The 100,000-strong Army of Germany was under the command of Moreau, whom Bonaparte could not very well replace, even though he was neither willing nor capable of carrying out the operation Bonaparte had in mind. He tried to stimulate him through flattery. ‘I envy your good fortune, for you have a brave army with which you will do fine things,’ he wrote to him on 16 March. ‘I would gladly exchange my consular purple for the epaulette of a chef de brigade under your orders.’ Moreau was unmoved.7
Since Moreau could not be relied on to deliver the main blow, Bonaparte would have to strike at the Austrians in Italy. ‘What he doesn’t dare do on the Rhine, I shall have to do over the Alps,’ he concluded. ‘He may soon regret the glory he is leaving to me.’ He nevertheless kept his intentions secret. He had put Berthier in command of the Reserve Army, replacing him at the War Ministry by Carnot, who was dependable and competent, and popular with the Jacobins. Ten days later the Consular Guard marched out of Paris in a southerly direction, but Bonaparte remained in Paris.8
On 6 April the Austrians went into action against Masséna’s Army of Italy. Less than 40,000 strong, it was strung out in a defensive screen and the Austrian commander, Field Marshal Melas, had no difficulty in forcing a wedge through the middle, slicing it in two and driving one half under General Suchet back towards the Var while Masséna fell back on Genoa. Bonaparte ordered them both to hang on at all costs while he accelerated the formation of the Reserve Army, with which he would have to come to their aid. Despite his repeated pleas Moreau had still not made a move, and it was not until 25 April, after what amounted to an ultimatum, that he crossed the Rhine.
On his last day in Paris, 5 April, Bonaparte received news of a victory by one of Moreau’s divisions under General Lecourbe at Stockach. After sending a letter replete with flattery and congratulation to Moreau, he went to the opera, and at two o’clock in the morning climbed into a carriage with Bourrienne and left the capital. Officially, he was only going to inspect the Reserve Army, now about 36,000 strong.9
The following evening, at Avallon, he encountered a courier from Masséna who informed him that he could not hold out in Genoa for long. ‘Are you not the brave, the victorious Masséna?’ Bonaparte wrote back, urging him to stand firm. He sped on, inspecting the various units of the Reserve Army still on the march along the road. The next day, at Auxonne, he visited the artillery barracks and several erstwhile acquaintances came to see him. At Dôle he inspected the cannon foundry and saw the former chaplain of Brienne, Father Charles. But there was little time for banter, and at three o’clock in the morning of the following day, 9 May, he was in Geneva, where he joined Berthier. He had been enthusiastically cheered by the troops along the way and, tired as he was, appeared in high spirits.10
‘The whole army is on the move and in the best condition possible,’ he wrote to Cambacérès, from whom he had received a report on the situation in Paris. He was pleased to hear that the capital was quiet, but repeated his order to ‘strike hard the first one, whoever he might be, who steps out of line’. ‘The Italian campaign was a real trial for my colleague [Lebrun] and me,’ Cambacérès later recalled. ‘Even in the tumult of war, Bonaparte never took his eye off us.’ Joseph reported their every move to his brother.11
Bonaparte lingered three days in Geneva. He was called on by its burghers, whom he edified with professions of pacifism and predictions of a general peace founded on justice and liberty. He also received a visit from the renowned Jacques Necker, minister of finance of Louis XVI before the Revolution and father of Germaine de Staël, who appeared to be fishing for an invitation to become his finance minister. Bonaparte had avoided seeing him on his previous passage through Geneva, and remained unimpressed after a two-hour conversation with him.12
On 12 May he ordered Lannes to begin crossing the Great St Bernard Pass, which would bring him into the Austrian rear in Italy. He then left Geneva for Lausanne. On arriving there he wrote to Josephine telling her that she would be able to join him in ten or twelve days. His spirits were lifted by the news that Desaix had managed to get back from Egypt safely, ‘good news for the whole Republic but more especially for me, who has vowed to you all the esteem due to men of your talent, along with a friendship which my heart, already very aged and knowing men all too well, bears for no other’. He urged him to make haste to join him.13
Taking the army over the pass was a difficult undertaking. Everything had to be carried, by man, horse or mule. The ordnance had to be dismantled, the wheels and limbers transported on muleback and the barrels dragged along in the hollowed-out trunks of trees, with as many as a hundred men pulling each one up the steep inclines.
