The moment Napoleon began to speak the most profound silence reigned throughout the assembly. The desire to hear his voice was so intense, that hardly did the audience venture to move a limb or to breathe, while in tones, calm and clear, he addressed them. The moment he ceased speaking, a wild burst of enthusiasm filled the air. The most unimpassioned lost their self-control. Shouts of "Live Napoleon the conqueror of Italy, the pacificator of Europe, the saviour of France," resounded loud and long. Barras, in the name of the Directory, replied, "Nature," exclaimed the orator in his enthusiasm, "has exhausted her energies in the production of a Bonaparte. Go," said he turning to Napoleon, "crown a life, so illustrious, by a conquest which the great nation owes to its outraged dignity. Go, and by the punishment of the cabinet of London, strike terror into the hearts of all who would miscalculate the powers of a free people. Let the conquerors of the Po, the Rhine, and the Tiber, march under your banners. The ocean will be proud to bear them. It is a slave still indignant who blushes for his fetters. Hardly will the tri-colored standard wave on the blood-stained shores of the Thames, ere an unanimous cry will bless your arrival, and that generous nation will receive you as its liberator." Chenier's famous Hymn to Liberty was then sung in full chorus, accompanied by a magnificent orchestra. In the ungovernable enthusiasm of the moment the five Directors arose and encircled Napoleon in their arms. The blast of trumpets, the peal of martial bands, the thunder of cannon, and the acclamations of the countless multitude rent the air. Says Thiers, "All heads were overcome with the intoxication. Thus it was that France threw herself into the hands of an extraordinary man. Let us not censure the weakness of our fathers. That glory reaches us only through the clouds of time and adversity, and yet it transports us! Let us say with Æschylus, 'How would it have been had we seen the monster himself!'"
Napoleon's powers of conversation were inimitable. There was a peculiarity in every phrase he uttered which bore the impress of originality and genius. He fascinated every one who approached him. He never spoke of his own achievements, but in most lucid and dramatic recitals often portrayed the bravery of the army and the heroic exploits of his generals.
He was now elected a member of the celebrated Institute, a society composed of the most illustrious literary and scientific men in France. He eagerly accepted the invitation, and returned the following answer. "The suffrages of the distinguished men who compose the Institute honor me. I feel sensibly that before I can become their equal I must long be their pupil. The only true conquests—those which awaken no regret—are those obtained over ignorance. The most honorable, as the most useful pursuit of nations, is that which contributes to the extension of human intellect. The real greatness of the French Republic ought henceforth to consist in the acquisition of the whole sum of human knowledge, and in not allowing a single new idea to exist, which does not owe its birth to their exertions." He laid aside entirely the dress of a soldier, and, constantly attending the meetings of the Institute, as a philosopher and a scholar became one of its brightest ornaments. His comprehensive mind enabled him at once to grasp any subject to which he turned his attention. In one hour he would make himself master of the accumulated learning to which others had devoted the labor of years. He immediately, as a literary man, assumed almost as marked a pre-eminence among these distinguished scholars, as he had already acquired as a general on fields of blood. Apparently forgetting the renown he had already attained, with boundless ambition he pressed on to still greater achievements, deeming nothing accomplished while any thing remained to be done. Subsequently he referred to his course at this time and remarked, "Mankind are in the end always governed by superiority of intellectual qualities, and none are more sensible of this than the military profession. When, on my return from Italy, I assumed the dress of the Institute, and associated with men of science, I knew what I was doing, I was sure of not being misunderstood by the lowest drummer in the army."
A strong effort was made at this time, by the royalists, for the restoration of the Bourbons. Napoleon, while he despised the inefficient government of the Directory, was by no means willing that the despotic Bourbons should crush the spirit of liberty in France. Napoleon was not adverse to a monarchy. But he wished for a monarch who would consult the interests of the people, and not merely pamper the luxury and pride of the nobles. He formed the plan and guided the energies which discomfited the royalists, and sustained the Directors. Thus twice had the strong arm of this young man protected the government. The Directors, in their multiplied perplexities, often urged his presence in their councils, to advise with them on difficult questions. Quiet and reserved he would take his seat at their table, and by that superiority of tact which ever distinguished him, and by that intellectual pre-eminence which could not be questioned, he assumed a moral position far above them all, and guided those gray-haired diplomatists, as a father guides his children. Whenever he entered their presence, he instinctively assumed the supremacy, and it was instinctively recognized.
