CHAPTER XIII

BONAPARTE EMBODIES THE REVOLUTION[14]

[Footnote 14: References as before. Further, Adolphus: History of England (Reign of George III). Alison: History of Europe. Vandal: l'Avènement de Bonaparte, Vol. II. Oncken: Zeitalter der Revolution. Allardyce: Memoir of Lord Keith. Castlereagh: Correspondence. Jackson: Diaries and Letters, and the Bath Archives. The souvenirs of Chaptal, Hue, and Girardin; the memorial of Norvins, the letters of Joubert, and the memoirs of Barante. Quinet: La Révolution. Tocqueville: Correspondance. Proudhon: Napoleon I. Benckendorff: Histoire anecdotique de Paul Ier.]

End of the Revolution -- The Alternatives -- French Glory -- Bonaparte as an Idealist -- Reconstruction of the Army -- Russia and the Great Powers -- Slackness of the Coalition -- The Policy of England -- Debates in Parliament -- Canning's Influence -- Austrian Schemes -- French Opinion and the Press -- Consolidation of French Power -- Bonaparte in the Tuileries -- The Washington Festival.

No one understood better than Bonaparte the connection in a state between external and internal affairs. The second coalition, so far as Russia, Austria, England, and Turkey were concerned, was very loosely cemented indeed. They were united in their determination to subdue revolutionary France, but they had not an interest in common beyond that. Such was their jealousy as regarded the control of the Mediterranean that a strong government at Paris might hope to create discord among them. When, therefore, on December fifteenth, 1799, the provisional consulate came to an end, and the new constitution, known in French history as that of the twenty-second of Frimaire, year VIII, came into operation, the government entered upon life, as was most essential for French interests, not as an empty scheme, but as a full-fledged organism, with every office filled, the machinery actually in motion, and the administration ready for intercourse with the other governments of Europe. The words of Bonaparte's proclamation were: "Citizens, the Revolution is planted on the principles from which it proceeded. It is ended." As regarded the internal life of France, no truer words could have been written. There had never been true liberty nor true brotherhood under its banners; the leveling had been more successful, and equality in the matter of civil rights might be considered as won. What was left of those principles, as the event proved, was embodied for France herself in the First Consul and in his beneficent measures. To Europe at large this embodiment of the Revolution in the new sovereign was soon made equally evident. France had adopted him. Would the surviving dynasties admit him, as the representative of French nationality, to a seat on their Olympus? Nothing but an imperative necessity would compel them to do so, and then only for the moment.

[Sidenote: 1799--1800]

Two courses were therefore open to the new power: first, to extort an acquiescence, however distasteful, by consolidating France as the nation and the homogeneous people which the Revolution had made it, by increasing her prosperity, by fostering her genius, by showing an example to the world of what the people of a peaceful, enlightened, industrious state could be in contrast to the case-hardened, unreceptive, and sullen populations who still remained passive under dynastic rule; or, second, to restore the expansive anti-national character of the Revolution, and, using the magnificent military system created in that epoch as a destroying power, to menace the dynasties in their very existence, and thus make them first respectful neutrals and then subservient tools both in their own reconstruction and in the liberation of their subjects. These seemed, in this emergency, the two alternatives at the First Consul's command. Choosing neither permanently, but one or the other at will, as each rising question made it expedient, the result was an interference which brought first this and then that policy into prominence, made both partly successful, but neither entirely so, and ended in the ruin of the schemer.

The responsibility was not his own: he so behaved under the compulsion of the national spirit. The revolutionary tyrannies, one after the other, had adopted the foreign policies of Richelieu and Louis XIV. Nothing could be more definite, nothing more ingrained as the fiber of French existence. France itself must have the boundaries of ancient Gaul, and the Mediterranean must be a French lake. To this end the dynasties must be indemnified: Spain might have Portugal, Prussia the hegemony of North Germany, Austria might expand in Bavaria and Italy. For a bulwark of defence the land frontier must be girt with little buffer states, semi-autonomous but dependent: Batavia, Helvetia, Cisalpina. The still more important sea frontier must be fortified by the exclusion of Great Britain absolutely from the Continent; Italy was to be rearranged, with Piedmont and Tuscany occupied and subdued, the States of the Church distributed among the secular powers of which Roman and Neapolitan republics were to be the chief. It was a stupendous task, but ideals have no physical limits. Glory is the circumambient ether of the French spirit. Repose, order, material prosperity, domestic life, religion--these must be the preëstablished basis of existence, but life is triumph, splendor, power. It was not, therefore, as inheritor and incarnation of the Revolution, but as the embodiment of France and her immemorial policies, that Bonaparte became a student of foreign affairs. With the prospect of peace must be envisaged the prospect of war: war for the frontiers, the heritage of the Gauls; for propagating French thought and influence; for the invasion of irreconcilable lands. The voluminous and careful studies of foreign affairs which he caused to be made by able councilors still exist to show his painstaking zeal in the perpetuation of time-honored and sacred policies, which no man aspiring to capture the heart of the French dared neglect or permit to lapse into oblivion.

