Chapter 10

"THE RETURN OF THE HERO"[10]

[Footnote 10: The fullest accounts are those of Sorel and Vandal. Further authorities are the memoirs of Duport de Cheverny, of Larévellière-Lepeaux, of Lafayette, of Mme. de Chastenay, and of Pasquier, the works of Roederer, the studies of Aulard, the contemporary journals and reviews. Also, E. and I. de Goncourt: Histoire de la Société Française pendant le Directoire. Stenger: La Société Française pendant le Consulat. Rocquain: L'État de la France au 18 Brumaire.]

The Second Coalition -- Failures and Defeats of the Directory -- The Rastadt Congress -- Murder of the French Plenipotentiaries -- The Crisis in France -- The Revolution of Prairial -- The Conscription -- The Schemes of the Directors -- The Successes of the Bonapartists -- The Attitude of Paris -- "The Return of the Hero" -- The Man of Destiny.

The situation of affairs in Europe at the close of 1799 was, as Bonaparte had anticipated, by no means simple. England having been scorned in the propositions for peace which she made in 1797 at Lille, a second coalition of France's enemies was formed in 1798, largely through the efforts of Paul I, the new Czar of Russia. The organization of the Helvetian Republic in Switzerland had brought the Revolution into the very heart of central Europe, and thus had further estranged the trembling dynasties of both Austria and Prussia. The organization on February eighteenth, 1798, of the Roman Republic had brought the Revolution to the frontiers of Naples; when her king, having joined the coalition, renewed hostilities and inaugurated a general war by throwing an army into Rome, the French troops in Italy were divided, and a portion of them, under Championnet, overturned the Neapolitan throne in a kind of pleasure excursion. In January, 1799, the Parthenopean Republic was proclaimed. By a skilfully devised complot in which Lucien Bonaparte was active, the Directory charged the feeble King of Sardinia with unfriendliness, the Cisalpine Republic picked a quarrel with him, Tuscany became involved in the ensuing disorders, and Charles Emmanuel IV was compelled on December ninth, 1798, to abandon all his territories on the mainland, while the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinand III, fled shortly after, in 1799, to his relatives in the court of Vienna, leaving his dominions temporarily at the disposal of France.

It was doubtless a pleasant delusion for sincere republicans to imagine that in these events free governments were rising on the wreck of absolutism; but unfortunately the fact was otherwise: every one of these so-called free states was founded, not in the hearts of its people, but in the power of French arms. With the waning of this military ascendancy, they must of necessity lose all vitality. Bonaparte had stated to the Directory, in defense of his own conduct, and of course both repeatedly and emphatically, that to divide the Army of Italy and leave the Austrians on the Adige would be to lose Italy. And yet this was precisely the blunder the directors made in sending Championnet to Naples. Angered by the unexpected renewal of hostilities, their preparations for the coming war, though vigorous and energetic, were made unadvisedly and in haste. Brune was sent to command in Holland, Bernadotte to the middle Rhine, Jourdan into central Germany, Masséna to Switzerland, Macdonald to Naples, and Schérer to upper Italy. Two hundred thousand men were raised under the new conscription law, and these conscripts-a word then used in that sense for the first time-were sent to fill the depleted ranks of the respective armies. Brune and Masséna were destined to show ability and win success; the others were marked for overwhelming defeat: the crowning example of folly was the appointment of the incapable Schérer to the post of greatest importance. He had once before shown his inability to master the rudiments of warfare in Italy, and this time his command was as inefficient as might have been expected. Jourdan, having been defeated toward the close of March, by the Archduke Charles, both at Ostrach and at Stockach, was succeeded by Lenouf, who was at once compelled to retreat behind the Rhine. On the heels of this disaster, Schérer was driven first behind the Mincio, then to the Oglio; he was shamefully beaten at Magnano in April, and then voluntarily made way for Moreau, laying down his command amid the jeers of his disgusted troops.

