Читать книгу The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte (Vol. 1-4) - William Milligan Sloane - Страница 26

Table of Contents

The English Conquest of Corsica—Effects in Italy—The Buonapartes at Toulon—Napoleon Thwarted Again—Departure for Paris—His Character Determined—His Capacities—Reaction From the "Terror"—Resolutions of the Convention—Parties in France—Their Lack of Experience—A New Constitution—Different Views of Its Value.

1795.

The turmoils of civil war in France had now left Corsica to her own pursuits for many months. Her internal affairs had gone from bad to worse, and Paoli, unable to control his fierce and wilful people, had found himself helpless. Compelled to seek the support of some strong foreign power, he had instinctively turned to England, and the English fleet, driven from Toulon, was finally free to help him. On February seventeenth, 1794, it entered the fine harbor of St. Florent, and captured the town without an effort. Establishing a depot which thus separated the two remaining centers of French influence, Calvi and Bastia, the English admiral next laid siege to the latter. The place made a gallant defense, holding out for over three months, until on May twenty-second Captain Horatio Nelson, who had virtually controlled operations for eighty-eight days continuously—nearly the entire time—directed the guns of the Agamemnon with such destructive force against the little city that when the land forces from St. Florent appeared it was weakened beyond the power of resistance and surrendered.[44] The terms made by its captors were the easiest known to modern warfare, the conquered being granted all the honors of war. As a direct and immediate result, the Corsican estates met, and declared the island a constitutional monarchy under the protection of England. Sir Gilbert Elliot was appointed viceroy, and Paoli was recalled by George III to England. On August tenth fell Calvi, the last French stronghold in the country, hitherto considered impregnable by the Corsicans.

The presence of England so close to Italian shores immediately produced throughout Lombardy and Tuscany a reaction of feeling in favor of the French Revolution and its advanced ideas. The Committee of Safety meant to take advantage of this sentiment and reduce the Italian powers to the observance of strict neutrality at least, if nothing more. They hoped to make a demonstration at Leghorn and punish Rome for an insult to the republic still unavenged—the death of the French minister, in 1793, at the hands of a mob; perhaps they might also drive the British from Corsica. This explained the arrival of the commissioners at Nice with the order to cease operations against Sardinia and Austria, for the purpose of striking at English influence in Italy, and possibly in Corsica.

Everything but one was soon in readiness. To meet the English fleet, the shipwrights at Toulon must prepare a powerful squadron. They did not complete their gigantic task until February nineteenth, 1795. We can imagine the intense activity of any man of great power, determined to reconquer a lost position: what Buonaparte's fire and zeal must have been we can scarcely conceive; even his fiercest detractors bear witness to the activity of those months. When the order to embark was given, his organization and material were both as nearly perfect as possible. His mother had brought the younger children to a charming house near by, where she entertained the influential women of the neighborhood; and thither her busy son often withdrew for the pleasures of a society which he was now beginning thoroughly to enjoy. Thanks to the social diplomacy of this most ingenious family, everything went well for a time, even with Lucien; and Louis, now sixteen, was made a lieutenant of artillery. At the last moment came what seemed the climax of Napoleon's good fortune, the assurance that the destination of the fleet would be Corsica. Peace was made with Tuscany. Rome could not be reached without a decisive engagement with the English; therefore the first object of the expedition would be to engage the British squadron which was cruising about Corsica. Victory would of course mean entrance into Corsican harbors.

On March eleventh the new fleet set sail. In its very first encounter with the English on March thirteenth the fleet successfully manœuvered and just saved a fine eighty-gun ship, the Ça Ira, from capture by Nelson. Next day there was a partial fleet action which ended in a disaster, and two fine ships were captured, the Ça Ira and the Censeur; the others fled to Hyères, where the troops were disembarked from their transports, and sent back to their posts.[45] Naval operations were not resumed for three months. Once more Buonaparte was the victim of uncontrollable circumstance. Destitute of employment, stripped even of the little credit gained in the last half-year,[46] he stood for the seventh time on the threshold of the world, a suppliant at the door. In some respects he was worse equipped for success than at the beginning, for he now had a record to expunge. To an outsider the spring of 1795 must have appeared the most critical period of his life.[47] He himself knew better; in fact, this ill-fated expedition was probably soon forgotten altogether. In his St. Helena reminiscences, at least, he never recalled it: at that time he was not fond of mentioning his failures, little or great, being chiefly concerned to hand himself down to history as a man of lofty purposes and unsullied motives. Besides, he was never in the slightest degree responsible for the terrible waste of millions in this ill-starred maritime enterprise; all his own plans had been for the conduct of the war by land.

