Napoleon: The Man Behind the Myth

On her release from prison following the fall of Robespierre, Josephine made the most of the friendships forged there with, amongst others, Thérèse Tallien. She resumed her affair with General Hoche and was prominent in the exuberant new society, the salons and the extravagant macabre entertainments of the capital. Sometime in the early summer of 1795 she became the mistress of Barras, but by the beginning of the autumn he was ready to move on and began looking around for a husband who might provide for her. She had no money and was living from day to day on the generosity of lovers, currently that of Barras, who had rented a small house for her off the rue Chantereine.

Josephine was thirty-two and, as Barras put it, ‘growing precociously decrepit’. She had never been a beauty, and with her freshness wilting she had to resort to what he called ‘the most refined, the most perfected artistry ever practised by the courtesans of ancient Greece or Paris in the exercise of their profession’. She knew how to overcome every disadvantage, concealing her rotten teeth by keeping her mouth shut when she smiled, which many found irresistible. She possessed an almost legendary charm, grace, and a languor of movement which people associated with her creole origins, lending her a certain spice in their imagination. She was both dignified, with elegant manners and bearing, and girlishly light-hearted, displaying a devil-may-care attitude to practicalities. And there is little doubt that she was an accomplished lover. But she had no position to fall back on when these assets failed, and marriage was the only practical way of securing her future.14 (#litres_trial_promo)

According to Barras she had set her cap at Hoche, but he was married, and had allegedly commented that ‘one could take a whore as a mistress for a time, but not as a legitimate wife’. It seems that Barras then suggested she marry Buonaparte. She was not taken with the idea, allegedly saying that of all the men she might bring herself to love, this ‘puss in boots’ was the last, and objecting that he came from ‘a family of beggars’, even though he was by then showering her with presents. Barras encouraged the match, partly in order to establish her on a respectable footing, perhaps also to tighten his grip on the useful young general, who was growing alarmingly independent.15 (#litres_trial_promo)

Buonaparte had begun to do as he pleased, appointing and cashiering officers, reorganising units, and extending his brief beyond military matters. He called on the Directors almost daily, not so much advising them as telling them what to do, and castigating them for their incompetence. When they reproved him for acting in an arbitrary manner, he reputedly countered by saying it was impossible to get anything done if one were to stick to the law, and he usually managed to get them to see things his way. Getting Buonaparte settled might make life easier for the Directors. Barras advised him that ‘a married man finds his place in society’, and that marriage gave a man ‘more substance and greater resilience against his enemies’. Most people thought he was merely trying to park an unwanted mistress, and the Marquis de Sade would publish that version, thinly veiled, in his Zoloé et ses deux acolytes.16 (#litres_trial_promo)

Buonaparte was not as fussy as Hoche. He allegedly told Barras that he did not like the idea of seducing a virgin, and preferred to find ‘l’amour tout fait que l’amour a faire’, in other words the ground well prepared. Whether those really were his words or not, there is a ring of truth about what they expressed; such cynical bluster is characteristic of the sexually insecure.17 (#litres_trial_promo)

The first extant letter from Buonaparte to Josephine is undated, but it was written at seven in the morning, probably in the second half of December 1795, and almost certainly after their first night of love. ‘I have woken full of you,’ he wrote. ‘The picture of you and the memory of yesterday’s intoxicating evening have left no rest to my senses. Sweet and incomparable Josephine, what a strange effect you have had on my heart!’ He goes on to say that he cannot stop thinking about her and what she is doing, and cannot wait to see her again, in three hours’ time. ‘Meanwhile, mio dolce amor, a million kisses from me; but do not give me any, as your kisses set my blood on fire.’18 (#litres_trial_promo)

