In Paris the negotiations had produced some uneasiness. It is now generally said that Fructidor was exclusively the work of Bonaparte: or, rather, that the thirteenth of Vendémiaire was the work of Barras, assisted by Bonaparte; that the eighteenth of Fructidor was the work of Bonaparte, assisted by Barras. This is only a half-truth based on an exaggerated estimate of the facts. While, on the whole, Bonaparte was at the moment pleased with the results of this second political stroke, there was much connected with it utterly repugnant to his wishes. The so-called Fructidorians, among them Mme. de Staël and her friends, were still favorable, in the main, to Bonaparte; but they were thorough republicans, and considered the day as the victory, not of a man, but of a cause. Later Bonaparte expressed sorrow that he had taken any share in arranging it, for the cause and its few supporters proved to be hostile. The wholesale proscription which followed the success of the Directory and its friends destroyed their personal popularity, strengthened the adherents of the monarchy, and weakened the prestige of the army, which was the real support of the new revolution. As far as the repression of conservative royalist and moderate republican influence in the Directory and the chambers was concerned, Bonaparte's interests were identical with those of Barras, Rewbell, and the bigoted Larévellière. He would gladly have ended public agitation in a nation the majority of whom had become royalists again. To this end, he would willingly have broken the presses of the newspapers and have closed the Clichy club: he was anxious for any extreme course necessary to preserve the revolutionary model in government until, in his own phrase, "the pear was ripe" for him. The events of Fructidor, on the one hand, confirmed the constitutionalists in the policy of letting other countries alone, and at the same time put an end to all enthusiasm for republican principles even in the radical executive, necessarily substituting in its place the merest self-interest. This new situation, though not inimical to Bonaparte's interests, made the Fructidorians the most determined opponents of his ambitions.
Almost immediately after the events of Fructidor the new Directory had sent instructions to Passariano that Venice was to be preserved from the hands of Austria. The removal of Clarke had followed. At once began a war of words and a conflict of purposes. Bonaparte's despatches depicted the situation of the Italian peoples in the darkest light, so as to set forth their unfitness for independence, while in every letter he dwelt on his own feeble and broken health as a reason for his immediate recall. Meantime he was driving the machinery of negotiation at its utmost speed and capacity. The Directory finally took its stand on the determination that Italy must be free as far eastward as the Isonzo, and the subtle Talleyrand agreed to win or compel Bonaparte's acquiescence. The courier with this ultimatum from Paris reached Passariano exactly twelve hours after Monge and Berthier had carried the treaty of Campo Formio in the opposite direction for the sanction of the directors. It was bitter, indeed, for Barras and his colleagues to surrender, but the logic of their position made resistance impossible. They approved the hateful stipulations with what grace they could muster, and, the warfare on the Continent being over, appointed Bonaparte to command what was significantly entitled the Army of England, but without defining his duties. Thirty thousand soldiers began their march from Milan to Picardy on the English Channel. As for the now distracted Venetians, they asked permission to continue the war against Austria on their own account. Bonaparte imprisoned the deputies who presented the petition, and Sérurier delivered Venice into the Emperor's hands, after destroying the arsenals and such vessels as were no longer useful for war. Among these was the stately barge in which the officials of the commonwealth had from immemorial times been wont to espouse the Adriatic—the famous Bucentaur. Manin, the last doge of Venice, was compelled to swear allegiance to Austria in the name of his compatriots. With a broken heart he made ready for the ceremony, but as he stepped forward at the appointed time to pronounce the fatal words, his strength and his faculties gave way together. He fell senseless at the feet of his foes, and died not long afterward.
