Napoleon may have had his intentions from the first to sacrifice Venetia. He may have been insincere in offering the weak old oligarchy the protection of liberal institutions and a French alliance. Letters of his, inconsistent with each other, have been published. They prove his duplicity, his craft, his cunning, his callousness; but this was long after Venice had provoked him.
However cold-blooded Napoleon’s treatment of Venice may have been, the European conscience could not have been as much shocked as royalist writers pretend, for after Napoleon’s overthrow, Venice, which he had reformed and regenerated, was thrown back as a victim to Austria.
* * * * *
It was a brilliant gathering which surrounded Napoleon and Josephine in the summer of 1797. Diplomats, statesmen, adventurers, soldiers, men of science and literature, thronged Milan, and paid court at beautiful Montebello, the palatial country-seat where Napoleon had taken up his residence after the preliminaries of Leoben. Many subjects of importance needed his thought, his fertile resources, his ready hand. His republics needed guidance, the affairs of Genoa and Venice were unsettled, German princelets from along the Rhine had a natural curiosity to know just who they belonged to, and details of the coming treaty of Campo Formio needed to be worked out. It was a busy and a glorious season for Napoleon. He stood on the highest of pinnacles, his renown blazing to the uttermost parts of Europe; and to him was drawn the enthusiastic admiration which turns so warmly to heroes who are young. He had, as yet, made few enemies. All France was in raptures over him; even Austrians admired him. The aristocrats, lay and clerical, in Italy doubtless wished him dead; but the masses of the people looked up to him in wonder and esteem. Of Italian extraction, he spoke their language, knew their character, despised it, imperiously dominated it, and was therefore loved and obeyed.
Miot de Melito, an unfavorable witness, declares that Napoleon already harbored designs for his own sovereignty, and made no secret thereof. “Do you think I am doing all this for those rascally lawyers of the Directory?” He may possibly have said so, but it is not probable. A man like Napoleon, meditating the seizure of power and the overturn of government, does not, as a rule, talk it to the Miots de Melito. Had Napoleon had any such clearcut design as Miot records, he would not have allowed the wealth of Italy to roll through his army chest, while he himself was left poor. Like Cæsar, he would have returned laden with spoil, to be used in furthering his plans. Napoleon doubtless took something for Napoleon out of the millions which he handled, but the amount was so inconsiderable that he keenly felt the burden of debt which Josephine had made in furnishing his modest home in Paris. And when the time did come to overturn the “rascally lawyers,” he had to borrow the money he needed for that brief campaign. No; the simple truth is that Napoleon indulged no sordid appetites in his Italian campaign. He made less money out of it than any of his lieutenants, than any of the army contractors, than any of the lucky spoilsmen who followed in his wake. If he had harbored, the designs attributed to him by Miot, it was obviously a mistake for him to have declined the $800,000 in gold secretly offered him by the Duke of Modena. At St. Helena he uttered something which sounds like an admission that, in view of his subsequent necessities in Paris, he should have accepted the money. For wealth itself Napoleon had no longing—glory, power, fame, all these stood higher with him. The 7,000,000 francs Venice offered were as coolly refused as the smaller sum tendered by Modena, and the principality offered by the Emperor of Germany.
* * * * *
The elections of 1797 were not favorable to the Directory. Many royalists found seats in the Assembly, and the presiding officer of each legislative body was an opponent to the government. Two of the Directors, Carnot and Barthélemy, joined the opposition.
