Читать книгу The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte (Vol. 1-4) - William Milligan Sloane - Страница 29

Table of Contents

The Warfare of St. Roch and the Pont Royal—Order Restored—Meaning of the Conflict—Political Dangers—Buonaparte's Dilemma—His True Attitude—Sudden Wealth—The Directory and Their General—Buonaparte in Love—His Corsican Temperament—His Matrimonial Adventures.

1795.

In this general position the opposing forces confronted each other on the morning of October fifth, the thirteenth of Vendémiaire. In point of numbers the odds were tremendous, for the Convention forces numbered only about four thousand regulars and a thousand volunteers, while the sections' force comprised about twenty-eight thousand National Guards. But the former were disciplined, they had cannon, and they were desperately able; and there was no distracted, vacillating leadership. What the legend attributes to Napoleon Buonaparte as his commentary on the conduct of King Louis at the Tuileries was to be the Convention's ideal now. The "man on horseback" and the hot fire of cannon were to carry the day. Both sides seemed loath to begin. But at half-past four in the afternoon it was clear that the decisive moment had come. As if by instinct, but in reality at Danican's signal, the forces of the sections from the northern portion of the capital began to pour through the narrow main street of St. Honoré, behind the riding-school, toward the chief entrance of the Tuileries. They no doubt felt safer in the rear of the Convention hall, with the high walls of houses all about, than they would have done in the open spaces which they would have had to cross in order to attack it from the front. Just before their compacted mass reached the church of St. Roch, it was brought to a halt. Suddenly becoming aware that in the side streets on the right were yawning the muzzles of hostile cannon, the excited citizens lost their heads, and began to discharge their muskets. Then with a swift, sudden blast, the street was cleared by a terrible discharge of the canister and grape-shot with which the field-pieces of Barras and Buonaparte were loaded. The action continued about an hour, for the people and the National Guard rallied again and again, each time to be mowed down by a like awful discharge. At last they could be rallied no longer, and retreated to the church, which they held. On the left bank a similar mêlée ended in a similar way. Three times Laffont gathered his forces and hurled them at the Pont Royal; three times they were swept back by the cross-fire of artillery. The scene then changed like the vanishing of a mirage. Awe-stricken messengers appeared, hurrying everywhere with the prostrating news from both sides of the river, and the entire Parisian force withdrew to shelter. Before nightfall the triumph of the Convention was complete. The dramatic effect of this achievement was heightened by the appearance on horseback here, there, and everywhere, during the short hour of battle, of an awe-inspiring leader; both before and after, he was unseen. In spite of Barras's claims, there can be no doubt that this dramatic personage was Buonaparte. If not, for what was he so signally rewarded in the immediate sequel? Barras was no artillerist, and this was the appearance of an expert giving masterly lessons in artillery practice to an astonished world, which little dreamed what he was yet to demonstrate as to the worth of his chosen arm on wider battle-fields. For the moment it suited Buonaparte to appear merely as an agent. In his reports of the affair his own name is kept in the background. It is evident that from first to last he intended to produce the impression that, though acting with Jacobins, he does so because they for the time represent the truth: he is not for that reason to be identified with them.

Thus by the "whiff of grape-shot" what the wizard historian of the time "specifically called the French Revolution" was not "blown into space" at all. Though there was no renewal of the reign of terror, yet the Jacobins retained their power and the Convention lived on under the name of the Directory. It continued to live on in its own stupid anarchical way until the "man on horseback" of the thirteenth Vendémiaire had established himself as the first among French generals and the Jacobins had rendered the whole heart of France sick. While the events of October twenty-fifth were a bloody triumph for the Convention, only a few conspicuous leaders of the rebels were executed, among them Laffont; and harsh measures were enacted in relation to the political status of returned emigrants. But in the main an unexpected mercy controlled the Convention's policy. They closed the halls in which the people of the mutinous wards had met, and once more reorganized the National Guard. Order was restored without an effort. Beyond the walls of Paris the effect of the news was magical. Artois, afterward Charles X, though he had landed three days before on Île Dieu, now reëmbarked, and sailed back to England, while the other royalist leaders prudently held their followers in check and their measures in abeyance. The new constitution was in a short time offered to the nation, and accepted by an overwhelming majority; the members of the Convention were assured of their ascendancy in the new legislature; and before long the rebellion in Vendée and Brittany was so far crushed as to release eighty thousand troops for service abroad. For the leaders of its forces the Convention made a most liberal provision: the division commanders of the thirteenth of Vendémiaire were all promoted. Buonaparte was made second in command of the Army of the Interior: in other words, was confirmed in an office which, though informally, he had both created and rendered illustrious. As Barras almost immediately resigned, this was equivalent to very high promotion.

