Part 5 (2/2)
After settling the affairs of Venice, and establis.h.i.+ng the new Ligurian Republic, the general took up his residence at the n.o.ble castle of Montebello, near Milan. Here his wife, who, though they had been married in March, 1796, was still a bride, and with whom, during the intervening eventful months, he had kept up a correspondence full of the fervour, if not of the delicacy of love,[20] had at length rejoined him. Josephine's manners were worthy, by universal admission, of the highest rank; and the elegance with which she did the honours of the castle, filled the ministers and princes, who were continually to be seen in its precincts, with admiration. While Napoleon conducted his negotiations with as much firmness and decision as had marked him in the field, it was her care that nature and art should lend all their graces to what the Italians soon learnt to call _the Court_ of Montebello. Whatever talent Milan contained, was pressed into her service. Music and dance, and festival upon festival, seemed to occupy every hour. The beautiful lakes of Lombardy were covered with gay flotillas; and the voluptuous retreats around their sh.o.r.es received in succession new life and splendour from the presence of Napoleon, Josephine, and the brilliant circle amidst whom they were rehearsing the imperial parts that destiny had in reserve for them. Montebello was the centre from which Buonaparte, during the greater part of this autumn, negotiated with the emperor, controlled all Italy, and overawed the Luxembourg.
The final settlement with the emperor's commissioners would have taken place shortly after the fall of Venice, but for the successful intrigues of the royalist Clichyens, the universal belief that the government of France approached some new crisis, and the Austrians' hope that from such an event their negotiation might derive considerable advantages.
Buonaparte well knew the secret motive which induced Cobentzel, the emperor's chief envoy, to protract and multiply discussions of which he by this time was weary. One day, in this amba.s.sador's own chamber, Napoleon suddenly changed his demeanour; ”you refuse to accept our ultimatum,” said he, taking in his hands a beautiful vase of porcelain, which stood on the mantelpiece near him. The Austrian bowed. ”It is well,” said Napoleon, ”but mark me--within two months I will shatter Austria like this potsherd.” So saying, he dashed the vase on the ground in a thousand pieces, and moved towards the door. Cobentzel followed him, and made submissions which induced him once more to resume his negotiations.
The result was the treaty of Campo-Formio, so-called from the village at which it was signed, on the 3d of October, 1797. By this act the emperor yielded to France, Flanders and the boundary of the Rhine, including the great fortress of Mentz. The various new republics of Lombardy were united and recognised under the general name of the Cisalpine Republic.
To indemnify Austria for the loss of those territories, the fall of Venice afforded new means--of which Napoleon did not hesitate to propose, nor Austria to accept the use. The French general had indeed conquered Venice, but he had entered into a treaty subsequently, and recognised a wholly new government in place of the oligarchy. The emperor, on the other hand, well knew that the Doge and Senate had incurred ruin by rising to his own aid. Such considerations weighed little on either side. France and Austria agreed to effect a division of the whole territories of the ancient republic. Venice herself, and her Italian provinces, were handed over to the emperor in lieu of his lost Lombardy; and the French a.s.sumed the sovereignty of the Ionian islands and Dalmatia. This unprincipled proceeding excited universal disgust throughout Europe. It showed the sincerity of Buonaparte's love for the cause of freedom; and it satisfied all the world of the excellent t.i.tle of the imperial court to complain of the selfishness and rapacity of the French democracy.
The emperor set his seal at Campo-Formio to another of Buonaparte's acts of dictators.h.i.+p, which, though in one point of view even more unjustifiable than this, was not regarded by the world with feelings of the same order. The Italian territory of the Valteline had for ages been subject to the Grison League. The inhabitants, roused by the prevailing spirit all around them, demanded Napoleon's intercession with their Swiss masters, to procure their admission to all the political privileges of the other cantons. They refused; and Napoleon, in the plenitude of his authority, immediately supported the Valteline in throwing off the Grison yoke, and a.s.serting its utter independence. This territory was now annexed to the Cisalpine Republic. A government, with which France was on terms of alliance and amity, was thus robbed of its richest possession; but the Valteline belonged by natural position, religion, and language, to Italy, and its annexation to the new Italian republic was regarded as in itself just and proper, however questionable Buonaparte's t.i.tle to effect that event. He himself said at the time, ”It is contrary to the rights of man that any one people should be subject to another;” a canon on which his after history formed a lucid commentary.
