Lavalette to say nothing of the savants friend: "Do you see the behaviour of this whom he meant to turn to good account, Monge, Berthollet, Denon, &c. He left the command to Kleber, who had all along disapproved the expedition, and being in no humour to adopt the responsibility when all hope of deriving honour from it was at an end, instantly addressed a Letter to the Directory, in which its Quixotic character was thoroughly laid bare. This letter was intercepted by the English, and only reached France to be delivered to the First Consul. Fortune, which had transformed the accused into the judge, had thenceforth prepared their respective rewards for each of them for one the dagger of a fanatic; for the other the first throne of the world!" 66 When we find that almost everything had fallen out during his absence as he had wished and anticipated, that his successor in the Italian command had shown accumulated proofs of incapacity, that the decline of national glory had served to enhance his, that the state of parties and public opinion had ripened to the precise point indicated by him as essential to his plans we cannot set down all to fortune, we must allow something for the instincts of coming greatness, for intuitive insight into men and events, for political as well as military coup d'œil, for the faculty of reading signs in the social and moral atmosphere which was possessed in so eminent a degree by Talley rand. insolent little fellow towards the member of an authority which ought to have had him shot." As M. Lanfrey observes, the difficulty was not to surmount their common repugnance but to conciliate their ambition. The Executive Government consisted of five Directors, Sieyès, Roger Ducos, Bar ras, Gohier, and De Moulins. Ducos was a creature of Sieyes, who also commanded a majority in the Conseil des Anciens. The plan was to remove the legislative bodies (les Anciens and the Cinq-Cents) to St. Cloud, where, secure from popular control, the Anciens were to issue a decree naming Bonaparte Commandant of all the military forces of Paris, including the National Guards, and supersede the Directors by a Provisional Consulate, composed of Bonaparte, Sieyes, and Ducos. Bonaparte found no difficulty in securing the adhesion of all the military men of mark, including Moreau, who preferred being a blind instrument and refused to listen to the plan, saying that he, too, was tired of the yoke of the advocates. To him was consequently assigned the most compromising part of all, the forcible occupation of the Luxembourg, i. e., an act that, happen what might, could be construed into nothing less than open revolt against the Constitution. His criminal and weak connivance weighed on him during the whole remainder of his life. For a time all went smoothly enough, but It was currently believed that the Egyp- the Cinq-Cents proved unmanageable, the tian expedition had been set on foot by the Anciens wavered, and the affair assumed so Directors, out of jealousy or fear, to get rid awkward an appearance for the First Consul of Bonaparte, who consequently escaped in embryo, that Augereau addressed him any blame that may have been incurred by with bitter irony, Te voilà dans une jolie poits imprudence, whilst everything dazzling sition. He cut a bad figure before the about it everything calculated to excite Anciens, where, though the majority was popular admiration was monopolized for favourable to him and bullying language him by the crowd. At Frejus, where he miserably misplaced, he broke forth in this landed, he was received with acclamations, fashion," If an orator, paid by the foreigner, and on the evening which he passed at were to speak of outlawing me, let him beLyons a piece, entitled "Le Retour du ware lest such a judgment be turned against Héros," was improvised for the occasion. him. If he were to speak of outlawing me, At Paris he had only to choose his party, I should appeal to you, my brave companor rather his instruments; and, after due ions in arms, to you grenadiers, to you, deliberation, he resolved on making Sieyes soldiers, whose caps and bayonets I have in (then first Director) his stepping-stone, al- view. Remember that I march acompathough holding this celebrated constitution-nied by the god of fortune and the god of anonger in the most sovereign contempt as war." Nothing more to the purpose could an idealist and a pedant. The dislike was be extracted from him, and the moral drawn reciprocal. It could not well fail to be so, by M. Lanfrey is that he had really had for their aims were similar whilst their char- nothing to urge in justification of the moveacters were diametrically opposed, and neither felt disposed to concede the first place. At a dinner where they met, Bonaparte, not having taken the slightest notice of Sieyes, and affecting to be ignorant of his presence, Sieyes angrily murmured to a ment that would hold water. He had no public object in view; he meant to raise himself on the bayonets of his grenadiers, and he