The incomparable courtesan had clearly given him his first pleasurable amorous experience. ‘It was, it seems, his first love, and he experienced it with all the intensity of his nature,’ noted Marmont. He also noted something else. ‘What is incredible, and yet absolutely true, is that Bonaparte’s vanity was flattered,’ he wrote, explaining that for all his republican talk, the young general was beguiled by the social grace of the old nobility, and that in the company of the former pseudo-vicomtesse de Beauharnais he felt as though he had been accepted into its charmed circle; he was not Carlo Buonaparte’s son for nothing. Josephine fed Buonaparte’s social aspirations with talk of her estates in Martinique, cleverly disguising her penury and hinting at great wealth. She had taste and flair, and had managed to create a sense of elegance in the little house on the rue Chantereine with the few sticks of furniture and meagre ornaments she possessed, and despite the chipped assorted china and unmatched flatware her dinners exuded refined aristocratic ease. The house itself, designed for the philosopher Condorcet by Claude Nicolas Ledoux, was an intimate retreat, reached by a narrow walled lane, a refuge from the political turmoil of the capital. Buonaparte felt well there not just on account of his love for Josephine. He quickly captivated her two children, the fourteen-year-old Eugène and the twelve-year-old Hortense. They had begun by resenting his intrusion, but gave in when he started telling them ghost stories and playing with them. Still something of a child himself, he had found a home in Paris.19 (#litres_trial_promo)

Josephine was unsure about this third child. ‘They want me to marry, my dear friend!’ she wrote to a confidante. ‘All my friends urge me to, my aunt almost orders it and my children beg me to! “Do you love him?” you will ask. – Well … no. “So you find him unappealing?” – No, but I find myself in a state of tepidity which I find unpleasant …’ She goes on to say that she feels she should feel greater ardour: ‘I admire the general’s courage, the extent of his knowledge in all things, of which he speaks equally well, the agility of his mind, which allows him to seize the thoughts of others almost before they have expressed them; but I am fearful, I confess, of the control he seems to wish to exert over everything around him. His piercing look has something about it quite mysterious which impresses even the directors: you can judge for yourself how it intimidates a woman!’

What seems to have bothered her most was his ardour. His various sexual encounters to date had evidently left him cold, and what he experienced with Josephine had opened up a gamut of new sensations and unlocked feelings he had either never known, or had repressed with all the vehemence with which he had lambasted his friend des Mazis at Valence. ‘Above all,’ continues Josephine, ‘that which should please me, the strength of a passion of which he speaks with a force which does not permit any doubt as to its sincerity is precisely that which holds back the consent which I am often ready to give. Having passed my first youth, can I hope to preserve this violent love which, in the general’s case, resembles an access of madness?’ She also found it faintly ridiculous to be the object of adoration of a younger man. She was astonished at his ‘absurd self-confidence’, while admitting that at moments she believed him capable of anything. Her friends encouraged her, and Barras reassured her that he would soon be sending the young general off to war to cool his ardour.20 (#litres_trial_promo)

By then the coalition against France was in poor shape: Tuscany, Prussia, Holland and Spain had dropped out and made peace. Only Austria, Britain and Sardinia were actively pursuing the war. On 31 December an armistice was signed with Austria, but it was expected that hostilities would resume in the spring, and Buonaparte had pronounced ideas on how they should be conducted. Although he was now in command of Paris and the interior, he could not help meddling in overall strategy, to the annoyance of most of the Directors.

Buonaparte’s plan for a two-pronged attack on Vienna, to be delivered through Germany by the Army of the Rhine under General Jean-Victor Moreau and through the Tyrol by the Army of Italy, had been sent to the relevant commanders in September 1795. It had been ridiculed by General Kellermann, who had succeeded Dumerbion at the Army of Italy, but was implemented by General Scherer, who had replaced him in command. He carried out the first stage successfully, but then, instead of moving on as prescribed, came to a standstill, pleading insufficient strength and the low morale of his troops. In January 1796 Buonaparte produced an amended version of the plan, but this too met with a critical reception, and one of the commissioners attached to the Army of Italy protested at orders being sent by ‘project-mongers’ ‘gnawed by ambition and greedy for posts above their abilities’, ‘madmen’ in Paris who knew nothing of the realities of the situation on the ground yet thought they could ‘seize the moon with their teeth’. Scherer tendered his resignation.21 (#litres_trial_promo)

