Читать книгу The Life and Legacy of Napoleon Bonaparte: All 4 Volumes - William Milligan Sloane - Страница 32

Table of Contents

Bonaparte and the Army of Italy—The System of Pillage—The General as a Despot—The Republican Armies and French Politics—Italy as the Focal Point—Condition of Italy—Bonaparte's Sagacity—His Plan of Action—His Army and Generals—Strength of the Army of Italy—The Napoleonic Maxims of Warfare—Advance of Military Science—Bonaparte's Achievements—His Financial Policy—Effects of His Success.

1796.

The struggle which was imminent was for nothing less than a new lease of national life for France. It dawned on many minds that in such a combat changes of a revolutionary nature—as regarded not merely the provisioning and management of armies, as regarded not merely the grand strategy to be adopted and carried out by France, but as regarded the very structure and relations of other European nations—would be justifiable. But to be justifiable they must be adequate; and to be adequate they must be unexpected and thorough. What should they be? The Œdipus who solves this riddle for France is the man of the hour. He was found in Bonaparte. What mean these ringing words from the headquarters at Nice, which, on March twenty-seventh, 1796, fell on the ears of a hungry, eager soldiery and a startled world? "Soldiers, you are naked, badly fed. The government owes you much; it can give you nothing. Your long-suffering, the courage you show among these crags, are splendid, but they bring you no glory; not a ray is reflected upon you. I wish to lead you into the most fertile plains of the world. Rich provinces, great towns, will be in your power; there you will find honor, glory, and riches. Soldiers of Italy, can you be found lacking in honor, courage, or constancy?"

Such language has but one meaning. By a previous understanding with the Directory, the French army was to be paid, the French treasury to be replenished, at the expense of the lands which were the seat of war. Corsicans in the French service had long been suspected of sometimes serving their own interests to the detriment of their adopted country. Bonaparte was no exception, and occasionally he felt it necessary to justify himself. For example, he had carefully explained that his marriage bound him to the republic by still another tie. Yet it appears that his promotion, his engagement with the directors, and his devotion to the republic were all concerned primarily with personal ambition, though secondarily and incidentally with the perpetuation of a government professedly based on the Revolution. From the outset of Napoleon's independent career, something of the future dictator appears. This implied promise that pillage, plunder, and rapine should henceforth go unpunished in order that his soldiers might line their pockets is the indication of a settled policy which was more definitely expressed in each successive proclamation as it issued from his pen. It was repeated whenever new energy was to be inspired into faltering columns, whenever some unparalleled effort in a dark design was to be demanded from the rank and file of the army, until at last a point-blank promise was made that every man should return to France with money enough in his pocket to become a landowner.

There was magic in the new spell, the charm never ceased to work; with that first call from Nice began the transformation of the French army, fighting now no longer for principle, but for glory, victory, and booty. Its leader, if successful, would be in no sense a constitutional general, but a despotic conqueror. Outwardly gracious, and with no irritating condescension; considerate wherever mercy would strengthen his reputation; fully aware of the influence a dramatic situation or a pregnant aphorism has upon the common mind, and using both with mastery; appealing as a climax to the powerful motive of greed in every heart, Bonaparte was soon to be not alone the general of consummate genius, not alone the organizing lawgiver of conquered lands and peoples, but, what was essential to his whole career, the idol of an army which was not, as of old, the servant of a great nation, but, as the new era had transformed it, the nation itself.

The peculiar relation of Bonaparte to Italy, to Corsica, and to the Convention had made him, as early as 1794, while yet but chief of artillery, the real director of the Army of Italy. He had no personal share in the victorious campaign of that year, but its victories, as he justly claimed, were due to his plans. During the unsuccessful Corsican expedition of the following winter, for which he was but indirectly responsible, the Austro-Sardinians in Piedmont had taken advantage of its absorbing so many French troops to undo all that had so far been accomplished. During the summer of 1795 Spain and Prussia had made peace with France. In consequence all northern Europe had been declared neutral, and the field of operations on the Rhine had been confined to the central zone of Germany, while at the same time the French soldiers who had formed the Army of the Pyrenees had been transferred to the Maritime Alps. In 1796, therefore, the great question was whether the Army of the Rhine or that of Italy was to be the chief weapon of offense against Austria.