blurted out the truth. The most trying scene was at the CinqCents, which he entered with a guard. In a moment, the whole assembly were on their feet storming with indignation: "What is the meaning of this? Sabres in this place! Armed men! The boldest of the deputies rush from their seats, they surround Bonaparte, they push him back, they load him with invectives. Out with him.' Outlaw the dictator.' What are you doing, rash man? You are violating the sanctuary of the laws,' exclaimed Bigonnet. And Destrem, walking up to him, Is it for this that thou hast conquered? Others seize him by the collar and shake him violently, whilst reproaching him with his treason. Having come to intimidate, the general turns pale, he falls fainting into the arms of his grenadiers, who carry him out of the hall." Napoleon stated that daggers had been raised against him, and a grenadier was rewarded with a diamond ring and a kiss by Josephine for receiving in his sleeve the stab intended for the heart of her lord, but no one of the numerous eye witnesses could be found to verify the statement.* of Vive Bonaparte, and a party of them, led by Murat, entered the hall with drums beating, cleared it, and closed the doors. In the course of the evening, Lucien re-assembled about thirty members of the Cing-Cents, and passed in their name the decrees required for establishing the Consulate, and giving formal effect to this coup d'état, which led by easy and obvious gradations to the First Empire, much as the coup d'état of December, 1851, led to the Second. All enterprises of this kind are essentially alike. Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coute. Bonaparte's foot was now on the first step of the range by which he was to ascend the throne. The member of the family (Lucien) who placed it there, was the one who derived least advantage from their rise; as he was also the one who persevered in maintaining a certain self-respect and independence of spirit till the last. The founder of the dynasty has been accused of wanting personal courage, as well as presence of mind, on this day; and he undeniably shrank from clamour and violence as he would not have shrunk before a column or a battery. That he invariably displayed the very highest order of bravery in action, is beyond dispute. But what is commonly understood by personal courage depends much on habit and does not necessarily imply moral or civil courage. It may be proof against powder or steel, without being proof against a blow. That chastity of honour which feels a stain like a wound" is found in men who have no other quality of chivalry. Thus, it is no imputation on the proved bravery of James II. that, when rudely pulled and pushed about by the fishermen of Sheppey, his behaviour gave signs of pusillanimity. It is no reflection on Bonaparte that, when hustled and shaken by the collar in the CinqCents, his nerves proved unequal to the emergency; that he quailed more from elevated self-esteem than fear.* All now depended on Lucien, the President of the Cinq-Cents, who was fortunately equal to the occasion when Napoleon was not. After a fruitless attempt to oppose a decree of outlawry against his brother, he refused to put it to the vote, and deposited upon the tribune the ensigns of his authority, during the reiterated cry of hors la loi, that terrible cry that struck down Robespirre. It was heard outside by the group, in which stood Bonaparte, and they turned pale. Sieyes, who alone had preserved an imperturbable sangfroid through the critical turns of this day, coolly remarked: "Since they are putting you out of the law, it is they who are within it; " about as comforting a speech as Augereau's. Napoleon sent a party of grenadiers to bring off Lucien, and was about to clear the hall by force, when the soldiers, who had served as guard to the Assembly, hesitated, till Lucien, known to them as President, got on horseback, and made them an harangue, in which he pictured the Cinq-Cents overborne by repreImmediately before leaving Fontainebleau for sentatives with daggers, by brigands in Elba, he gave strong expression to his fear of personEnglish pay, and only waiting to be de-al violence on the way: "Let the Bourbons have livered from this minority of assassins." Then, taking a sword and turning it against his brother: "As for me, I swear to pierce the heart of my own brother, if he ever infringes the liberty of Frenchmen." This rhodomontade succeeded; they raised a cry me assassinated, I forgive them; but I shall perhaps be abandoned to the outrages of this abominable population of the South. To die on the field of batile is nothing, but in the mud and by such hands!" His fears were justified by the result, for he ran great risk of being torn to pieces. Sir Neil Campbell, the English Commissioner, who accompanied esse to which he had recourse, much anxiety to him, says: " Upon every occasion he evinced, by the save his life whenever he considered it in danger." After leaving Orange, "he quitted his