In concluding, and in celebrating the conclusion of his treaty, Napoleon's proud and fiery temperament twice shone out. Cobentzel had set down as the first article, ”The Emperor recognises the French Republic.” ”Efface that,” said Napoleon, sternly, ”it is as clear as that the sun is in heaven. Woe to them that cannot distinguish the light of either!” At the TE DEUM after the proclamation of the peace, the imperial envoy would have taken the place prepared for Buonaparte, which was the most eminent in the church. The haughty soldier seized his arm and drew him back. ”Had your master himself been here,” said he, ”I should not have forgotten that in my person the dignity of France is represented.”
Various minor arrangements remained to be considered; and a congress of all the German powers being summoned to meet for that purpose at Rastadt, Napoleon received the orders of the Directory to appear there, and perfect his work in the character of amba.s.sador of France. He took an affecting leave of his soldiery, published a temperate and manly address to the Cisalpine Republic, and proceeded, by way of Switzerland, (where, in spite of the affair of the Valteline, he was received with enthusiasm,) to the execution of his duty. He carried with him the unbounded love and devotion of one of the finest armies that ever the world had seen; and the attachment, hardly less energetic, of all those cla.s.ses of society throughout Italy, who flattered themselves with the hope that the Cisalpine Republic, the creature of his hands, would in time prepare the way for, and ultimately merge in a republican const.i.tution common to the whole Italian people. With what hopes or fears as to his future fortunes he abandoned the scene and the companions of his glory, the reader must form his own opinion.
[Footnote 18: Moreau knew it some months sooner, and said so _after_ Napoleon had communicated it to the Directory. This is a suspicious circ.u.mstance when considered along with the sequel of Moreau's history.]
[Footnote 19: Mantua, as will appear hereafter, was saved to France under Napoleon's final treaty with Austria; but the events which rendered this possible were as yet unknown and unexpected.]
[Footnote 20: It would be painful to show, as might easily be done, from this correspondence, the original want of delicacy in Napoleon's mind.
Many of his letters are such as no English gentleman would address to a _mistress_. In others, the language is worthy of a hero's pa.s.sion.
”Wurmser,” says he, ”shall pay dearly for the tears he causes you to shed.”]
CHAPTER X
Napoleon at Rastadt--He arrives in Paris--His reception by the Directory--His Conduct and Manners--He is appointed to command the Army for the Invasion of England--He recommends an Expedition to Egypt--Reaches Toulon--Embarks.
Napoleon was received by the ministers a.s.sembled at Rastadt with the respect due to the extraordinary talents which he had already displayed in negotiation as well as in war. But he stayed among them only two or three days, for he perceived that the multiplicity of minor arrangements to be discussed and settled, must, if he seriously entered upon them, involve the necessity of a long-protracted residence at Rastadt; and he had many reasons for desiring to be quickly in Paris. His personal relations with the Directory were of a very doubtful kind, and he earnestly wished to study with his own eyes the position in which the government stood towards the various orders of society in the all-influential capital. He abandoned the conduct of the diplomatic business to his colleagues, and reached Paris at the beginning of December. Nor was he without a feasible pretext for this rapidity. On the 2nd of October, the Directory had announced to the French people their purpose to carry the war with the English into England itself; the immediate organisation of a great invading army; and their design to place it under the command of ”Citizen General Buonaparte.”
During his brief stay at Rastadt the dictator of Campo-Formio once more broke out. The Swedish envoy was Count Fersen, the same n.o.bleman who had distinguished himself in Paris, during the early period of the Revolution, by his devotion to King Louis and Marie-Antoinette.
Buonaparte refused peremptorily to enter into any negotiation in which a man, so well known for his hostility to the cause of the Republic, should have any part; and Fersen instantly withdrew.
On quitting this congress Napoleon was careful to resume, in every particular, the appearance of a private citizen. Reaching Paris, he took up his residence in the same small modest house that he had occupied before he set out for Italy, in the _Rue Chantereine_, which, about this time, in compliment to its ill.u.s.trious inhabitant, received from the munic.i.p.ality the new name of _Rue de la Victoire_. Here he resumed with his plain clothes his favourite studies and pursuits, and, apparently contented with the society of his private friends, seemed to avoid, as carefully as others in his situation might have courted, the honours of popular distinction and applause. It was not immediately known that he was in Paris, and when he walked the streets his person was rarely recognised by the mult.i.tude. His mode of life was necessarily somewhat different from what it had been when he was both poor and obscure; his society was courted in the highest circles, and he from time to time appeared in them, and received company at home with the elegance of hospitality over which Josephine was so well qualified to preside. But policy as well as pride moved him to shun notoriety. Before he could act again, he had much to observe; and he knew himself too well to be flattered by the stare either of mobs or of saloons. ”They have memories for nothing here”--he said at this time to his secretary--”if I remain long without doing anything, I am done. Fame chases fame in this great Babylon. If they had seen me three times at the spectacle, they would no longer look at me.” Another day Bourienne could not help congratulating him on some noisy demonstration of popular favour. ”Bah!”
he answered, ”they would rush as eagerly about me if I were on my way to the scaffold.”
