Buonaparte had already appeared timidly and awkwardly at the salon of the voluptuous Barras, where the fair but frail Madame Tallien—Notre Dame de Thermidor she was styled—dazzled Parisian society by her classic features and the uncinctured grace of her attire. There he reappeared, not in the threadbare uniform that had attracted the giggling notice of that giddy throng, but as the lion of the society which his talents had saved. His previous attempts to gain the hand of a lady had been unsuccessful. He had been refused, first by Mlle. Clary, sister of his brother Joseph's wife, and quite recently by Madame Permon. Indeed, the scarecrow young officer had not been a brilliant match. But now he saw at that salon a charming widow, Josephine de Beauharnais, whose husband had perished in the Terror. The ardour of his southern temperament, long repressed by his privations, speedily rekindles in her presence: his stiff, awkward manners thaw under her smiles: his silence vanishes when she praises his military gifts: he admires her tact, her sympathy, her beauty: he determines to marry her. The lady, on her part, seems to have been somewhat terrified by her uncanny wooer: she comments questioningly on his "violent tenderness almost amounting to frenzy": she notes uneasily his "keen inexplicable gaze which imposes even on our Directors": How would this eager nature, this masterful energy, consort with her own "Creole nonchalance"? She did well to ask herself whether the general's almost volcanic passion would not soon exhaust itself, and turn from her own fading charms to those of women who were his equals in age. Besides, when she frankly asked her own heart, she found that she loved him not: she only admired him. Her chief consolation was that if she married him, her friend Barras would help to gain for Buonaparte the command of the Army of Italy. The advice of Barras undoubtedly helped to still the questioning surmises of Josephine; and the wedding was celebrated, as a civil contract, on March 9th, 1796. With a pardonable coquetry, the bride entered her age on the register as four years less than the thirty-four which had passed over her: while her husband, desiring still further to lessen the disparity, entered his date of birth as 1768.
A fortnight before the wedding, he had been appointed to command the Army of Italy: and after a honeymoon of two days at Paris, he left his bride to take up his new military duties. Clearly, then, there was some connection between this brilliant fortune and his espousal of Josephine. But the assertion that this command was the "dowry" offered by Barras to the somewhat reluctant bride is more piquant than correct. That the brilliance of Buonaparte's prospects finally dissipated her scruples may be frankly admitted. But the appointment to a command of a French army did not rest with Barras. He was only one of the five Directors who now decided the chief details of administration. His colleagues were Letourneur, Rewbell, La Réveillière-Lépeaux, and the great Carnot; and, as a matter of fact, it was the last-named who chiefly decided the appointment in question.
He had seen and pondered over the plan of campaign which Buonaparte had designed for the Army of Italy; and the vigour of the conception, the masterly appreciation of topographical details which it displayed, and the trenchant energy of its style had struck conviction to his strategic genius. Buonaparte owed his command, not to a backstairs intrigue, as was currently believed in the army, but rather to his own commanding powers. While serving with the Army of Italy in 1794, he had carefully studied the coast-line and the passes leading inland; and, according to the well-known savant, Volney, the young officer, shortly after his release from imprisonment, sketched out to him and to a Commissioner of the Convention the details of the very plan of campaign which was to carry him victoriously from the Genoese Riviera into the heart of Austria.[35] While describing this masterpiece of strategy, says Volney, Buonaparte spoke as if inspired. We can fancy the wasted form dilating with a sense of power, the thin sallow cheeks aglow with enthusiasm, the hawk-like eyes flashing at the sight of the helpless Imperial quarry, as he pointed out on the map of Piedmont and Lombardy the features which would favour a dashing invader and carry him to the very gates of Vienna. The splendours of the Imperial Court at the Tuileries seem tawdry and insipid when compared with the intellectual grandeur which lit up that humble lodging at Nice with the first rays that heralded the dawn of Italian liberation.
With the fuller knowledge which he had recently acquired, he now in January, 1796, elaborated this plan of campaign, so that it at once gained Carnot's admiration. The Directors forwarded it to General Schérer, who was in command of the Army of Italy, but promptly received the "brutal" reply that the man who had drafted the plan ought to come and carry it out. Long dissatisfied with Schérer's inactivity and constant complaints, the Directory now took him at his word, and replaced him by Buonaparte. Such is the truth about Buonaparte's appointment to the Army of Italy.
To Nice, then, the young general set out (March 21st) accompanied, or speedily followed, by his faithful friends, Marmont and Junot, as well as by other officers of whose energy he was assured, Berthier, Murat, and Duroc. How much had happened since the early summer of 1795, when he had barely the means to pay his way to Paris! A sure instinct had drawn him to that hot-bed of intrigues. He had played a desperate game, risking his commission in order that he might keep in close touch with the central authority. His reward for this almost superhuman confidence in his own powers was correspondingly great; and now, though he knew nothing of the handling of cavalry and infantry save from books, he determined to lead the Army of Italy to a series of conquests that would rival those of Cæsar. In presence of a will so stubborn and genius so fervid, what wonder that a friend prophesied that his halting-place would be either the throne or the scaffold?
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CHAPTER V
THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN
(1796)
In the personality of Napoleon nothing is more remarkable than the combination of gifts which in most natures are mutually exclusive; his instincts were both political and military; his survey of a land took in not only the geographical environment but also the material welfare of the people. Facts, which his foes ignored, offered a firm fulcrum for the leverage of his will: and their political edifice or their military policy crumbled to ruin under an assault planned with consummate skill and pressed home with relentless force.