BONAPARTE EMBODIES THE REVOLUTION[14]
[Footnote 14: References as before. Further, Adolphus:
History of England (Reign of George III). Alison: History of
Europe. Vandal: l'Avenement de Bonaparte, Vol. II. Oncken:
Zeitalter der Revolution. Allardyce: Memoir of Lord Keith.
Castlereagh: Correspondence. Jackson: Diaries and Letters,
and the Bath Archives. The souvenirs of Chaptal, Hue, and
Girardin; the memorial of Norvins, the letters of Joubert,
and the memoirs of Barante. Quinet: La Revolution.
Tocqueville: Correspondance. Proudhon: Napoleon I.
Benckendorff: Histoire anecdotique de Paul Ier.]
End of the Revolution -- The Alternatives -- French Glory --
Bonaparte as an Idealist -- Reconstruction of the Army -- Russia
and the Great Powers -- Slackness of the Coalition -- The Policy
of England -- Debates in Parliament -- Canning's Influence --
Austrian Schemes -- French Opinion and the Press -- Consolidation
of French Power -- Bonaparte in the Tuileries -- The Washington
Festival.
No one understood better than Bonaparte the connection in a state
between external and internal affairs. The second coalition, so far as
Russia, Austria, England, and Turkey were concerned, was very loosely
cemented indeed. They were united in their determination to subdue
revolutionary France, but they had not an interest in common beyond
that. Such was their jealousy as regarded the control of the
Mediterranean that a strong government at Paris might hope to create
discord among them. When, therefore, on December fifteenth, 1799, the
provisional consulate came to an end, and the new constitution, known
in French history as that of the twenty-second of Frimaire, year VIII,
came into operation, the government entered upon life, as was most
essential for French interests, not as an empty scheme, but as a
full-fledged organism, with every office filled, the machinery
actually in motion, and the administration ready for intercourse with
the other governments of Europe. The words of Bonaparte's proclamation
were: "Citizens, the Revolution is planted on the principles from
which it proceeded. It is ended." As regarded the internal life of
France, no truer words could have been written. There had never been
true liberty nor true brotherhood under its banners; the leveling had
been more successful, and equality in the matter of civil rights might
be considered as won. What was left of those principles, as the event
proved, was embodied for France herself in the First Consul and in his
beneficent measures. To Europe at large this embodiment of the
Revolution in the new sovereign was soon made equally evident. France
had adopted him. Would the surviving dynasties admit him, as the
representative of French nationality, to a seat on their Olympus?
Nothing but an imperative necessity would compel them to do so, and
then only for the moment.
[Sidenote: 1799--1800]
Two courses were therefore open to the new power: first, to extort an
acquiescence, however distasteful, by consolidating France as the
nation and the homogeneous people which the Revolution had made it, by
increasing her prosperity, by fostering her genius, by showing an
example to the world of what the people of a peaceful, enlightened,
industrious state could be in contrast to the case-hardened,
unreceptive, and sullen populations who still remained passive under
dynastic rule; or, second, to restore the expansive anti-national
character of the Revolution, and, using the magnificent military
system created in that epoch as a destroying power, to menace the
dynasties in their very existence, and thus make them first
respectful neutrals and then subservient tools both in their own
reconstruction and in the liberation of their subjects. These seemed,
in this emergency, the two alternatives at the First Consul's command.
Choosing neither permanently, but one or the other at will, as each
rising question made it expedient, the result was an interference
which brought first this and then that policy into prominence, made
both partly successful, but neither entirely so, and ended in the ruin
of the schemer.
The responsibility was not his own: he so behaved under the compulsion
of the national spirit. The revolutionary tyrannies, one after the
other, had adopted the foreign policies of Richelieu and Louis XIV.
Nothing could be more definite, nothing more ingrained as the fiber of
French existence. France itself must have the boundaries of ancient
Gaul, and the Mediterranean must be a French lake. To this end the
dynasties must be indemnified: Spain might have Portugal, Prussia the
hegemony of North Germany, Austria might expand in Bavaria and Italy.
For a bulwark of defence the land frontier must be girt with little
buffer states, semi-autonomous but dependent: Batavia, Helvetia,
Cisalpina. The still more important sea frontier must be fortified by
the exclusion of Great Britain absolutely from the Continent; Italy
was to be rearranged, with Piedmont and Tuscany occupied and subdued,
the States of the Church distributed among the secular powers of which
Roman and Neapolitan republics were to be the chief. It was a
stupendous task, but ideals have no physical limits. Glory is the
circumambient ether of the French spirit. Repose, order, material
prosperity, domestic life, religion--these must be the preestablished
basis of existence, but life is triumph, splendor, power. It was not,
therefore, as inheritor and incarnation of the Revolution, but as the
embodiment of France and her immemorial policies, that Bonaparte
became a student of foreign affairs. With the prospect of peace must
be envisaged the prospect of war: war for the frontiers, the heritage
of the Gauls; for propagating French thought and influence; for the
invasion of irreconcilable lands. The voluminous and careful studies
of foreign affairs which he caused to be made by able councilors still
exist to show his painstaking zeal in the perpetuation of time-honored
and sacred policies, which no man aspiring to capture the heart of the
French dared neglect or permit to lapse into oblivion.