The effect of Bonaparte's success in forcing such a peace upon Austria was profound throughout Europe. The war party in Great Britain was materially strengthened by the treatment which Malmesbury had received. While the treaty made a pretense of upholding the integrity of the empire as a principle, yet Prussia and all Germany knew that that integrity was quickly to be violated. Paul I of Russia remembered that as guarantor of the peace of Teschen, he too was deeply concerned in that integrity, and displayed uneasiness. The British had on October eleventh annihilated the Dutch fleet at Camperdown: their sea power was again assured and with it the replenishing of their treasury. These elements of the second coalition have been repeatedly described, but for all that, events would have been otherwise than they were, had there been anywhere in Europe a statesman with moral and material power at his bidding, who could have propagated a moderate, enlightened liberalism in the countries of the north. As a sorry radicalism had full play for some years in France, a blind reactionary conservatism prevailed among all the Teutonic peoples. The struggle of two extremes made the chaos. England was determined on war to destruction or exhaustion: France likewise. The system of national assassinations and territorial compensations begun in the partition of Poland was exemplified in the peace of Campo Formio. Then it was three to one against a nation with neither political nor military strength, and the decision was against nationality. Hereafter it was to be all absolute Europe against a nation with some political and immense military aptitudes. The struggle was to last fifteen years and be decided this time for, not against, nationality as a fact and a principle.
CHAPTER III
Bonaparte and Talleyrand[3]
Bonaparte in Switzerland — Arrival at Rastadt — A Royalist Portrait of Him — His Affectation of Simplicity — Reception by the Directory — First Threat of Invading England — Career of Talleyrand — His Relations with Bonaparte — Men and Parties in Paris.
In the complications of his far-reaching designs, the return of Bonaparte to Paris was a matter of consequence to him, an affair to be managed with diplomacy and an eye to dramatic effect. To appease the Directory, the insubordinate plenipotentiary explained in his despatches that he had acted as he did because Austria had made herself stronger than ever in the long interval, which was probably true; and that the possibility of further successful warfare had been jeopardized by the early arrival of winter, which had left him no choice in hastening the conclusion. This was not flatly untrue, for Marmont noted in his diary that it was October thirteenth when the first new snow fell on the mountain peaks, and that he had marked his general's surprise at the fact: the treaty was signed on the seventeenth. Nevertheless, the season was later than usual, and the plea of weather was a pretext to hide the negotiator's own purposes. In his rôle as an Italian deliverer, Bonaparte remained until the middle of November to consolidate the new republics and await the assembling of delegates at Rastadt. Then, traveling sedately by Turin and the Mont Cenis pass through Chambéry, he reached Geneva. Switzerland was ripe for his presence. The first step was to arrest Bontemps, a Genevese banker who had assisted Carnot in his flight to Nyon, where he was still in concealment. The second was to focus the revolutionary movement in the district of Vaud, and to strengthen its preparations for throwing off the Bernese dominion by organizing an ovation for himself at Lausanne: a democrat must be fêted only by democrats.
"Nothing too far" being manifestly his motto at this period, he then passed by easy stages to Rastadt, where he arrived on November twenty-fifth, and immediately asserted for himself a nominal supervision of the arrangements. The King of Sweden had claimed representation both as Duke of Pomerania and as a guarantor of the peace of Westphalia; for that reason he had sent as his delegate Count Fersen, a shrewd agent, once Swedish ambassador in Paris, the friend of Marie Antoinette, and known everywhere as an intimate counselor of the Bourbons. Bonaparte, outraged at such effrontery, summoned the envoy to his presence, and, trampling on the forms of a hollow politeness, informed him with a few biting words that his presence was not desired. The envoy tarried long enough to assure himself that Austria was quite as hostile as France, and returned to Stockholm. It annoyed Bonaparte even more to find that the imperial delegates had not yet arrived. But he passed the interval with considerable satisfaction in an exchange of pleasantries with the various personages who were on the ground. "How," said he to Stadion, garbed as a canon of Würzburg, "can the station of an ecclesiastical prince of the empire, a man who is both warrior and spiritual minister, accord with the precepts of the Scriptures, with the poverty and the lowliness of early Christianity?" "Where will your master live?" he said to the agent from the Bishop of Mainz, "when he loses his present residence?" The hollow shells of worn-out institutions rattled wherever this innovator stepped. At last Cobenzl arrived, and the urgent affair of the transfer of Mainz was promptly concluded. That fortress was to be occupied by French troops on the thirtieth, the day in which Austria was to take possession of Venice. Then, leaving Treilhard and Bonnier, the rude and insolent French plenipotentiaries, in a position of arrogant superiority to their colleagues, he set out for Paris, and after a triumphal progress throughout northern France, a region not before familiar to him, arrived, on December fifth, at his residence on Chantereine street. With its usual facility in that line, the Paris municipality soon after dubbed this rather insignificant byway the Street of Victory. Mme. Bonaparte, who had been visiting Rome, where her brother-in-law Joseph was now French minister, rejoined her husband at Christmas.
