by Alan Schom
Like an enormous fire, typhus is sweeping our hospitals and barracks...Typhus, that mortal plague afflicting all campaigning armies, is caused by the filth of these quarters, the lack of fresh air, the negligence of the troops [in their personal hygiene], and the total lack of concern by our own general staffs...Indeed, even in our hospitals in Milan...the wounded and sick are relegated to disgusting places and denied any sort of help because the war commissars [including Joseph Bonaparte, earlier on] have stolen and sold army medical supplies, down to the very hospital mattresses.
Whether Napoleon replied to Turiot is not known, but his reaction to the letter’s contents is. The corrupt commissaires de guerre responsible for providing medical supplies to his various armies over the years — forming a powerful lobby, with kickbacks to the War Ministry, commanding generals, and influential Parisian politicians — continued to thrive to the end of Napoleon’s career. Despite a few’ occasional promises by him, and even special legislation introduced years later, conditions in fact deteriorated. Little did Turiot realize that these were still the good days. Worse, much worse, was yet to come.[84]
Chapter Four – Crossroads
‘I have tasted command, I cannot give it up.’
“I was received by Buonaparte at the magnificent residence of Montebello, on [June 1, 1797], in the midst of a brilliant court, rather than the usual army headquarters I had expected,” recalled diplomat Count Miot de Melito. “Strict etiquette already reigned round him. Even his aides-de-camp and officers were no longer received at his table, for he had become fastidious in the choice of guests whom he admitted to it. An invitation was an honour eagerly sought, and obtained only with great difficulty...He was in no wise embarrassed or confused by these excessive honours, but received them as though he had been accustomed to them all his life. His reception rooms and an immense tent pitched before the palace were constantly filled with a crowd of generals, administrators, and the most distinguished noblemen of Italy, who came to solicit the favour of a momentary glance or the briefest interview. In a word, all bowed before the glory of his victories and the haughtiness of his demeanour. He was no longer the general of a triumphant Republic, but a conqueror on his own account, imposing his own laws on the vanquished.”[85] At the seasoned age of twenty-seven, Divisional General Bonaparte had already achieved much of the success he had dreamed of as a youth. As commander in chief of the Army of Italy his forces had brought badly needed victories to the First French Republic. The Austrian emperor had been ignominiously defeated, and praise of General Bonaparte rose from every village, town, and city of France, as hundreds of wagonloads of objets d’art, gems, gold, and silver emptied from the ancient palaces and churches of Venice and the fortified Renaissance cities of Lombardy streamed back to Paris to fill the empty treasury (and pockets) of the French Directory. Nor had General Bonaparte’s troops forgone their share of the booty, generals, junior officers, and even NCOs becoming rich instantly (Andre Masséna surpassing them all). Generous shares of this loot were reserved for Napoleon’s mother, Letizia, and brother Lucien, while Joseph and Louis, in Italy now, simply helped themselves. On a table in Bonaparte’s study, Louis de Bourrienne safeguarded a large coffer filled with gold and silver coins with which to meet any immediate expenses. Napoleon had literally produced his own version of the Arabian Nights here on the plains of Lombardy, and Paris appreciated the results. The republicans in particular praised his achievements, and Bourbon sympathizers accepted the conquests for the fatherland, while secretly planning the return of Louis XVIII to his rightful throne. Nevertheless, the Directory found its new sword to be double-edged, for behind the riches and conquest remained the conqueror himself, a man of undisguised ambition.
Bonaparte clearly loved the glory, acclaim, and power he now wielded for the first time. It fitted him like a glove. The entire administration of northern Italy — quite exclusive of his army command — lay in his hands alone. At a word from him, ministers were dismissed or nobles stripped of titles and wealth, then imprisoned or even executed. That was power. An astonished Bourrienne, with his more modest goals, serving as Bonaparte’s private secretary, simply took in the scene, the bad with the good. He was on the winning side, thanks to his formerly impecunious classmate at Brienne, who had later — when he was unemployed and awaiting a fresh army appointment, any appointment — hungrily partaken of numerous dinners provided by Bourrienne’s young wife in their small Paris apartment. But now all had changed, and with it the rules of the game. Brothers Joseph and Lucien would never again be reduced to earning a living as warehouse guards, as they had been in Provence. Nor would Napoleon ever again go without a meal. Bourrienne and his wife, for their part, were no longer permitted to address the great man with the informal tu or even to dine with him, unless specifically invited. Now there were only senior generals, ambassadors, dukes, marquis, and counts.