carriage, mounted one of the horses, and dressed in a plain great-coat, wearing too a Russian cloak and a common round hat with a white cockade, rode on in advance of the carriages, accompanied only by a courier." During the remainder of the journey he changed caps and coats with the Commissioners, In the Constitution drawn up by Sieyes, than he can be in two places at once. Althe post of Grand-Elector, intended for exander, Cæsar, Peter, Frederic, NapoleBonaparte, was contemptuously suppressed on, -not one of these would have attained and received its death-blow from a mot: "How could you imagine," said he, addressing the mortified legislator, "that a man of some talent and a little honour would consent to play the part of a pig put up to fatten on so many millions?" He meant from the first to take the lion's share, and he took it. The Constitution as remodelled under his instructions, practically concentrated the whole power, civil and military, legislative and executive, in the first Consul, i.e. himself. When an exile he regretted that he had not been more moderate, and M. Thiers remarks that "restricted in the employment of his faculties, he would undoubtedly not have accomplished such great things, but neither would he have attempted such extravagant ones, and probably his sceptre and his sword would have remained to his death in his glorious hands." The probability is that he would not have held the sceptre, and would have been materially restricted in the use of the sword. M. Thiers has elsewhere said of him: "Always and in all things he went straight, and without turning, to the point. Was it an affair of reasoning, he found the peremptory argument on the instant; was it a battle, he hit upon the decisive manoeuvre. In him, to conceive, will, execute, were a single indivisible act, of an incredible rapidity, so that between the action and the thought, there was not an instant lost for reflection or resolve. To oppose to a genius thus constituted a moderate objection, a resistance of lukewarmness, of feebleness, or of ill will, was to make him spring like a torrent which boils up and covers you with its foam, if you oppose to it an unexpected obstacle.' How could a genius thus constituted have been subjected to constitutional restraints, without neutralizing its energies? He would have resembled Gulliver tied down by a multiplicity of threads. Cramp your great man, and he ceases to be great. Break your Hannibal, and he is no longer Hannibal. A hero can no more be two people, up and assumed alternately the names of Colonel Campbell and Lord Burghersh. - Napoleon at Fontainebleau and Elba, &c. By the late Major-General Sir Neil Campbell, C.B., British Commissioner, &c., &c., with a Memoir, &c., by his nephew, Archibald Neil Campbell Maclachlan, M.A., &c., 1869.), M. Thiers says, "that the Commissioners obliged him to put on a foreign uniform that he might pass for one of the officers of the retinue." "D'un cochon a l'engrais de quelques millions." This mot has been omitted and paraphrased by M. Thiers, though recorded, as dictated at St. Helena, by both Gourgaud and Las Casas. Lord Russell mentions three other remarkable instances in which the same animal has supplied the metaphor. the same giddy height without being absolute. Napoleon could not even have undertaken the campaign of Marengo, had he abided by the principles of the new Constitution, which forbade the First Consul to command an army in the field. But no provision forbade his being present. Whilst, therefore, he in point of fact commanded the army, his Chief of the Staff, Berthier, held the title of General-in-Chief. It so happens that all his prominent merits and defects as a commander are placed in broad relief by this campaign; which also teems with proofs that his successes and victories, in the earlier stages of his career, were quite as much owing to fortune or accident as his subsequent failures and defeats. The conception was bold but hazardous. The notion of (what M. Thiers calls) enveloping the Austrians with an inferior force, was like that of the Irishman who, single-handed, took four prisoners by surrounding them; and it is preposterous to call the passage of the Alps a prodigy greater than that of Hannibal, whose elephants were as difficult to get over as artillery, who was operating in an unknown country, cut off from all communication with his own, and with none of the appliances of modern warfare at his disposal. The little fort of Bard might have proved another grain of sand, like Acre, had it been held by another Sir Sydney Smith. Bonaparte has been described, shortly before his departure, stretched at full length upon his maps and suddenly exclaiming to his astonished secretary, “That poor M. de Melas will pass by Turin, will turn back I shall cross the towards Alexandria Po, I shall overtake him in the road to Piacenza, in the plains of the Scrivia, and I shall beat him there, there," placing one of his coloured pins on San Giulano. "We shall presently (adds M. Thiers) appreciate how extraordinary this kind of vision of the future was." Extraordinary, indeed, for no one decisive event came to pass as intended or designed. On the 13th June, when the Austrian army under Melas (about 40,000 strong) was concentrated in Alexandria and resolved on risking a battle on the 14th, Bonaparte believed that they were on their retreat towards Genoa, and despatched Desaix to intercept them at Novi. Leaving another portion of his army at Marengo under Lannes, he was on his way to his quartersgeneral at Voghera, when he was stopped by the overflow of a river, and compelled to pass the night at Torre-di-Garofolo. The amount of sacrifice and suffering imBut for this accidental circumstance he posed on others in order to obtain this could not have reached the scene of action victory is not the least remarkable or chartill too late. At break of day the Austrian acteristic circumstance connected with it. attack began, and although the French, When the operations commenced, Massena, partially protected by a deep rivulet in with the army of Liguria (15,000 strong), their front, offered a stubborn resistance, was blockaded in Genoa. Though reduced they were falling back in confusion, when to the verge of starvation, he held out in their general, "blessing the opportune hope of being relieved by the First Consul, overflow of the Scrivia," came upon the and by so doing prevented the besieging ground. It was then ten o'clock. With force from uniting with the army of Melas. the Consular Guard that he brought with A change of plan would have enabled Bohim, and by a series of admirable disposi- naparte to raise the siege, "but (says M. tions, he temporarily restored the battle; Thiers) it was decided that the noble and but the advantage of numbers was too much unhappy army of Liguria should pay to the for him and defeat seemed again inevitable, end with its blood, with its sufferings, and when (about three in the afternoon) he was finally by a painful surrender, the triumph rejoined by Desaix, who, finding no traces of the army of reserve." of the Austrians towards Novi and hearing the sustained cannonade at Marengo, had hurried back on his own personal responsibility. He brought with him 6000 fresh troops, and his first words are reported to have been,The battle is lost; but there is time to win another." He fell leading the first charge, and the onward course of his division was arrested by a column of Austrian grenadiers, who were carrying all before them like the English brigade at Fontenoy, when they were charged in flank by the heavy dragoons of Kellermann, broken and cut down. The credit of this charge, which decided the day, was always claimed by Kellerman as an inspiration of his own. He was wont to account by it for subsequent neglect, saying that it was too great a service to be recognized. Thiers says the charge was ordered at the suggestion of Desaix; and, as Desaix was dead, there could be no risk in assigning to him any amount of glory not incompatible with the glory of the chief: Moreau, who commanded the army of the Rhine, had submitted his proposed plan of operations to the First Consul, whose assent was extorted by a threat of resignation. Moreau's military reputation was then hardly inferior to his own, and he did not hesitate to flatter the rival he could not yet venture to destroy. In a letter, carried by Moreau's chief of the Staff, he writes: “This officer will tell you that no one is more interested in your personal glory and happiness. I am now a kind of mannequin who has lost his liberty and happiness. Grandeur is a fine thing, happiness: you are about to perform fine actions but in memory and in imagination I envy your with brave men. I would willingly exchange my Consular purple for the epaulettes of a chief of brigade under your orders." At the same time he delayed the army of the Rhine by diverting the supplies required for it to the use of his own, the army of reserve; and stipulated that this army should, in a given emergency, be strengthened by a "Happy inspiration of a lieutenant (exclaims large detachment (20,000 men) of Moreau's. M. Thiers), as intelligent as devoted! Happy Moreau's campaign was eminently successfortune of youth! If, fifteen years later, the ful; he was in a career of victory which would First Consul, now so well seconded by his gen- speedily have placed the Austrian capital, erals, had found a Desaix on the battle-field of if not the Austrian monarchy, at his mercy, Waterloo, he would have preserved the empire when the detachment was demanded. His and France its ruling position amongst the pow-movements were paralyzed that Bonaparte ers of Europe." Give the sentence a turn. If the First Consul had not found both a Desaix and a Kellerman on the battlefield of Marengo, he would never have founded an empire to be preserved, and France might have obtained long ago the position, for which she is still struggling, of a free as well as great nation.