The altars of religion, overthrown by revolutionary violence, still remained prostrate. The churches were closed, the Sabbath abolished, the sacraments were unknown, the priests were in exile. A whole generation had grown up in France without any knowledge of Christianity. Corruption was universal. A new sect sprang up called Theophilanthropists, who gleaned, as the basis of their system, some of the moral precepts of the gospel, divested of the sublime sanctions of Christianity. They soon, however, found that it is not by flowers of rhetoric, and smooth-flowing verses, and poetic rhapsodies upon the beauty of love and charity, of rivulets and skies, that the stern heart of man can be controlled. Leviathan is not so tamed. Man, exposed to temptations which rive his soul, trembling upon the brink of fearful calamities, and glowing with irrepressible desires, can only be allured and overawed when the voice of love and mercy, blends with Sinai's thunders. "There was frequently," says the Duchess of Abrantes, "so much truth in the moral virtues which this new sect inculcated, that if the Evangelists had not said the same things much better, eighteen hundred years before them, one might have been tempted to embrace their opinions."
Napoleon took a correct view of these enthusiasts. "They can accomplish nothing," said he, "they are merely actors." "How!" it was replied, "do you thus stigmatize those whose tenets inculcate universal benevolence and the moral virtues?" "All systems of morality," Napoleon rejoined, "are fine. The gospel alone has exhibited a complete assemblage of the principles of morality, divested of all absurdity. It is not composed, like your creed, of a few common-place sentences put into bad verse. Do you wish to see that which is really sublime? Repeat the Lord's Prayer. Such enthusiasts are only to be encountered by the weapons of ridicule. All their efforts will prove ineffectual."
Republican France was now at peace with all the world, England alone excepted. The English government still waged unrelenting war against the Republic, and strained every nerve to rouse the monarchies of Europe again to combine to force a detested dynasty upon the French people. The British navy, in its invincibility, had almost annihilated the commerce of France. In their ocean-guarded isle, safe from the ravages of war themselves, their fleet could extend those ravages to all shores. The Directory raised an army for the invasion of England, and gave to Napoleon the command. Drawing the sword, not of aggression but of defense, he immediately proceeded to a survey of the French coast, opposite to England, and to form his judgment respecting the feasibility of the majestic enterprise. Taking three of his generals in his carriage, he passed eight days in this tour of observation. With great energy and tact he immediately made himself familiar with every thing which could aid him in coming to a decision. He surveyed the coast, examined the ships and the fortifications, selected the best points for embarkation, and examined until midnight sailors, pilots, smugglers, and fishermen. He made objections, and carefully weighed their answers. Upon his return to Paris his friend Bourrienne said to him, "Well, general! what do you think of the enterprise? Is it feasible?" "No!" he promptly replied, shaking his head. "It is too hazardous. I will not undertake it. I will not risk on such a stake the fate of our beautiful France." At the same time that he was making this survey of the coast, with his accustomed energy of mind, he was also studying another plan for resisting the assaults of the British government. The idea of attacking England, by the way of Egypt in her East Indian acquisitions, had taken full possession of his imagination. He filled his carriage with all the books he could find in the libraries of Paris, relating to Egypt. With almost miraculous rapidity he explored the pages, treasuring up, in his capacious and retentive memory, every idea of importance. Interlineations and comments on the margin of these books, in his own hand-writing, testify to the indefatigable energy of his mind.