Napoleon found it all exhilarating and did not want it to end. Therein lay the problem. The Directory was pressing him to conclude peace with the vanquished Austrians. But once this was done, large portions of the occupying forces would be withdrawn and the conquering hero ordered home. This was his first taste of the awe and power of an independent military command, where he alone could dictate all the rules, and he was still hungry. Once back in France, he would return to the boredom and restrictions of any other garrison commander, stripped of all political clout and any say in the dictation of French foreign policy, the glory and independence of Montebello but a fading memory.
During a long conversation with André Miot and Francesco Melzi d’Eril, Napoleon made no attempt to conceal his dread of returning to such a humdrum existence in France. “What I have done up to this point is nothing,” the general told them during a two-hour interview in the gardens of Montebello:
This is but the beginning of my career. Do you really think that I triumphed in Italy in order to aggrandise that pack of lawyers who form the Directory, men like Carnot and Barras? What an absurd idea! A republic of thirty million people, that is what the French want today! But that fad will pass, just like all the others. What they really want is Glory to gratify their Vanity, but as for Liberty, they do not know the meaning of the word.
The key to all was the army, he insisted, and the army would follow his wishes. “Let the Directory try to take this command from me, and they will see who is master. The nation,” he continued, “must have a chief, a chief rendered illustrious by glory, and not by theories of government, by phrases, by speeches which the people do not understand. Give them baubles, that suffices for them; they will be amused and let themselves be led, so long as the end towards which they are heading is skilfully concealed from them.” Then, turning to Melzi, he said: “We shall do what we like with Italy...we are going to create one or two republics of our own design here...” As far as Austria was concerned, Napoleon would hold on to Lombardy and Mantua and give Austria Venice, while he remained in command with almost sovereign powers,
unless by some blunder in Paris I am compelled to make peace; for it is not my intention to finish so promptly with Austria. Peace is not in my best interests. You can see for yourselves what my position is here, what I can do in Italy. If on the other hand peace is made, and I am no longer left at the head of the army...and must renounce power and the high position I have made for myself here...I do not want to leave unless it is to play a role in France similar to the one I have here, and for that the time has not yet come, the pear is not yet ripe.
But if the political situation in Paris were settled (this was before the coup of 18 Fructidor, September 4, 1797), and “if peace becomes necessary to satisfy those boobies in Paris, then it is I who shall make it. For if I left it to someone else [to dictate the terms and sign the treaty] then he would be everyone’s darling, and I quite forgotten.”[86]
Of course Bonaparte couldn’t achieve these goals single-handedly. Conquering armies need successful generals, but such generals should know their place and not steal the limel
ight. When the popular General Bernadotte arrived with a division of the Army of the Rhine to Italy to reinforce him, Napoleon quickly banished him to Paris, ostensibly to present the Directory with the twenty-one regimental flags taken by the French at the Battle of Rivoli. And when in August 1797 the Directory then wanted Napoleon to report back to Paris, purportedly to take command of the troops of the capital to assure their planned September 4 coup, Napoleon instead sent General Augereau, who was beginning to become too assertive — and popular. Augereau duly quelled the extreme Jacobin republicans and royalists, but when he was subsequently rewarded with command of the Army of the Rhine, Napoleon was upset, jealous of any laurels and glory that had escaped him.
In mid-July 1797, for the first time as supreme warlord, General Bonaparte summoned the five full army divisions under his command to Milan to give an unprecedented review of French military might. In theory this was a belated part of the Bastille Day celebrations, but in reality it was an overt notice to Paris that he was the most powerful man in France. This he reinforced by ordering each division to publish an address to the French government — using the most arrogant language — threatening the monarchist faction in France, but which was clearly meant for the Directory.[87] As the tens of thousands of victorious infantrymen, cavalrymen and artillerymen passed in review before their commander in chief, it was a staggering display not only of French power but of Napoleon’s as well. “I have tasted command, I cannot give it up,” he was to repeat time and again thereafter.[88] And Paris did indeed take heed.
