by Alan Schom
Stymied and at the breaking point, Bonaparte strode out of the château and across the garden. “We have to play every card we have now,” he said as he passed cheering troops. Entering the Orangerie without being announced or requested, his hat in one hand and riding crop in the other, escorted this time by four strapping grenadiers armed with campaign swords, the little general with the big shinning boots, found himself in the middle of a session of the Council of Five Hundred, where Barras’s letter of resignation had just been read:
The glory accompanying the return of the illustrious warrior whose splendid career I had the good fortune of opening for him, along with the astonishing marks of confidence the legislators have shown him and the decree of the National Convention, have convinced me that, whatever post he is called on by the nation to fill, the threats to liberty will be overcome and the interests of the army guaranteed.
Thus it is that I joyfully return to the rank of plain citizen.[352]
After the mollifying words of ex-Director Barras, the timing of the “illustrious warrior” could not have been more unfortunate. “What are you doing here?” the infuriated deputies demanded. “General, is it for such unconscionable acts as these that you conquered for us on the field of battle?” Cries of “Down with the dictator! The sanctuary of the nation’s laws has been violated. Down with the tyrant! Down with this Cromwell!” “Outlaw him! Long live the Constitution!”[353] pelted him from every direction, as the angered men in their white state robes and blue sashes closed menacingly around him. Bonaparte was only saved at the last minute as the four grenadiers shoved back the threatening hands and bodies — but not before one deputy grabbed him by the collar and shook him.
Leaving utter mayhem in his wake, the trembling Bonaparte stomped back across the gardens to the château, to relate to Sieyès what had just transpired, as he gathered his general staff around him.[354] Beside himself, he rushed back outside. Telling the troops assembled outside of the attack on his person by the Five Hundred, he shouted: “Soldiers! Can I count on you?” By now Generals Murat and Sérurier were at his side, and many other senior officers were equally wrought up. In the Orangerie, Lucien Bonaparte, doing all in his power to prevent his brother from being outlawed, pounded his gavel furiously, his voice unheard in the ensuing pandemonium. Exasperated, he tore off his presidential sash and toga, shouting, “I hereby place on this tribune, as a sign of mourning, the badge and costume of the supreme magistrature.” Then, practically unnoticed, he left the hall.[355]
Outside, encountering Napoleon and Sieyès, a shaken Lucien told them: “If you don’t stop them within the next ten minutes, all is lost.”[356] And, mounting a horse, Lucien shouted at the troops: “The majority of the council is being threatened by the Terror [Jacobins], some even wielding daggers...and threatening to outlaw the general who has been charged with executing the council’s decree. You must expel the rebels from the Orangerie. Those brigands are no longer the representatives of the people, but of the dagger.” Then withdrawing a sword and pointing it at Napoleon’s heart, he swore before all of them to run his own brother through then and there if he did not respect their liberties, which finally won cheers and smiles from the soldiers.[357] “Lucien,” said Bourrienne, “showed an activity, an intelligence, a courage, a hardiness, and a presence of mind rare in any man at any time. From what I have seen, it is incontestably to him and his conduct that the ultimate success of 19 Brumaire was due.”
Napoleon, pale but calmer, turned to address the troops: “Soldiers, I have led you to victory in the past. Can I count on you here?”[358] Apart from an occasional hesitant cheer, a curious, tentative silence and sense of bewilderment hung over the thousands of men. Old soldiers who had campaigned with Bonaparte to their great glory in the Army of Italy, and others in Murat’s old cavalry unit, were clearly moved and on the brink of going over to their general, but they held back, aware of the gravity of marching against a duly constituted government body of their legally elected representatives. Napoleon could think of nothing else to say or do to convince them. He stood there, riding crop in hand, white, speechless, incredulous that his enthusiasm and his wishes had not ignited them. Finally the tension was unexpectedly broken as General Murat urged his horse ahead of Napoleon and Lucien, waving his long cavalry sword, calling out to the troops to move. That crude gesture seemed to do it: Drums suddenly rolled and all the troops moved en masse, following Generals Murat and Leclerc on their horses into the Orangerie.[359] Shouting “Vive le general!” they rushed into the glass building, where they were greeted by shouts of abuse from the swarming deputies in their white robes, Murat’s angry voice thundering above them all, “Dammit, get the whole lot out of here!”[360] Terrified, most of the deputies poured out through the nearest exits, and within ten minutes the Orangerie was swept clean and still. It was 7:30 and dark outside. Napoleon’s schedule was a shambles.
Meanwhile, in the Galérie d’Apollon, the Ancients, learning of what had just transpired, hastily reconvened.[361] Here at least the steady guiding hands of Napoleon’s fellow conspirators Sieyès and Roger-Ducos had maintained order and direction. Most of the few dozen remaining Ancients drew up the formal draft of a new decree naming a new “temporary executive committee” consisting of Bonaparte, Sieyès, and Roger-Ducos to replace the defunct Directory. “This semblance of legal representation was essential,” Bourrienne noted, “for Bonaparte, in spite of the illegalities committed the previous day, wished to present the façade of having acted legally”[362] — window dressing for public consumption, and for history.