Taking advantage of the temporary abdication of all power, and of the
momentary renunciation of all activities, even of interest, by the
people, the unconscious idealist began his work. Never was a man more
practical in his own eyes, or, from his own point of view, more
concrete and direct in his motives or conduct. Seizing every
opportunity as it arose, he was the type of what is to-day called in
France an opportunist. But for all that, not the least element of his
supernal greatness was an ever-present idealism. In view of his birth
and early training, it is easy to see that if, as Mme. de Stael first
suggested, nature had brought that quality down in his line from some
far-off Italian of the early Renascence, it would develop under
Rousseau's and Raynal's influence. Whencesoever it came, it is not
least among the causes of the later political renascence which saw the
creation of a new and modern society, the completion of a process
which began with the English revolution. It is this quality alone
which makes Napoleon an element of the first importance in universal
history. Other traits make him so in the epoch now called by his name.
His first thought was for the army. It is probable that Moreau's
participation in the latest political stroke--a fact to which, in the
initial stages, it owed its success--was due to personal ambition; he
probably thought that when Bonaparte had once become a civilian, his
only military rival would be disposed of. Accordingly, when the plan
for the coming campaign was published, it was found that Moreau was to
command a great central European force composed of the recruited
armies of the Rhine and of Helvetia, to be called by the name of the
former. Massena, whose brilliant victories in Switzerland had
moderated the gloom occasioned by the disasters of the previous year
in Italy, was to have supreme command of the forces which were still
to be called the Army of Italy--the name made so glorious at Lodi, at
Arcola, at Castiglione, and at Rivoli. It seemed, indeed, as if the
First Consul had himself renounced all ambition as a soldier in order
to become entirely a statesman. The imperious and jealous but prudent
Moreau was to have full scope for his powers, the brilliant Massena
was to wear his old commander's laurels. But there was a reserve army,
not talked of nor paraded, which was quietly, silently, and
unostentatiously formed, under Berthier's master-hand, from new
conscripts skilfully intermingled with selected veterans. The
divisions were gathered in different places, apparently with no unity,
and thus were drilled, trained, and organized without observation.
While most of it was kept within the French borders, ready for instant
mobilization, and with headquarters ostensibly at Dijon, a part was
sent under the nominal command of the devoted adjutant to Geneva in
order to maintain the French honor in Switzerland.
The French people, however, desired not war, but peace. The list of
competent and admirable administrators chosen by the government was
sufficient proof that public affairs were to be carefully transacted.
The reconstruction of the army gave evidence that peace was to be made
with honor. The next step was so to behave that France should think
her new chief magistrate eager for a general pacification. Since
Bonaparte's return from Egypt there had been a combination of
circumstances which pointed to an easy solution of this problem. The
Czar of Russia was much exasperated with George III because the
Russian soldiers included in the capitulation of Alkmaar were coolly
received when transported to England, and then virtually imprisoned in
the island of Guernsey. When, soon afterward, the English laid siege
to Malta, of which he yearned to be grand master, he was ready to
accuse Great Britain of treachery. But he was still more incensed with
Austria. As has been told, a portion of his army, under Korsakoff, was
overwhelmed by Massena at Zurich on September twenty-fifth, 1799.
Suvoroff, with the other wing, was at the time in full possession of
Piedmont; and in accordance with his master's instructions he had
invited the fugitive Charles Emmanuel IV to return from Sardinia and
reinstate himself at Turin.
The Austrian archduke Charles had withdrawn, after his defeat of
Massena by the first battle of Zurich in June, 1799, to take command
in central Germany. Francis, being fully determined to keep all
northern Italy for himself, and therefore to prevent the
reestablishment of the house of Savoy on the mainland, speciously
ordered Suvoroff to the assistance of his fellow-countrymen north of
the Alps. The Russian general found nothing prepared for his passage
of the St. Gotthard; on the contrary, he was so hindered at every turn
by the absence of mules for his baggage-train, and so harassed by the
attacks of the French, that his expedition was one long disaster. He
attributed his misfortunes to Austrian indifference or worse. Driven
from valley to valley, over icy peaks and barren passes, his troops
perished in great numbers, and their panic was complete when they
heard of Korsakoff's terrible defeat. Before a junction could be
effected with the remnants of that army, Massena turned and attacked
Suvoroff himself, compelling him to flee eastward as best he could
until he reached the confines of Bavaria. This put a climax to the
Czar's fury; he demanded that the Italian princes should be restored
to their governments, and that Thugut should be dismissed, as a
guarantee of good faith. Finally he heard that when Ancona fell before
the combined attacks of Austrians, Russians, and Turks, his own
standard had been taken down, and only the Austrian left flying. To a
gloomy enthusiast, claiming to be the mirror of chivalry and
magnanimity, this was a crowning insult; and he determined, in
December, 1799, to withdraw from the coalition. This was Bonaparte's
opportunity, and he began at once a series of the most flattering
attentions to Paul, which made the Czar for the rest of his short life
a passionate admirer of the schemes and person of the First Consul.