Bonaparte made the ascent on the back of a mule led by a guide. Although he peppered his talk with references to Caesar, Alexander and Hannibal, he did not cut much of a figure, his hat protected by an oilskin cover, his uniform hidden under a cloak. Impatient as always, at one point he tried to hurry his mount, which slipped and nearly pitched him down a precipice into the stream below. He was saved from this indignity by the guide (meaning to reward him, Bonaparte asked to know his dearest wish, which turned out to be a good mule of his own, so when he returned to Paris, he sent him the best mule money could buy). No more gloriously, on the descents he was obliged to imitate his men, who slid down the icy slopes on their bottoms.14
At the summit he visited the hospice and monastery of St Bernard, and dined with the prior. On being shown the library he pulled out a copy of Livy and looked up the passage on Hannibal. His onward march was impeded by the fort of Bard, defended by a small force of Croat grenadiers with twenty-six cannon. They refused to surrender, and an attempt by the vanguard to storm the fort came to nothing. An attack commanded by Bonaparte also failed, so he decided to bypass the fort across country and press on, leaving the artillery to follow once it had surrendered. The next day he was at Aosta, from where on 24 May he reported to Cambacérès and Lebrun that events were moving fast. ‘I hope to be back in Paris within two weeks,’ he wrote. The following day, having ridden ahead of his escort with only Duroc at his side, he was surrounded and almost captured by an Austrian cavalry patrol, but he pressed on regardless, reaching Ivrea on 26 May. There he paused to take stock.15
Leaving a force of 25,000 men under General Ott blocking Masséna in Genoa, the Austrian commander Melas with some 30,000 men had driven the French forces under General Suchet back as far as Nice. He disposed of another 50,000 or so strung out along his lines of communication or manning fortresses in his rear. If Genoa were to fall, the Royal Navy would be able to supply him through that. As well as making it possible to land allied troops, this would free up those 50,000 guarding his communications with Austria, bringing his effectives up to around 100,000 men. With such a force he would be able to sweep into the south of France unhindered.
Bonaparte only had 54,000 men. He could have made for Genoa, defeated Ott and delivered Masséna, but he decided instead to take Milan, where he would find Austrian guns to replace those he had left behind at Bard. He would also be able to join up with 14,000 men under General Moncey detached from the Army of the Rhine and another 3,000 who had crossed the Alps over the Mont Cenis pass. He calculated that on hearing of the fall of Milan Melas would race back to dislodge him and would be caught between two fires, with Masséna free to act once the siege had been raised. ‘I hope to be in the arms of my Josephine in ten days’ time,’ he wrote to her from Ivrea on 29 May, convinced that his strategy would yield a quick result.16
He reached Milan on the evening of 2 June, annoyed to find no cheering crowds. Before going to bed he dictated a Bulletin in which he reported that he had entered the city greeted ‘by a people animated by the utmost enthusiasm’. Two days later, when he went to La Scala he really was cheered, and he spent the night with the prima donna Giuseppina Grassini, who was surprised he wanted her now, having rejected her when she was young and fresh. Then, he had had thoughts only for Josephine.17
At eleven on the night of 7
June a captured Austrian courier was brought to him, from whom he learned shocking news. Pressed by Ott on the landward side and bombarded from the sea by Admiral Keith’s squadron, fearing an insurrection by the starving inhabitants, Masséna had capitulated, leaving Genoa in Austrian hands. This not only removed his force from the scene, it raised the possibility that Melas might ensconce himself behind the walls of the city, where, supplied by the Royal Navy, he would be able to hold out indefinitely, facing Bonaparte with an impasse similar to that of Acre. For political as well as military reasons, he must obtain a quick victory. He woke up his staff and began dictating orders. By the early hours his troops were on the move.
