrue, for
Marmont noted in his diary that it was October thirteenth when the
first new snow fell on the mountain peaks, and that he had marked his
general's surprise at the fact: the treaty was signed on the
seventeenth. Nevertheless, the season was later than usual, and the
plea of weather was a pretext to hide the negotiator's own purposes.
In his role as an Italian deliverer, Bonaparte remained until the
middle of November to consolidate the new republics and await the
assembling of delegates at Rastadt. Then, traveling sedately by Turin
and the Mont Cenis pass through Chambery, he reached Geneva.
Switzerland was ripe for his presence. The first step was to arrest
Bontemps, a Genevese banker who had assisted Carnot in his flight to
Nyon, where he was still in concealment. The second was to focus the
revolutionary movement in the district of Vaud, and to strengthen its
preparations for throwing off the Bernese dominion by organizing an
ovation for himself at Lausanne: a democrat must be feted only by
democrats.
"Nothing too far" being manifestly his motto at this period, he then
passed by easy stages to Rastadt, where he arrived on November
twenty-fifth, and immediately asserted for himself a nominal
supervision of the arrangements. The King of Sweden had claimed
representation both as Duke of Pomerania and as a guarantor of the
peace of Westphalia; for that reason he had sent as his delegate Count
Fersen, a shrewd agent, once Swedish ambassador in Paris, the friend
of Marie Antoinette, and known everywhere as an intimate counselor of
the Bourbons. Bonaparte, outraged at such effrontery, summoned the
envoy to his presence, and, trampling on the forms of a hollow
politeness, informed him with a few biting words that his presence was
not desired. The envoy tarried long enough to assure himself that
Austria was quite as hostile as France, and returned to Stockholm. It
annoyed Bonaparte even more to find that the imperial delegates had
not yet arrived. But he passed the interval with considerable
satisfaction in an exchange of pleasantries with the various
personages who were on the ground. "How," said he to Stadion, garbed
as a canon of Wuerzburg, "can the station of an ecclesiastical prince
of the empire, a man who is both warrior and spiritual minister,
accord with the precepts of the Scriptures, with the poverty and the
lowliness of early Christianity?" "Where will your master live?" he
said to the agent from the Bishop of Mainz, "when he loses his present
residence?" The hollow shells of worn-out institutions rattled
wherever this innovator stepped. At last Cobenzl arrived, and the
urgent affair of the transfer of Mainz was promptly concluded. That
fortress was to be occupied by French troops on the thirtieth, the day
in which Austria was to take possession of Venice. Then, leaving
Treilhard and Bonnier, the rude and insolent French plenipotentiaries,
in a position of arrogant superiority to their colleagues, he set out
for Paris, and after a triumphal progress throughout northern France,
a region not before familiar to him, arrived, on December fifth, at
his residence on Chantereine street. With its usual facility in that
line, the Paris municipality soon after dubbed this rather
insignificant byway the Street of Victory. Mme. Bonaparte, who had
been visiting Rome, where her brother-in-law Joseph was now French
minister, rejoined her husband at Christmas.
In the papers of the Comte d'Antraigues was found a pen-portrait of
Bonaparte as he appeared at Venice, and it will no doubt, with due
allowances, stand for the few months later when he became the idol of
Paris. Sucy, a government commissioner of much sense, overpowered by
the importance of passing events, wrote in August to a friend that he
could not enter upon such voluminous details as would be necessary to
depict Bonaparte, but warned his correspondent against supposing that
the general had attained the height of his ambition, using the words
previously quoted in another connection, "I can even add that I know
no other end for him but the throne or the scaffold." But Antraigues
was fortunately more communicative: "Bonaparte is a man of small
stature, of sickly hue, with piercing eyes, and something in his look
and mouth which is cruel, covert, and treacherous; speaking little,
but very talkative when his vanity is engaged or thwarted; of very
poor health because of violent humors in his blood. He is covered with
tetter, a disease of such a sort as to increase his vehemence and his
activity. He is always full of his projects, and gives himself no
recreation. He sleeps but three hours every night, and takes no
medicine except when his sufferings are unendurable. This man wishes
to master France, and, through France, Europe. Everything else, even
in his present successes, seems but a means to the end. Thus he steals
without concealment, plunders everything, is accumulating an enormous
treasure of gold, silver, jewels, and precious stones. But he cares
for it only as a means. This same man, who will rob a community to the
last sou, will without a thought give a million francs to any person
who can assist him. If such a person has hate or vengeance to gratify,
he will afford every opportunity to do so. Nothing stands in the way
of his prevailing with a man he thinks will be useful; and with him a
bargain is made in two words and two minutes, so great is his
seductive power. The reverse side of his methods is this: the service
rendered, he demands a complete servility, or he becomes an implacable
enemy; and when he has bought traitors, their service rendered, he
observes but little secrecy concerning them. This man abhors royalty:
he hates the Bourbons, and neglects no means to wean his army from
them. If there were a king in France other than himself, he would like
to have been his maker, and would desire royal authority to rest on
the tip of his own sword; that sword he would never surrender, but
would plunge it into the king's heart, should the monarch cease for a
moment to be subservient."
