Napoleon: The Man Behind the Myth

As he exerted authority over the whole of northern Italy, either directly or by proxy, Bonaparte was constantly receiving representatives of the civil authorities and the administration seeking guidance or approval. And as the political system on the peninsula remained fluid, a stream of diplomats trickled through Mombello, from the emperor of Austria, the kings of Sardinia and Naples, the Pope, the republics of Genoa and Lucca, the dukes of Parma and Tuscany, from civic corporations and other bodies, even from Swiss cantons and minor German states. Couriers came and went. So did individuals seeking redress, protection or favour. In order to accommodate the numbers, a large tent was erected beside the villa to extend the drawing room.

An etiquette gradually established itself, distancing Bonaparte from his comrades-in-arms, who were made to feel they could no longer use the familiar ‘tu’ when addressing him. In French military custom, a commander kept table for all his officers when on active service, and until now Bonaparte had sat down with his comrades to eat whatever and wherever they could. At Mombello, he dined in public with Josephine as French monarchs had done, to the accompaniment of music and watched by his court, only occasionally inviting one or other of his staff to join them. In the evenings, the company was entertained with music, and La Grassini would drive out from Milan to sing for the conqueror. ‘He did not appear in the least embarrassed or put out by these excessive marks of honour, and received them as though he had been used to them all his life,’ commented the French diplomat André-François Miot de Melito.3 (#litres_trial_promo)

The painter Antoine Gros, who had been travelling in Italy, came to Mombello and started work on a portrait. Bonaparte would not sit still, so Josephine made him sit on her knee, and by playfully holding his head and caressing him she managed to immobilise him long enough for Gros to sketch the face. He would later work these sketches into the memorable painting of Bonaparte on the bridge of Arcole.4 (#litres_trial_promo)

Josephine reigned over this court with a relaxed grace that impressed visitors: she seemed born to the station of regal consort. The ladies of Milan who called were charmed by her easy and friendly manner. ‘Never has a woman combined more kindness with more natural grace and done more good with more pleasure than her,’ in the words of Miot de Melito. She was nevertheless bored, and pined for Paris. Her relationship with Bonaparte seems to have been passing through a good phase, as she informed Barras. ‘My husband has promised not to leave me any more,’ she wrote, ‘… you helped to marry us, and you made his happiness and mine. I could not love him more than I do.’ To Bonaparte’s delight, the cook’s dog killed Josephine’s pug Fortuné, who could no longer prevent him taking what one observer called ‘conjugal liberties’ with her in public, but the spontaneous and unaffected nature of his caresses disarmed even the most prudish.5 (#litres_trial_promo)

Josephine was less happy at having to put up with her husband’s family. Letizia arrived on 1 June, bringing Maria Nunziata, now styling herself Caroline, little Geronimo, and Maria-Anna, who had taken to calling herself Élisa and brought her fiancé, the Corsican Félix Bacciochi. She needed a dowry, which only her brother could provide, and though he disliked Bacciochi, Bonaparte had to give in to the entreaties of his mother, who approved of the marriage, as the man came from a prominent family of Ajaccio. Joseph had also turned up, followed by Joseph Fesch, who brought Paulette and Josephine’s son Eugène from Paris.

It was not a happy family gathering. Letizia, who now met Josephine for the first time, saw no reason to change her views on the subject of what she considered her son’s disastrous marriage. The rest of the family concurred. For her part, Josephine was unimpressed by her in-laws. She had already met Lucien, whom she detested, and Louis, who did not like her and who since falling ill in February had turned into a hypochondriac prone to fits of depression. She found Joseph amiable enough, as he kept up a diplomatic show of friendliness towards her. It was her sisters-in-law who horrified Josephine. She appears to have believed the gossip that they had all slept with Bonaparte, and Paulette’s behaviour did little to gainsay it. She was stunningly beautiful, but her demeanour combined the pranks of a schoolgirl with the morals of a harlot. One moment she would be pulling faces and sticking out her tongue, mimicking and joshing distinguished personages, the next she would be fornicating behind a curtain with whichever young officer came to hand. Bonaparte resolved to put a stop to it by marrying her off to one of his most able officers, Victor-Émmanuel Leclerc, who was in love with her and could be counted on to keep her occupied. They were married on 14 June along with Élisa and Bacciochi. Soon after, Letizia departed for Ajaccio with the Bacciochis, and a little later Joseph left for Rome to take up the job of French ambassador to the Holy See which Bonaparte had obtained for him.6 (#litres_trial_promo)