Taking advantage of the temporary abdication of all power, and of the momentary renunciation of all activities, even of interest, by the people, the unconscious idealist began his work. Never was a man more practical in his own eyes, or, from his own point of view, more concrete and direct in his motives or conduct. Seizing every opportunity as it arose, he was the type of what is to-day called in France an opportunist. But for all that, not the least element of his supernal greatness was an ever-present idealism. In view of his birth and early training, it is easy to see that if, as Mme. de Staël first suggested, nature had brought that quality down in his line from some far-off Italian of the early Renascence, it would develop under Rousseau's and Raynal's influence. Whencesoever it came, it is not least among the causes of the later political renascence which saw the creation of a new and modern society, the completion of a process which began with the English revolution. It is this quality alone which makes Napoleon an element of the first importance in universal history. Other traits make him so in the epoch now called by his name.

His first thought was for the army. It is probable that Moreau's participation in the latest political stroke--a fact to which, in the initial stages, it owed its success--was due to personal ambition; he probably thought that when Bonaparte had once become a civilian, his only military rival would be disposed of. Accordingly, when the plan for the coming campaign was published, it was found that Moreau was to command a great central European force composed of the recruited armies of the Rhine and of Helvetia, to be called by the name of the former. Masséna, whose brilliant victories in Switzerland had moderated the gloom occasioned by the disasters of the previous year in Italy, was to have supreme command of the forces which were still to be called the Army of Italy--the name made so glorious at Lodi, at Arcola, at Castiglione, and at Rivoli. It seemed, indeed, as if the First Consul had himself renounced all ambition as a soldier in order to become entirely a statesman. The imperious and jealous but prudent Moreau was to have full scope for his powers, the brilliant Masséna was to wear his old commander's laurels. But there was a reserve army, not talked of nor paraded, which was quietly, silently, and unostentatiously formed, under Berthier's master-hand, from new conscripts skilfully intermingled with selected veterans. The divisions were gathered in different places, apparently with no unity, and thus were drilled, trained, and organized without observation. While most of it was kept within the French borders, ready for instant mobilization, and with headquarters ostensibly at Dijon, a part was sent under the nominal command of the devoted adjutant to Geneva in order to maintain the French honor in Switzerland.

The French people, however, desired not war, but peace. The list of competent and admirable administrators chosen by the government was sufficient proof that public affairs were to be carefully transacted. The reconstruction of the army gave evidence that peace was to be made with honor. The next step was so to behave that France should think her new chief magistrate eager for a general pacification. Since Bonaparte's return from Egypt there had been a combination of circumstances which pointed to an easy solution of this problem. The Czar of Russia was much exasperated with George III because the Russian soldiers included in the capitulation of Alkmaar were coolly received when transported to England, and then virtually imprisoned in the island of Guernsey. When, soon afterward, the English laid siege to Malta, of which he yearned to be grand master, he was ready to accuse Great Britain of treachery. But he was still more incensed with Austria. As has been told, a portion of his army, under Korsakoff, was overwhelmed by Masséna at Zurich on September twenty-fifth, 1799. Suvoroff, with the other wing, was at the time in full possession of Piedmont; and in accordance with his master's instructions he had invited the fugitive Charles Emmanuel IV to return from Sardinia and reinstate himself at Turin.