* Bonaparte did all in his power to mystify the battle of Marengo. After writing three varying and false accounts, he caused all the original documents to be destroyed. might enter with full effect upon the scene, might strike the grand blow and reap the enviable merit of an honourable but unsuchonour, "leaving to Massena the hardly cessful defence, to Moreau that of an abnegation for which no one gave him credit": "He was about to secure the price of their long labours, and he proposed to give such an eclat to the final surprise that the world should see only him in this success prepared by them. Habituated to refer everything to himself, it seemed to him quite natural to sacrifice his companions in arms to his own fortune or solely to the desire of producing a greater effect on men's imaginations." The dazzling success of this campaign made him all-powerful. He usurped supreme authority in all things, in all branches of the administration, in all departments of the State, and within a wonderfully short space of time he had trampled upon or crushed out every form of liberty, -the liberty of the tribune, the liberty of the press, the liberty of the salon, dearer perhaps than any other liberty to the French. Intoxicated to giddiness by the height and suddenness of his elevation, he began to dream of universal empire, at least of empire like that of ancient Rome or Charlemagne; and his unrivalled military genius, with the vast resources of a great military people at his unchecked disposal, speedily enabled him to subject the greater part of Europe to his will." suited his purpose had they been otherwise. That the notion of durability never entered his thoughts, is clear from the manner in which he threw down and shifted his puppets, or made them change places, at the first variation of policy or suggestion of caprice; as when he transferred Joseph from Naples to Spain, to be replaced in Naples by Murat; or when he erected a kingdom of Etruria, only to be suppressed; or made Louis King of Holland, as if for the fraternal gratification of dethroning him. Louis remonstrated in vain against the unwelcome dignity thrust upon him. It was (he wrote) equally disagreeable to "this (the Dutch) free and estimable nation and himself." Napoleon cut the matter short in a despatch to Talleyrand :— "I have seen M. Verhuell this evening. In two words, I have reduced the question to this. Holland is without an Executive and must have one. I will give her Prince Louis. Instead of the Grand Pensionary, there will be a King. Before twenty days Prince Louis must make his entry into Amsterdam." trial, because he was too conscientious and Louis made his exit after an unsatisfactory tender-hearted for the place. He was foolish enough to suppose - M. Thiers thinks it very foolish that kings have duties as well as rights. "Un conquerant, dans sa fortune altiere, Se fit un jeu des sceptres et des lois, Et de ses pieds on peut voir la poussiere Empreinte encor sur le bandeau des rois." From the admirable character of Alexander the Great drawn by Mr. Grote, it may be collected that the dominant motive, the life-long end and aim of "Macedonia's madman," was the love or lust of glory, the passionate wish to be recorded in song and history as the greatest warrior and conqueror the world e'er knew. He cared little or nothing for civilization or colonization, for diffusing the arts of Greece, for Hellenizing Asia, or for leaving lasting and beneficent marks of his progress as het comprises every variety of moral turpipassed.* Bonaparte's ambition was of a more material and less romantic order. What he aimed at was power, dominion, sovereignty, absolutism; to dictate to kings Perhaps the most nefarious of all Bonaparte's schemes of personal and family aggrandizement was that by which he entrapped the Spanish Bourbons, and laid violent hands on their persons and their throne. tude - treachery, falsehood, inhumanity, injustice - and the sole attempt at palliation turns out to be an impudent forgery, delibSpain, he faithfully carried out each one of erately concocted by the perpetrator.* In and communities, to annihilate national independence and self-government, to be able the maxims of kingcraft which he was fond to imitate Rienzi when (as described by of quoting from Corneille : Gibbon), brandishing his sword to the three" parts of the world, he thrice repeated, And this too is mine!" Bonaparte's peculiar fancy was not to proclaim himself the autocrat of the many realms obedient to his rule, but to be nominally the head of a federation of rulers. In one of Gilray's caricatures he was drawn as a baker drawing a fresh batch of gingerbread kings and queens out of an oven; in another, as a showman pulling the wires of the crowned figures who were dancing and attitudinizing before him. Each hit told. The kings and princes of his creation were fragile as gingerbread and movable as puppets. They would not have "History of Greece," vol. xii. p. 346, seq. Le choix des actions ou mauvaises ou bonnes, |