To distract Josephine, Bonaparte arranged excursions to the lakes of Garda, Maggiore and Como, to Monza and Isola Bella. But he was himself not in holiday mood. More than one witness noted that he looked not only exhausted but also sad and often dejected, that on occasion his look was filled with melancholy and reflection, that he was sometimes sombre.7 (#litres_trial_promo)

He had experienced a great deal over the past year, and had learned much about himself and others, about war, politics and human affairs in general. Most of it, including the deceptions of Josephine, had lowered his opinion of human nature. He had debased his own standards and made compromises, in his relationship with his wife, his political calculations and his financial dealings. By the beginning of 1797 he was systematically siphoning off a considerable proportion of the resources being sucked out of Italy, and following the last campaign he had taken most, at least a million francs, of the wealth uncovered by his commissary Collot at the mercury mines of Idrija in Slovenia.8 (#litres_trial_promo)

In conversation with the agronomist André Thouin at Mombello one day, he said that once peace had been signed he would retire to the country and become a justice of the peace. There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of such sentiments, but they were no more than idle thoughts: in the uncertain state France was in, no government of whatever persuasion could tolerate the existence of a man of his capacities and following as an uncommitted private individual. In August, one of the army victuallers who had known him at Valence wrote to a friend that he could see ‘no end for him other than the throne or the scaffold’.9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Partly through his ambition and partly by force of circumstance, Bonaparte had become a figure famous throughout Europe. Between the spring of 1796, when he took command of the Army of Italy, and the end of 1797, no fewer than seventy-two pamphlets would have been published about him. People in the most distant parts of the Continent were either inspired or disgusted by him. Some feared him like the devil, others pinned their most ardent hopes on him. He was the source of fascination for young people of all classes and nations. But in France itself, he had become a political figure. Since the army had become an indispensable tool of government any popular general was, whether he liked it or not, a player in the power struggle which was going on over the future governance of France. Having proved his competence during the Vendémiaire rising, he was now both feared and needed by the Directory, and by every political faction in Paris.10 (#litres_trial_promo)

For a man not shy of saying what he thought of others, Bonaparte was surprisingly sensitive to criticism. He had recently come under attack from the right-wing press in Paris, which portrayed him as a Caesar only waiting to cross the Rubicon, as a Jacobin and a fiendish ‘exterminating angel’. He decided to respond in kind. On 19 July the first issue appeared in Milan of the Courrier de l’armée d’Italie, a paper ostensibly meant to keep the army informed, but whose primary aim was to work on public opinion in France, where it was disseminated. Other commanders had published papers to keep their troops informed, but this one was different. The main feature of the first number was a description of the parade held in Milan on the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille on 14 July. It abounded in touching vignettes, mostly apocryphal. ‘As the army marched past, a corporal of the ninth demi-brigade approached the commander-in-chief and said to him: “General, you have saved France. We, your children who share in the glory of belonging to this invincible army will make a rampart of their bodies around you. Save the Republic; may the hundred thousand soldiers who make up this army close ranks in defence of liberty.”’11 (#litres_trial_promo)

While Bonaparte made it clear that he and his army stood firm in support of the Republic, the Courrier subtly distanced him from the Directory, which, by contrast with the pure republicanism of the Army of Italy and its commander, was made to appear weak and corrupt. A second journal, which came out once a décade (ten days – the revolutionary week) under the editorship of the moderate constitutionalist royalist Michel Regnaud de Saint-Jean-d’Angély, printed articles ‘correcting’ ‘false’ impressions of Bonaparte held in Paris and building up the image of him as a miracle-performing hero.