In his intercourse with society at this period, he was, for the most part, remarkable for the cold reserve of his manners. He had the appearance of one too much occupied with serious designs, to be able to relax at will into the easy play of ordinary conversation. If his eye was on every man, he well knew that every man's eye was upon him; nor, perhaps, could he have chosen a better method (had that been his sole object) for prolonging and strengthening the impression his greatness was calculated to create, than this very exhibition of indifference. He did not suffer his person to be familiarised out of reverence. When he did appear, it was not the ball or _bon mot_ of the evening before, that he recalled:--he was still, wherever he went, the Buonaparte of Lodi, and Arcola, and Rivoli. His military bluntness disdained to disguise itself amidst those circles where a meaner _parvenu_ would have been most ambitious to s.h.i.+ne. The celebrated daughter of Necker made many efforts to catch his fancy and enlist him among the votaries of her wit, which then gave law in Paris. ”Whom,” said she, half wearied with his chillness, ”do you consider as the greatest of women?” ”Her, madam,” he answered, ”who has borne the greatest number of children.” From this hour he had Madame de Stael for his enemy; and yet, such are the inconsistencies of human nature, no man was more sensitive than he to the a.s.saults of a species of enemy whom he thus scorned to conciliate.
Throughout his Italian campaigns--as consul--as emperor--and down to the last hour of the exile which terminated his life--Buonaparte suffered himself to be annoyed by sarcasms and pamphlets as keenly and constantly as if he had been a poetaster.
The haughtiness, for such it was considered, of his behaviour in the society of the capital, was of a piece with what he had already manifested in the camp. In the course of his first campaigns, his officers, even of the highest rank, became sensible, by degrees, to a total change of demeanour. An old acquaintance of the Toulon period, joining the army, was about to throw himself into the general's arms with the warmth of the former familiarity. Napoleon's cold eye checked him; and he perceived in a moment how he had altered with his elevation.
He had always, on the other hand, affected much familiarity with the common soldiery. He disdained not on occasion to share the ration or to taste the flask of a sentinel; and the French private, often as intelligent as those whom fortune has placed above him, used to address the great general with even more frankness than his own captain.
Napoleon, in one of his Italian despatches, mentions to the Directory the pleasure which he often derived from the conversation of the men: ”But yesterday,” says he, ”a common trooper addressed me as I was riding, and told me he thought he could suggest the movement which ought to be adopted. I listened to him, and heard him detail some operations on which I had actually resolved but a little before.” It has been noticed (perhaps by over-nice speculators) as a part of the same system, that Napoleon, on his return to Paris, continued to employ the same tradespeople, however inferior in their several crafts, who had served him in the days of his obscurity.[21]
If we may follow M. de Bourienne, Napoleon at this time laboured under intense anxiety of mind. Conscious of the daring heights to which he had ere now accustomed his ambitious imagination, he was fearful that others had divined his secret, and was haunted with the perpetual dread that some accident might unite Royalists and Republicans in the work of his personal ruin.
The first public appearance of Buonaparte occurred (January 2, 1798) when the treaty of Campo-Formio was to be formally presented to the Directory. The great court of the Luxembourg was roofed over with flags; an immense concourse, including all the members of the government and of the two legislative bodies, expected the victorious negotiator; and when he appeared, followed by his staff, and surrounded on all hands with the trophies of his glorious campaign, the enthusiasm of the mighty mult.i.tude, to the far greater part of which his person was, up to the moment, entirely unknown, outleaped all bounds, and filled the already jealous hearts of the directors with dark presentiments. They well knew that the soldiery, returning from Italy, had sung and said through every village that it was high time to get rid of the lawyers, and make the ”little corporal” king. With uneasy hearts did they hear what seemed too like an echo of this cry, from the a.s.sembled leaders of opinion in Paris and in France. Anxious curiosity and mutual distrust were written in every face. The voice of Napoleon was for the first time heard in an energetic speech, ascribing all the glories that had been achieved to the zeal of the French soldiery--for ”the glorious const.i.tution of the year THREE”--the same glorious const.i.tution which, in the year _eight_, was to receive the _coup de grace_ from his own hand; and Barras, as presiding director, answering, that ”Nature had exhausted all her powers in the creation of a Buonaparte,” awoke a new thunder of unwelcome applauses.
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