The Austrian archduke Charles had withdrawn, after his defeat of Masséna by the first battle of Zurich in June, 1799, to take command in central Germany. Francis, being fully determined to keep all northern Italy for himself, and therefore to prevent the reëstablishment of the house of Savoy on the mainland, speciously ordered Suvoroff to the assistance of his fellow-countrymen north of the Alps. The Russian general found nothing prepared for his passage of the St. Gotthard; on the contrary, he was so hindered at every turn by the absence of mules for his baggage-train, and so harassed by the attacks of the French, that his expedition was one long disaster. He attributed his misfortunes to Austrian indifference or worse. Driven from valley to valley, over icy peaks and barren passes, his troops perished in great numbers, and their panic was complete when they heard of Korsakoff's terrible defeat. Before a junction could be effected with the remnants of that army, Masséna turned and attacked Suvoroff himself, compelling him to flee eastward as best he could until he reached the confines of Bavaria. This put a climax to the Czar's fury; he demanded that the Italian princes should be restored to their governments, and that Thugut should be dismissed, as a guarantee of good faith. Finally he heard that when Ancona fell before the combined attacks of Austrians, Russians, and Turks, his own standard had been taken down, and only the Austrian left flying. To a gloomy enthusiast, claiming to be the mirror of chivalry and magnanimity, this was a crowning insult; and he determined, in December, 1799, to withdraw from the coalition. This was Bonaparte's opportunity, and he began at once a series of the most flattering attentions to Paul, which made the Czar for the rest of his short life a passionate admirer of the schemes and person of the First Consul. England and Austria were thus the only formidable opponents left in the coalition against France.

With ostentatious simplicity, Bonaparte wrote both to George III and to Francis II, as man to man, announcing his accession to power, and pleading, in the interest of commerce, of national well-being, and of domestic happiness, for a cessation of hostilities after eight years of warfare. The French people, who looked upon the First Consul as a ruler made by themselves, were delighted with this simple straightforwardness, and gratified by the notion of their representative treating on equal terms with the divine-right monarchs of Europe. Pitt mistakenly thought that Bonaparte still personified Jacobinism, and labored under the delusion that France was completely exhausted. An English army was ready and about to disembark on the west coast of France. Kléber in Egypt, having maintained himself superbly thus far, was about to yield to pitiless fate, and accept humiliating terms for evacuating the country. Could the flames of the civil war which was once more raging in France be further fanned, and the control of the Levant secured in English hands, the great English premier would be able in a few months to make terms far more advantageous than any he could hope for at the moment. Lord Grenville therefore wrote a brusque letter to Talleyrand, refusing negotiation with a government the stability of which was not assured, and suggesting in a weak, impolitic way that while the French had a right to choose their own government, the return of the Bourbons would be the best guarantee of a permanent and settled administration. This clause afforded the opportunity for a smart reply by Bonaparte, denouncing England as the author of the war which had raged through 1799 and was about to be renewed, and reminding the King that he himself ruled by consent of his people.

The debate which ensued in Parliament was most instructive, because the First Consul was entirely right. Great Britain was the mainspring of the coalition. The wits of London said in public that England had contracted half of her national debt to destroy the Bourbons and the other half to restore them to power. This was the key-note of the Liberal opposition. Lord Holland was willing to be sponsor for Bonaparte's sincerity, but the Lords laughed at him. In the Commons Whitbread charged the excesses of the French Revolution to the unwarrantable interference of other powers; England owed it to herself to make peace when she could, even with a usurper. Erskine could see in England's course nothing but a blind obstinacy which had overwhelmed the nation with debt and disaster. "What would you say," said Tierney, "if Bonaparte victorious should refuse to treat except with the Stuarts?" But the temper of Parliament and the people was for continuing the war. Grenville, in the upper house, declared that Bonaparte was merely a new exponent of the revolutionary wickedness of the Directory. He had made treaties or armistices with Sardinia, Tuscany, Modena, and the minor Italian states, only to violate them; he had scorned the neutrality of Parma; he had dragged Venice into war for her own destruction; he had trampled Genoa underfoot; and he had destroyed the liberty of Switzerland while uttering false promises of peace and friendship. His hearers sustained him by an overwhelming majority.

In the lower house Canning denounced the First Consul as a usurper who, like a specter, wore on his head something which resembled a crown. Pitt rose to the height of his majestic powers in one of the great orations of his life. Minor political considerations must be waived. Bonaparte was the destroyer of Europe. The sole refuge from the calamities with which he was about to flood the nations was England. He himself had unwillingly consented to the negotiations at Lille; it was Fructidor which had broken them off, and it was Bonaparte who was the author of Fructidor. He might be reproached for desiring the restoration of the ancient monarchy to France, but an exhausted and desperate country could not find the long repose essential for recuperation except under the Bourbons. The success of his plea was even greater than Grenville's. Thus by an appeal to the old detestation of revolutionary excess which was so deep-seated in the English masses, and by an adroit insinuation that it was this for which Bonaparte stood,--a fact which seemed to be shown by his career,--the ministry gained a new lease of life, and men believed that a few months would see France fall in utter exhaustion before the coalition.