This positioning had a great deal to do with recent events in France, where the April elections had returned a majority of right-wing deputies to the two chambers, setting these in conflict with the Directory. Barras resolved to cow them by force, and summoned General Hoche from the Army of the Sambre-et-Meuse under pretence of giving him the job of minister of war. On 16 July, as his troops crossed the sixty-kilometre exclusion zone supposed to keep the military away from the institutions of government, the chambers denounced the action and the attempted coup was blocked. Barras and his fellow Directors then concentrated on winning over those troops legally stationed within the zone, but they needed a popular general to lead them. Bonaparte wrote to the Directory on 15 July that the Army of Italy was alarmed at news of a slide to the right in Paris and hoped they would take energetic steps in defence of the Republic, assuring them of its support. He had cause for anxiety.12 (#litres_trial_promo)

When they invaded Venetian territory in May, his troops had arrested a royalist agent, the comte d’Antraigues, and from him and the papers found on him, Bonaparte discovered that Generals Pichegru and Moreau were involved in a plot to overthrow the Directory and bring back the Bourbons, a plot which specifically involved killing him. This explained why the Austrians were dragging their feet over concluding peace.13 (#litres_trial_promo)

The preliminaries signed at Leoben were just that, and a treaty still needed to be negotiated. The Austrian foreign minister Baron Thugut sent the Neapolitan ambassador in Vienna, Marchese Gallo, to negotiate this on his behalf, and when he met Bonaparte in Milan in May they agreed to conclude rapidly. But Thugut was in no hurry. At the last moment Bonaparte had insisted that France be allowed to keep all her conquests on the left bank of the Rhine, which meant that the territory’s rulers would have to be compensated. Since their lands had formed part of the Holy Roman Empire, the emperor would need to sanction this and make whatever compensations were necessary. It was also hoped that some of Austria’s allies in the anti-French coalition would be persuaded to accede to the settlement, which would be finalised at a congress to be convoked at Rastatt at the beginning of July. The possibility of a restoration of the Bourbon monarchy radically altered the situation; Louis XVIII would be only too happy to recover France reduced to her old frontiers and let northern Italy revert to Austria. When all this dawned on Bonaparte, he was outraged.14 (#litres_trial_promo)

Both sides prepared for a resumption of hostilities. Austria took possession of the Venetian territory promised to it, while Bonaparte took over Venice itself and reorganised the area under his control. He had turned the lands taken from Venice into a Transpadane Republic, but then incorporated that with the Cispadane into one, to be known as the Cisalpine Republic. His aim was to deny the whole of northern Italy to Austria and create a political unit that could stand on its own but remain under French control. He hoped to introduce an administration which would allow it to raise and pay for enough troops to defend both itself and French interests. It was not a new idea, as Dumouriez had done much the same in the Austrian Netherlands and Hoche on the Rhine. The policy made sense to the generals operating in the respective areas, if not to the Directory. It was also partly inspired by the mission civilisatrice the Revolution was supposed to be carrying out as it liberated sister nations from feudal ‘slavery’. Bonaparte had the establishment of the Cisalpine Republic immortalised in a print showing himself before the tomb of Virgil, with the French people represented by a Herculean figure tearing the chains off a female figure representing Italy.

The reality did not live up to the ideal. Aside from a small number of Italian nationalists and Jacobins, the population had greeted the French incursion with varying degrees of hostility, which was greatly increased by the depredations of the troops and civilian administrators. Bonaparte had been careful not to upset local sensibilities by spreading revolutionary ideas, had refrained from toppling any throne (except that of Modena) or abolishing the privileges of the nobility, and had shown respect for the Church and the Pope (the Directors raged about his use of the terms ‘Holy Father’ and ‘His Holiness’ when writing and referring to him). Yet the majority of Italians remained sceptical and uncommitted. There were moments when Bonaparte despaired of the enterprise; and he was beginning to be distracted by other thoughts.