On Bonaparte's passage through Chambery, he had been visibly affected
by a shout from the multitude hailing him as the father of his
soldiers. There were countless homes in France into which the letters
of absent sons had sent the same epithet, and the nation at large
thought of him in that role as a simple, benevolent man, devoted to
his country and to her liberties. His histrionic talents, like his
other gifts, were of the highest order, and for the moment this ideal
must not be shattered. He therefore appeared to the French public as
devoted to the principle of equality, which the Revolution considered
the guarantee of free institutions. In the "Moniteur," the official
journal of the time, may be read every detail of his conduct. Instead
of waiting for visits from those in place, he made the advances. His
clothes were plain, his manners were simple, his dignity was moderated
to a proper respect for himself and others. The carriage in which he
drove had but two horses, and there was no suite in attendance, either
abroad or at home. Often the passers-by saw him walking alone in the
small garden of his unostentatious dwelling, apparently resting from
the fatigues of his campaigns. In short, there was nothing
recognizable of the conquering potentate who had kept such state at
Milan, except the affected simplicity of his personal life and
conduct. "At first sight," wrote Talleyrand, whose acquaintance
Bonaparte sought immediately on reaching Paris, "he struck me as a
charming figure; the laurels of twenty victories are so becoming to
youth, a handsome eye, a pale complexion, and a certain tired look."
There were a few proper assumptions of great dignity, as for instance
when, on December tenth, 1797, a grand festival was celebrated in the
classic style for the formal reception by the Directory of the treaty
of Campo Formio from the hands of its negotiator. Talleyrand
pronounced a glowing eulogium. Bonaparte, with impressive mien,
replied in a few short, terse sentences, which closed with the
significant utterance: "When the happiness of the French people shall
rest upon the _best_ organic laws, all Europe will become free."
Barras closed with a long, dreary tribute to the Directory, and at the
end imprinted the kiss of fraternity on the young general's brow. The
other members of the executive hurried to display a feigned cordiality
in following his example. The two councils united in a banquet to the
hero of the hour. The public was overpowered by the harmony of its
rulers. Bonaparte's studied modesty might have shown the directors how
false was their position. As had been said long before to Pepin, the
title of king belongs to him who has the power. In private the skilful
minister of foreign affairs was no less adroit than the young
conqueror, and lavished his courtier arts in the preservation of
apparent unity.
The greatest danger to Bonaparte's ambitions was that he should by
some mishap become identified with a party. Thus far, chiefly by
absence from the seat of government, he had successfully avoided that
pitfall. The Parisian populace did not even identify him with the
Fructidorians; and, though not entirely forgetful of the Day of the
Sections, they flocked to see him wherever it was known he would be.
When asked if their interest did not gratify him, he replied that it
meant nothing; they would crowd in the same way to stare if he were on
his way to the scaffold. He appears to have felt that long residence
would diminish his prestige, which for his purposes would be a
disaster, and consequently he seems carefully to have conveyed the
impression that he was but a visitor. Sandoz-Rollin, the Prussian
minister in Paris, believed that the soldiers sent into France from
Italy were intended for use in the capital. Exactly what was planned
he did not know, for Bonaparte was not yet thirty, and therefore
ineligible, at least under the constitution, to the Directory. Others
believed that, Austria having been vanquished, England was to be
struck--first through a fight between the two fleets, and then by the
landing on her shores of a large body of veterans from the Army of
Italy, under their victorious commander. In fact, Monge had formally
stated, on December tenth, that "the government of England and the
French republic cannot both continue to exist"; and during the winter
Thomas Paine exercised his powers as a pamphleteer on the theme of
England's approaching bankruptcy, while the public crowded one of the
theaters to stare at stage pictures representing the invasion of
England. As Bonaparte's almost superhuman diligence had ever open and
ready two or more possibilities, this direct invasion may already have
been a third choice. In the report which he made in February of the
following year after a visit to Dunkirk, he distinctly set forth the
studied policy of his whole career; viz., to keep three possibilities
in working order, a pretense of invasion, a system of barring England
from continental commerce, and a blow at the trade of Great Britain in
the Orient. Otherwise there is nothing for it but a peace. But his
dealings with every Italian power and with Austria had shown a
definite policy of striking, not at the heart to produce desperation,
but at the limbs, where the blow would be quite as deadly and
resistance less furious. All the natural and successive steps of
preparation for such an enterprise had been taken by the government
during the summer of 1797. Corfu and Zante, and with them the
possessions of Venice in the Levant, were secured and kept; a fleet
was collected and equipped from the spoils of northern Italy; Naples
was temporarily neutralized; and plans had then been carefully
elaborated with experts, among whom was Monge, for the seizure of
Malta and the disruption of Turkey by an attack on Egypt.
