1800—01

The famous battle began on the morning of December fourth. It opened at half-past seven, the main attack being on the center. Moreau, supported by Grenier, Ney, and Grouchy, easily sustained the onset, while right and left the wings began to infold the Austrians, who were now blundering through the unknown woodland paths. When all was ready, Ney and Grouchy were suddenly detached to break through and join their forces to those of Richepanse, which had reached the Austrian rear. The manœuver was successfully accomplished, and by three in the afternoon the day was won for the French, with a loss that was slight in comparison with that of the Austrians, which was upward of twenty thousand killed and wounded, besides much artillery and immense stores. The flight was a rout, and even the Archduke narrowly escaped capture. Moreau's pursuit was sharp, and a fortnight later he was within easy reach of Vienna, where confusion and terror would have reigned supreme had not the Archduke Charles been persuaded to resume the chief command in the extremity. Fortunately also for Francis, this rapidity had left Augereau's corps in danger from the possible advance of Klenau, and, much as Moreau would have liked to eclipse his rival in Paris, he dared go no further, and was compelled to rest content with having won a victory greater than any Bonaparte had gained. The campaign was of course ended, and to release Augereau from all menace an armistice was signed at Steyer on Christmas day. In Italy, Brune had with difficulty advanced to Trent on the Adige. He was there to join Macdonald, whose feat of leading fifteen thousand men across the Splügen in the heart of winter had scarcely attracted the attention it deserved.

The sober judgment of posterity in the light of the fullest information is that well-nigh every movement of both the Austrian and French armies at Hohenlinden was haphazard and bungling, the former ignorant, the latter lucky. But what with an open road to Vienna on the north and the prompt successes of the French forces south of the Alps, the consequences were decisive. Moreau enjoyed a renown in France that was, though fictitious, of enormous political value. The First Consul must be the first in generous recognition so as not to alienate an important group of republican supporters; he was quick to see it and to use the fruits of victory.

Hohenlinden brought matters at Lunéville to a speedy conclusion. A separate peace for Austria was signed on February ninth, 1801, which virtually shattered the time-honored Hapsburg policy of territorial expansion. Her line in northern Italy was fixed at the Adige; the Grand Duke of Tuscany lost his land, and, like him of Modena, received no other compensation except a grant from the Breisgau in Germany; the Rhine, from source to mouth, was to be the French boundary; and the temporal princes so maimed were to be indemnified by the secularization of the ecclesiastical lands on the right bank. Austria was thus not only left insignificant in Italy, she was deprived of her independent station as a great power in Europe; she was even threatened in her Germanic ascendancy, for the spiritual princes of the empire were her main support in the Diet, and the diminution of their numbers meant the supremacy of Prussia in Germany. The treaty was negotiated for France by Joseph Bonaparte; it was signed by Austria, not only for herself, but for the Germanic body, in which, according to its terms, the First Consul might, if necessary, intervene in order to secure the execution of the stipulations made in the document.

Such provisions could only mean either the permanent humiliation of Austria, or the resumption of hostilities whenever recruited strength would permit. It is doubtful whether they would have been accepted even then had not the First Consul finally succeeded in winning the Czar to his cause. It will be remembered that in the previous year the cession of Malta to Russia had been suggested by the French envoy at St. Petersburg. This was, of course, another step in the process of widening the dissension already created in the coalition. The proposition had been received by the Czar with great delight; and when, on September fifth, 1800, the English compelled the French garrison of that fortress to capitulate, and, careless of the Grand Master's rights, entered on full possession of the island, Paul, openly accusing England and Austria of treachery, entered an "armed neutrality" with Sweden, Denmark, and Prussia to check English aggression at sea. The real motive of Frederick William III in joining this movement was to repress Austria's aspirations for the annexation of Bavarian lands. He persisted in his neutrality, and would make no alliance with Bonaparte; but he was glad to see his rival weakened. The Czar believed that by diminishing Austria's power in Italy that state would be impotent to restrain Russia's ambition in the Orient. One authority declares that the Czar had been assured by the First Consul that he was about to restore the Bourbons, and would himself be content with an Italian principality; but this is doubtful. So ardent was the Russian autocrat, however, that he urged forward the preparation of plans for the projected Franco-Russian expedition, which was to march by way of Khiva and Herat, and strike at the heart of England's power by the conquest of India. This was the first of those sportive tricks which for years to come Bonaparte was so triumphantly to play with the old dynasties of Europe. The success of this combination temporarily secured the peace of the Continent on terms most advantageous to himself.