In April, the former French minister in Constantinople, Raymond Verninac, turned up at Leoben on his way back to France. He was concerned at the treatment of French citizens and interests in Egypt by the Mameluke beys who ruled it as a semi-autonomous province on behalf of the Ottoman Porte. For the past two years he had been receiving alarming reports from the French consul in Cairo, Charles Magallon, who since 1790 had been pressing for France to intervene militarily and, if necessary, take Egypt over as a colony.15 (#litres_trial_promo)

The Levant had been a French sphere of interest since the Crusades, when a French dynasty was established in Jerusalem, and later France had entertained close diplomatic and commercial ties with the Ottoman Porte. The two powers were united in opposition to Austria and Russia, both of which threatened Ottoman interests in the Balkans. Toulon and Marseille had grown up on trade with the Levant, which attracted colonies of French merchants. An Ottoman province since 1517, Egypt was ruled by a pasha nominated by the Porte assisted by Mameluke soldiers of Albanian and Circassian origin. The pasha had lost control, the beys did as they pleased, and the population suffered from their maladministration, corruption and cruelty. In the course of the eighteenth century many came to believe that Egypt was crying out for stable administration and development.

The loss of Canada and other colonies to the British in the 1760s prompted the French to look east. Featuring prominently in the art and literature of the eighteenth century, in the course of which France developed relations with Persia, the region seemed to offer great promise. The decline of the Ottoman Empire was a source of concern for France: if it were to fall apart, Austria and Russia would be the beneficiaries. A French base in Egypt would permit France to deny them that and Syria at least. It would also enable her to safeguard her interests in India, where she had a number of partisans among the Indian princes, chief among them Tipu Sahib of Mysore, who in October 1797 would make the last of several appeals for military assistance. A French force from Suez landing in Bombay at the heart of Mahratta territory would at the very least divert British forces.

As France lost further colonies to Britain in the West Indies in the 1790s, the case for acting in Egypt grew stronger. Magallon pointed out that the Nile delta provided the conditions to grow all the goods formerly derived from the Caribbean – cotton, rice, sugar, coffee and so on – while others could be obtained from neighbouring Arabia and Persia. When the British seized the Cape of Good Hope, cutting off the sea route to India, the appeal of obtaining a port on the Red Sea grew stronger, as did that of piercing the Isthmus of Suez with a canal. The idea of turning the Mediterranean into a French sea was a logical one, and with Spain onside and Corsica in French hands once more, it appeared practicable.16 (#litres_trial_promo)

When he occupied the port of Ancona earlier in the year, Bonaparte noted its strategic value and that of the Ionian islands across the Adriatic. They had been part of the Republic of Venice, and as soon as he was able to, he despatched a force to occupy them. He made overtures to the Ottoman rulers of Albania, assuring them of France’s good intentions and respect for their faith, and also to the Maniotes of the Peloponnese. Contemplation of those shores triggered a host of cultural references: Athens, Sparta, Homer and Alexander the Great litter his correspondence at the time.

Another strategic imperative for control of the eastern Mediterranean was Malta, and Bonaparte began gathering information on the state of its defences and the morale of its masters, the Knights of the Order of St John. He pressed the Directory to investigate the possibility of having a Spaniard elected Grand Master, which, Spain being France’s ally, would bring the island into France’s orbit.17 (#litres_trial_promo)

General Louis Desaix, who turned up at Mombello in late July, was intrigued to find Bonaparte poring over maps of Egypt and Syria. A year older than him, looking, according to Lavalette, ‘like a savage from the Orinoco dressed in French clothes’, Desaix had much in common with Bonaparte, always wearing a plain, poorly-fitting blue coat with no marks of rank, ill at ease in society and paying little attention to women. He caught Bonaparte’s enthusiasm, and they discussed the details of an invasion of Egypt sailing out of Venice with a corps of 10,000 French and 8,000 Polish troops.18 (#litres_trial_promo)