The Directory sent Saliceti to Nice to investigate. He reported that the Army of Italy was not only lacking in all the necessities, it was suffering from low morale, due largely to Scherer’s poor leadership. At the suggestion of Barras, the head of the Directory, Carnot, appointed Buonaparte to succeed him. Carnot regarded the Italian theatre of operations as secondary, and supposed that this ‘little captain’, as he referred to him, would be up to the limited task. The appointment nevertheless raised eyebrows, as Buonaparte had never commanded a unit, let alone an army in the field, and had never been in a real battle. There were plenty of experienced generals to choose from who, as some observed, were not treacherous Corsicans.22 (#litres_trial_promo)

Buonaparte set to his new task with his characteristic sense of purpose. He bought all the maps and books on Italy he could find and shut himself up for a week in his office reading, lying on his stomach on maps spread on the floor and tracing possible routes and lines of advance. On the afternoon of 8 March he met Josephine at the offices of her notary Raguideau to draw up their marriage contract and sign a séparation de biens, a prenuptial agreement, after which they parted and spent the night apart (Barras claims she spent it with him). Buonaparte almost certainly worked through the night, and did not emerge from his offices until that night of 9 March, when he remembered, two hours late, an important appointment.23 (#litres_trial_promo)

At ten o’clock he drove across a Paris thickly carpeted in snow, accompanied by his aide Jean Le Marois, to the offices of the deuxième municipalité of Paris, housed in the former residence of an émigré marquis, situated in the rue d’Antin. Josephine had been waiting for him there for two hours, along with Barras, Jean-Lambert Tallien, now a member of the legislative chamber, and her lawyer Étienne Calmelet, who were to witness their marriage. The man who was to marry them, the officier de l’état civil Carles Leclercq, had grown tired of waiting and gone home to bed, leaving a minor functionary to act in his stead.

The resulting marriage was invalid. The functionary in question had no authority to marry anyone; Buonaparte’s witness Le Marois was under the required age of twenty-one; and the documents provided by both parties were spurious: pleading the impossibility of providing a birth certificate due to the British blockade of Martinique, Josephine produced a document drawn up by her notary attesting that she had been born on the island in 1767, four years after her real date of birth, while Buonaparte, using the same argument, produced a similar one giving his date of birth as 5 February 1768 (the day Corsica became French).24 (#litres_trial_promo)

After the ceremony, without so much as a celebratory drink, the participants went home singly, except for the newlyweds. But their wedding night was not a success, as Josephine’s pet pug, Fortuné, would not let Buonaparte get into her bed, and bit him in the calf when he tried. The next day he accompanied her to Madame Campan’s school at Saint-Germain-en-Laye to visit Hortense. That night he may have had access to his spouse, but by the following evening he was on his way south, travelling by night in the company of Junot and the commissary Félix Chauvet. Wisely, he had opted to have his own men running the supply services, and he trusted Chauvet, who was an old friend of the family from Marseille and had served him at Toulon. After much begging he had also persuaded Jean-Pierre Collot, an efficient victualler, to come with him.25 (#litres_trial_promo)

They went by way of Marseille, where Buonaparte had a serious matter to attend to. He had not asked his mother for permission to marry, a mark of disrespect and a sin against Corsican family lore, nor had he informed any of his siblings of the forthcoming event – with good reason. He knew that Josephine did not conform to their idea of a desirable wife or a useful addition to the family. She came from an alien milieu, and not only did she not bring any money with her, her interests and those of her children were bound to conflict with those of the Buonaparte. He had himself berated Lucien for his marriage to the lowly Christine Boyer, and more recently had ruled out allowing Paulette to marry the waning Fréron. Lucien, who knew Josephine and disliked her, would no doubt have enjoyed alerting Letizia to his brother’s mésalliance. On reaching Marseille, Buonaparte apprised Letizia of his marriage and delivered a fittingly deferential letter from Josephine. She took some persuasion, and consulted Joseph before grudgingly responding with a letter whose text Buonaparte had prepared in advance.26 (#litres_trial_promo)

