Only twelve pieces of artillery were left to the French. Marmont massed these, and opened on the dense Austrian column advancing en échelon along the road. Desaix charged, and almost immediately got a ball in the breast and died “a soldier’s beautiful death.” But his troops pressed forward with fury, throwing back in confusion the head of the Austrian column. At this moment, “in the very nick of time” as Napoleon himself admitted to Bourrienne, Kellermann made his famous cavalry charge on the flank of the Austrian column, cut it in two, and decided the day. The French lines everywhere advanced, the Austrians broke. They were bewildered at the sudden change: they had no chief, Zach being a prisoner, and Melas absent. In wildest confusion they fled toward the bridges over the Bormida, Austrian horse trampling Austrian foot, and the French in hot pursuit.
Some sixteen thousand men were killed or wounded in this bloody battle, and very nearly half of these were French. But the Austrians were demoralized, and Melas so overcome that he hastened to treat. To save the relics of his army, he was willing to abandon northern Italy, give up Genoa, and all fortresses recently taken.
From the field of Marengo, surrounded by so many dead and mangled, Napoleon wrote a long letter to the Emperor of Austria, urgently pleading for a general peace.
Returning to Milan, he was welcomed with infinite enthusiasm. He spent some days there reëstablishing the Cisalpine republic, reorganizing the administration, and putting himself in accord with the Roman Catholic Church. Just as earnestly as he had assured the Mahometans in Egypt that his mission on earth was to crush the Pope and lower the Cross, he now set himself up as the restorer of the Christian religion. He went in state to the cathedral of Milan to appear in a clerical pageant; and he took great pains to have it published abroad that the priests might rely upon him for protection.
Leaving Masséna in command of the army of Italy, Napoleon returned to Paris by way of Lyons. The ovations which greeted him were as spontaneous as they were hearty. Never before, never afterward, did his presence call forth such universal, sincere, and joyous applause. He was still young, still the first magistrate of a republic, still conciliatory and magnetic, still posing as a public servant who could modestly write that “he hoped France would be satisfied with its army.” He was not yet the all-absorbing egotist who must be everything. Moreau was still at the head of an army, Carnot at the war office, there was a tribunate which could debate governmental policies; there was a public opinion which could not be openly braved.
Hence it was a national hero whom the French welcomed home, not a master before whom flatterers fawned. All Paris was illuminated from hut to palace. Thousands pressed forward but to see him; the Tuileries were surrounded by the best people of Paris, all eager to catch a glimpse of him at a window, and greeting him wherever he appeared with rapturous shouts. He himself was deeply touched, and said afterward that these were the happiest days of his life. The time was yet to come when he would appear at these same windows to answer the shouts of a few boys and loafers, on the dreary days before Waterloo.
With that talent for effect which was one of Napoleon’s most highly developed traits, he had ordered the Consular Guard back to France almost immediately after Marengo, timing its march so that it would arrive in Paris on the day of the great national fête of July 14. On that day when so many thousands of Frenchmen, dressed in gala attire, thronged the Field of Mars and gave themselves up to rejoicings, the column from Marengo, dust-covered, clad in their old uniform, and bearing their smoke-begrimed, bullet-rent banners, suddenly entered the vast amphitheatre. The effect was electrical. Shout upon shout greeted the returning heroes; and with an uncontrollable impulse the people rushed upon these veterans from Italy with every demonstration of joy, affection, and wild enthusiasm. So great was the disorder that the regular programme of the day was thrust aside; the men of Marengo had dwarfed every other attraction.
About this time the Bourbons made efforts to persuade Napoleon to play the part of Monk in restoring the monarchy. Suasive priests bearing letters, and lovely women bearing secret offers, were employed, the facile Josephine lending herself gracefully to the intrigue. The First Consul was the last of men to rake chestnuts out of the fire for other people, and the Bourbons were firmly advised to accept a situation which left them in exile.
Failing in their efforts to bribe him, the monarchists determined to kill him; and the more violent Jacobins, seeing his imperial trend, were equally envenomed. It was the latter faction which made the first attempt upon his life. The Conspiracy of Ceracchi, Arena, and Topino-Lebrun was betrayed to the police. Ceracchi was an Italian sculptor who had modelled a bust of Napoleon. Arena was a Corsican whose brother had aimed a knife at Napoleon on the 19th of Brumaire. Topino-Lebrun was the juryman who had doubted the guilt of Danton, and who had been bullied into voting death by the painter David. They were condemned and executed.
A yet more dangerous plot was that of the royalists. An infernal machine was contrived by which Napoleon was to have been blown up while on his way to the opera. The explosion occurred, but a trifle too late. Napoleon had just passed. The man in charge of the machine did not know Josephine’s carriage from Napoleon’s, and approached too near in the effort to make certain. A guard kicked him away, and while he was recovering himself Napoleon’s coachman drove furiously round the corner. A sound like thunder was heard, many houses were shattered, many people killed and wounded.