In his report to the Directory on 16 August Bonaparte warned that Austria was arming and would soon be in a position to field formidable forces for the reconquest of Italy, and argued that France must seek alternatives. ‘The islands of Corfu, Zante and Cephalonia are of greater interest to us than the whole of Italy taken together,’ he went on. ‘I believe that if we were forced to choose, it would be better to restitute Italy to the emperor and to keep the four islands, which are a source of riches and prosperity for our commerce. The empire of the Turks is crumbling by the day; the possession of these isles will put us in the position to support it for as long as that will be possible, or to take our share of it. It will not be long before we feel that, in order to really destroy England, we have to take Egypt.’19 (#litres_trial_promo)

Unbeknown to him, the Directory had a few weeks before received a memorandum from its foreign minister, Talleyrand, in which he put the case for seeking replacements in Africa and Egypt for the colonies lost to the British in the western hemisphere, and followed this up with three more documents developing the putative advantages, suggesting Egypt as a suitable place to begin.

The Directors had other things on their mind: they needed a general who could help them intimidate the chambers, and they approached Bonaparte. While he shared their alarm at the counter-revolutionary tide in Paris and urged them to act, he was wary of getting involved. He therefore sent them Augereau, a stalwart republican who was sure to be able to carry the troops with him. The manoeuvre had also rid him of a man he did not like or trust, and who was inconveniently popular among the rank and file.20 (#litres_trial_promo)

In the course of the past year, Bonaparte had become aware of the perils threatening him, and he created a unit of bodyguards, the Guides, to act as an escort. But he needed to make sure that the Army of Italy was also entirely his. He bought the loyalty of the other generals with a mixture of encomiums, promotions, mentions in despatches to the Directory and his Bulletins, and cash hand-outs. On the cessation of hostilities with the signature of the preliminaries of Leoben, the army was just over 80,000 strong, but a large proportion was made up of recent reinforcements, men who had seen little or no service under his command. He refrained from promoting more recent arrivals, and filled the higher ranks of every unit with men who had proved themselves under him, even if it meant giving them precedence over senior officers. On 14 July he celebrated the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille with a parade at which he honoured men and units, followed by a banquet for all those who had distinguished themselves in battle. On 28 August he presented a hundred sabres of honour, ten to cavalrymen, ninety to grenadiers, whom he was already singling out as a kind of elite, his Praetorians.21 (#litres_trial_promo)

‘What I have done so far is nothing,’ he said to Miot de Melito and the Italian statesman Francesco Melzi d’Eril as they strolled in the gardens of Mombello one summer day. ‘I am only at the beginning of the career I must pursue. Do you think it is to enhance the position of the lawyers of the Directory, the Carnots, the Barras, that I have been winning victories in Italy? And do you think it is in order to establish a republic? What nonsense! A republic of thirty million people! With our manners and our vices! It is an impossibility! It is a dream with which the French are in love, but it will pass like so many others. They want glory, they want their vanity to be satisfied, but liberty? They don’t understand it at all. […] The nation needs a glorious leader and not theories of government, phrases and speeches by ideologues which Frenchmen don’t understand. […] I do not wish to leave Italy until I can go and play in France a role similar to that I am playing here, and the time has not yet come: the pear is not yet ripe.’22 (#litres_trial_promo)