He followed on 9 June, in the rain, with a bad cold. ‘I cannot stand the rain, and my body was drenched in it for hours,’ he wrote to Josephine; while she had forfeited the exclusivity of his sexual interest, she still had his affection, and he wrote to her regularly, almost always including an impish message for ‘Mademoiselle Hortense’. This apparent nonchalance could not disguise his anxiety. That same day the vanguard under Lannes had come across Ott’s army returning from Genoa on its way to join Melas at Alessandria and defeated it at Montebello. But Bonaparte was no clearer as to where Melas was and what he intended to do next. At Stradella he was joined by Desaix, and the two sat up all night talking.18
In the morning Bonaparte sent Desaix south with two divisions to get between Melas and Genoa, and another division westwards to check him if he were intending to move on Turin instead. After another day without intelligence on the Austrian’s whereabouts, he moved forward with the rest of his forces, reaching the small village of Marengo under pouring rain on 13 June. He went up a tower to survey the surrounding countryside, but came down none the wiser. From what he could tell, there was only a small Austrian force facing him at Alessandria on the opposite bank of the river Bormida. He dried his clothes and dined with a local nobleman, then made another attempt to assess the situation by counting the number of Austrian campfires. He slept badly, and was up at five in the morning.
At seven, a large number of Austrians began crossing the river over three bridges, backed up by heavy artillery fire, at which point he realised he was facing Melas, who had concentrated 30,000 men and a hundred field guns at Alessandria. Bonaparte was down to 22,000, with only twenty guns. ‘Come back, in God’s name, if you still can,’ he wrote to Desaix. Desaix received the order at one o’clock and immediately set off, his men occasionally breaking into a run as they covered the thirteen kilometres that separated them from the field of battle.19
Meanwhile, Bonaparte mounted up and led all his available reserves up to support Lannes and Victor, who were trying to hold on against the Austrian onslaught at Marengo. At two o’clock the division he had sent to cover the road to Turin returned, followed by the Consular Guard. But the best these reinforcements could do was to prevent the more or less orderly retreat from Marengo turning into a rout under pressure from the overwhelming Austrian artillery and cavalry. ‘The battle appeared to be lost,’ recalled Victor, and by three o’clock in the afternoon Bonaparte was preparing to disengage. Melas judged that he had won, and having had two falls from his horse that day, painful at his age of seventy-one, retired to Alessandria and lay down to rest, leaving it to his generals to finish off and pursue the French.20
Just as Melas had taken to his bed, around five o’clock, Desaix turned up and, after a brief exchange with Bonaparte, led his two divisions into the fray. Simultaneously, General Kellermann, son of the victor of Valmy, gathered up his cavalry and charged the Austrian flank. As the astonished Austrians faltered, the entire French line surged forward, causing them to fall back and then flee in disorder.21
It was not much of a victory. Although Austrian losses were almost twice as high as French ones, Melas could easily replace them, while the French could not make up theirs. A particularly painful loss was that of Desaix, who was killed leading his men into the attack. ‘I feel the most profound grief at the death of the man I loved and esteemed the most,’ Bonaparte wrote to Cambacérès. He took on his late friend’s two aides, Generals Rapp and Savary, adding them to his own staff.22
Fortunately for Bonaparte, Melas was demoralised by the turn events had taken, and requested an armistice. Bonaparte was good at browbeating his enemies in such circumstances and, aware that he must use his less than decisive victory to maximum effect, forced him to agree to evacuate Piedmont, Liguria and Lombardy and retire behind the river Mincio. In order to keep up the pressure, and perhaps to sway his master the emperor while he was still under the shock of his defeat, Bonaparte wrote to him saying that it had been British perfidy that had prevented them coming to terms at his first request. ‘The war has taken place,’ he continued. ‘Thousands of Austrians and Frenchmen are no longer … Thousands of desolate families mourn their fathers, their husbands, their sons! … It is on the field of battle of Marengo, surrounded by suffering and 15,000 corpses [no more than about 2,000 were killed], that I conjure Your Majesty to listen to the cry of humanity and not allow a whole generation of two brave and great nations to go on murdering each other in the interests of others.’ He argued that the interests of all the causes the emperor held dear were best served by peace, while the revolutionary ideals he was trying to contain were best spread by war. He followed this up with a letter to Melas on 20 June, bewailing the fact that their brave troops had to die in the interests of ‘English merchants’, complimenting him on his military talents and presenting him as a mark of his esteem with a fine sabre he had captured in Egypt. Unbeknown to him, that very day Austria signed a fresh subsidy treaty with Britain which bound her not to make a separate peace with France for another six months.23