In the third week of August, after quietly celebrating his twenty-eighth birthday in Milan, Napoleon and Josephine, accompanied by Berthier and Miot, set out for a brief trip to Lake Maggiore and a lovely villa on Isola Bella. Because of the sweltering heat they left at night, and in the semi-darkened carriage Napoleon grew unusually cheerful and “extremely attentive to his wife,” as Miot delicately put it, “frequently taking little conjugal liberties that rather embarrassed Berthier and me.” Later on a “gay and animated” Napoleon related “several anecdotes of his youth.” They found Isola Bella, “the most beautiful of the lake’s islands,” a delight, Bonaparte momentarily removed from the pressures of work as commandant of an occupied country.[89] But this was only a two-day respite, and soon their carriage descended the mountain back into the intense heat of the valley below and the simmering politics of Milan.
Bernadotte, whose outspoken Jacobin sympathies had so annoyed Napoleon, was now out of the way, and Augereau was en route to Paris, while Miot traveled back to Turin to negotiate a new treaty with Piedmont and the king of Sardinia.[90]
It was in Paris, however, and not in Lombardy where the main event affecting Napoleon and his fresh Italian conquests was now taking place. With the backing of the newly arrived General Augereau, the coup d’état of September 4 was successfully executed. The republicans ousted monarchists and moderates and replaced them with hitherto minor, local Jacobin politicians: Gen. Jean Moulin, Louis Gohier, and Pierre Roger-Ducos. This reinforced a stronger Jacobin influence in the Luxembourg Palace and the former Bourbon Palace (where the Assembly of Five Hundred had earlier attempted to name Gaspard Monge, who would soon become a valued friend and ally of Napoleon’s, to the Directory, an action precluded, however, by his absence in Italy). Meanwhile, ironically thanks to the successful coup, greater pressure was in turn brought to bear on Bonaparte, by Gen. H. J. G. Clarke, the Directory’s negotiator with the Austrians at Udine.
Although the preliminaries to an Italian peace settlement had been concluded at Leoben back on April 15, Napoleon had managed to extend the negotiations at Udine for months, while he continued to expand his conquests. The behind-the-scenes activity was complex and intense. Napoleon’s aide-de-camp Antoine Chamans Lavalette, who had been sent to Paris as his “negotiator” with the Directory, had in fact just dashed back to Udine to warn Bonaparte of the volatile situation in the capital: The new Directory had suddenly dismissed General Clarke both as negotiator and soldier but was also most upset about Bonaparte’s intention of returning Venice to the Austrians. More important, Lavalette disclosed, the newly reconstructed Directory had dispatched a special courier to Udine — due any hour now — with instructions not only forbidding Bonaparte to sign the draft treaty but also ordering him back to France!
Napoleon conceded defeat. If he wanted to be the one who concluded the peace treaty, he would have to do so immediately. Reluctantly convoking all negotiators, at 10:00 P.M. on October 17, 1797, he and they signed the final draft Treaty of Campo Formio. Two hours later he dispatched Berthier and Monge with this binding international document to Paris. Shortly after their departure, the Directory’s special courier arrived with the expected orders, informing Napoleon that they were “looking forward with the greatest pleasure to seeing the hero of 13 Vendémiaire once again.”[91] Napoleon had outfoxed them, at least in part. Nevertheless, his own future seemed in doubt.
As a result of this important new treaty, among other things Austria now legally recognized the cession of Belgium and Holland as well as the left bank of the Rhine, not to mention the French conquest of Lombardy and acquisition of three Venetian islands: Corfu (Kerkira), Zante (Zakinthos), and Cephalonia (Kafillinia). In return Bonaparte had given Austria much of the Venetian Republic, including Venice — after first looting it, including some of the splendors of Venice’s eleventh-century Byzantine Basilica of San Marco. (In fact it was at the insistence of Gaspard Monge that the French were able to include among the war booty from the Venetian capital several major paintings and the marvelous four bronze horses from San Marco, originally taken by the Venetians from Nero’s triumphal arch in Rome.)