This memorable "day of the sections," as it is often called, was an unhallowed day for France and French liberty. It was the first appearance of the army since the Revolution as a support to political authority; it was the beginning of a process which made the commander-in-chief of the army the dictator of France. All purely political powers were gradually to vanish in order to make way for a military state. The temporary tyranny of the Convention rested on a measure, at least, of popular consent; but in the very midst of its preparations to perpetuate a purely civil and political administration, the violence of the sections had compelled it to confide the new institutions to the keeping of soldiers. The idealism of the new constitution was manifest from the beginning. Every chance which the Directory had for success was dependent, not on the inherent worth of the system or its adaptability to present conditions, but on the support of interested men in power; among these the commanders of the army were not the least influential. After the suppression of the sections, the old Convention continued to sit under the style of the Primary Assembly, and was occupied in selecting those of its members who were to be returned to the legislature under the new constitution. There being no provision for any interim government, the exercise of real power was suspended; the elections were a mere sham; the magistracy was a house swept and garnished, ready for the first comer to occupy it.

As the army and not the people had made the coming administration possible, the executive power would from the first be the creature of the army; and since under the constitutional provisions there was no legal means of compromise between the Directory and the legislature in case of conflict, so that the stronger would necessarily crush the weaker, the armed power supporting the directors must therefore triumph in the end, and the man who controlled that must become the master of the Directory and the ruler of the country. Moreover, a people can be free only when the first and unquestioning devotion of every citizen is not to a party, but to his country and its constitution, his party allegiance being entirely secondary. This was far from being the case in France: the nation was divided into irreconcilable camps, not of constitutional parties, but of violent partizans; many even of the moderate republicans now openly expressed a desire for some kind of monarchy. Outwardly the constitution was the freest so far devised. It contained, however, three fatal blunders which rendered it the best possible tool for a tyrant: it could not be changed for a long period; there was no arbiter but force between a warring legislative and executive; the executive was now supported by the army.

It is impossible to prove that Buonaparte understood all this at the time. When at St. Helena he spoke as if he did; but unfortunately his later writings, however valuable from the psychological, are worthless from the historical, standpoint. They abound in misrepresentations which are in part due to lapse of time and weakness of memory, in part to wilful intention. Wishing the Robespierre-Salicetti episode of his life to be forgotten, he strives in his memoirs to create the impression that the Convention had ordered him to take charge of the artillery at Toulon, when in fact he was in Marseilles as a mere passer-by on his journey to Nice, and in Toulon as a temporary adjunct to the army of Carteaux, having been made an active participant partly through accident, partly by the good will of personal friends. In the same way he also devised a fable about the "day of the sections," in order that he might not appear to have been scheming for himself in the councils of the Convention, and that Barras's share in his elevation might be consigned to oblivion. This story of Napoleon's has come down in three stages of its development, by as many different transcribers, who heard it at different times. The final one, as given by Las Cases, was corrected by Napoleon's own hand.[54] It runs as follows: On the night of October third he was at the theater, but hearing that Menou had virtually retreated before the wards, and was to be arrested, he left and went to the meeting of the Convention, where, as he stood among the spectators, he heard his own name mentioned as Menou's successor. For half an hour he deliberated what he should do if chosen. If defeated, he would be execrated by all coming generations, while victory would be almost odious. How could he deliberately become the scapegoat of so many crimes to which he had been an utter stranger? Why go as an avowed Jacobin and in a few hours swell the list of names uttered with horror? "On the other hand, if the Convention be crushed, what becomes of the great truths of our Revolution? Our many victories, our blood so often shed, are all nothing but shameful deeds. The foreigner we have so thoroughly conquered triumphs and overwhelms us with his contempt; an incapable race, an overbearing and unnatural following, reappear triumphant, throw up our crime to us, wreak their vengeance, and govern us like helots by the hand of a stranger. Thus the defeat of the Convention would crown the brow of the foreigner, and seal the disgrace and slavery of our native land." Such thoughts, his youth, trust in his own power and in his destiny, turned the balance.

Statements made under such circumstances are not proof; but there is this much probability of truth in them, that if we imagine the old Buonaparte in disgrace as of old, following as of old the promptings of his curiosity, indifferent as of old to the success of either principle, and by instinct a soldier as of old—if we recall him in this character, and remember that he is no longer a youthful Corsican patriot, but a mature cosmopolitan consumed with personal ambition—we may surely conclude that he was perfectly impartial as to the parties involved, leaned toward the support of the principles of the Revolution as he understood them, and saw in the complications of the hour a probable opening for his ambition. At any rate, his conduct after October fourth seems to uphold this view. He was a changed man, ardent, hopeful, and irrepressible, as he had ever been when lucky; but now, besides, daring, overbearing, and self-confident to a degree which those characteristic qualities had never reached before.

His first care was to place on a footing of efficiency the Army of the Interior, scattered in many departments, undisciplined and disorganized; the next, to cow into submission all the low elements in Paris, still hungry and fierce, by reorganizing the National Guard, and forming a picked troop for the special protection of the legislature; the next, to show himself as the powerful friend of every one in disgrace, as a man of the world without rancor or exaggerated partizanship. At the same time he plunged into speculation, and sent sums incredibly large to various members of his family, a single remittance of four hundred thousand francs being mentioned in his letters. Lucien was restored to the arms of his low-born but faithful and beloved wife, and sent to join his mother and sisters in Marseilles; Louis was brought from Châlons, and made a lieutenant; Jerome was put at school in Paris; and to Joseph a consular post was assured. Putting aside all bashfulness, General Buonaparte became a full-fledged society man and a beau. No social rank was now strange to him; the remnants of the old aristocracy, the wealthy citizens of Paris, the returning Girondists, many of whom had become pronounced royalists, the new deputies, the officers who in some turn of the wheel had, like himself, lost their positions, but were now, through his favor, reinstated—all these he strove to court, flatter, and make his own.