The Corsican administration had always had in it at least one French representative. Between the latest of these, Lacombe Saint-Michel, now a member of the Committee of Safety, and the Salicetti party no love was ever lost. It was a general feeling that the refugee Corsicans on the Mediterranean shore were too near their home. They were always charged with unscrupulous planning to fill their own pockets. Now, somehow or other, inexplicably perhaps, but nevertheless certainly, a costly expedition had been sent to Corsica under the impulse of these very men, and it had failed. The unlucky adventurers had scarcely set their feet on shore before Lacombe secured Buonaparte's appointment to the Army of the West, where he would be far from old influences, with orders to proceed immediately to his post. The papers reached Marseilles, whither the Buonapartes had already betaken themselves, during the month of April. On May second,[48] accompanied by Louis, Junot, and Marmont, the broken general set out for Paris, where he arrived with his companions eight days later, and rented shabby lodgings in the Fossés-Montmartre, now Aboukir street. The style of the house was Liberty Hotel.

At this point Buonaparte's apprentice years may be said to have ended: he was virtually the man he remained to the end. A Corsican by origin, he retained the national sensibility and an enormous power of endurance both physical and intellectual, together with the dogged persistence found in the medieval Corsicans. He was devoted with primitive virtue to his family and his people, but was willing to sacrifice the latter, at least, to his ambition. His moral sense, having never been developed by education, and, worse than that, having been befogged by the extreme sensibility of Rousseau and by the chaos of the times which that prophet had brought to pass, was practically lacking. Neither the hostility of his father to religion, nor his own experiences with the Jesuits, could, however, entirely eradicate a superstition which passed in his mind for faith. Sometimes he was a scoffer, as many with weak convictions are; but in general he preserved a formal and outward respect for the Church. He was, however, a stanch opponent of Roman centralization and papal pretensions. His theoretical education had been narrow and one-sided; but his reading and his authorship, in spite of their superficial and desultory character, had given him certain large and fairly definite conceptions of history and politics. But his practical education! What a polishing and sharpening he had had against the revolving world moving many times faster then than in most ages! He was an adept in the art of civil war, for he had been not merely an interested observer, but an active participant in it during five years in two countries. Long the victim of wiles more secret than his own, he had finally grown most wily in diplomacy; an ambitious politician, his pulpy principles were republican in their character so far as they had any tissue or firmness.

His acquisitions in the science of war were substantial and definite. Neither a martinet himself nor in any way tolerant of routine, ignorant in fact of many hateful details, among others of obedience, he yet rose far above tradition or practice in his conception of strategy. He was perceptibly superior to the world about him in almost every aptitude, and particularly so in power of combination, in originality, and in far-sightedness. He could neither write nor spell correctly, but he was skilled in all practical applications of mathematics: town and country, mountains and plains, seas and rivers, were all quantities in his equations. Untrustworthy himself, he strove to arouse trust, faith, and devotion in those about him; and concealing successfully his own purpose, he read the hearts of others like an open book. Of pure-minded affection for either men or women he had so far shown only a little, and had experienced in return even less; but he had studied the arts of gallantry, and understood the leverage of social forces. To these capacities, some embryonic, some perfectly formed, add the fact that he was now a cosmopolitan, and there will be outline, relief, and color to his character. "I am in that frame of mind," he said of himself about this time, "in which men are when on the eve of battle, with a persistent conviction that since death is imminent in the end, to be uneasy is folly. Everything makes me brave death and destiny; and if this goes on, I shall in the end, my friend, no longer turn when a carriage passes. My reason is sometimes astonished at all this; but it is the effect produced on me by the moral spectacle of this land [ce pays-ci, not patrie], and by the habit of running risks." This is the power and the temper of a man of whom an intimate and confidential friend predicted that he would never stop short until he had mounted either the throne or the scaffold.