The people of France were tired of the awful earnestness which had characterized the philosophical and political upheavals of the eighteenth century, and were ever more and more eager for glory and for pleasure. This was true of all political schools, excepting only a very few men of serious minds. The masses had come to loathe royalty. They were living under what was called a republic, and when an expression was needed for the national life as a whole they and their writers employed the common classical term "empire." The word "citizen," used in both genders as a form of address, recalled the days of rude leveling. It had lasted through the Directory; with the Consulate it disappeared, first from official documents, and then, in spite of resistance by a few radicals, it soon gave place everywhere to the old "monsieur" and "madame." In like manner the former habits of polite society quietly reasserted themselves with the return to prominence of those who had been trained in them. Liberty could no longer be endangered by admirable usages whose connection with monarchy was forgotten. Such incidents were significant of the movement which, with the assured stability of the Consulate, brought immediately to its service those persons who represented, not exactly the greatness, but the capacity of France. Excepting that which was resident in a few royalists and in a few radicals, the power of the nation rallied to the support of the new order. When Daunou, Cabanis, Grégoire, Carnot, and Lafayette were identified with the Consulate, the Jacobinism which had turned the early nobility of the Revolution into baseness might well hide its head. For a time, at least, the majority believed that the highest aims of the Revolution were to be attained under the new government.

The Bonapartes resided in the Luxembourg from November, 1799, to February, 1800. In that short time a little coterie of visitors, with many royalists in its number, had been regular in attendance; but the republican side was studiously kept prominent, and thence the First Consul had married his sister Caroline to Murat, the son of an innkeeper at Cahors. During that period the anniversary of the death of Louis XVI was stricken from the list of public festivals, but those of July fourteenth, the storming of the Bastille, and of September twenty-second, the founding of the republic, were kept. After the installation of the family at the Tuileries, in February, 1800, there was little change, except that a clever beginning was made in ceremonial and etiquette, which augured further changes, and the bearers of noble names became more and more prominent. "It is not exactly a court," said the Princess Dolgoruki of the receptions, "but it is no longer a camp." Toward those who aspired to the familiar address of equality the First Consul grew more forbidding; to the plain people in civil and military life he was always accessible, and with them he was simple, even confidential, in his manner and tone. "I have your letter, my gallant comrade," he wrote to a sergeant. "I know your services: ... you are one of the brave grenadiers of the army. You are included in the list for one of a hundred presentation swords which I have ordered distributed. Every soldier in your corps thought you deserved it most. I wish much to see you again. The minister of war is sending you an order to come to Paris." After the battle of Montebello, the affair fought by Lannes five days before Marengo, when Coignet, a common soldier who could neither read nor write, but who had performed several daring deeds in that, his first engagement, was by Berthier's orders presented at ten in the evening to the Consul, the latter playfully caught his visitor by the ear, and held him thus during a short catechism. At the close, the delighted peasant, entranced by such familiarity, saw his services noted in a mysterious book, and was dismissed with the remark that no doubt, eventually, he would merit service in the guard, the members of which must be veterans of four campaigns. The effect of such incidents was to turn the popular admiration into a passion.