He did not call on Désirée, now back in Marseille, but she heard his news and wrote him a suitably heartbroken and melodramatic letter: ‘You have made me miserable for the rest of my life, and yet I still have the heart to forgive you. My life is a horrible torture for me since I can no longer devote it to you … You, Married! I cannot accustom myself to the idea, it is killing me, I cannot survive it.’ She ended by assuring him that she would never marry another.27 (#litres_trial_promo)

Her letter might have moved the ‘Clisson’ of a few months earlier, but now Buonaparte had thoughts only for Josephine. ‘Every instant takes me further away from you, my adorable love, and with every instant I find less and less strength with which to bear being away from you,’ he wrote as he sped south two days after leaving her in Paris. ‘You are the constant object of all my thoughts,’ he assured her, wishing he could be back reading ‘our wonderful Ossian’ together. It is the first extant document he signed ‘Bonaparte’.28 (#litres_trial_promo)

10

Italy (#ulink_107c1446-a736-5391-af0c-9f448a698878)

When he reached the headquarters of the Army of Italy at Nice on 26 March 1796, the twenty-six-year-old Bonaparte faced one of the greatest challenges of his life. He had never held independent command of so much as a platoon in the field, yet he was now commander-in-chief of an army, staffed with men older and more experienced than him, with sound reputations. Such was André Masséna, eleven years his senior, a big, tall man with expansive gestures and an ironic, malicious smile, the son of a petty grocer from Nice who had been orphaned early and run away to sea, then joined the royal army in which he rose as high as a plebeian could, before, after a spell as a smuggler, fighting his way to general’s rank in the army of the Republic. He was a force of nature, uneducated, ostentatiously brave, determined and effective in battle, displaying tactical flair – and a piratical lust for treasure. Another was Charles-Pierre Augereau, twelve years older than Bonaparte, the son of a servant and a Parisian fruit-seller who had a long career behind him as a mercenary in the Neapolitan and Prussian armies before rising in that of the Republic by his conspicuous bravery. He too was a tall, martial figure, with a big nose, the blustering demeanour of a bully and the subversive attitude of a proletarian revolutionary. Foul-mouthed and violent, this child of the streets was popular with his men. The only thing the third corps commander shared with the others was a massive physique. Jean-Mathieu Sérurier was an educated fifty-three-year-old minor nobleman and veteran of the royal army who had seen action in the Seven Years’ War, a conscientious, steady, brave and efficient general.

Unlike regular armies, in which a man’s rank is taken as a mark of his worth, in the armies of the Republic officers and men learned to trust and esteem only those with a reputation bestowed by those who served under them and spread by word of mouth. Masséna had come across Bonaparte at the siege of Toulon, but was unaware of his contribution to the fall of the town, and to him and the other officers in the Army of Italy, its new commander was an unknown quantity. But they did know he had taken part in the events of Vendémiaire and that he was a political appointment, a ‘Parisian general’ and an ‘intriguer’ with no substance, in the words of another who had come across him at Toulon, chef de bataillon Louis-Gabriel Suchet. They had been expecting the worst, but when they actually saw the man they despaired. In their eyes his diminutive stature, pathetic appearance, awkward manner and rasping voice ruled him out as an effective leader of men.1 (#litres_trial_promo)

Bonaparte immediately assumed a tone which brooked no argument. ‘I have taken command of the Army of Italy,’ he wrote to Masséna less than forty-eight hours after his arrival. ‘Nominating me, the executive Directory hopes that I may be of use in leading it towards the brilliant destiny which awaits it. Europe contemplates it with awe, and France expects from it all the triumphs of a campaign.’ At the same time he flattered the commanders, officers and men, raising their hopes of action, glory and rewards, while Junot and Marmont spread their own admiration and love of the new commander. With a dose of wishful thinking, four days after his arrival he assured Josephine that ‘my soldiers display a confidence in me impossible to describe’.2 (#litres_trial_promo)

The troops were in poor shape. To have any idea of the conditions, one has to forget all the paintings of finely-uniformed officers leading ranks of men with immaculate white facings and bright-red epaulettes on their well-cut blue coats, with blue, white and red plumes in their hats. Few of the men had boots, and many had no trousers. Some had no uniform jackets. They made themselves footwear out of woven straw and in the absence of hats wore knotted handkerchiefs on their heads. Most of them looked more like scarecrows than soldiers.3 (#litres_trial_promo)