Bonaparte's personal letter to the Emperor was, as the writer doubtless foresaw it would be, equally unsuccessful. Austria, thanks to her double-dealings with Russia in the last campaign, was now occupying Lombardy, Piedmont, and the Papal States; she meant to keep them, and moderately but firmly refused to treat on the basis proposed, which was that of Campo Formio.

Among other unfortunate surrenders which France under the Directory had made for the sake of quiet and security was that of freedom for the press. A consular decree of January seventeenth, 1800, further emphasized this undemocratic policy, and suppressed all but thirteen political journals. This was nominally a measure to be enforced only during the war. For its justification there was the plea of necessity. The serious indiscretions which a free and enterprising press always has committed, and is sure to commit, during hostilities, uniformly call out the angry denunciations of military writers. The "spurred and booted ruler" of whom Napoleon spoke at St. Helena could not well be expected to act otherwise than he did. Unfortunately, the only papers which continued to be published became at once mere administrative organs. When, therefore, with a skilful display of facts the course of negotiations in both England and Austria was laid before the public, the people of Paris and the provinces were easily roused to warlike ardor. The clever and witty pasquinades, the abusive and scathing paragraphs, in which all the papers indulged, from the "Moniteur" downward, increased the excitement. It pleased the French fancy to read a supposed summons to George, inviting him, as a convert to legitimacy, to abdicate in favor of the surviving Stuart heir. Forgetful of the immediate past, the nation was ready to maintain French honor at any cost against its embittered and inveterate foe. The Pactolus streams of English gold could not, the French felt sure, much longer subsidize the Continental powers; for it was Great Britain, and not France, which was really exhausted.

Led by a man whose genius was believed to be as fertile in political, administrative, and fiscal expedients as it had always been in military measures, with an admirable machinery of government and a general confidence in their ruler, the French people became ever more certain that they might now and finally conquer in the struggle with England for mastery. This opinion was further strengthened because the inveterate rancor of civil conflict in the west was again quieted, temporarily at least, perhaps permanently. The devastator of Egypt and Syria still held out with one hand the mildest offers of conciliation to the malcontent communities of that district, with the other he displayed his powerful sword, while in his proclamations he threatened measures as severe as those he had practised against the rebellious Bedouin. This course had the desired effect, and, having brought the French rebels to terms, seemed likely to soothe them into habits of submission. The Army of the West could therefore be reduced in numbers; and as at the same time the Batavian Republic was in a fervor of enthusiastic loyalty, so also could the Army of Holland. In this way more than thirty thousand excellent soldiers were freed for use elsewhere.

Simultaneously with these events the most careful preparation was made for a step which might redound to Bonaparte's credit if properly taken, but could easily be detrimental to the complete success of his schemes. Under the new constitution every department of government had an assigned dwelling-place. That of the consuls was to be the Tuileries. How could an absolute dictator install his penates in the sometime home of absolute royalty without inspiring general distrust? The first step was to rechristen the pile as "the palace of the government," the next to consecrate it to glory. From far and near the statues of the great were gathered to adorn its halls. The choice of these displayed in significant confusion the generals and statesmen of all times in all places. Alexander, Cæsar, Frederick; Cato, Cicero, Brutus; Mirabeau, Marceau, and Joubert; and many others of lesser note, were assembled in effigy. But highest of all was set the image of Washington, the news of whose death had just reached Europe. His example was to be held up as the real inspiration of the new ruler. In order both to arouse the imagination of the people and to convince their understanding, the army was put into mourning for the great American, and a festival was instituted in his honor. To exalt the man who was universally considered as the typical and ideal republican of the age was a conspicuously effective idea, since it accorded thoroughly with the approved traditions of the Revolution.

The celebration was set for February ninth, 1800, and proved a great success. It had already been decided to reawaken public enthusiasm by instituting great military ceremonies when the captured standards from Aboukir were finally deposited in the Hospital of the Invalides. These and the Washington festival were interwoven with consummate art: while the First Consul's victories were recalled in the imposing parade, the simple and impressive words of an able orator, M. de Fontanes, reminded the nation that the immortal Washington had shown as a general more strength than brilliancy, and had awakened little enthusiasm but great confidence; that he was one of the men inspired to rule who appear from time to time in the world; that he was neither partizan nor demagogue; and that when peace had once been signed he had laid down his arms to become the wisest of constructive legislators. "Yes, Washington! thy counsels shall be heard--thou warrior, legislator, administrator! He who in his youth surpassed thee in battle, like thee shall close with conquering hands the wounds of his country." Minds less quick than those of the Parisians would have discovered the moral of the address even without the peroration. When the official journal next day published the glowing words and described the brilliant ceremony, the coming monarch was already lodged under the roof of the Bourbons. Since Bonaparte had made the liberation of Lafayette an indispensable condition of the treaty ratified at Campo Formio, it might have been expected that this name, so long used elsewhere in a natural juxtaposition, would on such an occasion have been mentioned in connection with that of Washington; but the honors of that day were to be shared with the dead foreigner, not with the living Frenchman.