The overthrow of Robespierre was the result of an alliance between what have been called the radicals and the conservatives in the Convention. Both were Jacobins, for the Girondists had been discredited, and put out of doors. It was not, however, the Convention, but Paris, which took command of the resulting movement. The social structure of France has been so strong, and the nation so homogeneous, that political convulsions have had much less influence there than elsewhere. But the "Terror" had struck at the heart of nearly every family of consequence in the capital, and the people were utterly weary of horrors. The wave of reaction began when the would-be dictator fell. A wholesome longing for safety, with its attendant pleasures, overpowered society, and light-heartedness returned. Underneath this temper lay but partly concealed a grim determination not to be thwarted, which awed the Convention. Slowly, yet surely, the Jacobins lost their power. As once the whole land had been mastered by the idea of "federation," and as a later patriotic impulse had given as a watchword "the nation," so now another refrain was in every mouth—"humanity." The very songs of previous stages, the "Ça ira" and the "Carmagnole," were displaced by new and milder ones. With Paris in this mood, it was clear that the proscribed might return, and the Convention, for its intemperate severity, must abdicate.

This, of course, meant a new political experiment; but being, as they were, sanguine admirers of Rousseau, the French felt no apprehension at the prospect. The constitution of the third republic in France has been considered a happy chance by many. Far from being perfectly adapted to the needs of the nation, the fine qualities it possesses are the outcome, not of chance, nor of theory, but of a century's experience. It should be remembered that France in the eighteenth century had had no experience whatever of constitutional government, and the spirit of the age was all for theory in politics. Accordingly the democratic monarchy of 1791 had failed because, its framework having been built of empty visions, its constitution was entirely in the air. The same fate had now overtaken the Girondist experiment of 1792 and the Jacobin usurpation of the following year, which was ostensibly sanctioned by the popular adoption of a new constitution. With perfect confidence in Rousseau's idea that government is based on a social contract between individuals, the nation had sworn its adhesion to two constitutions successively, and had ratified the act each time by appropriate solemnities. Already the bubble of such a conception had been punctured. Was it strange that the Convention determined to repeat the same old experiment? Not at all. They knew nothing better than the old idea, and never doubted that the fault lay, not in the system, but in its details; they believed they could improve on the work of their predecessors by the change and modification of particulars. Aware, therefore, that their own day had passed, they determined, before dissolving, to construct a new and improved form of government. The work was confided to a committee of eleven, most of whom were Girondists recalled for the purpose in order to hoodwink the public. They now separated the executive and judiciary from each other and from the legislature, divided the latter into two branches, so as to cool the heat of popular sentiment before it was expressed in statutes, and, avoiding the pitfall dug for itself by the National Assembly, made members of the Convention eligible for election under the new system.

If the monarchy could have been restored at the same time, these features of the new charter would have reproduced in France some elements of the British constitution, and its adoption would probably have pacified the dynastic rulers of Europe. But the restoration of monarchy in any form was as yet impossible. The Bourbons had utterly discredited royalty, and the late glorious successes had been won partly by the lavish use in the enemy's camp of money raised and granted by radical democrats, partly by the prowess of enthusiastic republicans. The compact, efficient organization of the national army was the work of the Jacobins, and while the Mountain was discredited in Paris, it was not so in the provinces; moreover, the army which was on foot and in the field was in the main a Jacobin army. Royalty was so hated by most Frenchmen that the sad plight of the child dauphin, dying by inches in the Temple, awakened no compassion, and its next lineal representative was that hated thing, a voluntary exile; the nobility, who might have furnished the material for a French House of Lords, were traitors to their country, actually bearing arms in the levies of her foes. The national feeling was a passion; Louis XVI had been popular enough until he had outraged it first by ordering the Church to remain obedient to Rome, and then by appealing to foreign powers for protection. The emigrant nobles had stumbled over one another in their haste to manifest their contempt for nationality by throwing themselves into the arms of their own class in foreign lands.