They had scant equipment, and were expected to find themselves shelter for the night as best they could when on operations, as there were no tents. Disease and infections dramatically reduced the number of effectives. The companies contracted to supply them pocketed most of the money they received from the government. Even in cantonment around Nice the troops were poorly fed, with meat once every four days, beans once in three, and bowls of rice flavoured with lard the rest of the time. In the autumn they had been able to supplement their diet by gathering chestnuts, but the winter had robbed them of this resource. They could not buy food as they were paid irregularly, and then only in worthless assignats. Some of the senior officers who received cash contributions from the local administration to pay the men did not pass it on. The men had been stuck in the same place for months with nothing to do, and morale was low. Desertion was rife and acts of insubordination frequent. Disaffection had reignited anti-government and even royalist feeling among the older men, and shouts of ‘Vive le Roi’ were not infrequent. One demi-brigade mutinied shortly before Bonaparte’s arrival, one soon after.4 (#litres_trial_promo)

Bonaparte realised extreme measures were needed, and with Saliceti as the Directory’s commissioner, he was in a position to take them. He had a couple of officers court-martialled to set an example. He sent Chauvet to Genoa to raise a loan and purchase supplies, and wrote to the local authorities demanding food and forage, threatening to send the men out to loot and rape if these were not provided. With a mixture of threat and flattery he managed to get the contractors to disgorge victuals and the local administration to make up for some of the arrears in pay. He gave instructions that the men must have fresh or salt meat every day.5 (#litres_trial_promo)

He had selected as his chief of staff a man of experience, his senior in rank and age, whom he had met only recently. The forty-two-year-old Alexandre Berthier had trained as a military engineer and cartographer before receiving his baptism of fire as a captain in the American War of Independence. With his steady temperament, extraordinary memory, unmatched attention to detail, precise mode of expression and legible handwriting, Berthier was the perfect man for the job. He could grasp in a second some hastily-rapped-out order and give it coherent form, while his team ensured it was passed on to the appropriate quarter with a professionalism hitherto unknown in the army of the Republic. Bonaparte supervised and inspected, noting deficiencies and passing them on to Berthier, demanding immediate action. He was so confident that within two days of his arrival he reported to Carnot that ‘I have been very well received by the army, which shows a confidence in me for which I am deeply grateful.’ Quite how much confidence the army felt is questionable.6 (#litres_trial_promo)

François Vigo-Roussillon, a sergeant in the 32nd Demi-Brigade under Masséna, was astonished when his neighbour whispered that the diminutive figure who had just ridden up to their ranks was the new commander-in-chief. ‘His appearance, his dress, his bearing did not appeal to us,’ he recalled; ‘… small, slight, very pale, with great black eyes and hollow cheeks, with long hair falling from his brow to his shoulders in two dog’s ears, as they were then known. He wore a blue uniform coat and over that a nut-brown overcoat. He was mounted on a large bony sorrel horse with a docked tail.’ He was followed by a single servant ‘on a rather sad looking mule’ borrowed from the supply train. The new general introduced himself to the assembled troops with a speech in which he held out the prospect of glory and the possibility of rich plunder if they managed to defeat the enemy and break into Italy. His address produced little effect, and one officer recalled that afterwards the men made fun of his hairstyle and mimicked his accent.7 (#litres_trial_promo)

The troops were an amalgam of former royal soldiers, volunteers and conscripts. Most of the younger men came from the poorer mountainous regions of southern France. They were physically hardened and used to rigorous marches. The make-up of the officer corps was overwhelmingly plebeian (the percentage of nobles had fallen from 80 to 5 between 1789 and 1793), which contributed a sense of fraternity between officers and men, enhanced by the universal penury, as officers and even most of the generals could not afford a horse (the artillery was drawn by mules). The most disciplined units were those which had just been transferred from Spain, where they had fought a victorious campaign.8 (#litres_trial_promo)