CHAPTER XIV[15]

[Footnote 15: Further references are the Tratchefski Archives in Vol. LXX, Société d'histoire de Russie. Martens: Traités de la Russie. Montgelas: Denkwürdigkeiten. Eckart: Montgelas. Fournier: Studien und Skizzen. Reinach: Correspondance Royaliste. Pingaud: d'Antraigues. Stanhope: Life of Pitt.]

A CONSTITUTIONAL DESPOTISM

Policy of the First Consul -- His Family -- The New Officials -- The Council of State -- Bonaparte's Ubiquity -- Foreign Affairs -- France and Russia -- The Mistake of Prussia -- Peace Impossible -- Bonaparte's Plans -- His Aims -- The Temper of Great Britain -- Bonaparte's Appeal to the Army -- The Military Situation.

[Sidenote: 1800]

The makers of a paper constitution cannot foresee every detail in the working of its provisions; and contrary to the expectation at least of Sieyès, the form which the new government took at the outset was largely personal. The Consulate and the ministry were entirely so, their members being chosen with a keen business instinct, like that of a great industrial or commercial master, for personal character, integrity, capacity, and devotion. "What revolutionary," said Napoleon to his brother Joseph, "would not have confidence in an order of things where Fouché is minister? What gentleman would not expect to find existence possible under the former Bishop of Autun? One keeps my left, the other my right. I open a broad path where all may walk." This was so far true, but such nice discrimination could not be exercised in filling the hundreds of minor offices. France is second to no land in the ambition of its people for office-holding, and among the thousands of greedy claimants it was not easy to choose. There were many mistakes made in selecting the petty officials, and the disappointed formed a large class of embittered malcontents from the very inauguration of the consular system. There were the senate, the legislature, the council of state, the tribunate, the whole judicial administration, all to be filled. It was understood that the official emoluments would not be niggardly. When finally fixed, the salary of a senator was twenty-five thousand francs; that of a tribune, fifteen thousand; that of a legislator, ten thousand. As a measure of relative importance it is interesting to note that the First Consul had five hundred thousand a year, and each of his colleagues one hundred and fifty thousand.

So swiftly and thoroughly did Paris and France absorb the concept of monarchy in the Consulate, that the powers and fortunes of the First Consul were scarcely considered in relation to those of the other two, who, far from parity, were barely coadjutant. What the nation felt and accepted, but scarcely whispered, the Bonaparte family discussed with shameless greediness. How far soever Napoleon removed himself in other respects from the primitive institutions of Corsican barbarism, in one he never so far had varied: the sense of clanship. His brothers and sisters were men and women of parts, but they were undisciplined in language and behavior: their natural appetites were never concealed, nor their tongues bridled. Napoleon acknowledged the fraternal bond in the tribal sense; for every one of them he desired to provide handsomely in money and honor, and he expected the return of affection and loyalty. Behind his back they discussed his death and the succession, formed cabals of supporters, wrangled for influence and power. Of this their brother was not unaware, and the danger (p.~151) of their irregular conduct was ever present to him. But he could not bring himself to check them. At this moment when their activities were most pernicious, he intended Lucien to be the master politician, Joseph the master negotiator, Louis a general, and Jerome an admiral. Their intercourse with official France might make or mar the fortunes not only of their brother but also of themselves.

The new officials were selected from every walk of life, from every shade of opinion, from every stratum of society. The intention was that they should have no bond but a common interest in the new order. The senate became a high place for the successful among the old, the men whose day was over. Monge, Berthollet, Volney, and the like were found on its benches. The silent legislature was filled with the majority of those whose ardent and uninstructed ambitions were easily muzzled by the tenure of place, and found a sufficient vent in casting a voiceless vote. The tribunes, "legislative eunuchs," as they have been called, were men such as Daunou, Benjamin Constant, and J. B. Say--the elect among the able and intelligent of the day. Their duty was to debate the nature and utility of all bills with the proposers, the council of state; and it was expected that the fiery logic and merciless criticism which they were sure to employ would rebound harmlessly from the benches on which their opponents sat. If freedom of debate and liberty of speech became too dangerous even in such remoteness from action, the superfluous institution could be suppressed without a jar in the machinery of state. There was possibly a hint of this in the fact that the tribunes found shelter in the Palais Royal, then the haunt of prostitutes and the refuge of the great gambling-hells which were so numerous. To the end of its days the tribunate was the one asylum of liberty under the constitution of the year VIII. It was supposed, as has just been said, that the impotence of the tribunes would be offset by the independence of the council of state.