Divided interests and warped convictions quickly created two opinions in the French nation, each of which was held with intensity and bitterness by its supporters. So far the Army of the Rhine was much the stronger, and the Emperor had concentrated his strength to oppose it. But the wisest heads saw that Austria might be flanked by way of Italy. The gate to Lombardy was guarded by the sturdy little army of Victor Amadeus, assisted by a small Austrian force. If the house of Savoy, which was said to wear at its girdle the keys of the Alps, could be conquered and brought to make a separate peace, the Austrian army could be overwhelmed, and a highway to Vienna opened first through the plains of Lombardy, then by the Austrian Tyrol, or else by the Venetian Alps. Strangely enough, the plainest and most forcible exposition of this plan was made by an emigrant in London, a certain Dutheil, for the benefit of England and Austria. But the Allies were deaf to his warnings, while in the mean time Bonaparte enforced the same idea upon the French authorities, and secured their acceptance of it. Both he and they were the more inclined to the scheme because once already it had been successfully initiated; because the general, having studied Italy and its people, thoroughly understood what contributions might be levied on them; because the Army of the Rhine was radically republican and knew its own strength; because therefore the personal ambitions of Bonaparte, and in fact the very existence of the Directory, alike depended on success elsewhere than in central Europe.

Having been for centuries the battle-field of rival dynasties, Italy, though a geographical unit with natural frontiers more marked than those of any other land, and with inhabitants fairly homogeneous in birth, speech, and institutions, was neither a nation nor a family of kindred nations, but a congeries of heterogeneous states. Some of these, like Venice and Genoa, boasted the proud title of republics; they were in reality narrow, commercial, even piratical oligarchies, destitute of any vigorous political life. The Pope, like other petty rulers, was but a temporal prince, despotic, and not even enlightened, as was the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Naples and the Milanese both groaned under the yoke of foreign rulers, and the only passable government in the length and breadth of the land was that of the house of Savoy in Piedmont and Sardinia, lands where the revolutionary spirit of liberty was most extended and active. The petty courts, like those of Parma and Modena, were nests of intrigue and corruption. There was, of course, in every place that saving remnant of high-minded men which is always providentially left as a seed; but the people as a whole were ignorant and enervated. The accumulations of ages, gained by an extensive and lucrative commerce, or by the tilling of a generous soil, had not been altogether dissipated by misrule, and there was even yet rich store of money in many of the venerable and still splendid cities. Nowhere in the ancient seats of the Roman commonwealth, whose memory was now the cherished fashion in France, could anything more than a reflection of French revolutionary principles be discerned; the rights of man and republican doctrine were attractive subjects of debate in many cities throughout the peninsula, but there was little of that fierce devotion to their realization so prevalent beyond the Alps.

The sagacity of Bonaparte saw his account in these conditions. Being a professed republican, he could announce himself as the regenerator of society, and the liberator of a people. If, as has been supposed, he already dreamed of a throne, where could one be so easily founded with the certainty of its endurance? As a conqueror he would have a divided, helpless, and wealthy people at his feet. If the old flame of Corsican ambition were not yet extinguished, he felt perhaps that he could wreak the vengeance of a defeated and angry people upon Genoa, their oppressor for ages.

His preparations began as early as the autumn of 1795, when, with Carnot's assistance, the united Pyrenean and Italian armies were directed to the old task of opening the roads through the mountains and by the sea-shore into Lombardy and central Italy. They won the battle of Loano, which secured the Maritime Alps once more; but a long winter amid these inclement peaks had left the army wretched and destitute of every necessity. It had been difficult throughout that winter to maintain even the Army of the Interior in the heart of France; the only chance for that of Italy was movement. The completed plan of action was forwarded from Paris in January. But, as has been told, Schérer, the commanding general, and his staff were outraged, refusing to consider its suggestions, either those for supplying their necessities in Lombardy, or those for the daring and venturesome operations necessary to reach that goal.

Bonaparte, who could invent such schemes, alone could realize them; and the task was intrusted to him. For the next ten weeks no sort of preparation was neglected. The nearly empty chest of the Directory was swept clean; from that source the new commander received forty-seven thousand five hundred francs in cash, and drafts for twenty thousand more; forced loans for considerable sums were made in Toulon and Marseilles; and Salicetti levied contributions of grain and forage in Genoa according to the plan which had been preconcerted between him and the general in their Jacobin days. The army which Bonaparte finally set in motion was therefore a fine engine of war. Its immediate necessities relieved, the veterans warmed to their work, and that notable promise of booty worked them to the pitch of genuine enthusiasm. The young commander, moreover, was as circumspect as a man of the first ability alone could be when about to make the venture of his life and play for the stake of a world. His generals of division were themselves men of mark—personages no less than Masséna, Augereau, Laharpe, and Sérurier. Of Masséna some account has already been given. Augereau was Bonaparte's senior by thirteen years, of humble and obscure origin, who had sought his fortunes as a fencing-master in the Bourbon service at Naples, and having later enlisted in the French forces sent to Spain in 1792, rose by his ability to be general of brigade, then division commander in the Army of Italy. He was rude in manner and plebeian in feeling, jealous of Bonaparte, but brave and capable. In the sequel he played an important part and rose to eminence, though he distrusted both the Emperor and the empire and flinched before great crises. Neither Laharpe nor Sérurier was distinguished beyond the sphere of their profession, but in that they were loyal and admirable. Laharpe was a member of the famous Swiss family banished from home for devotion to liberty. Under Luckner in Germany he had earned and kept the sobriquet of "the brave"; until he was mortally wounded in a night attack, while crossing the Po after Millesimo, he continued his brilliant career, and would have gone far had he been spared. Sérurier was a veteran of the Seven Years' War and of Portugal, already fifty-four years old. Able and trustworthy, he was loaded with favors by Napoleon and survived until 1819. It might have been very easy to exasperate such men. But what the commander-in-chief had to do was done with such smoothness and skill that even they could find no ground for carping; and though at first cold and reticent, before long they yielded to the influences which filled with excitement the very air they breathed.

