Napoleon now learned that France was in a terrible state of confusion. The imbecile government was despised. Plots, conspiracies, and assassinations filled the land. Napoleon determined to return to France. As he had no fleet, he could not take his army. The matter was therefore concealed from them. With a small retinue, Napoleon embarked, and sailed to France. Then followed the overthrow of the Directory. France had tried republicanism, and the experiment had failed. The people were too ignorant to govern themselves. The next morning after the overthrow of the Directory, the three consuls, Napoleon, Sièyes, and Ducos, met in the palace of the Luxembourg.
There was but one arm-chair in the room. Napoleon had seated himself in it. Sièyes exclaimed, “Gentlemen, who shall take the chair?”
“Bonaparte, surely,” said Ducos; “he already has it. He is the only man who can save us.”
“Very well, gentlemen,” said Napoleon, promptly; “let us proceed to business.”
And important business he soon despatched. The revolutionary tribunals had closed the churches and prohibited the observance of the Sabbath. Napoleon recalled the banished priests, opened the churches, and restored religious worship. The treasury was bankrupt. Napoleon replenished it. The army was starving and ragged. Napoleon addressed them with his thrilling words of sympathy, and clothed and fed them. The navy was dilapidated. In every port in France, at the magic word of this magnetic man, the sound of the ship-hammer was heard, and a fleet was prepared to send to Egypt to convey to France his soldiers left there. The Constitution was framed and adopted, and Napoleon was elected First Consul of France. Civil war was now at an end. Napoleon wrote two letters, one to the king of England, and the other to the emperor of Germany, endeavoring to arrange a general peace. Austria was inclined to listen to this appeal, but England demanded war. She would have no peace while France continued a republic. So Napoleon was forced to prepare for war.
“Moreau was sent with a magnificent army into Swabia, to drive back the Austrians towards their capital; Massena was appointed over the army of Italy, while Napoleon himself swept down from the heights of San Bernard, upon the plains of Lombardy.
“At the fierce-fought battle of Marengo he reconquered Italy, while Moreau chased the vanquished Austrians over the Danube. Victory everywhere perched on the French standards, and Austria was ready to agree to an armistice, in order to recover from the disasters she had suffered. The slain at Montibello, around Genoa, on the plains of Marengo, in the Black Forest, and along the Danube are to be charged over to the British government, which refused peace in order to fight for the philanthropic purpose of giving security to governments.
“Austria, though crippled, let the armistice wear away, refusing to make a treaty because she was bound for seven months longer to England. Bonaparte, in the mean time, was preparing to recommence hostilities. Finding himself unable to conclude a peace, he opened the campaign of Hohenlinden, and sent Macdonald across the Splugen. Moreau’s victorious march through Austria, and the success of the operations in Italy, soon brought Austria to terms, and the celebrated peace of Luneville, of 1801, was signed. The energy and ability, and above all, the success of the First Consul had now forced the continental powers to regard him with respect, and in some cases with sympathy, while England, by her imperious demands, had embroiled herself with all the northern powers of Europe.”
At length a general peace was concluded at Amiens, and the world was at rest. Napoleon was now the idol of France. Although his title was only that of First Consul, and France was nominally a republic, yet he was in reality the most powerful monarch in Europe. He ruled in the hearts of forty millions of people. In 1803 the peace of Amiens was broken, and all impartial historians admit, and even English writers cannot deny the responsibility of this rupture rests with England. In that treaty it was expressly stipulated that England should evacuate Egypt and Malta, while France was to evacuate Naples, Tarento, and the Roman States. Napoleon had fulfilled his part of the agreement within two months after the peace. But the English were still in Alexandria and Malta. Napoleon was right, and England was entirely wrong. If a violation of a solemn treaty is a just cause for war, Napoleon was free from blame. England now drew Russia into this new alliance, then Austria and Sweden. Prussia refused to join the alliance, and sided with France. The bloody conflict began. For the slain left on the plains of Italy, for the tens of thousands strewn on the battle-field of Austerlitz, who is chargeable? Neither Napoleon nor France. Napier, in his “Peninsular War,” says:
“Up to the peace of Tilsit, the wars of France were essentially defensive; for the bloody contest that wasted the continent for so many years was not a struggle for pre-eminence between ambitious powers, nor for the political ascendency of one or other nation, but a deadly conflict to determine whether aristocracy or democracy should predominate,—whether equality or privilege should henceforth be the principle of European governments.”