The infantry divisions each had between three and five demi-brigades, the basic fighting unit at the time. The heavy demi-brigades were supposed to number 3,000 men and the light ones 1,500. Masséna commanded two divisions, Augereau and Sérurier one each. The cavalry, which numbered less than 5,000 men and was of poor quality and short of horses, was led by General Henri Stengel, a fifty-two-year-old German who had been in French service from the age of sixteen. The overall strength of the French Army of Italy was, on paper, 60,000 men, but most historians agree that the real figure was no more than about 47,000. Some put it as low as 35,000.9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Facing them in the Alpine passes were 18,000 men of the Sardinian army, well-trained, hardy Savoyard mountain men under the command of the Austrian field marshal baron de Colli. Beside them stood 35,000 Austrians under the seventy-one-year-old Field Marshal de Beaulieu, a Belgian by birth. His troops were disciplined, well-trained, steady and motivated, but they were used to set-piece battles and methodical manoeuvres, which would disadvantage them in the tight valleys and boulder-strewn terrain on which they were to fight.

Bonaparte’s orders were to stage a diversion that would tie down the maximum number of Austrian forces in Italy while the two stronger French armies poised on the Rhine defeated the main Austrian army in Germany and marched on Vienna. But he did not think like a soldier content merely to carry out the task he had been set. He believed that as long as the Habsburgs remained dominant in Italy they would present a threat to France, and that the centuries-old rivalry between the two states for hegemony over the peninsula should be resolved. He had studied the various Franco-Austrian wars over Italy, most recently Marshal Maillebois’ campaigns of 1745–46. He had pored over maps of the area during the past two years, becoming familiar with the lie of the land and making mental notes of which passes were practicable by artillery, where rivers could be forded, and which were the possible lines of advance and retreat not only for his own army but for the enemy as well. He meant to wipe out the threat to France by expelling the Austrians from Italy.

One weapon in this struggle would be the nascent Italian national movement, which identified the Austrians as oppressors. Many of the nationalists were living in exile in Nice, and Bonaparte held meetings with them. He did not think much of those he met, and had a poor opinion of Italians in general, but he decided to take 150 of them, led by Filippo Buonarroti, along with him. On 31 March he issued a proclamation to the people of Piedmont announcing that the French nation would shortly liberate them.10 (#litres_trial_promo)

The following day his divisions were on the move. On 4 April he set up headquarters at Albenga, where he heard of the death of his friend Chauvet in Genoa. Collot was shocked by the apparent indifference with which Bonaparte received the news, merely instructing him to take over. Here and on similar occasions he made a show of calm, even brash self-control, hiding the emotional turmoil that comes through in his letters, particularly to Josephine. ‘Not a day has passed without my writing to you, not a night has passed without me pressing you in my arms, I have not drunk a cup of tea without cursing the desire for glory and the ambition which keep me far from the soul of my life,’ he had written from Nice, complaining that her letters were scarce and cold, and that in contrast to his soldiers, only she withheld her trust and remained ‘the joy and the torment’ of his life.11 (#litres_trial_promo)

To her, he poured out his despair at the news of Chauvet’s death. ‘What is the future? What is the past? What are we?’ he questioned, wondering at the purpose of life, and ‘what magical fluid shrouds us and conceals all that we should most want to know?’ But this was no time to brood, and he must think only of the army. Two days later he wrote to her in more passionate vein, telling of his burning desire for her and sending her a kiss on a point of her body ‘lower than the heart, much, much lower’.12 (#litres_trial_promo)

On 9 April Bonaparte transferred to Savona as his three corps took up their positions, with Masséna on the right, Augereau in the centre and Sérurier to their left. But it was the Austrians who struck first. Beaulieu had misinterpreted a French reconnaissance along the coast as the vanguard of an attack on Genoa, and, assuming that the whole French army would be following, decided to drive in its flank through Montenotte and Monte Legino. His attack on what he assumed to be the French flank ran head-on into the units at Monte Legino preparing to attack.13 (#litres_trial_promo)