Openly and boldly, the malcontents, including royalists, constitutionals, and moderates, declared their purpose of upsetting the Directory. Barras, Rewbell, and Larévellière were united, and Barras still retained sufficient vigor to act promptly at a crisis. Seeing that bayonets were needed, he called on Hoche for aid. Hoche was willing enough, but he involved himself in a too hasty violation of law, and became useless. Then Barras turned to Napoleon, and Napoleon was ready. Angry with the legislative councils for having criticised his high-handed conduct in Italy, and feeling that for the present his own interest was linked with that of the Directory, he did not hesitate. He sent Augereau to take command of the government forces at Paris, and Augereau did his work with the directness of a bluff soldier. “I am come to kill the royalists,” he announced by way of public explanation of his presence in town. “What a swaggering brigand is this!” cried Rewbell when he looked up from the directorial chair at Augereau’s stalwart, martial figure. Augereau marched thousands of troops into Paris at night, seized all the approaches to the Tuileries where the councils sat, and to the guard of the councils he called out through the closed gates, “Are you republicans?” and the gates opened. Augereau broke in upon the conspirators, seized with his own hand the royalist commander of the legislative guard, tore the epaulettes from his shoulders, and threw them in his face. Roughly handled like common criminals, the conspirators were carted off to prison. Carnot fled; Barthélemy was arrested at the Luxembourg palace. With them fell Pichegru, the conqueror of Holland. While still in command of the republican army, he had entered into treasonable relations with the royalists, and had agreed to use his republican troops to bring about a restoration of the monarchy. This plot, this treason, had not been known when Pichegru, returned from the army, had been elected to one of the councils and made its president. Moreau had captured the correspondence from the Austrians, and had concealed the facts. After Pichegru’s arrest by Augereau, the secret of the captured despatches came to light. Moreau himself made the report, and the question which sprang to every lip was, Why did he not speak out before? This universal and most natural query became the first cloud upon the career of the illustrious Moreau. As Napoleon tersely put it, “By not speaking earlier, he betrayed his country; by speaking when he did, he struck a man who was already down.” After having saved the government, as Augereau fancied he alone had done, that magnificent soldier’s opinion of himself began to soar. Why should he not become a director, turn statesman, and help rule the republic? Very influential people, among them Napoleon and all the Directors, were able to give good reasons to the contrary, and Augereau was compelled to content himself with remaining a soldier. Although he bragged that he was a better man than Bonaparte, he yielded to the silent, invisible pressure of the little Corsican, and he went to take command of the unemployed army of the Rhine. In a few months the same fine, Italian hand transferred him to the command of the tenth division in Perpignan, where he gradually, if not gracefully, disappeared from the political horizon.
The negotiation for final peace between Austria and France continued to drag its slow length along. Diplomats on either side exhausted the skill of their trade, each trying to outwit the other. How many crooked things were done during those weary months, how many bribes were offered and taken, how many secrets were bought and sold, how much finesse was practised, how many lies were told, only a professional and experienced diplomatist would be competent to guess. Into all these wire-drawn subtleties of negotiation Napoleon threw a new element,—military abruptness, the gleam of the sword. Not that he lacked subtlety, for he was full of it. Not that he was unable to finesse, for he was an expert. Not that he scorned to lie, for he delighted in artistic deception. But on such points as these the veteran Cobentzel and the other old-time diplomats could meet him on something like an equality. To throw in a new element altogether, to hide his perfect skill as a machinator under the brusque manners of a rude soldier, was to take the professionals at a disadvantage. Just as the Hungarian veteran had complained that Napoleon would not fight according to rule, Cobentzel and his band were now embarrassed to find that he would not treat by established precedent. Wearied with delays, indignant that they should threaten him with a renewal of the war, and determined to startle the antiquated Austrian envoys into a decision, Napoleon is said to have sprung up from his seat, apparently in furious wrath, exclaiming, “Very well, then! Let the war begin again, but remember! I will shatter your monarchy in three months, as I now shatter this vase,” dashing to the floor a precious vase which Catherine II. of Russia had given Cobentzel.
This story, told by so many, is denied by about an equal number. Cobentzel himself contradicted it, but he makes an admission which almost amounts to the same thing. He says that Napoleon became irritated by the delays, worked himself into a passion, tossed off glass after glass of punch, became rude to the negotiators, flung out of the room, and required a good deal of pacification at the hands of his aides. Says Cobentzel: “He started up in a rage, poured out a flood of abuse, put on his hat in the conference room itself” (an awful thing to do!), “and left us. He behaved as if he had just escaped from a lunatic asylum.”