At this moment, besides the National Guard, France had an army, and in some sense a navy: of both the effective fighting force numbered upward of half a million. Divided nominally into nine armies, instead of fourteen as first planned, there were in reality but seven; of these, four were of minor importance: a small, skeleton Army of the Interior, a force in the west under Hoche twice as large and with ranks better filled, a fairly strong army in the north under Macdonald, and a similar one in the Alps under Kellermann, with Berthier and Vaubois as lieutenants, which soon became a part of Bonaparte's force. These were, if possible, to preserve internal order and to watch England, while three great active organizations were to combine for the overthrow of Austria. On the Rhine were two of the active armies—one near Düsseldorf under Jourdan, another near Strasburg under Moreau. Macdonald was of Scottish Jacobite descent, a French royalist converted to republicanism by his marriage. He was now thirty-one years old. Trained in the regiment of Dillon, he alone of its officers remained true to democratic principles on the outbreak of the Revolution. He was made a colonel for his bravery at Jemmapes, and for his loyalty when Dumouriez went over to the Austrians he was promoted to be general of brigade. For his services under Pichegru in Holland he had been further rewarded by promotion, and after the peace of Campo Formio was transferred from the Rhine to Italy. He was throughout a loyal friend of Bonaparte and received the highest honors. Kellermann was a Bavarian, and when associated with Bonaparte a veteran, sixty-one years old. He had seen service in the Seven Years' War and again in Poland during 1771. An ardent republican, he had served with distinction from the beginning of the revolutionary wars: though twice charged with incapacity, he was triumphantly acquitted. He linked his fortunes to those of Bonaparte without jealousy and reaped abundant laurels. Of Berthier and the other great generals we have already spoken. Vaubois reached no distinction. At the portals of Italy was Bonaparte, with a third army, soon to be the most active of all. At the outset he had, all told, about forty-five thousand men; but the campaign which he conducted had before its close assumed such dimensions that in spite of its losses the Army of Italy contained nearly double that number of men ready for the field, besides the garrison troops and invalids. The figures on the records of the war department were invariably much greater; but an enormous percentage, sometimes as high as a third, was always in the hospitals, while often as many as twenty thousand were left behind to hold various fortresses. Bonaparte, for evident reasons, uniformly represented his effective force as smaller than it was, and stunned the ears of the Directory with ever reiterated demands for reinforcement. A dispassionate estimate would fix the number of his troops in the field at any one time during these operations as not lower than thirty-five thousand nor much higher than eighty thousand.

Another element of the utmost importance entered into the coming campaign. The old vicious system by which a vigilant democracy had jealously prescribed to its generals every step to be taken was swept away by Bonaparte, who as Robespierre's "man" had been thoroughly familiar with its workings from the other end. He was now commander-in-chief, and he insisted on the absolute unity of command as essential to the economy of time. This being granted, his equipment was complete. It will be remembered that in 1794 he had explained to his patrons how warfare in the field was like a siege: by directing all one's force to a single point a breach might be made, and the equilibrium of opposition destroyed. To this conception of concentration for attack he had, in concert with the Directory, added another, that of expansion in a given territory for sustenance. He had still a third, that war must be made as intense and awful as possible in order to make it short, and thus to diminish its horrors. Trite and simple as these aphorisms now appear, they were all original and absolutely new, at least in the quick, fierce application of them made by Bonaparte. The traditions of chivalry, the incessant warfare of two centuries and a half, the humane conceptions of the Church, the regard for human life, the difficulty of communications, the scarcity of munitions and arms—all these and other elements had combined to make war under mediocre generals a stately ceremonial, and to diminish the number of actual battles, which took place, when they did, only after careful preparation, as an unpleasant necessity, by a sort of common agreement, and with the ceremony of a duel.