No one ever declared that Napoleon Bonaparte was a gentleman animated by trained self-respect and consideration for others. Many thought his accesses of feverish sensitiveness, which now began to be noted, were due to a hysterical temperament: in society he often sat in forbidding silence; sometimes he wept tears which the world would consider unmanly, and appeared to be temporarily disordered in his mind. But he had much rude good nature and considerable wholesome sensibility. He worked regularly from twelve to fifteen hours a day, evolving schemes which paralyzed his secretaries by their magnitude. The hours which such a man of affairs spent in the companionship of women were not marked by that quick appreciation and attention which gratify the great lady. No one has suffered more at the hands of women than Bonaparte. Mme. Junot and Mme. de Rémusat forgot nothing which would place his rude passions in glaring contrast with their own chastity, or even with the polished laxity of that notoriously immoral society which scorned old-fashioned restraints. The long struggle for recognition and attention which that "femme incomprise," Mme. de Staël, waged with Bonaparte ended in her defeat, and she then turned against her antagonist the weapon of her clever pen.

It is certain that with all his genius the great statesman and the great general failed to understand the power of woman. His youth gave him no due share in the society of those mothers, sweethearts, and female friends who, in the routine of daily life, by instinct, training, and ability, mold every generation as it rises to its place. The years of nonage were absorbed in political intrigue, and those of early manhood in tasks not laid upon most men until middle life. Amid the storms of the Revolution was formed a general without experience in those social forces of peace which finally overpower all others. His married life began in passion and ambition; the relation was checked in its normal development by ensuing hurricanes of alternating jealousy and physical attraction. The social power of his wife was great, but superficial; and while she powerfully supported her husband's ambitions, and often captivated his senses, she failed in creating any companionship with him in noble enterprise. The innate coarseness of a giant was, therefore, never diminished, and the society of those who turned pleasing and pleasure into a fine art, who regarded entertainment as the chief concern of life, was generally irksome to a man who looked upon many over-ready women as instruments for gratifying physical passion; to a general who saw in all women the possible mothers of soldiers; to a "scientific" politician who looked on the family and on children as inert factors in a mathematical problem; to a wilful dictator ignorant of the unalterable supremacy of woman in her own sphere. But even Mme. de Rémusat admits that there were times and places when serious women with earnest notions of duty received at his hands the most gracious and considerate treatment. In the main, Napoleon's nature was so dominated by his gigantic schemes that he was impervious to the feminine fascinations by which men are so often ruled. He would tolerate neither Egerias nor Hypatias, neither Cleopatras nor Messalinas, although the times might easily have furnished him with examples of each type.

The Consulate is the period of Bonaparte's greatest and most enduring renown. In what he did the new France was heartily sympathetic; the old France, with all its vices, spite, and bitterness, though existent, was in abeyance, and remained so for some years to come. The multitudinous memoirs concerning the time were for the most part written in the days of the Restoration, when the revulsion of feeling created a passion for the basest defamation, and unduly magnified the small defects of etiquette, behavior, and dress in the preceding régime. The scraps of evidence which these writings afford ought to be carefully examined, and viewed from the standpoint of the circumstances which produced them. Such a task being well-nigh hopeless, the deeds of the First Consul must speak for him rather than the statements about them and him which he himself and others have made. He was not in touch with the polite society of Paris; he certainly did most arbitrarily banish from its precincts Mme. de Staël, the brilliant woman whose writings many praise but few now read, and whose home was the focus for the discontented ability of the time; he never appreciated the spirit of true liberty, and he often misapprehended the gentler spirits who in its name sought his powerful protection and patronage; he was not sensitive to the finer sentiments of the mind, often mocking at the "ideologues"; and while he enjoyed the society of Josephine and her friends, he repelled their interference with his plans, and apparently never forgot that her jealous devotion had grown with his power and reputation. All this must be admitted in characterizing Bonaparte at the height of his greatness; but the vile innuendos, insinuations, and imputations of sordid traits, which so abound in the diaries of the time, must be considered in relation to the murky natures of those who recorded them, and, with allowances for the time and the training of the man, may be consigned to the limbo of malice from which they came.