For all his cynicism, Bonaparte was still a child of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, a believer in human progress, to be achieved through the better organisation of society. ‘A France with honest and strong government, that is what I want,’ he told Pontécoulant. He had long ago come to the conclusion that this could only be achieved by dictatorial means. While dining with his staff at Ancona in February, he had astonished them by affirming that the only decent government since the beginning of the Revolution had been that of Robespierre. Strong central authority, he explained, was necessary in order to carry the Revolution to its logical conclusion; to create new institutions based on solid rational foundations, ensure the rule of law, stabilise the currency by abolishing paper money and introducing a functional system of tax-collection, re-establish the Church as a moral base for society, regenerate its morals and make France great once more. He concluded by saying that Robespierre had only failed because he lacked the experience and strength of ‘a military commander’.23 (#litres_trial_promo)

The Directory had once again demonstrated the truth of this. Having placed Augereau in command of the troops in the Paris region, on 4 September (18 Fructidor) it felt strong enough to invalidate the April elections, expelling 154 deputies and thereby recovering its majority. Sixty-five were sent to the penal colony of Guyana. Bonaparte had sent his aide-de-camp Antoine de Lavalette to observe and report back on events. Once the coup had been accomplished, he was therefore able to gauge public reactions and act accordingly. As these had been generally unfavourable, he distanced himself from the actions of the Directory. ‘Your silence is very curious, general,’ wrote Barras, prompting Bonaparte to issue a proclamation expressing his satisfaction at the defeat of ‘the enemies of the fatherland’. In private, he condemned the coup and particularly the deportations to Guyana. Barras remained suspicious, and sent his secretary Bottot to Italy to ascertain what was going on.24 (#litres_trial_promo)

Bonaparte had acquired a new ally in Talleyrand, who had written him a flattering letter seeking his friendship. He responded with an appropriately cordial one full of praise for the minister’s distinguished record, which he, Bonaparte, would certainly reward were he to be in a position to do so. ‘You ask for my friendship, and you have it along with my esteem,’ he wrote. ‘In return, I ask for your counsels, which I will value, I assure you.’ He went on to say that the Revolution had destroyed too much and built nothing, so ‘everything remained to be done’, and the only question was who would be the one to ‘close the Revolution’. Subsequent correspondence confirmed that it was not only their views on Egypt that coincided.25 (#litres_trial_promo)

With the possibility of a Bourbon restoration dismissed by the Fructidor coup, there was no longer any reason for Austria to delay making peace. Britain too was inclined to end the hostilities, and peace talks had been going on at Lille since July between Lord Malmesbury and Charles-Louis Letourneur. But they were undermined by the Directory, which saw them as part of an Anglo–royalist plot. Bonaparte was highly critical of the missed opportunity, arguing that the British could have been allowed to keep the Cape in exchange for agreeing to a French colonisation of Egypt.26 (#litres_trial_promo)

It was not until the end of August that the Austrian chancellor Thugut sent a senior diplomat, the monstrously fat forty-four-year-old Count Ludvig Cobenzl, to direct the negotiations along with Gallo. They took up residence at Udine while Bonaparte installed himself a short distance away at Passariano, a grand country residence set in beautiful parkland belonging to Ludovico Manin, the last Doge of Venice. They skirmished ferociously but dined together, either at Udine or Passariano.

While Thugut was now eager to proceed so as to secure Venice for Austria as quickly as possible, the Directory felt strong and belligerent. Following the unexpected death of General Hoche on 19 September it appointed Augereau commander of the Army of Germany in his place, which suggested the possibility of a fresh offensive against Austria in that theatre. This was unwelcome news to Bonaparte, as it raised the possibility of Augereau stealing a march on him, or at least dimming his glory with a victory. Equally unwelcome were the despatches which arrived from Paris on 25 September informing him that the Directory was sending someone to conduct the negotiations in his stead.