In the papers of the Comte d'Antraigues was found a pen-portrait of Bonaparte as he appeared at Venice, and it will no doubt, with due allowances, stand for the few months later when he became the idol of Paris. Sucy, a government commissioner of much sense, overpowered by the importance of passing events, wrote in August to a friend that he could not enter upon such voluminous details as would be necessary to depict Bonaparte, but warned his correspondent against supposing that the general had attained the height of his ambition, using the words previously quoted in another connection, "I can even add that I know no other end for him but the throne or the scaffold." But Antraigues was fortunately more communicative: "Bonaparte is a man of small stature, of sickly hue, with piercing eyes, and something in his look and mouth which is cruel, covert, and treacherous; speaking little, but very talkative when his vanity is engaged or thwarted; of very poor health because of violent humors in his blood. He is covered with tetter, a disease of such a sort as to increase his vehemence and his activity. He is always full of his projects, and gives himself no recreation. He sleeps but three hours every night, and takes no medicine except when his sufferings are unendurable. This man wishes to master France, and, through France, Europe. Everything else, even in his present successes, seems but a means to the end. Thus he steals without concealment, plunders everything, is accumulating an enormous treasure of gold, silver, jewels, and precious stones. But he cares for it only as a means. This same man, who will rob a community to the last sou, will without a thought give a million francs to any person who can assist him. If such a person has hate or vengeance to gratify, he will afford every opportunity to do so. Nothing stands in the way of his prevailing with a man he thinks will be useful; and with him a bargain is made in two words and two minutes, so great is his seductive power. The reverse side of his methods is this: the service rendered, he demands a complete servility, or he becomes an implacable enemy; and when he has bought traitors, their service rendered, he observes but little secrecy concerning them. This man abhors royalty: he hates the Bourbons, and neglects no means to wean his army from them. If there were a king in France other than himself, he would like to have been his maker, and would desire royal authority to rest on the tip of his own sword; that sword he would never surrender, but would plunge it into the king's heart, should the monarch cease for a moment to be subservient."
On Bonaparte's passage through Chambéry, he had been visibly affected by a shout from the multitude hailing him as the father of his soldiers. There were countless homes in France into which the letters of absent sons had sent the same epithet, and the nation at large thought of him in that rôle as a simple, benevolent man, devoted to his country and to her liberties. His histrionic talents, like his other gifts, were of the highest order, and for the moment this ideal must not be shattered. He therefore appeared to the French public as devoted to the principle of equality, which the Revolution considered the guarantee of free institutions. In the "Moniteur," the official journal of the time, may be read every detail of his conduct. Instead of waiting for visits from those in place, he made the advances. His clothes were plain, his manners were simple, his dignity was moderated to a proper respect for himself and others. The carriage in which he drove had but two horses, and there was no suite in attendance, either abroad or at home. Often the passers-by saw him walking alone in the small garden of his unostentatious dwelling, apparently resting from the fatigues of his campaigns. In short, there was nothing recognizable of the conquering potentate who had kept such state at Milan, except the affected simplicity of his personal life and conduct. "At first sight," wrote Talleyrand, whose acquaintance Bonaparte sought immediately on reaching Paris, "he struck me as a charming figure; the laurels of twenty victories are so becoming to youth, a handsome eye, a pale complexion, and a certain tired look."