Such activity, of course, could not pass unnoticed. The new government had been constituted without disturbance, the Directory chosen, and the legislature installed. Of the five directors—Barras, Rewbell, Carnot, Letourneaux de la Manche, and Larévellière-Lépeaux—all had voted for the death of Louis XVI, and were so-called regicides; but, while varying widely in character and ability, they were all, excepting Barras, true to their convictions. They scarcely understood how strong the revulsion of popular feeling had been, and, utterly ignoring the impossibility of harmonious action among themselves, hoped to exercise their power with such moderation as to win all classes to the new constitution. They were extremely disturbed by the course of the general commanding their army in seeking intimacy with men of all opinions, but were unwilling to interpret it aright. Under the Convention, the Army of the Interior had been a tool, its commander a mere puppet; now the executive was confronted by an independence which threatened a reversal of rôles. This situation was the more disquieting because Buonaparte was a capable and not unwilling police officer. Among many other invaluable services to the government, he closed in person the great club of the Panthéon, which was the rallying-point of the disaffected.[55] Throughout another winter of famine there was not a single dangerous outbreak. At the same time there were frequent manifestations of jealousy in lower circles, especially among those who knew the origin and career of their young master.

Toward the close of the year the bearing and behavior of the general became constrained, reserved, and awkward. Various reasons were assigned for this demeanor. Many thought it was due to a consciousness of social deficiency, and his detractors still declare that Paris life was too fierce for even his self-assurance, pointing to the change in his handwriting and grammar, to his alternate silence and loquacity, as proof of mental uneasiness; to his sullen musings and coarse threats as a theatrical affectation to hide wounded pride; and to his coming marriage as a desperate shift to secure a social dignity proportionate to the career he saw opening before him in politics and war. In a common man not subjected to a microscopic examination, such conduct would be attributed to his being in love; the wedding would ordinarily be regarded as the natural and beautiful consequence of a great passion.

Men have not forgotten that Buonaparte once denounced love as a hurtful passion from which God should protect his creatures; and they have, for this, among other reasons, pronounced him incapable of disinterested affection. But it is also true that he likewise denounced Buttafuoco for having, among other crimes committed by him, "married to extend his influence"; and we are forced to ask which of the two sentiments is genuine and characteristic. Probably both and neither, according to the mood of the man. Outward caprice is, in great natures, often the mask of inward perseverance, especially among the unprincipled who suit their language to their present purpose, in fine disdain of commonplace consistency. The primitive Corsican was both rude and gentle, easily moved to tears at one time, insensate at another; selfish at one moment, lavish at another; and yet he had a consistent character. Although disliking in later life to be called a Corsican, Napoleon was nevertheless typical of his race: he could despise love, yet render himself its willing slave; he was fierce and dictatorial, yet, as the present object of his passion said, "tenderer and weaker than anybody dreamed."[56]

And thus it was in the matter of his courtship: there were elements in it of romantic, abandoned passion, but likewise of shrewd, calculating selfishness. In his callow youth his relations to the other sex had been either childish, morbid, or immoral. During his earliest manhood he had appeared like one who desired the training rather than the substance of gallantry. As a Jacobin he sought such support as he could find in the good will of the women related to men in power; as a French patriot he put forth strenuous efforts to secure an influential alliance through matrimony. He appears to have addressed Mme. Permon, whose fortune, despite her advanced age, would have been a great relief to his destitution. Refused by her, he was in a disordered and desperate emotional state until military and political success gave him sufficient self-confidence to try once more. With his feet firmly planted on the ladder of ambition, he was not indifferent to securing social props for a further rise, but was nevertheless in such a tumult of feeling as to make him particularly receptive to real passion. He had made advances for the hand of the rich and beautiful Désirée Clary;[57] the first evidence in his correspondence of a serious intention to marry her is contained in the letter of June eighteenth, 1795, to Joseph; and for a few weeks afterward he wrote at intervals with some impatience, as if she were coy. In explanation it is claimed that Napoleon, visiting her long before at the request of Joseph, who was then enamoured of her, had himself become interested, and persuading his brother to marry her sister, had entered into an understanding with her which was equivalent to a betrothal. Time and distance had cooled his ardor. He now virtually threw her over for Mme. Beauharnais, who dazzled and infatuated him. This claim is probably founded on fact, but there is no evidence sufficient to sustain a charge of positive bad faith on the part of Napoleon. Neither he nor Mlle. Clary appears to have been ardent when Joseph as intermediary began, according to French custom, to arrange the preliminaries of marriage; and when General Buonaparte fell madly in love with Mme. Beauharnais the matter was dropped.