In this last body, therefore, were assembled three important classes: sincere Bonapartists like Roederer, Regnault de St.-Jean-d'Angély, and Boulay de la Meurthe; clever specialists like Ganteaume, Chaptal, and Fourcroy, who were quite willing to serve the First Consul; and a number of proselytes from among the royalists and other factions. For the most part these were men of great ability, and for a time they found in the First Consul a disinterestedness in serving France which made them his devoted servants. The personality of the council was Bonaparte's, and whatever independence it possessed was his. The court of appeals was duly organized by the senate, which had this right as being the guardian of the constitution. The justices and councilors of a supreme court, the copestone of the judiciary, were nominated by the same body. The other courts were also ably manned with officials who, though not servile, were stanch supporters of the new government.

Before the time when the campaign could open in the spring of 1800, all these parts were intended to be, and actually were, running smoothly; but they were running by the inspiration and activity of a single man. The council of state was his greater self, the senate his instrument of governing; the legislative body was as silent as the tribunate was noisy--neither was a serious check on his plans. Legislation of the greatest importance was under way; it was all devised for purposes of centralization, and was studied in detail by the First Consul. Administration was proceeding with scarcely any friction whatsoever; but this was because Bonaparte kept his eye on each separate office, and carefully superintended its working. By special arrangement foreign relations were considered and settled in secret consultation by the chief of state and Talleyrand; but the latter dared not pretend that in unraveling the threads of so tangled a web, or in their skilful rearrangement, the initiative was his. Carnot, at his old work, with his old genius unimpaired, needed little encouragement; but even in his department every corps, every battalion, every regiment, every company of all the arms,--cavalry, infantry, and artillery of every class, conscript, soldier, reserve, and home guard,--each and all were known to the First Consul. Incredible and exaggerated as such statements must appear, the testimony to their truth is so abundant and unimpeachable that it seems to the reader as if at this crisis there had appeared in Europe a being neither human, demoniac, nor celestial, but a man with superhuman powers of endurance, apprehension, and labor, an angel without perfection, a demon without malevolence. For, on the whole, Bonaparte's work, while replete with dangerous expedients, and, as the future conclusively proved, inspired by self-seeking, was beneficent, constructive, and permanent in regard not merely to France, but to Europe and the world.

In the opening months of 1800 the Continental situation was even more peculiar than usual. In 1799 the Directory had, as a financial measure, incorporated Belgium with France, and her provinces, like all other parts of the country, paid heavy taxes. This could not be changed; and in regard to the minor states still nominally independent, but really under French control, the old policy of the Directory could likewise not immediately be dropped. Masséna had just made a forced levy in Switzerland. Genoa was laid under a (p.~154) fresh contribution of two million francs, and menaced with a forced levy. It was arranged that Holland should pay forty million francs for the restitution of Flushing; and Amsterdam was invited to lend ten more, but refused. Hamburg was secretly held out to Prussia as the price of an alliance with France. Publicly the Hohenzollern monarchy was praised for its refusal to surrender some important political refugees to the coalition, and was offered the friendship of France at the price of four to six millions of francs. It was determined that Portugal, which, having been exhausted by a long alliance with England, now earnestly desired peace, should be told informally by Talleyrand that it could be purchased by a contribution of from eight to ten millions for the Army of Italy. Paul I of Russia, already angry with Austria, was confirmed in his friendship for France by many acts of courtesy. The Russian prisoners of war received new clothes, and were released; the First Consul, recognizing the Czar's quixotic interest in the Knights of Malta, sent to him the sword of Valetta, captured on the seizure of the island. A treaty of peace between France and Russia speedily ensued.