England and Austria were thus the only formidable opponents left in
the coalition against France.
With ostentatious simplicity, Bonaparte wrote both to George III and
to Francis II, as man to man, announcing his accession to power, and
pleading, in the interest of commerce, of national well-being, and of
domestic happiness, for a cessation of hostilities after eight years
of warfare. The French people, who looked upon the First Consul as a
ruler made by themselves, were delighted with this simple
straightforwardness, and gratified by the notion of their
representative treating on equal terms with the divine-right monarchs
of Europe. Pitt mistakenly thought that Bonaparte still personified
Jacobinism, and labored under the delusion that France was completely
exhausted. An English army was ready and about to disembark on the
west coast of France. Kleber in Egypt, having maintained himself
superbly thus far, was about to yield to pitiless fate, and accept
humiliating terms for evacuating the country. Could the flames of the
civil war which was once more raging in France be further fanned, and
the control of the Levant secured in English hands, the great English
premier would be able in a few months to make terms far more
advantageous than any he could hope for at the moment. Lord Grenville
therefore wrote a brusque letter to Talleyrand, refusing negotiation
with a government the stability of which was not assured, and
suggesting in a weak, impolitic way that while the French had a right
to choose their own government, the return of the Bourbons would be
the best guarantee of a permanent and settled administration. This
clause afforded the opportunity for a smart reply by Bonaparte,
denouncing England as the author of the war which had raged through
1799 and was about to be renewed, and reminding the King that he
himself ruled by consent of his people.
The debate which ensued in Parliament was most instructive, because
the First Consul was entirely right. Great Britain was the mainspring
of the coalition. The wits of London said in public that England had
contracted half of her national debt to destroy the Bourbons and the
other half to restore them to power. This was the key-note of the
Liberal opposition. Lord Holland was willing to be sponsor for
Bonaparte's sincerity, but the Lords laughed at him. In the Commons
Whitbread charged the excesses of the French Revolution to the
unwarrantable interference of other powers; England owed it to herself
to make peace when she could, even with a usurper. Erskine could see
in England's course nothing but a blind obstinacy which had
overwhelmed the nation with debt and disaster. "What would you say,"
said Tierney, "if Bonaparte victorious should refuse to treat except
with the Stuarts?" But the temper of Parliament and the people was for
continuing the war. Grenville, in the upper house, declared that
Bonaparte was merely a new exponent of the revolutionary wickedness of
the Directory. He had made treaties or armistices with Sardinia,
Tuscany, Modena, and the minor Italian states, only to violate them;
he had scorned the neutrality of Parma; he had dragged Venice into war
for her own destruction; he had trampled Genoa underfoot; and he had
destroyed the liberty of Switzerland while uttering false promises of
peace and friendship. His hearers sustained him by an overwhelming
majority.
In the lower house Canning denounced the First Consul as a usurper
who, like a specter, wore on his head something which resembled a
crown. Pitt rose to the height of his majestic powers in one of the
great orations of his life. Minor political considerations must be
waived. Bonaparte was the destroyer of Europe. The sole refuge from
the calamities with which he was about to flood the nations was
England. He himself had unwillingly consented to the negotiations at
Lille; it was Fructidor which had broken them off, and it was
Bonaparte who was the author of Fructidor. He might be reproached for
desiring the restoration of the ancient monarchy to France, but an
exhausted and desperate country could not find the long repose
essential for recuperation except under the Bourbons. The success of
his plea was even greater than Grenville's. Thus by an appeal to the
old detestation of revolutionary excess which was so deep-seated in
the English masses, and by an adroit insinuation that it was this for
which Bonaparte stood,--a fact which seemed to be shown by his
career,--the ministry gained a new lease of life, and men believed
that a few months would see France fall in utter exhaustion before the
coalition.
Bonaparte's personal letter to the Emperor was, as the writer
doubtless foresaw it would be, equally unsuccessful. Austria, thanks
to her double-dealings with Russia in the last campaign, was now
occupying Lombardy, Piedmont, and the Papal States; she meant to keep
them, and moderately but firmly refused to treat on the basis
proposed, which was that of Campo Formio.