Turenne, Marlborough, and Frederick, all men of cold-blooded temperament, had been the greatest generals of their respective ages, and were successful much in proportion to their lack of sentiment and disregard of conventionalities. Their notions and their conduct displayed the same instincts as those of Bonaparte, and their minds were enlarged by a study of great campaigns like that which had fed his inchoate genius and had made possible his consummate achievement. He had much the same apparatus for warfare as they. The men of Europe had not materially changed in stature, weight, education, or morals since the closing years of the Thirty Years' War. The roads were somewhat better, the conformation of mountains, hills, and valleys was better known, and like his great predecessors, though unlike his contemporaries, Bonaparte knew the use of a map; but in the main little was changed in the conditions for moving and manœuvering troops. News traveled slowly, the semaphore telegraph was but slowly coming into use, and the fastest couriers rode from Nice to Paris or from Paris to Berlin in seven days. Firearms of every description were little improved: Prussia actually claimed that she had been forced to negotiate for peace because France controlled the production of gun-flints. The forging of cannon was finer, and the artillery arm was on the whole more efficient. In France there had been considerable change for the better in the manual and in tactics; the rest of Europe followed the old and more formal ways. Outside the republic, ceremony still held sway in court and camp; youthful energy was stifled in routine; and the generals opposed to Bonaparte were for the most part men advanced in years, wedded to tradition, and incapable of quickly adapting their ideas to meet advances and attacks based on conceptions radically different from their own. It was at times a positive misery to the new conqueror that his opponents were such inefficient fossils. Young and at the same time capable; using the natural advantages of his territory to support the bravery of his troops; with a mind which was not only accurate and decisive, but comprehensive in its observations; unhampered by control or by principle; opposed to generals who could not think of a boy of twenty-six as their equal; with the best army and the finest theater of war in Europe; finally, with a genius independently developed, and with conceptions of his profession which summarized the experience of his greatest predecessors, Bonaparte performed feats that seemed miraculous even when compared with those of Hoche, Jourdan, or Moreau, which had already so astounded the world.

Within eleven days the Austrians and Sardinians were separated, the latter having been defeated and forced to sign an armistice. After a rest of two days, a fortnight saw him victorious in Lombardy, and entering Milan as a conqueror. Two weeks elapsed, and again he set forth to reduce to his sway in less than a month the most of central Italy. Against an enemy now desperate and at bay his operations fell into four divisions, each resulting in an advance—the first, of nine days, against Wurmser and Quasdanowich; the second, of sixteen days, against Wurmser; the third, of twelve days, against Alvinczy; and the fourth, of thirty days, until he captured Mantua and opened the mountain passes to his army. Within fifteen days after beginning hostilities against the Pope, he forced him to sign the treaty of Tolentino; and within thirty-six days of their setting foot on the road from Mantua to Vienna, the French were at Leoben, distant only ninety miles from the Austrian capital, and dictating terms to the Empire. In the year between March twenty-seventh, 1796, and April seventh, 1797, Bonaparte humbled the most haughty dynasty in Europe, toppled the central European state system, and initiated the process which has given a predominance apparently final to Prussia, then considered but as a parvenu.

It is impossible to estimate the enormous sums of money which he exacted for the conduct of a war that he chose to say was carried on to emancipate Italy. The soldiers of his army were well clad, well fed, and well equipped from the day of their entry into Milan; the arrears of their pay were not only settled, but they were given license to prey on the country until a point was reached which seemed to jeopardize success, when common pillage was promptly stopped by the severest examples. The treasury of the Directory was not filled as were those of the conquering officers, but it was no longer empty. In short, France reached the apex of her revolutionary greatness; and as she was now the foremost power on the Continent, the shaky monarchies in neighboring lands were forced to consider again questions which in 1795 they had hoped were settled. As Bonaparte foresaw, the destinies of Europe had indeed hung on the fate of Italy.

Europe had grown accustomed to military surprises in the few preceding years. The armies of the French republic, fired by devotion to their principles and their nation, had accomplished marvels. But nothing in the least foreshadowing this had been wrought even by them. Then, as now, curiosity was inflamed, and the most careful study was expended in analyzing the process by which such miracles had been performed. The investigators and their readers were so overpowered by the spectacle and its results that they were prevented by a sort of awe-stricken credulity from recognizing the truth; and even yet the notion of a supernatural influence fighting on Bonaparte's side has not entirely disappeared. But the facts as we know them reveal cleverness dealing with incapacity, energy such as had not yet been seen fighting with languor, an embodied principle of great vitality warring with a lifeless, vanishing system. The consequences were startling, but logical; the details sound like a romance from the land of Eblis.