This of course effectually checked Turkey, and soon afterward competent experts were appointed by Paul to consider the details of a combined Franco-Russian expedition for the invasion of India by land, and to parcel out Asia between the two powers. The scheme originated with an agent of the Directory, named Guttin, who after a sojourn in Russia had boldly suggested that as Russia could never be even touched by modern ideas, and as the international propaganda of cosmopolitan republicanism must needs stop at her frontiers, there was but one course open: to seek her alliance. Bonaparte carefully studied the long and persuasive report, began his preparations to realize the policy in the far future, was mindful of it at Tilsit, and, thwarted in his hope of keeping Russia an eastern power, found his first serious check in the campaign fought to coerce her. The expedition planned by him and Paul, as a side thrust at Great Britain, embraced both India and Persia in its details. Should it succeed, even the island kingdom might one day find itself a tamed and trained unit in the federation of western and central Europe under the ægis of a new western emperor, dividing the world with him who claimed to be the eastern; the heir and successor of those Romans who had reigned from Byzantium.

The center of gravity on the Continent remained in Prussia. As the land of Frederick, and the rival of Austria, she supposed herself to represent the liberal side of German life. In fact, there was a strong French party at Berlin, which felt that the republic had been fighting Prussia's battle in weakening the house of Austria. But Frederick William III, the young King, was timid, cautious, and full of self-esteem. He was overmastered by the specious idea, also cherished by his prime minister, that a firm neutrality would recuperate the strength of his country and people while internecine warfare was exhausting the rest of Europe. On this ground he had so far stood unshaken; and though the sympathies of his house had always been, in the main, on the side of absolutism, he refused the alliance of the absolutist coalition, and remained obstinate between the two alternatives. Nor did he falter until he destroyed his own prestige. The country itself would have been sacrificed but for the national uprising which some years later compelled him to take a decided stand. The Directory had longed to secure Prussia as part of the French system in Europe, and finally sent Sieyès to engage her as an ally. But the envoy spent more energy in intriguing against his employers, and in devising schemes for the monarchical system which was to supplant them in France, than in his proper work, and succeeded only in confirming the King of Prussia in his policy. Bonaparte sent two representatives, Duroc and Beurnonville, to renew the negotiation and obtain Prussia's active assistance. They were received with much show of kindness, and the hopes of the latter envoy rose high, but only to be shattered. Privately the King notified Sandoz, his minister in Paris, that if France were defeated in the inevitable impending conflict, Prussia would reclaim her territories on the left bank of the Rhine, and declare war to secure them. The treaties in which she had renounced them were waste paper in this case; but until the event were decided she would stir neither hand nor foot.

With Prussia persistently neutral, and all the minor states exasperated not only by the continued billeting of French troops upon them, but by new demands for money, France was virtually left alone against Austria and England in the coming campaign. This situation was perfectly clear to the French people; but in view of all that had happened since the change of government, it appeared to every one not only as if reasonable offers of peace on the part of the First Consul had been refused, but as if French honor were inseparably united with the policy of war forced upon him. Though not proved, it is reiterated that this was what Bonaparte wanted. Subsequent events support the hypothesis; and if it be true, no schemer ever met with such perfect success. A career of aggressive extension was apparently forced upon him.

Three great revolutionary concepts of foreign policy were therefore the outcome of Bonaparte's studies in the exhibition of Austrian and British policy, of French temperament and personal ambition: the mastery of the Mediterranean basin and thereby of the Orient; the extension of a revolutionary liberal system in Europe by the conquest and protectorate of the Continent; and the leadership of the world for the French nation, still as ever enthusiastic for lofty ideals and great deeds. Similar notions had not been foreign to the ancient régime, but England had prevented their fulfilment. The republic, having vaguely enlarged them, had fought for them as France had never fought before, because these things were not to be achieved for a dynasty, and were now illuminated by visions of human regeneration. Still England stood in the way. Bonaparte had given them new shape and new intensity with new definition; logically his success would stand for that most splendid of ideals which has ever dazzled poets, theologians, and kings--the universality of empire for peace and its arts, and the consequent elevation of all mankind. By the conquests of Alexander, Cæsar, and Charles the Great, animated as was each in turn by ambition and fiery zeal, nations, tribes, and institutions had been melted in one crucible. Each of those heroes had done a wondrous work in the advance of civilization, but their gains had been indirect. The experiment was to be tried for a fourth time. Would England again and finally dash the French Utopia into ruins?

