A person who saw Bonaparte on this occasion for the first time thus described him in a letter he wrote to Paris:—"With lively interest and extreme attention I have observed this extraordinary man, 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 very like his portraits—little, thin, pale, with an air of fatigue, but not of ill-health, as has been reported of him. He appears to me to listen with more abstraction than interest, and that he was more occupied with what he was thinking of than with what was said to him. There is great intelligence in his countenance, along with which may be marked an air of habitual meditation, which reveals nothing of what is passing within. In that thinking head, in that bold mind, it is impossible not to believe that some daring designs are engendering which will have their influence an the destinies of Europe."
From the last phrase, in particular, of this letter, one might suspect that it was written after Bonaparte had made his name feared throughout Europe; but it really appeared in a journal in the month of December 1797, a little before his arrival in Paris.
There exists a sort of analogy between celebrated men and celebrated places; it was not, therefore, an uninteresting spectacle to see Bonaparte surveying the field of Morat, where, in 1476, Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, daring like himself, fell with his powerful army under the effects of Helvetian valour. Bonaparte slept during the night at Maudon, where, as in every place through which he passed, the greatest honours were paid him. In the morning, his carriage having broken down, we continued our journey an foot, accompanied only by some officers and an escort of dragoons of the country. Bonaparte stopped near the Ossuary, and desired to be shown the spot where the battle of Morat was fought. A plain in front of the chapel was pointed out to him. An officer who had served in France was present, and explained to him how the Swiss, descending from the neighbouring mountains, were enabled, under cover of a wood, to turn the Burgundian army and put it to the rout. "What was the force of that army?" asked Bonaparte.—"Sixty thousand men."—"Sixty thousand men!" he exclaimed: "they ought to have completely covered these mountains!"—"The French fight better now," said Lannes, who was one of the officers of his suite. "At that time," observed Bonaparte, interrupting him, "the Burgundians were not Frenchmen."
Bonaparte's journey through Switzerland was not without utility; and his presence served to calm more than one inquietude. He proceeded on his journey to Rastadt by Aix in Savoy, Berne, and Bale. On arriving at Berne during night we passed through a double file of well-lighted equipages, filled with beautiful women, all of whom raised the cry of "Long live, Bonaparte!—long live the Pacificator!" To have a proper idea of this genuine enthusiasm it is necessary to have seen it.
The position in society to which his services had raised him rendered it unfit to address him in the second person singular and the familiar manner sometimes used by his old schoolfellows of Brienne. I thought, this very natural.
M. de Cominges, one of those who went with him to the military school at Paris, and who had emigrated, was at Bale. Having learned our arrival, he presented himself without ceremony, with great indecorum, and with a complete disregard of the respect due to a man who had rendered himself so illustrious. General Bonaparte, offended at this behaviour, refused to receive him again, and expressed himself to me with much warmth on the occasion of this visit. All my efforts to remove his displeasure were unavailing, this impression always continued, and he never did for M. de Cominges what his means and the old ties of boyhood might well have warranted.
On arriving at Rastadt
—[The conference for the formal peace with the Empire of Germany
was held there. The peace of Leoben was only one made with
Austria.]—
Bonaparte found a letter from the Directory summoning him to Paris. He eagerly obeyed this invitation, which drew him from a place where he could act only an insignificant part, and which he had determined to leave soon, never again to return. Some time after his arrival in Paris, on the ground that his presence was necessary for the execution of different orders, and the general despatch of business, he required that authority should be given to a part of his household, which he had left at Rastadt, to return.
How could it ever be said that the Directory "kept General Bonaparte away from the great interests which were under discussion at Rastadt"? Quite the contrary! The Directory would have been delighted to see him return there, as they would then have been relieved from his presence in Paris; but nothing was so disagreeable to Bonaparte as long and seemingly interminable negotiations. Such tedious work did not suit his character, and he had been sufficiently disgusted with similar proceedings at Campo-Formio.