Moreover, another work of the Revolution could not be undone. The lands of both the emigrants and the Church had either been seized and divided among the adherents of the new order, or else appropriated to state uses. Restitution was out of the question, for the power of the new owners was sufficient to destroy any one who should propose to take away their possessions. This is a fact particularly to be emphasized, because, making all allowances, the subsequent history of France has been determined by the alliance of a landed peasantry with the petty burghers of the cities and towns. What both have always desired is a strong hand in government which assures their property rights. Whenever any of the successive forms and methods has failed its fate was doomed. In this temper of the masses, in the flight of the ruling class, in the distemper of the radical democracy, a constitutional monarchy was unthinkable. A presidential government on the model of that devised and used by the United States was equally impossible, because the French appear already to have had a premonition or an instinct that a ripe experience of liberty was essential to the working of such an institution. The student of the revolutionary times will become aware how powerful the feeling already was among the French that a single strong executive, elected by the masses, would speedily turn into a tyrant. They have now a nominal president; but his election is indirect, his office is representative, not political, and his duties are like an impersonal, colorless reflection of those performed by the English crown. The constitution-makers simply could not fall back on an experience of successful free government which did not exist. Absolute monarchy had made gradual change impossible, for oppression dies only in convulsions. Experience was in front, not behind, and must be gained through suffering.

It was therefore a grim necessity which led the Thermidorians of the Convention to try another political nostrum. What should it be? There had always been a profound sense in France of her historic continuity with Rome. Her system of jurisprudence, her speech, her church, her very land, were Roman. Recalling this, the constitution-framers also recollected that these had been the gifts of imperial and Christian Rome. It was a curious but characteristic whim which consequently suggested to the enemies of ecclesiasticism the revival of Roman forms dating from the heathen commonwealth. This it was which led them to commit the administration of government in both external and internal relations to a divided executive. There, however, the resemblance to Rome ended, for instead of two consuls there were to be five directors. These were to sit as a committee, to appoint their own ministerial agents, together with all officers and officials of the army, and to fill the few positions in the administrative departments which were not elective, except those in the treasury, which was a separate, independent administration. All executive powers except those of the treasury were likewise to be in their hands. They were to have no veto, and their treaties of peace must be ratified by the legislature; but they could declare war without consulting any one. The judiciary was to be elected directly by the people, and the judges were to hold office for about a year. The legislature was to be separated into a senate with two hundred and fifty members, called the Council of Ancients, which had the veto power, and an assembly called the Council of Juniors, or, more popularly, from its number, the Five Hundred, which had the initiative in legislation. The members of the former must be at least forty years old and married; every aspirant for a seat in the latter must be twenty-five and of good character. Both these bodies were alike to be elected by universal suffrage working indirectly through secondary electors, and limited by educational and property qualifications. There were many wholesome checks and balances. This constitution is known as that of I Vendémiaire, An IV, or September twenty-second, 1795. It became operative on October twenty-sixth.

The scheme was formed, as was intended, under Girondist influence, and was acceptable to the nation as a whole. In spite of many defects, it might after a little experience have been amended so as to work, if the people had been united and hearty in its support. But they were not. The Thermidorians, who were still Jacobins at heart, ordered that at least two-thirds of the men elected to sit in the new houses should have been members of the Convention, on the plea that they alone had sufficient experience of affairs to carry on the public business, at least for the present. Perhaps this was intended as some offset to the enforced closing of the Jacobin Club on November twelfth, 1794, due to menaces by the higher classes of Parisian society, known to history as "the gilded youth." On the other hand, the royalists saw in the new constitution an instrument ready to their hand, should public opinion, in its search for means to restore quiet and order, be carried still further away from the Revolution than the movement of Thermidor had swept it. Their conduct justified the measures of the Jacobins.