For the moment Great Britain might be well content. India was safer for the overthrow of Tippoo, Ceylon was conquered, Egypt blockaded, and supremacy regained in the West Indies as well. Malta was in her hands, the Dutch fleet had been destroyed, the French and Spanish fleets were imprisoned at Brest. It is true the liberal agitations inaugurated and kept alive by the discontent of her middle and lower classes were hard to repress; but they were mercilessly crushed as they came to the surface, and on the whole, public opinion supported the policy. That Grenville was subsidizing Georges Cadoudal with half a million francs to reorganize the Chouannerie of western France, and strike the "essential blow," was barely suspected. The proof has only come to light a century later. Assassination is an ugly word: it was not used, but it was contemplated. If this were the temper of Great Britain, that of Austria, her ally, was even more irreconcilable. Expansion in Italy was the focal concept of her policy. There was no expense of money and men she would refuse to consider for erasing the blot of Campo Formio. She had recruited her treasury and her army by British aid, and was defiant. The letter to her Emperor from the First Consul, as of equal to equal, was a crowning insult.

The first four months of the Consulate had not left the First Consul without enemies at home both numerous and bitter; moreover, many narrow minds--men who, like Talleyrand, were ignorant of how impossible the permanent return of the Bourbons had become--considered Bonaparte's tenure of power only as a transition to the old order. But at the critical instant, in April of the last year of the eighteenth century, France as a whole, including even the factions which had hoped to use him as a tool, felt that her doctrines, her aspirations, and her fate were personified in the great Corsican. His own motives may properly be stigmatized as those of personal ambition; but they were much more. Half educated and half barbarous as he was in his disdain of human limitations, there was in his heart a clear conception that good can come only of good, and therefore he had a definite purpose to do the most possible in order to illuminate his own rise by the regeneration of society. Himself a man without a country,--for all his patriotic aspirations perished in Corsica's desperate failure,--he cared little for territorial limits, and utterly failed to comprehend the strength of national ties. Without sincere ecclesiastical feeling or an earnest faith, he partly understood the value of religious sentiment in the individual, but underrated utterly its moral preponderance in the social organism. The church to him was little more than a "white" police force. A consummate actor, he estimated at its full the influence of the dramatic word and situation on the common mind, but was often self-deceived while believing others misled or beguiled by his acting.

It is not at all inconsistent with a possible sincerity in the ostensibly pacific foreign policy he was pursuing that, even before the decision to fight had apparently been forced upon him, two manifestoes rang out to the troops. To the Army of the Rhine he said: "You have conquered Holland, the Rhine, and Italy, and have dictated peace under the walls of terrified Vienna. Now it is not a question of defending your borders, but of overpowering hostile states." To the Army of Italy in particular he said, with reference to a too notorious instance in which during the previous year a half-brigade had shown the white feather: "Are they all dead, the brave men of Castiglione, of Rivoli, and of Neumarkt? They would rather have perished than have been untrue to their colors; and they surely would have dragged their younger comrades on to honor and to duty. Soldiers, you say your rations are not regularly distributed. What would you have done if, like Four and Twenty-two of the light infantry, like Eighteen and Thirty-two of the line, you had found yourselves in the midst of the desert, without bread, without water, with nothing to eat but the flesh of horses and mules? 'Victory will give us bread,' said they; and you--you desert your standards!" Such words, from such a man, could leave no soldier of any nation unmoved. The Frenchmen in the ranks were thrilled by them; the general who wrote them understood that peace without glory was a broken reed for an aspiring ruler. He had proffered the olive-branch, but he must, in order completely to win his people, chastise those who had spurned it. Austria, in particular, must get another lesson in humility.

On the eve of active operations in the first months of 1800 the military situation was as follows: The Italian line stretched from Genoa around by Savona to the Col di Tenda. On it were thirty thousand men, under Masséna, while ten thousand more guarded the passes of the Alps. Confronting it was an Austrian force of eighty thousand men, under Melas, a general of the old formal school, hampered by tradition and by the machinery of the Aulic Council in Vienna. In Tuscany, in the Papal States, and in Piedmont were twenty thousand Austrian soldiers in garrison. On the Rhine stood Moreau, with a hundred and twenty thousand men, facing a less able antagonist than Melas in the person of Kray, whose army was about equal in number to his own. The Austrian lines stretched from the falls of the Rhine northward by their headquarters at Donaueschingen to Kinzig. The greatest of the Austrian generals, the Archduke Charles, was not in the field. A sensitive epileptic, he had been wounded by the incessant and meddling interference of the Vienna bureaucrats, and had temporarily withdrawn from service. The plan of Francis and his ministry was to drive back Masséna's inferior force; then, with the aid of the English fleet, which arrived in March, under Keith, to reduce Genoa, where Masséna was sure to make a stand; then to cross the Var, and increase the numerical superiority of the Austrians still further by a union with the royalists of Provence, who were organizing under Pichegru, just escaped from Guiana; and finally to carry the war into the heart of France, while Kray held Moreau in check.