Among other unfortunate surrenders which France under the Directory
had made for the sake of quiet and security was that of freedom for
the press. A consular decree of January seventeenth, 1800, further
emphasized this undemocratic policy, and suppressed all but thirteen
political journals. This was nominally a measure to be enforced only
during the war. For its justification there was the plea of necessity.
The serious indiscretions which a free and enterprising press always
has committed, and is sure to commit, during hostilities, uniformly
call out the angry denunciations of military writers. The "spurred and
booted ruler" of whom Napoleon spoke at St. Helena could not well be
expected to act otherwise than he did. Unfortunately, the only papers
which continued to be published became at once mere administrative
organs. When, therefore, with a skilful display of facts the course of
negotiations in both England and Austria was laid before the public,
the people of Paris and the provinces were easily roused to warlike
ardor. The clever and witty pasquinades, the abusive and scathing
paragraphs, in which all the papers indulged, from the "Moniteur"
downward, increased the excitement. It pleased the French fancy to
read a supposed summons to George, inviting him, as a convert to
legitimacy, to abdicate in favor of the surviving Stuart heir.
Forgetful of the immediate past, the nation was ready to maintain
French honor at any cost against its embittered and inveterate foe.
The Pactolus streams of English gold could not, the French felt sure,
much longer subsidize the Continental powers; for it was Great
Britain, and not France, which was really exhausted.
Led by a man whose genius was believed to be as fertile in political,
administrative, and fiscal expedients as it had always been in
military measures, with an admirable machinery of government and a
general confidence in their ruler, the French people became ever more
certain that they might now and finally conquer in the struggle with
England for mastery. This opinion was further strengthened because the
inveterate rancor of civil conflict in the west was again quieted,
temporarily at least, perhaps permanently. The devastator of Egypt and
Syria still held out with one hand the mildest offers of conciliation
to the malcontent communities of that district, with the other he
displayed his powerful sword, while in his proclamations he threatened
measures as severe as those he had practised against the rebellious
Bedouin. This course had the desired effect, and, having brought the
French rebels to terms, seemed likely to soothe them into habits of
submission. The Army of the West could therefore be reduced in
numbers; and as at the same time the Batavian Republic was in a fervor
of enthusiastic loyalty, so also could the Army of Holland. In this
way more than thirty thousand excellent soldiers were freed for use
elsewhere.
Simultaneously with these events the most careful preparation was made
for a step which might redound to Bonaparte's credit if properly
taken, but could easily be detrimental to the complete success of his
schemes. Under the new constitution every department of government had
an assigned dwelling-place. That of the consuls was to be the
Tuileries. How could an absolute dictator install his penates in the
sometime home of absolute royalty without inspiring general distrust?
The first step was to rechristen the pile as "the palace of the
government," the next to consecrate it to glory. From far and near the
statues of the great were gathered to adorn its halls. The choice of
these displayed in significant confusion the generals and statesmen of
all times in all places. Alexander, Caesar, Frederick; Cato, Cicero,
Brutus; Mirabeau, Marceau, and Joubert; and many others of lesser
note, were assembled in effigy. But highest of all was set the image
of Washington, the news of whose death had just reached Europe. His
example was to be held up as the real inspiration of the new ruler. In
order both to arouse the imagination of the people and to convince
their understanding, the army was put into mourning for the great
American, and a festival was instituted in his honor. To exalt the man
who was universally considered as the typical and ideal republican of
the age was a conspicuously effective idea, since it accorded
thoroughly with the approved traditions of the Revolution.
The celebration was set for February ninth, 1800, and proved a great
success. It had already been decided to reawaken public enthusiasm by
instituting great military ceremonies when the captured standards from
Aboukir were finally deposited in the Hospital of the Invalides. These
and the Washington festival were interwoven with consummate art: while
the First Consul's victories were recalled in the imposing parade,
the simple and impressive words of an able orator, M. de Fontanes,
reminded the nation that the immortal Washington had shown as a
general more strength than brilliancy, and had awakened little
enthusiasm but great confidence; that he was one of the men inspired
to rule who appear from time to time in the world; that he was neither
partizan nor demagogue; and that when peace had once been signed he
had laid down his arms to become the wisest of constructive
legislators. "Yes, Washington! thy counsels shall be heard--thou
warrior, legislator, administrator! He who in his youth surpassed thee
in battle, like thee shall close with conquering hands the wounds of
his country." Minds less quick than those of the Parisians would have
discovered the moral of the address even without the peroration. When
the official journal next day published the glowing words and
described the brilliant ceremony, the coming monarch was already
lodged under the roof of the Bourbons. Since Bonaparte had made the
liberation of Lafayette an indispensable condition of the treaty
ratified at Campo Formio, it might have been expected that this name,
so long used elsewhere in a natural juxtaposition, would on such an
occasion have been mentioned in connection with that of Washington;
but the honors of that day were to be shared with the dead foreigner,
not with the living Frenchman.