He responded with one of his tantrums. ‘I am ill and I need rest,’ he wrote to Barras the same day, asking him for a discharge, adding that he wanted to settle outside Paris and enjoy at least a couple of years of peace. He wrote to the Directory in the same vein. ‘No power on earth could make me continue to serve after this horrible mark of ingratitude by the Government, which I had been very far from expecting,’ he complained. ‘My health is considerably impaired, it urgently demands rest and tranquillity. The state of my soul is also such that it needs to reimmerse itself in the mass of my fellow citizens. I have for too long had great power placed in my hands.’ The idea of Bonaparte immersing himself in the mass of his fellow citizens was too frightening for the Directory to contemplate.27 (#litres_trial_promo)

The negotiations continued, Cobenzl trying to intimidate Bonaparte with courtly mundanity, only to be met with bullying and feigned rages. The Austrian diplomat was unused to such tactics, and through Gallo he persuaded Josephine to exert a calming influence (for which she would be rewarded by the emperor). But Bonaparte was not to be controlled as he steered his own course; he was under strict orders from the Directory not to cede any part of Venice to Austria, and while he had no intention of following these, he used them to pressure Cobenzl over other things, as by then Austria was set on having the territory. At the same time, he did not want to push the Austrian too hard, as he feared a possible resumption of hostilities, for which his army was unprepared, and he reserved his belligerence for the peace talks.28 (#litres_trial_promo)

These were eventually concluded, and the treaty was to be signed on 11 October, but at the last moment Bonaparte insisted a guarantee be inserted that France would obtain the left bank of the Rhine. Cobenzl demurred. Bonaparte, who had spent two sleepless nights, was in an agitated state and fortified himself with numerous glasses of punch as he read out his proposed draft of the treaty. When Cobenzl attempted to explain the impossibility of his acceding to the new terms, Bonaparte got up from the table clearly drunk, put on his hat and stormed out of the room, vomiting barrack-room imprecations. By his own account, he smashed Cobenzl’s favourite coffee set before walking out, pursued by a vainly emollient Gallo.29 (#litres_trial_promo)

Bourrienne records that two days later he awoke to see snow on the mountaintops and informed Bonaparte of it as he roused him. With winter on its way, a French threat to Vienna through the passes was dissolving fast, and Bonaparte realised he had to conclude speedily. The treaty was signed on the night of 17–18 October, and named after a place equidistant from the two in which the negotiations had been conducted, the village of Campoformido, mis-spelt by a French secretary as Campo Formio. Bonaparte had gained most of what he wanted. He was in high spirits, and at dinner he entertained the Austrians by telling them his favourite ghost stories.30 (#litres_trial_promo)

‘My services have earned me the approbation of the Government and the nation,’ He wrote to the Directory. ‘I have received many marks of its esteem. It now remains for me only to step back into the crowd, take up the plough of Cincinnatus and set an example of respect for the magistrates and aversion for military rule, which has destroyed so many republics and undermined several States.’31 (#litres_trial_promo)

On 5 November he received his nomination as commander of a projected Army of England and also as plenipotentiary at the congress due to convene at Rastatt to settle questions arising from France’s acquisition of the left bank of the Rhine. On the morning of 17 November he left Milan with Eugène de Beauharnais. Travelling fast and through the night he was at Mantua the next day, where he paused only to review the troops stationed there, hold a ceremony in honour of the deceased Hoche and attend the theatre, before rushing on, to reach Turin at two on the morning of 19 November. He remained there long enough to have a talk with Miot de Melito, in the course of which he again expressed his conviction that ‘those Parisian lawyers who have been put in the Directory understand nothing about government’. ‘As for me, my dear Miot, I tell you that I cannot obey; I have tasted command and I would not be able to give it up. I have made up my mind: if I cannot be master, I will leave France …’32 (#litres_trial_promo)

At three that afternoon he left Turin, and two days later he was in Geneva. People came out to catch sight of him as he passed through, not just to see the victorious hero whose reputation was spreading over the Continent, but to cheer the man who had brought peace after so many years of war. ‘Vive Bonaparte, vive le pacificateur!’ they shouted. According to Bourrienne, Bonaparte was furious when one of their former colleagues from Brienne now living in Switzerland came to see him and addressed him with the familiar ‘tu’.33 (#litres_trial_promo)