After stopping to rest and get something to eat, Lucien managed to convene sixty-one of the remaining deputies of the Council of Five Hundred. Meeting in the cold hall, lit only by a handful of candles, at 1:30 in the morning on 20 Brumaire, Boulay de la Meurthe — another member of Bonaparte’s inner circle — addressed them, declaring that there remained in France “neither public liberty nor personal freedom,” merely “a phantom government.”[363] A new one had to be installed under an entirely new constitution. To ensure no further problems from the Left, they voted to exclude all Jacobin members of the present Five Hundred and Ancients from any future legislative body, and then seconded the earlier motion of the Ancients by authorizing the creation of “an executive consular commission.”[364] Bonaparte, Sieyès, and Roger-Ducos were then summoned to take the oath of office. Until a new constitution could be written, the former two assemblies would be replaced by a special twenty-five-man commission to help govern the country and administer the policies and decisions of the executive consuls. With only two members now opposing these measures, the motions were carried and the Constitution of the Year III proclaimed null and void. Bonaparte had successfully pulled off what Alexis de Tocqueville called “one of the most badly conceived and executed coups d’état imaginable.”[365]
The night session had gone “smoothly and quietly,” Bourrienne recorded:
At three in the morning all was finished and the Château of St.-Cloud...once again enveloped in a vast solitude, resumed its customary state of calm...I climbed into the carriage with Bonaparte as we took the road back to Paris. Bonaparte was so exhausted after so many trials and tribulations that — [as] a whole new future unfolded before him — he was entirely lost in thought, and during the journey back did not utter a single word.[366]
Chapter Fourteen – The Consulate
‘We have lived together for so many years, and have been so closely united that our hearts are one, and you know better than anyone how fond I am of you.’
To Joseph
“I am greatly disposed to think, that the present [French] Government is much inclined to correct, at least in part, the follies of the past,” Secretary of State John Marshall informed President John Adams in the spring of 1800.[367] War with France could be averted if the new French government, the Consulate, as it was called, would make amends, substantial reparations for past attacks on American citizens and property during the violent revo
lutionary years. For months three upright and wary senior American ministers plenipotentiary — Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth, William Vans Murray, and William Richardson Davie — had been negotiating with their French counterparts, led by Joseph Bonaparte. For months they had been in deadlock, first because Napoleon had been stalling and as a result of very real differences and then because the latest military campaign against the Austrians took First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte to battlefields far from the Parisian conference table. Nor had relations between the stern, puritanical American diplomats with the easy-going Joseph Bonaparte been smooth. Ellsworth and Murray in particular had more than once been at the point of despair. But finally there had been a breakthrough, for even Puritans are willing to compromise, and on September 30, 1800, they had agreed to the articles and wording of a new treaty between the American and French Republics.
Now, at four o’clock on Friday, October 3, the spacious courtyard of Joseph Bonaparte’s sprawling country estate of Mortefontaine was filled with hundreds of the most important government officials of the French Republic. Joseph and Julie Bonaparte, as hosts to the multitude — a queue of more than a thousand carriages stretched back some twenty miles to Paris — waited with smiles and a little anxiety. Trumpets pierced the air, and drums rolled as cavalry units of the Consular Guard suddenly appeared, the ground shaking beneath the thunder of their hooves and those of the six white horses recently given First Consul Bonaparte by Austrian Emperor Franz I, the state carriage coming to a halt in the Court of Honor as other elite troops of the Guard snapped to attention.
