Napoleon, aided by Joubert and Masséna, followed rapidly on the heels of the residue of the defeated army and gave it no rest. Pope Pius VI. having made himself objectionable by stirring up strife, the Commander-in-chief turned towards Florence preparatory to marching on Rome. The latter, however, became unnecessary, as a humiliating peace was signed at Tolentino on the 19th February 1797, by the terms of which the Pope was compelled to pay 30,000,000 francs, and to cede a considerable portion of territory, and various valuable works of art. The French, moreover, gained certain military and maritime advantages.
The contest with Austria continued to occupy the French, the Imperialists now being under the command of the Archduke Charles, the Emperor’s brother. Finding himself in an awkward situation, Napoleon agreed to a suspension of hostilities, and preliminaries of peace were signed at Leoben on the 18th April, 1797, preparatory to the Treaty of Campo Formio on the 17th October. Dr J. Holland Rose thus summarizes the terms of the latter: “Austria ceded to the French Republic her Belgic provinces. Of the once extensive Venetian possessions France gained the Ionian Isles, while Austria acquired Istria, Dalmatia, the districts at the mouth of the Cattaro, the city of Venice, and the mainland of Venetia as far west as Lake Garda, the Adige, and the lower part of the River Po. The Hapsburgs recognised the independence of the now enlarged Cisalpine Republic.... The Emperor ceded to the dispossessed Duke of Modena the territory of Breisgau on the east of the Rhine.”
Having so successfully played the parts of conqueror and diplomatist Napoleon went to Rastatt. One might have imagined that the journey was the triumphal progress of an Emperor. Feted by townsfolk and cheered by peasants as he went, the enthusiasm expressed might well have turned his head but that Napoleon had learnt his lessons in the hard school of experience. Bourrienne remarked on the admiration shown, that it must be delightful to be so greeted. “Bah!” Napoleon replied with disgust, “this same unthinking crowd, under a slight change of circumstances, would follow me just as eagerly to the scaffold.” The Reign of Terror and his intimacy with the younger Robespierre were too recent for their moral to be forgotten. From Rastatt he proceeded to Paris.
It is fortunate that a contemporary, who saw Napoleon at this time, has committed his observations to paper. “I beheld with deep interest and extreme attention that extraordinary man,” he writes, “who has performed such great deeds, and about whom there is something which seems to indicate that his career is not yet terminated. I found him much like his portraits, small in stature, thin, pale, with an air of fatigue, but not, as has been reported, in ill-health. He appeared to me to listen with more abstraction than interest, as if occupied rather with what he was thinking of, than with what was said to him. There is great intelligence in his countenance, along with an expression of habitual meditation, which reveals nothing of what is passing within. In that thinking head, in that daring mind, it is impossible not to suppose that some designs are engendering which will have their influence on the destinies of Europe.”
The magnificent reception accorded to Napoleon by the Directory in the Luxembourg on the 10th December 1797 surpassed all others. Madame de Staël, that witty woman whom Napoleon detested because of her meddling in politics, tells us that “Bonaparte arrived, dressed very simply, followed by his aides-de-camp, all taller than himself, but nearly bent by the respect which they displayed to him. M. de Talleyrand, in presenting Bonaparte to the Directory, called him ‘the Liberator of Italy, and the Pacificator of the Continent.’ He assured them that ‘General Bonaparte detested luxury and splendour, the miserable ambition of vulgar souls, and he loved the poems of Ossian particularly, because they detach us from the earth.’” Napoleon, who had a keen sense of the dramatic, knew very well that the plainer he dressed on such an occasion the more conspicuous he would be in a crowd of such magnificence. One sentence of his short but telling speech is worthy of notice: “From the peace you have just concluded,” he said, “dates the era of representative governments.” In a certain sense this was true, notwithstanding that his own despotism was destined to have its day.
Napoleon was now given command of the so-called Army of England, which the Government fondly hoped would plant its standards on the banks of the Thames. The general soon dispelled this delusion. The time was not yet come for his gigantic preparations to subdue “perfidious Albion.” The glamour of the East beckoned him. “All great fame comes from that quarter,” he told Bourrienne. An expedition to Egypt and the restoration of French rule in India were more to his liking at the moment and offered more possibilities of enhanced fame. Not slow to read the signs of the times, and knowing the Directors were jealous of his reputation, Napoleon felt that an absence from France might have the desired effect of showing how very useful he was to the Republic.
CHAPTER X
The Expedition to Egypt (1798)
There is no more romantic phase of Napoleon’s career than that of his expedition to the sunny land of the Pharaohs. He has himself told us that “Imagination rules the world,” and although he was essentially practical by nature, a man who invariably worked out his plans to almost fractional details, whenever practicable, his ardent Southern temperament readily responded to the glow and glamour of the Orient. There history had been made, there history was to be made. He saw vast possibilities in the slumbering East, perhaps an awakening into prodigious activity under the rule of a military dictator with liberal ideas. He might revitalise Asia as he had revivified some of the moribund States of worn-out Europe. Briefly his object was to conquer Egypt, oust the British from India, where their rule was by no means consolidated, and on his return, crush the power of the Sultan. Everything seemed to favour him in engineering the machinery of this vast project. The scientists of France took up the scheme with avidity, and learned members of the Institute, to which he had been admitted in the place of Carnot, gave him the benefit of their researches.