“Drive on!” shouted Napoleon; and when he entered his box at the opera, he looked as if nothing had occurred. “The rascals tried to blow me up,” he said coolly as he took his seat and called for an opera-book. But when he returned to the Tuileries he was in a rage, and violently accused the Jacobins of being the authors of the plot. Fouché in vain insisted that the royalists were the guilty parties; the First Consul refused to listen. Taking advantage of the feeling aroused in his favor by the attempts to assassinate him, he caused a new tribunal to be created, composed of eight judges, who were to try political offenders without jury, and without appeal or revision. By another law he was empowered to banish without trial such persons as he considered “enemies of the State.” One hundred and thirty of the more violent republicans were banished to the penal colonies.
For the purpose of feeling the public pulse, a pamphlet was put forward by Fontanes and Lucien Bonaparte, called a “Parallel between Cæsar, Cromwell, Monk, and Bonaparte.” It was hinted that supreme power should be vested in Napoleon, that he should be made king. The pear was not quite ripe, the pamphlet created a bad effect. Napoleon, who had undoubtedly encouraged its publication, promptly repudiated it; and Lucien, dismissed from his office as Secretary of the Interior, was sent to Spain as ambassador.
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However willing Austria might be for peace, she could not make it without the consent of England, her ally. The British ministry viewed with the spirit of philosophy the crushing blows which France had dealt Austria, and, secure from attack themselves, encouraged Austria to keep on fighting. Not able to send troops, England sent money. With $10,000,000 she bought the further use of German soldiers to keep France employed on the Continent, while Great Britain bent her energies to the capture of Malta and of Egypt. Thus it happened that the armistice expired without a treaty having been agreed on; and the war between the Republic and the Empire recommenced (November, 1800). Brune defeated the Austrians on the Mincio; Macdonald made the heroic march through the Splügen Pass; Moreau won the magnificent victory of Hohenlinden (December 4, 1800).
It seems that, with a little more dash, Moreau might have taken Vienna, exposed as it was to the march of three victorious armies. But Austria asked for a truce, gave pledges of good faith, and the French halted. On February 9, 1801, the Peace of Lunéville put an end to the war. France had won the boundary of the Rhine; and, in addition to the territory made hers by the treaty of Campo Formio, gained Tuscany, which Napoleon had promised to Spain, in exchange for Louisiana.
Napoleon’s position on the Continent was now very strong. Prussia was a friendly neutral; Spain an ally; Italy and Switzerland little more than French provinces; the Batavian republic and Genoa submissive subjects; Portugal in his power by reason of his compact with Spain; and the Czar of Russia an enthusiastic friend. England was shut out from the Continent almost completely.
Her insolent exercise of the right of search of neutral vessels on the high seas, a right which had no basis in law or justice, had provoked the hatred of the world, and Napoleon took advantage of this feeling and of Russia’s friendship to reorganize the armed neutrality of the northern powers for the purpose of bringing England to reason. Her reply was brutal and effective. She sent her fleet, under Parker and Nelson, to bombard Copenhagen and to destroy the Danish navy. The work was savagely done, and the northern league shattered. The English party at St. Petersburg followed up this blow by the murder of the Czar Paul. Hardly had the young Alexander been proclaimed before he announced his adhesion to the English and his antagonism to the French. He may, possibly, have been free from the guilt of conniving at his father’s murder; but it is not to be denied that he continued to reward with the highest offices the chief assassins—Bennigsen, for example.
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Kléber, who had gloriously maintained himself in Egypt, was assassinated on the day of Marengo. It is one of the mysteries of Napoleon’s career that he allowed the incompetent Menou to succeed to a command where so much executive and administrative ability was required. One is tempted to think that even at this early date the genius of Napoleon was overtaxed. In trying to do so many things, he neglected some. Egypt he certainly tried to relieve by sending reënforcements; but he slurred all, neglected all, and lost all, by allowing so notorious an imbecile as Menou to remain in chief command. Why he did not appoint Reynier or Lanusse, both of whom were already in Egypt, or why he did not send some good officer from France, can only be explained upon the theory that his mind was so much preoccupied with other matters that he failed to attach due importance to the situation of the Army of the East.
Menou’s administration was one dreary chapter of stupidities; and when the English landed at Alexandria, they found an easy conquest. With little effort and little bloodshed the French were beaten in detail, and agreed to quit the country.