Napoleon was now almost adored by the republicans all over Europe, as the great champion of popular rights. The people looked to him as their friend and advocate. In England, in particular, there was a large, influential, and increasing party, dissatisfied with the prerogatives of the crown, and with the exclusive privileges of the nobility, who were never weary of proclaiming the praises of this champion of liberty and equality. The brilliance of his intellect, the purity of his morals, the stoical firmness of his self-endurance, his untiring energy, the glowing eloquence of every sentence which fell from his lips, his youth and feminine stature, and his wondrous achievements, all combined to invest him with a fascination such as no mortal man ever exerted before. The command of the army for the invasion of England was now assigned to Napoleon. He became the prominent and dreaded foe of that great empire. And yet the common people who were to fight the battles almost to a man loved him. The throne trembled. The nobles were in consternation. "If we deal fairly and justly with France," Lord Chatham is reported frankly to have avowed, "the English government will not exist for four-and-twenty hours." It was necessary to change public sentiment and to rouse feelings of personal animosity against this powerful antagonist. To render Napoleon unpopular, all the wealth and energies of the government were called into requisition, opening upon him the batteries of ceaseless invective. The English press teemed with the most atrocious and absurd abuse. It is truly amusing, in glancing over the pamphlets of that day, to contemplate the enormity of the vices attributed to him, and their contradictory nature. He was represented as a perfect demon in human form. He was a robber and a miser, plundering the treasuries of nations that he might hoard his countless millions, and he was also a profligate and a spendthrift, squandering upon his lusts the wealth of empires. He was wallowing in licentiousness, his camp a harem of pollution, ridding himself by poison of his concubines as his vagrant desires wandered from them; at the same time he was physically an imbecile—a monster—whom God in his displeasure had deprived of the passions and the powers of healthy manhood. He was an idol whom the entranced people bowed down before and worshiped, with more than Oriental servility. He was also a sanguinary heartless, merciless butcher, exulting in carnage, grinding the bones of his own wounded soldiers into the dust beneath his chariot wheels, and finding congenial music for his depraved and malignant spirit in the shrieks of the mangled and the groans of the dying. To Catholic Ireland he was represented as seizing the venerable Pope by his gray hairs, and thus dragging him over the marble floor of his palace. To Protestant England, on the contrary, he was exhibited as in league with the Pope, whom he treated with the utmost adulation, endeavoring to strengthen the despotism of the sword with the energies of superstition.
The philosophical composure with which Napoleon regarded this incessant flow of invective was strikingly grand. "Of all the libels and pamphlets," said Napoleon subsequently, "with which the English ministers have inundated Europe, there is not one which will reach posterity. When I have been asked to cause answers to be written to them, I have uniformly replied, 'My victories and my works of public improvement are the only response which it becomes me to make.' When there shall not be a trace of these libels to be found, the great monuments of utility which I have reared, and the code of laws that I have formed, will descend to the most remote ages, and future historians will avenge the wrongs done me by my contemporaries. There was a time," said he again, "when all crimes seemed to belong to me of right; thus I poisoned Hoche,[5] I strangled Pichegru[6] in his cell, I caused Kleber[7] to be assassinated in Egypt, I blew out Desaix's[8] brains at Marengo, I cut the throats of persons who were confined in prison, I dragged the Pope by the hair of his head, and a hundred similar absurdities. As yet," he again said, "I have not seen one of those libels which is worthy of an answer. Would you have me sit down and reply to Goldsmith, Pichon, or the Quarterly Review? They are so contemptible and so absurdly false, that they do not merit any other notice, than to write false, false, on every page. The only truth I have seen in them is, that I one day met an officer, General Rapp, I believe, on the field of battle, with his face begrimed with smoke and covered with blood, and that I exclaimed, 'Oh, comme il est beau! O, how beautiful the sight!' This is true enough. And of it they have made a crime. My commendation of the gallantry of a brave soldier, is construed into a proof of my delighting in blood."
The revolutionary government were in the habit of celebrating the 21st of January with great public rejoicing, as the anniversary of the execution of the king. They urged Napoleon to honor the festival by his presence, and to take a conspicuous part in the festivities. He peremptorily declined. "This fête," said he, "commemorates a melancholy event, a tragedy; and can be agreeable to but few people. It is proper to celebrate victories; but victims left upon the field of battle are to be lamented. To celebrate the anniversary of a man's death is an act unworthy of a government; it creates more enemies than friends—it estranges instead of conciliating; it irritates instead of calming; it shakes the foundations of government instead of adding to their strength." The ministry urged that it was the custom with all nations to celebrate the downfall of tyrants; and that Napoleon's influence over the public mind was so powerful, that his absence would be regarded as indicative of hostility to the government, and would be highly prejudicial to the interests of the Republic. At last Napoleon consented to attend, as a private member of the Institute, taking no active part in the ceremonies, but merely walking with the members of the class to which he belonged. As soon as the procession entered the Church of St. Sulpice, all eyes were searching for Napoleon. He was soon descried, and every one else was immediately eclipsed. At the close of the ceremony, the air was rent with the shouts, "Long live Napoleon!" The Directory were made exceedingly uneasy by ominous exclamations in the streets, "We will drive away these lawyers, and make the Little Corporal king." These cries wonderfully accelerated the zeal of the Directors, in sending Napoleon to Egypt. And most devoutly did they hope that from that distant land he would never return.