In all this Talleyrand had been a brilliant and unscrupulous agent.
Born of a noble family, his lameness closed other careers and drove
him for distinction into the Church, where, under the old regime, the
traditions of ecclesiastical feudalism still lingered. In his youth he
was the friend of the infamous Mme. du Barry, and owed his early
promotion to her influence. When he was treasurer of the French clergy
and bishop of Autun, Mirabeau said of him that he would "offer his
very soul at a price, and he would do well, for he would exchange dung
for gold." During the first years of the Revolution he led the liberal
clergy; finally he went to such extremes in secularizing the Church
that the Pope excommunicated him. His private life had been scandalous
from the first, and he was avowedly a passionate gambler. It was with
a sense of relief that he abandoned the Church to become the most
unscrupulous statesman and the most adroit diplomatist of his time. It
was he who in 1791 laid before the Legislative Assembly the dazzling
scheme of national education which afterward was modified and adopted
by Napoleon. He forecast the years of radical excess, and had himself
sent in 1792 as a secret diplomatic agent to London, where, with
occasional visits to Paris, he resided in the main for two years. The
English could not endure his duplicity, and finally drove him from
their country. The Convention having declared him an emigrant, he
sailed for America, and spent some time in the United States, where,
being coldly treated in political and social circles, he devoted
himself to an analytical study of the people and their institutions.
The revocation in 1796 of the decree pronouncing him an emigrant was
obtained by Mme. de Stael's influence, and he immediately returned to
France. It is characteristic of him that during these years he was
successively a representative of the King, of Danton, and of the
Directory.
To the Institute of France, of which learned body he had been made a
member during his absence, he presented on his return his brilliant
studies of colonization in general, and of the respective relations
between the United States and the rival powers of France and England.
But politics, not literature, was his trade. At once he began to study
the situation of his own land, and observed with profound penetration
both the instability of the government and the straits of the
Directory. Accordingly, though nominally their man, and accepting from
them the ministry of foreign affairs, he attached himself at once to
Bonaparte, in the hope, as he explains in his memoirs, of using the
conqueror to restore the monarchy. The latter had the perspicacity to
encourage the relation, and from that moment possessed in the very
center of affairs an able and congenial representative. It is known
that Talleyrand's public letters to Bonaparte were accompanied with
private supplements which often ran in a sense quite opposite to that
of the main sheet. For instance, nothing could be more satisfactory to
the directors than his open account of Fructidor; but it is known that
the private letter mercilessly analyzed the situation as impossible
and unstable. Attempting a corrupt bargain with the American envoys,
Pinckney, Marshall, and Gerry, in regard to the protection of American
commerce, he was mercilessly exposed by the indignant ministers, and
finally compelled by public opinion to resign from his office. But
even in disgrace he continued in Paris as the unscrupulous prime
mover of French politics, until restored to power by Bonaparte, when
he again accepted the position from which he had been driven, and
successfully elaborated in practice the schemes of his superior.
There were, however, two other men, Barras and Sieyes, who, after the
eighteenth of Fructidor, were left in an unendurable position. Both
these men were also boundlessly venal. The former was Bonaparte's
"ancient friend"; Fructidor made him the general's creature. Like
Talleyrand, both were for the present the devoted satraps of a master
who could pay not only with prospective power, but with present cash;
ultimately they also hoped to use him for their own ends in the
restoration of monarchy. Sieyes, now president of the Ancients, was
both weak and vain. But, posing as an oracular constitution-maker, he
was admitted as such to the councils of Talleyrand and Barras. Both
his pride and his interests being thus engaged, he had apparently
become as ardent a follower of Bonaparte as were the other two.
Rewbell was so occupied with the foreign policy of the Revolution, and
Merlin with the internal administration on Jacobin lines, that neither
one nor the other gave any thought to the ulterior consequences of
Fructidor. Francois de Neufchateau was posing as the wit of the epoch,
Larevelliere was its prophet; neither was of even the slightest
importance. Augereau, seeing himself duped by the disbanding of the
Rhine army, had been disenchanted, and was for a while the relentless
enemy of his old chief. A few mediocrities both in the army and in
politics were in sympathy with Augereau; but as England was the one
foe left, the general of the Army of England was virtually the
commander of the whole. Not one of the division generals disobeyed his
orders.