He was even angrier when, after rushing on, through Berne, Basel and Huningue and reaching Augereau’s headquarters at Offenburg, he was informed that the commander of the Army of Germany was busy getting dressed and could not see him. He hurried on to Rastatt, which he drove into on 26 November in a magnificent coach drawn like a sovereign’s by eight horses, with an escort of thirty hussars, before installing himself in the Margrave of Baden’s residence.34 (#litres_trial_promo)

He impressed the representatives of the Imperial Diet not just by his grand manner but by his familiarity with the Golden Bull of 1356, the constitution of the Holy Roman Empire and the Treaty of Westphalia. On 29 November he met the prime minister of Baden, and exchanged the ratified copies of the Treaty of Campo Formio. On the same day he received a despatch from the Directory summoning him to Paris.35 (#litres_trial_promo)

14

Eastern Promise (#ulink_45f127f1-b6ed-5585-8f7b-473c53585a44)

Bonaparte arrived in Paris at five o’clock on the dark winter evening of 5 December in an ordinary mail coach, dressed in civilian clothes, a broad-brimmed hat hiding his face, accompanied by generals Berthier and Championnet, also out of uniform. He went home to the house on the rue Chantereine, which was empty since he had left Josephine behind in his rapid journey through Rastatt to Paris. Before going to bed he dashed off a note to Madame Campan asking her to send Hortense to come and join him, and made an appointment to meet Talleyrand the following morning.

He arrived at the ministry of foreign relations at eleven o’clock. Waiting in Talleyrand’s anteroom were two eminent people desirous of meeting him: the old admiral and circumnavigator Bougainville and the celebrated writer and bluestocking baroness Germaine de Staël, whom he barely acknowledged in his haste to get down to business with the minister. It was their first meeting, and Talleyrand was enchanted, noting that ‘twenty battles won sit so well with youth, a fine look, pallor and a kind of exhaustion’. After an hour’s confabulation they set off to meet the five Directors, whom they found assembled in Barras’s quarters at the Luxembourg Palace. Bonaparte was greeted warmly by Barras himself and one other Director, the hideously ugly Louis-Marie Lareveillère-Lepaux, a dreamer more interested in horticulture and his pet project of a new religion, Theophilanthropy, than in the minutiae of government. The more practical and dominant Jean-François Reubell was amicable, but the remaining two, Lazare Carnot and Charles-Louis Letourneur, were hostile. They were incensed by the Treaty of Campo Formio and its destruction of the Venetian Republic. While they were powerless to do anything about it, given the popularity of Bonaparte and the universal joy at the coming of peace, they had shown their feelings by giving him command of the Army of England and delegating him to the congress of Rastatt – both designed to keep him away from Paris.1 (#litres_trial_promo)

After his meeting Bonaparte stayed to dine with Barras, and then went home. As news of his return spread, people wondered what his next move would be. He was still commander of the Army of Italy, he had been placed in command of that of England, and as president of the French delegation to the congress of Rastatt he had overall command of French troops in Germany. A number of units were making their way across France to the Channel coast, passing within reach of Paris. Bonaparte was therefore in a position to stage a military coup, and many expected him to act. There would be little resistance, as the great hope of the royalists, General Pichegru, had been sent to Guyana and the leader of the extreme left, Gracchus Babeuf, guillotined. But as the Republic was not under threat he had no credible motive.2 (#litres_trial_promo)

He was to return to Rastatt in a little over a week, and in the meantime he kept the door of his house firmly shut, instructing his servant to admit nobody and even to refuse to accept calling cards. To his intense irritation, the Directors had decided to hold a ceremony in his honour on 10 December, and he could not wriggle out of it. But afterwards he went to ground once more, and at dinner the following day, to which he had invited a handful of distinguished intellectuals, he talked metaphysics to the philosophically-minded Abbé Sieyès, poetry to the poet Chénier and geometry to the mathematician Laplace.3 (#litres_trial_promo)