In addition to the Treaty of Campo Formio, Monge and Berthier left with the “Army flag.”[92] This was an enormous tricolor flag, one side of which read, “To the Army of Italy, A Grateful Fatherland,” while the reverse listed battles fought by Napoleon, and places taken, followed by the results of those campaigns, including the seizure of 150,000 prisoners, 170 regimental flags, 550 cannon, 600 pieces of light field artillery, five pontoon-bridge teams, nine sixty-four-gun ships of the line, twelve thirty-two-gun frigates, twelve corvettes, and eighteen galley vessels — outrageous lies, for the most part. This list was followed by the diplomatic results as well, including successful negotiations with the king of Sardinia, Genoa, the duke of Parma, the king of Naples, the pope, and of course with the Austrian emperor. The flag went on to mention all the places and peoples “liberated” by the French, including those of Bologna, Ferrara, Modena, Massa-Carrara, Romagna, Lombardy, Brescia, Bergamo, Mantua, Cremona, Chiavena, Bormio, the Valtellina, Genoa, Corfu, Ithaca, as well as various imperial fiefdoms. Then followed the names of some of the great works of art stolen and now en route to Paris.[93] The paintings of the great Italian masters would be safe from marauders at last!
The 150,000 Austrian prisoners allegedly taken were more soldiers than the Austrians ever sent into Italy. And the number of ships purportedly seized exceeded all the ships the entire French navy captured during the whole of the Consulate and Empire, 1799-1814. Thus the flag should be considered an early example of public relations rather than historical fact.
Reaching Paris on October 25, Monge and Berthier presented the Executive Directory with the new treaty and the flag. Meeting in special session the following day, the outmaneuvered directors begrudgingly ratified Campo Formio in unprecedented haste, for despite their pique, public enthusiasm for this peace treaty (and the man responsible for it) was unanimous, indeed hysterical. At the same time the directors issued fresh orders to Divisional General Bonaparte. After prefatory thanks for services rendered the French Republic — without the flow of that booty it (and they) could not have survived — the directors confirmed his transfer from his dangerously powerful and prestigious post as commander in chief of the Army of Italy and peremptorily ordered him home to take up his new command over the embryonic army forming on the Channel coast, intended for the invasion of
England.
With these orders — including his own appointment as Napoleon’s successor — in hand, Berthier was sent directly back to Italy. Upon his arrival at the Montebello Palace, it was his disagreeable task personally to inform his dour chief that he was relieving him of his command. A furious Napoleon, presented with a fait accompli, sent Josephine, Bourrienne, and Captain Charles on ahead to prepare the house in Paris, even as he handed over command. “I can no longer obey them,” a seething Bonaparte confided to Miot during a brief stopover in Turin the next day. “I have made up my mind, if I cannot be master, then I shall simply leave France.”[94] Continuing on to Basel and the German states, he spent the last week of November 1797 at the Congress of Rastadt, convened to implement the new treaty, to study the diplomatic situation there, before finally crossing the Rhine and the French frontier, to reach Paris on December 5.
The French capital, well prepared by Bonaparte’s emissaries and successful publicity campaign, was ecstatic. A reluctant Directory, still under enormous public pressure, offered a sumptuous champagne reception for the conquering hero of the hour.[95] Greeted by a standing ovation of hundreds of the elect, Bonaparte entered the courtyard of the Luxembourg Palace, which had been hurriedly transformed into a colorfully festooned amphitheater of sorts, with rows of special temporary seating, as the choir of the Conservatoire sang patriotic hymns against a red-white-and-blue backdrop.
Foreign Minister Talleyrand addressed the distinguished assemblage, welcoming the father of the Treaty of Campo Formio, which gave France two new provinces, the Low Countries, and Lombardy. This was followed by a brief speech by Bonaparte himself into which he slipped — almost unperceived by anyone — his warning: “When the happiness of the French people is [one day] firmly seated on the best organic laws, the whole of Europe will become free.”[96] The implications were great, and if his words did raise one or two eyebrows, they were quickly followed by Director Barras’s own extravagant encomium, laced in irony. “The sublime revolution of the French people produced a new genius amid the history of famous men. The first among them all, Citizen General, you have cast aside all previous examples, and with the same arm with which you shattered the enemies of the republic, you have swept aside all heroic rivals cast up by antiquity.”