Bonaparte had intended to strike at the gap where the Alps ended and the Apennines began, which was the juncture between the Sardinians and their Austrian allies. While Sérurier pinned down the Sardinians frontally and Augereau turned their flank at Millesimo, Masséna was to move into the gap between the two armies. Bonaparte calculated that if he inserted a wedge between the two and prised them apart, strategic imperatives would force the Sardinians to fall back in a northerly direction towards their base at Turin and the Austrians to retreat eastwards towards theirs at Milan. He would then be able to defeat them separately. His studies had convinced him that it was superior numbers that won battles, and that the art of war could be reduced to the one principle of bringing greater forces to bear at a given point.14 (#litres_trial_promo)

As they sheltered from the torrential rain that night, planning to renew their attack the next morning, the Austrians at Monte Legino were unaware that, quickly appraising the situation, Bonaparte had ordered Masséna to veer right and make a forced march through the night to Montenotte in their rear. ‘Everything suggests that today and tomorrow will go down in history,’ Berthier wrote to Masséna with his latest orders.15 (#litres_trial_promo)

The following morning, as the Austrian commander was about to push home his attack, the dispersing mist revealed Masséna’s divisions deploying on his flank and rear. Coming under simultaneous attack from two sides, he ordered a retreat which quickly turned into a rout. It had been little more than a skirmish, with Austrian losses in dead, wounded and prisoners around 2,700 and the French no more than a hundred, but Bonaparte accorded it the status of a full-scale battle. In his self-aggrandising report to the Directory, he claimed that the main Austrian force commanded by Beaulieu himself was involved, that it had lost up to 4,000 men and ‘several’ flags (in fact only one was captured), and blew the event up to epic proportions. His order of the day to the troops echoed this, praising them for their glorious exploit. It was the first brush-stroke of what was to be a masterpiece of mendacity.16 (#litres_trial_promo)

Beaulieu had in fact spent the day several kilometres away, sitting badly bruised by a roadside while his escort struggled to repair the carriage that had pitched him to the ground. He had realised his mistake too late and had lost valuable time, which Bonaparte was not going to let him regain. He urged Augereau, most of whose men were still marching without boots, and many without muskets, to hasten his attack on Millesimo, and Masséna to strike further into the Austrian rear at Dego. Once Augereau had accomplished his task, he was to swing left and begin to roll up the extremity of the Sardinian line.

Bonaparte needed to keep up the momentum so that neither of his opponents had time to regroup and strike back; if they did, he would be caught between two fires. He therefore reacted violently to any apparent hitch. After Augereau had sent the Sardinians reeling at Millesimo, one force of about 1,000 men under General Provera had ensconced themselves in an old fortress at Cosseria. Knowing them to have no more supplies or water than those they carried, Augereau meant to leave a few hundred men to pin them down and take their inevitable surrender while he went after the retreating main body of Sardinians. But Bonaparte insisted he storm Cosseria. In the ensuing assault the French suffered heavy losses from the Sardinians sniping from the battlements. Provera offered to capitulate, but Bonaparte tried to bully him into unconditional surrender, threatening to take no prisoners, and ordered Augereau to attack once more. This attack proved as futile as the first. Provera duly surrendered the next morning, having lost no more than 150 men, while Bonaparte’s impatience had cost the French at least 600 and possibly as many as 1,000 casualties. He did have the good grace to admit his mistake and express regret.17 (#litres_trial_promo)

To Augereau’s right, Masséna attacked the citadel of Dego, where over the next two days some of the most serious fighting took place, with the citadel changing hands several times. After the final assault, which he directed himself, Bonaparte promoted a young chef de bataillon named Lannes whose dash had caught his attention.

On 16 April Bonaparte learned that Beaulieu was retreating to Acqui on the road to Milan; his plan had worked. He ordered Masséna to move northwards against the Sardinians. Colli’s dwindling force was falling back in order to defend Turin. It fought doggedly, inflicting heavy losses on the French, but on 21 April, after a brief defence it had to abandon its base and stores at Mondovi. That evening the King of Sardinia, Victor Amadeus, summoned a special council in Turin. As Beaulieu had signalled that he was not able to come to his aid further resistance seemed pointless; on the morning of 23 April Colli requested an armistice.