Meantime the congress at Rastadt had been keeping up the forms of negotiation, its proceedings being in the main perfunctory, and its sessions deriving their interest mainly from the attempts of the French plenipotentiaries to overawe their colleagues. In this they were largely successful, because they had in their possession the clearest evidence of Austria's earlier determination to secure her importance by the dismemberment of Bavaria. They were now three in number: two of them, Roberjot and Bonnier, were honest supporters of the Directory; the third, Debry, was an old friend of Bonaparte's, and had never swerved from his allegiance. As chief of the embassy he had attracted great attention, and having displayed a spirit far from conciliatory, he gave some cause for the special dislike in which he was held, not only by the other delegates, but even by his (p.~089) own colleagues. There was the utmost tension in the congress when hostilities were renewed. With the successes of Charles, Austria grew so bold that she determined to break off all negotiation. Already one imperial representative had withdrawn in dudgeon; the others were ready to follow. Aware that war was imminent, both French and Austrian troops had begun early in 1799 to scour the suburbs of Rastadt, and had in frequent forays not merely attacked each other, but had molested the citizens and even the ambassadors. Finally, in April, the imperial troops beset the town, and ordered the remaining members of the congress to leave within a term which, according to usage, was to be fixed by the assembly itself.

The French ministers, in obedience to orders received from Paris, waited until the very last, leaving with their train only at nightfall on April twenty-eighth. In a few moments, and almost before the gates, they were surrounded and hustled, by whom is not altogether certain, though at the time some were believed to be Austrian hussars. In the ensuing tumult the three plenipotentiaries were dragged from their carriages and furiously assaulted; Roberjot and Bonnier were killed, Debry escaped. Next morning he appeared in Rastadt wounded and bloody, but not seriously injured. This murder has become one of the standing historical puzzles. Some have attributed its instigation to the British cabinet, some to Bonaparte, some again to Caroline of Naples, and some to the French émigrés. Many claim that the blows were struck by Debry himself, who, it is thought, was one of those Bonapartist agents, like Garat in Naples and Ginguené in Turin, whose business, as is claimed, was to bring on anarchy at any price, and discredit the Directory. The royalists, supported by the declarations of Mme. Roberjot, who was in the carriage with her husband, asserted this at the time, and the numerous hewers at the greatness of Napoleon have again repeated it in our day. There are circumstances which could be twisted into corroborative evidence if even the slightest positive proof existed; but no satisfactory testimony has ever been offered from Austrian sources to prove that these attacks, like others of the time and in other lands, were not instigated by the authorities, and made both to conceal inconvenient shortcomings, and to bring on the war for which Austria was now thoroughly prepared.[11]

[Footnote 11: There is a small library of books and pamphlets devoted to the subject. The latest is that of the Austrian officer, Criste, to which reference has already been made: he searched the Vienna archives to learn, if possible, the truth, and confesses that he cannot find it, though he discusses all the theories and asserts the innocence of Austria. Even finer, however, is the volume of Helfert: Der Rastadter Gesandten Mord. The other sources are Gentz: Ueber die Ermordung der Französisch Congress-gesandten, a contemporary opinion, 1799; Böhtlingk's three discussions in Napoleon, Seine Jugend and Sein Emporkommen; Napoleon Bonaparte und der Rastadter Gesandten Mord; Der Rastadter Gesandten Mord vor dem Karlsruher Schöffengericht; Hüffer: Der Rastadter Gesandten Mord. By Müller, Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, and von Reichelin Meldegg, there are monographs of the same title. Further material is contained in Schlitz: Denkwürdigkeiten; Obser: Politische Correspondenz Carl Friederich's von Baden; Delaure: Esquisses historiques; Gohier: Memoirs; Arnault: Souvenirs d'un Sexagénaire; Vivenot: Zur Geschichte des Rastadter Congresses; Jomini: Vie politique et militaire de Napoléon; Erzherzog Karl: Ausgewählte Schriften.]