This was clearly Joseph Bonaparte’s great day, and if the signing of this Franco-American treaty was hardly his most important coup, it was nevertheless a bold step forward in his own career, to be followed in a few months by the even more spectacular treaties of Lunéville (concluding hostilities with Austria) and Amiens (with England). But this was the first important treaty to be concluded at his estate, with the eyes of the nation — nay, of the world — on him. Mr. and Mrs. Murray and William Davie stood near Joseph, and even the crotchety Oliver Ellsworth had left his bed, to which he had been confined because of a severe attack of kidney stones. William Murray, who had found Joseph Bonaparte the diplomat rather a fierce contender for a while, now saw Joseph the chatelain graciously indolent, warm, even charming, full of surprises, including his “flow of literary knowledge” that “comes from him like an insensible perspiration.”[368]
The estate of Mortefontaine seemed to shrink as more than three thousand dignitaries and special guests invaded the gracious salons, overflowing into the vast park that was in turn encompassed by a village, mills, and numerous farms, all set on well over a thousand acres in all directions. The English garden, so uncontrolled and informal after the rigid constraints that his brother Napoleon so preferred in the gardens of the Tuileries, Versailles, and Fontainebleau, somehow came as a relief. Lakes with wooded isles, rocky hills, temples, and peacocks, along with magnificent old chestnuts, oaks, elms, and lime trees stood as backdrop, as the ministers of First Consul Bonaparte’s government witnessed Foreign Minister Talleyrand’s presentation of the Convention of Peace, Commerce, and Navigation to Bonaparte. All the ministers were here, as were consuls, the somewhat reduced diplomatic corps, dozens of senior general officers of the French army and navy, members of the all-important and newly created State Council, the highest judges of the land, and the presidents of the various national institutions, including those of the Tribunate, the Corps Législatif, and the Senate. Farther back were their ladies in all their magnificence, in gowns specially made for the occasion, arms, bosoms, and coiffures glittering with gems, the fruit of Napoleon’s campaigns. But it was the rare sight of a man whose appearance Napoleon was shortly to ban, a man whose name rang in the hearts and imaginations of Frenchmen and Americans alike — perhaps even more than that of Bonaparte himself — the forty-three-year-old Gen. Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, and his lovely wife, Adrienne, that attracted as much attention and comment as anyone there.
Signed on October 1, 1800, by Joseph Bonaparte and his three colleagues, and of course by the three American “commissioners,” the treaty was pending final ratification by both governments.[369] War between France and the United States, war that Secretary of State John Marshall believed to be inevitable had these negotiations fallen through, had been averted, though just barely. Ending the state of quasi hostilities existing between the two countries, it now established free commerce between them, while outlawing contraband of war (anything from guns, ammunition, and swords to cavalry saddles) that could be seized by either party. France had successfully removed the fledgling American democracy from the ties of London, creating a new crack in the slate of nations England was attempting to assemble for the purpose of further isolating France. This was just the beginning, however, as Napoleon’s gaze fell farther afield on a seemingly unbounded horizon.
As the document was handed over, cannonfire shook the great house, announcing to the world this diplomatic coup, as everyone celebrated with vintage champagne and conversation. Then Joseph’s butler announced that dinner was served, and some 180 special guests filed into three of the largest reception rooms, all decorated in Franco-American motifs.
The main dining room, now dubbed the “Salle de l’Union,” had several American inscriptions on the walls, in the form of shields placed over the crossed flags of France and the United States, including one reading, “Fourth of July 1776, American Independence,” another, “Lexington,” followed by “Saratoga,” “York Town,” and other battles and events of the American Revolution. The remaining two halls bore the names “Salle de Washington” and “Salle de Franklin,” with appropriate busts of those two gentlemen set off by tasteful floral displays. Various toasts were offered, Napoleon lifting his glass “to the memory of the French and Americans who died on the field of battle for the independence of the world.”[370]
Following dinner, the guests stepped out into the garden briefly to watch a colorful fireworks display above the nearest lake, representing the motif of the union of France with its new American friends, over a flotilla of model warships sailing across the water, complete with sails and miniature French and American flags. Yet another hint for the Americans. As everyone stepped inside once again, a concert of French and Italian music was given, followed by two light plays. These were followed in turn by a grand ball that lasted well into the morning, but from which Napoleon and Josephine, and the Americans, retired shortly after midnight.
Early the next morning the indefatigable first consul was off on a hunt, bringing down a doe. Afterward he strolled in the gardens with a curious Murray, the latter’s first real tête-à-tête with Napoleon. The American diplomat was much impressed, finding Bonaparte
grave, rather thoughtful, occasionally severe — not inflated nor egotistical — very exact in all his motions wh[ich] show at once an impatient heart & a methodical head — not the exactness of a special pleader — but of a most skilful self possest fencing master...He speaks with a frankness so much above fear that you think he has no reserve — He is a pleasing man with the Soldier drawing into the politician — He could never have been a trifler in his life.[371]
A shrewd assessment.
As Ellsworth and Davie were taking their leave and about to board their carriage for Le Havre, thence to sail for America with their new treaty, Napoleon presented them each with a handful of gold Roman coins recently excavated in the region. Taken aback, they put their heads together momentarily and then handed back the gifts, explaining to a baffled first consul — and a much bemused Talleyrand — that they were not permitted to accept foreign gifts.[372]
Unknown to the three Americans, on that very October 4 the one person obviously absent at Mortefontaine, General Berthier, was at Madrid signing the secret Second Treaty of Ildefonso, ceding the vast region of Louisiana and the Spanish half of the island of Hispaniola to France. It was not a good bargain for Spain; the Spanish received
only the Duchy of Tuscany for the Spanish king’s daughter, Maria Luisa, and his son-in-law, Louis de Bourbon, duke of Parma.[373] Although later disturbed by this deception, the pragmatic Americans nevertheless duly ratified their treaty. They were in no position to do otherwise, and in the long run it proved a most fortunate event so far as the United States government was concerned.