Bonaparte replied that he lacked the necessary powers and continued his advance. When pressed by the desperate Sardinians to agree to a ceasefire, he replied that he would be putting himself at risk if he did so without guarantees, and could only sign one if they handed over the fortresses of Coni, Tortona and Alessandria. In order to prevent Beaulieu from attempting to succour his Sardinian allies, he moved quickly on Cherasco and Alba, where he encouraged Piedmontese revolutionaries to establish a ‘Republic’, as a signal to the king that he could overthrow him if he wished. He applied further pressure by raising his demands to include the cession of Savoy and Nice to France, and the supply of his army with all its needs. These he delivered as an ultimatum on 27 April.18 (#litres_trial_promo)

The two men sent to conclude the negotiations and sign the armistice, the old Piedmontese General La Tour and Colli’s chief of staff Colonel Costa de Beauregard, found Bonaparte late on the night of 27 April in a barely guarded house in Cherasco. He was haughty and firm, threatening to launch further attacks every time they suggested softening his terms. At one o’clock in the morning he informed them that his troops were under orders to begin the advance on Turin at two. But having bullied them into signing the armistice he offered them a snack of broth, cold meats, hardtack and some pastries made by the local nuns, during which he became talkative. Although Beauregard was impressed by the brilliance and wide-ranging interests Bonaparte displayed, he found him cold, proud, bitter, and lacking in any grace or amenity. He also noted that he was very tired and his eyes were red. As they parted he said to Bonaparte, ‘General, how sad that one cannot like you as much as one cannot help admiring and esteeming you!’19 (#litres_trial_promo)

Bonaparte had weightier concerns than the affection of his enemies. He had exceeded both his brief and his duty as a soldier. He was single-handedly deciding French foreign policy, presenting the Directory with a fait accompli. He was, it is true, acting in concert with commissioner Saliceti who was with him during the negotiations, but he was still at risk of being recalled in disgrace. As he had meant to act independently all along, he had anticipated this eventuality and been shoring up his position.

His treatment of the troops under his command had been designed from the start not only to make them more effective as fighting men, but also to turn them into his men. He had achieved the first aim by giving them victory: nothing acts on the soldier’s self-esteem like success. It was clear to them that this success was largely due to Bonaparte’s talents, yet he made them feel it was all down to them. He had developed a gift for talking to the men as equals. His extraordinary memory allowed him to remember their names, their units, where they came from, their ages, histories, and above all their military exploits. He would come up to a man and ask about some personal problem or congratulate him on a past feat like an old comrade. He was not shy of reprimanding officers in front of the troops, to show that he was their friend.

He had refrained from being too strict with them at first, allowing these men who had been starved of food, comforts and action for so long to indulge their basic instincts. They preyed on the country they went through, and by the time he had reached Cherasco he had to admit to being frightened by the ‘horrors’ they were committing. ‘The soldier who lacks bread is driven to excesses of violence which make one blush for humanity,’ he reported on 24 April. By then they had had a chance to fill their bellies and pull boots and items of clothing they lacked from Austrian and Sardinian dead or prisoners. Once he had halted his advance and managed to capture Sardinian stores, Bonaparte was able to begin reining them in. ‘The pillage is growing less widespread,’ he reported to the Directory on 26 April. ‘The primal thirst of an army lacking everything is being quenched.’ He had three men shot and six others condemned to hard labour, then shot a few more for looting a church. ‘It costs me much sadness and I have passed some difficult moments,’ he admitted.20 (#litres_trial_promo)

While he tightened discipline, he took care to flatter the soldiers’ self-esteem, making throwaway statements such as ‘With 20,000 men like that one could conquer Europe!’ He described their feats of arms in superlative terms in his proclamations. In that of 26 April he listed the engagements they had taken part in as if they were great battles, gave inflated figures of enemy dead and wounded, guns and standards captured, and told them they were heroic conquerors and liberators who would one day look back with pride on the glorious epic they had shared in. He encouraged the sense that they were making history with references to Hannibal as they came over the Alpine passes.21 (#litres_trial_promo)