The second coalition was stronger than the first, because, although Prussia remained neutral for reasons already mentioned, it included not only England and Austria, but also both Turkey and Russia, with Portugal and Naples. The long frontier, from Holland to Naples, which France was called on to defend in the absence of her best troops and generals in Egypt, made her weak and vulnerable as never before. England appeared in Holland with an Anglo-Russian army; the Russians poured into Switzerland and Italy; the Austrians were again on the Rhine and the Adige; while Turkey was showing unexpected energy in repelling the invaders from lands which, slack as was the tie, she still considered her own. Worse than all, the false position of the French republic and the Church with reference to each other had kept alive smoldering coals of discontent, and as a result civil war again broke out in Brittany and Vendée. To meet this appalling emergency there was needed either a capable, homogeneous administration heartily supported by the nation, or else a military despotism such as was the logical result of Vendémiaire and Fructidor. The former did not exist. Instead of gaining strength by wise self-denial, the Directory had grown steadily weaker, usurping authority of every kind, and actually seating in the councils of 1798, by the basest arts, creatures of their own as representatives of no less than forty-nine departments. The May elections of 1799 expressed the popular discontent in an uprising of extreme Jacobinism, which sent an opposition delegation into the councils too strong to be thus supplanted or overthrown.

The new legislature met the executive, and at once, with their own weapons. Aided by public clamor, and by the influence of a widely read pamphlet which Carnot had written in justification of his course, they obtained in June a virtual reconstruction of the Directory. Barras, who had become known as a weak trimmer, was suffered to remain. Rewbell, as a supporter of the unsuccessful Schérer and the pertinacious associate of Rapinat, a dishonest contractor connected with the Army of Italy, had been himself suspected of peculation, although unjustly, and his time having expired, he was not reëlected. The others went as a matter of course; Merlin and Larévellière were permitted to resign because, although troublesome, they were nonentities; Treilhard, though honest and able, could not make himself felt, and a flaw in his election was used as a pretext to replace him by Gohier, who, though he had been formerly minister of justice, was a feeble creature. Sieyès was put in Rewbell's place in order to secure a better constitution. He carried into his new sphere the same habits of supercilious mystery which he had always had, continuing likewise the scheming for radical change which he had so long carried on. He looked to Joubert as the popular general most likely to become an easy tool, and formed an intimacy with him. The two other places were filled by utter mediocrities: Roger-Ducos, a moderate, and Moulins, a radical. This revolution of the thirtieth of Prairial, another "day," was held to be a Jacobin counterstroke to that of the eighteenth of Fructidor. The legislature had shown itself as lawless as the Directory; the constitution was proved to be worthless: another must be enacted. With Fouché at the head of the police, and other Robespierrians restored to office, it appeared to the majority of the nation as if all constitutional government were jeopardized, as if the Terror were to be revived, as if such madness could be repressed only by military force.

But where was the general? Championnet had disgraced himself by permitting unbridled license among his soldiery after the capture of Naples on January twenty-third, 1799, and his army fell into a state of disreputable disorganization. Macdonald had gathered together and reorganized the remnants, but only to be defeated by Suvoroff with his Russians on the Trebbia. The army of Joubert, who succeeded Moreau, had been overwhelmed, and its leader killed, by an Austro-Russian force at Novi, on August fifteenth. Mantua was already lost. Moreau, having saved some remnants of Joubert's troops, made a successful stand in the Apennines, where his army still was. Masséna was defeated at Zurich, in June, by the Austrians under the archduke Charles; but on September twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth he routed the Russians under Korsakoff at the same place. Brune had defeated on September nineteenth, at Bergen, an Anglo-Russian army under the Duke of York, who was forced to capitulate at Alkmaar on October tenth, and to evacuate the Batavian Republic. Bernadotte was the new secretary of war, more successful in that office than as a diplomat. Although he was Joseph Bonaparte's brother-in-law, he was not a Bonapartist, being first, last, and always a Bernadottist. Under his administration Jourdan had devised and carried out the new conscription measure which filled once more the empty army lists. This sweeping measure was the extreme development of the system introduced by Carnot, whereby all able-bodied French citizens were declared liable to military service, and drafts were made only when voluntary enlistment failed. The conscription law was passed on September fifth, 1798, and compelled the service of all young men, or at least of as many as the government saw fit to draw, between the ages of twenty and twenty-five. This procedure differed but little from that now universal in modern Europe, and created the Napoleonic armies as distinguished from those of the republic. Organized into divisions, brigades, and half-brigades as before, the new ranks appear to have been quite as enthusiastic as the old, for the young of the nation now looked to war as the quickest road to glory. Bernadotte expressed the common conviction of all ambitious young men when he said: "Children, there are certainly great captains among you." The treasury was replenished by a (p.~094) forced loan disguised under the form of an arbitrary tariff. Besides all this, a frightful measure had been passed, known as the Hostage Law, which made the innocent relatives of every Chouan or emigrant responsible for his conduct.