Bonaparte could not afford to waste time in Italy. The next day he was back in Milan, where he attended a Te Deum at the Duomo on 18 June and enjoyed La Grassini. He also made arrangements for the reoccupied territories, leaving behind under Masséna’s command a strong detachment of the Consular Guard in case he was forced to return. A week later he was hurrying back to Paris, greeted along the way like a hero. He hardly noticed as he raced on; a wheel came off his coach as it was hurtling down a hill, and he had to be pulled out of the wreckage of the vehicle through a window. At two o’clock on the morning of 2 July he drove up to the Tuileries.24
The French public had been treated to exciting blow-by-blow accounts of the campaign. The Bulletin describing the battle of Marengo is largely fantasy, and reads like a bad novel. It describes Bonaparte galvanising the troops by his presence in the thick of battle, records the heroic modesty of the dying Desaix’s last words and Bonaparte manfully holding back his tears on hearing them. The Bulletin of 18 June described in sentimental terms how the two black boys given to Desaix by ‘the King of Darfur’ had mourned him ‘in the custom of their country, and in the most touching manner’. It related various glorious deeds and noble utterances of the dead hero in such a way that they fitted into and enhanced the overall narrative of Bonaparte’s campaigns both earlier in Italy and in Egypt.25
In order to illustrate it, his propaganda machine produced a series of prints, and he commissioned a painting from David which was to become, like that of him on the bridge of Arcole, an icon. He was to be portrayed crossing the Alps, evoking memories of Hannibal and Caesar. David proposed depicting him sword in hand, but Bonaparte told him it was not with a sword that battles were won, and he should paint him looking serene on a fiery horse. The Brutus of Vendémiaire, the Hannibal of the first Italian campaign and the Alexander of the Egyptian had been superseded by Caesar. From now on painters would depict Bonaparte not as the flamboyant general, rather as a great captain absorbed in thought – pondering the sad necessity of making war, the horrors of which were inflicted on him by ‘English merchants’ and European monarchs in their pay. As Bonaparte would not sit for the portrait, David used his own son as a model.26
The thoughts that assailed the first consul on his return to Paris were not happy, and Josephin
e complained to a friend of daily ‘scenes’ poisoning her life. She ascribed his moodiness to the presence of La Grassini, whom he had invited to Paris and whom she correctly suspected him of visiting at night. But he had more serious reasons for displeasure: it had not taken him long to get an idea of what had been going on during his absence, and he did not like it.27
A few days after the battle of Marengo, rumours had begun to circulate in Paris of a French defeat and the death in battle of ‘a great general’. Confidence plummeted, as did government stocks. It was not until 20 June that news of the victory reached the capital, confirmed two days later by the official report, announced by gun salutes. Confidence surged once more, and government stocks staged a dramatic recovery. Although there is some evidence to suggest that Bonaparte, Berthier, Talleyrand, Fouché and others made a killing and may have been behind the original rumours, the episode was nevertheless unsettling, as it underlined the fragility of the consular government. That was not the only thing that bothered Bonaparte.28
Sieyès and other disgruntled ideologues met regularly at Auteuil just outside Paris, and with Bonaparte off to war the question of replacing him featured in their discussions. Other malcontents met at a restaurant in the rue du Bac and at the salon of Germaine de Staël, where the subject also came up. Among the candidates suggested as possible replacements were the hero of the American and French Revolutions Lafayette, the minister of war Carnot, generals Moreau, Brune and Bernadotte, and two émigré royal princes, Enghien and Orléans.
That in itself was understandable, but what upset Bonaparte was what he saw as the lack of faith in him amongst those he depended on. Fouché and Talleyrand had both known of the confabulations, and both waited anxiously, ready to swing either way. Although they detested each other, they were drawn together by the common interest of preventing a Bourbon restoration, which would entail their political, if not physical, death. Bonaparte’s colleagues Lebrun and Cambacérès were also aware of what was going on, and while the latter assured him that in the event of his death he would have persuaded the Senate to nominate Joseph as his successor, they too had waited nervously to see which way to jump. There was nothing surprising or reprehensible in this. It was only natural for people to look to the future, and there was no evidence of any kind of plot against him, but Bonaparte’s sense of insecurity made him touchy. He told Roederer that what he had feared most at Marengo was getting himself killed and being replaced by one of his brothers.29
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