These measures were indicative of a dangerous and rising tide of the new Jacobinism, which was represented by a majority in the Five Hundred, in the Directory by Gohier and Moulins, and outside by a recognized club of terrorists, which began to sit in the famous riding-school where the Convention had held its sessions. The well-to-do men like Talleyrand, Regnault de St.-Jean-d'Angély, and Roederer, the philosophers Cambacérès, Sémonville, Benjamin Constant, and even Daunou, were outraged at the thought of a new Terror, and looked to Sieyès and Barras to prevent it. In view of these disturbing circumstances, many also asked, Where is the statesman? The Jacobins, as of old, had perfect faith that the chapter of accidents would reveal a statesman; a general they had either in the calm Jourdan or in the hotspur Augereau. Their policy was to repeat republican victories, and fortify democracy in the coming constitution, whatever shape it should take. Sieyès and his friends naturally would have turned to the conqueror of Italy, with whom they had already plotted; but he was absent, and, besides, they wanted a tool, not a master. They actually tried Moreau with the offer of a dictatorship to be equally shared with Bonaparte; but he was already under the spell of royalism, and proved coy. It has been suggested that but for the arrival of Bonaparte himself, Masséna, who much resembled Monk in character, might have repeated that general's rôle in France. Certainly the advocates of a limited monarchy would, in the extremity, have welcomed even the Bourbons as a constitutional dynasty, and this although they were so distrustful that Sieyès, when ambassador in Prussia, had dreamed of choosing a foreign royal house for that purpose, selecting as his own preference that of Brunswick.

Such, then, was the complicated web of defeat and victory in war, of plot and counterplot in politics, of cross-purposes everywhere, which was displayed to Bonaparte on his return to the capital. Should he, the hitherto avowed republican whose devoted soldiers still believed themselves to be fighting for freedom's cause, continue the farce still further, and throw in his fate with the Jacobins? Or should he put down the mask? It soon became clear to him that Paris and the people would never again tolerate a Terror, and that success in the long run lay in an alliance with them. If they would accept his leadership, the game was won. But was this possible? The cool heads, like Baron de Pasquier, had noted the real character of the Egyptian and Syrian campaigns; but even they had an admiration for an adventurer's effrontery, and they were too few to make much impression upon the masses. By large numbers of the hitherto indifferent it was now believed that Bonaparte and his army had been deported to Egypt from jealousy on the part of the Directory; and to some of the conservatives he was a martyr returning from exile, yet bringing new trophies to his country. This rumor was not only never contradicted, but was rather increased by the significant hints of those among the Bonaparte family who were now in the thick of events. Joseph, having three years previously been elected to the Five Hundred, had risen high in the public esteem; and Lucien for two years past had likewise been one of the most influential members. Both were changed men. Polished, at least superficially, and apparently devoted to letters, they were known as solid citizens. Their social gifts had made their homes, like that of Mme. Bonaparte herself, centers of influence among many important people of the capital. Hers, however, was far more exclusive, and affected a lofty superiority to all others. Between it and the other two there existed intense jealousy concerning the general's favor, but all were heartily united in furthering his interests.

The people of Paris did not, like those of Lyons, run to meet Bonaparte as if he were already a sovereign; but they received him warmly. In particular the malcontents who were plotting in his behalf, as if under his personal direction, welcomed him with effusion. Without a moment's delay he took charge of their councils. Sieyès had lost his mainstay in Joubert, and his prestige by the defeat at Novi. With the help of Talleyrand and Roederer he was soon brought to terms, and under Bonaparte's immediate direction the careful, daring plan for a complete change both in the constitution and in the administration which had been already discussed by Sieyès and his followers, the so-called reformists, was revised and finished. It was on its face a determined attempt to remedy the radical defects of the constitution of the year III, and to organize a strong constitutional government. In fact, its author had already shown a certain executive ability in preparing the way. Waving the red signal of the Terror, he had by a series of arbitrary measures suppressed the Jacobin papers and banished their editors. Jourdan at this crisis demanded from the assemblies a vote that the "country was in danger," but his appeal fell flat. Then came the stirring news that under Masséna and Brune the armies of France were renewing their pristine glories, and that the Rhine and the Alps at least were safe. A few days later a messenger from the executive read to the councils, in solemn state, the despatch, composed by Bonaparte for the purpose, containing his exaggerated narrative of the battle of Aboukir. Tremendous enthusiasm swept over both chambers. Gohier, who had fallen a victim to the charms of Josephine in her frequent visits to his flattered wife, was the president of the Directory. To him Bonaparte had paid his first official visit, and on the following day the Directory received in formal audience the general, who, as he himself declared to Gohier, had "left his army to come and share the national perils," reports of which had so disquieted him in Egypt.

The official and the popular good will were therefore before long alike intense: Paris was within a few days as much dazzled by Bonaparte's return as the country had been. The "Return of the Hero" was the catchword of the nation. Recent events had shattered parties into fragments: here was a leader who had never been identified with any one of them. The newspapers took up the pæan of his virtues. Meanness and mediocrity were to disappear; the French people, avid of great things, had found again the favorite of fortune who alone could accomplish them. First Talleyrand, then Sieyès, then all the other well-known men, from Gohier down, openly joined in the train of admirers. The shifty course of large numbers who, like Roederer, were opportunists at heart had become wearisome to the moneyed classes, and they also soon arrayed themselves under Bonaparte's banner. Doubtful or distant persons of influence were courted, and, as in the case of Moreau, were by consummate art often won. Roederer thought the revolution virtually completed by October thirtieth; the work, he said, was three quarters done. Next day Lucien Bonaparte was elected president of the Five Hundred, among whom, though the majority were vacillating and uncomprehending, there was a strong minority of unreconstructed Jacobins. Within the fortnight the defeated general had drawn together at Paris a court more powerful than that which he had had at Montebello in the hour of victory. His personal demeanor was much the same as then--quiet and reserved, but conciliatory, simple, and frank. He affected the simple garb of the civilian, sometimes wearing an Oriental scarf with a small scimitar; frequented the Institute, of which he had been made a member; and associated by preference with men like Volney, discussing questions of philosophy and science. Soon it was whispered that his plans were maturing. What could they be? The answer was not long in suspense. The pear was ripe.

We felt ourselves the associates of an all-powerful destiny, wrote Marmont, concerning the voyage from Egypt. Bonaparte himself was the author of this sentiment, which for long was to be the controlling thought of millions. The Orient had quickened in him a latent conviction as to the value of a destiny and a star. When, in threatening crises, others forgot it, the great adventurer reminded them of it, meaning thereby his own clear vision, unclouded by adversity, penetrating in the confusion of circumstances. In no sense was he an Oriental fatalist; on the contrary, his destiny was the power to discern and to dare which resided in himself. It was his presence in France which was to dispel doubts, restore confidence, control events. "My presence," he had said on shipboard, "by raising their spirits will restore to the army its lacking self-reliance, and to good citizens the hope of a better future. There will be a movement of opinion to the benefit of France. We must struggle to arrive, and we shall arrive." To Kléber, the ablest of his generals, he had left the command and with it a masterly set of directions for the guidance of affairs. He could not be charged with failure, for the end was not yet; disaster could not be retrieved in Egypt: he had hastened to the scene where alone succor could be found, and he had arrived with a heart ready for the decision, under conditions the most favorable, with a definite goal and a clear, simple plan for its attainment. To outsiders and to posterity the result has appeared a happy chance. It was not so, though unforeseen circumstances contributed. It was a foregone conclusion.