THE GENERALS

by Simon Scarrow

  Lucien kept his voice calm as he answered. ‘Victories are all very well, but the people want peace, brother.’

  ‘Peace?’ Napoleon pressed a hand over his heart. ‘Don’t they understand that I want peace too? There is no man in France who yearns for peace more than I do. But we can only have peace once our enemies are defeated. At the moment they will not accept anything less than the restoration of the Bourbons and the destruction of all that the revolution has achieved.’

  Talleyrand coughed lightly and Napoleon rounded on him with a cynical smile. ‘Are you ill, or is it that you have something to say?’

  ‘Citizen Consul, I am merely concerned about the notion of having peace only when our enemies are defeated.’

  ‘Really? I would have thought it was axiomatic.’

  ‘There is another way. We must negotiate a peace.’

  Napoleon sighed wearily. ‘That’s precisely what we are trying to do. Even with their armies defeated and an armistice agreed, the Austrians are delaying moves towards signing a peace treaty at every opportunity.’

  ‘They will see reason, in time,’ Talleyrand offered.

  ‘If they don’t see the gleam of English gold first, to lure them back into war.’

  ‘Precisely,’ Talleyrand countered. ‘The problem is England. While we are at war with England there will be no prospect of peace for France. We must deal with England.’

  ‘Oh, we’ll deal with them all right.’ Napoleon nodded. ‘The moment we land a French army on their shores. We’ll dictate peace terms from their houses of Parliament.’

  ‘You misunderstand me, Citizen Consul. I meant that we must deal with them in the sense of making peace with England.’

  ‘Oh.’ Napoleon looked disappointed. ‘But there can be no chance of peace while Pitt is Prime Minister.That man has made the destruction of our revolution his life’s mission. He denies us peace, and is prepared to ruin his country to bribe other nations to oppose us.’

  ‘True,’ Talleyrand conceded. ‘So we must wait until he is replaced, and, provided that we proceed shrewdly, that could happen rather sooner than you might suppose.’

  Napoleon narrowed his eyes. ‘Explain yourself.’

  ‘England’s strength relies on her trade. She needs customers for her goods, so we must attack her trade in order to hurt her enough to compel her to negotiate.’

  ‘How?’ Lucien asked. ‘You know the state of our navy. Most of our fleet is laid up, the best officers fled during the revolution, and man for man, ship for ship, they are no match for the Royal Navy.’ He glanced at Napoleon.‘That was made perfectly clear at Aboukir Bay.’

  ‘Thank you for reminding me,’ Napoleon replied coldly.

  ‘Then we don’t attack their sea trade,’ Talleyrand continued. ‘We cut them off from their customers instead. We make treaties and alliances with whatever nations we can, and at the same time we make sure that we use our diplomatic contacts to undermine England at every opportunity.’

  ‘Easier said than done,’ Fouché muttered.

  Talleyrand turned to him with a faintly amused expression. ‘You surprise me, citizen. I had thought you and your agents have had commendable success in your efforts to undermine and slander the opponents of the consulate. I merely wish to imitate your methods on the diplomatic stage.’

  As Fouché frowned Napoleon struggled to hide a smile and nodded to the foreign minister. ‘Go on.’

  ‘We must move quickly, while the example of Marengo is fresh in the minds of the rulers of Europe. Spain is weak, and will bow to pressure to return to France the territories she seized in North America. She is also concerned about English rivalry in the Americas and the Pacific ocean.We might yet persuade King Carlos to join us in the war against England. Prussia has no desire to echo the Austrian defeats and, in any case, they are rivals for control over the German principalities. The Tsar of Russia is furious about England’s claiming the right to search all ships at sea. My agents in St Petersburg say that Tsar Paul is even now trying to coax the Prussians into a joint war against England for that reason alone. Even America is losing patience with the Royal Navy’s interference with their shipping. Of course, while England is allied with Austria, that means the Tsar will be obliged to fight Austria as well. So, as you can see, the international situation is replete with advantages for us to seize.’ Talleyrand clasped his hands together. ‘If we can make peace with Austria, and put our efforts into diplomacy, then we can isolate England. In time she will be forced to accept peace on our terms.’

  ‘You make it sound easy,’ Napoleon remarked.

  ‘I did not say it would be easy, Citizen Consul. But it will work.’

  Napoleon nodded thoughtfully. Talleyrand’s advice made sense. And his scheme had the virtue of granting Napoleon time to reorganise and rebuild France’s exhausted armies for when they were needed again - as he had no doubt they would be. Until England was utterly crushed, any peace treaty would be little more than a breathing space before the struggle continued. But France desperately needed a period of peace. The mood of the public earlier that day was eloquent proof of that, and Napoleon’s mind turned from the wider sphere to the more immediate problems within France’s borders.

  ‘Very well, Talleyrand. Do all that you can to isolate England. That is the goal of our foreign policy from here on, and every other consideration is subordinate to that aim. Clear?’

  ‘Yes, Citizen Consul.’

  ‘Good. Then while our diplomats do their work abroad, we shall provide proof of our desire for peace here in France.We will make a new nation. We will consolidate the gains of the revolution so that our enemies see the futility of their desire to restore the Bourbons and all that they stand for. And we must convince our people that they have a stake in the future of France. All our people.’

  ‘What do you mean by all?’ asked Lucien.

  ‘I mean that we cannot succeed unless we resolve those issues that divide the French people.’

  Lucien stirred uncomfortably. ‘There are good reasons why the people are divided, brother. Class, religion and politics are the very stuff of society. And there are those who are for the revolution and those who are against. It is our duty to see that the latter are suppressed and eventually eradicated.’

  Napoleon sighed. ‘Can’t you see? That will never happen. As long as we drive people into the ranks of those who oppose us, France will never be at peace with itself. The process of revolution will never end. We will always see enemies about us, and be locked into one bloody purge after another.’

  ‘Then what are you saying?’ Lucien asked suspiciously.

  Napoleon stared at him for a moment before replying. ‘Perhaps it is time that the revolution came to an end. Perhaps it is time that we embraced those who opposed the revolution.’

  ‘We once called them enemies of the people.’

  ‘But they are the people,’ Napoleon countered earnestly.‘They always were, even when the Committee of Public Safety was drawing a line between those who supported the revolution and those who opposed it. That was the Committee’s mistake. There was hardly a peasant in the land who was not a revolutionary, until the Committee turned their sights on the church. The moment they began to attack the priests, they drove a wedge between their own supporters. It is the same with the nobility. Many of them were radicals, yet because of their birth they were branded enemies of the people.’ Napoleon uttered the last phrase with contempt. ‘It was the same in Corsica, Lucien. You remember how our people embraced the revolution? You recall those times at the Jacobin club in Ajaccio?’

  ‘I remember.’

  Napoleon smiled. ‘Every one of us was a fervent radical . . . until the French government decided to suppress our Corsican identity. They lost Corsica because they did not embrace us as Corsicans. Such a little thing, and yet, people being people, there was a conflict where there never should have been one.That was the great mistake. That is what we must resolve.’

  Lucien shrugged.‘Ho
w? There has been too much blood shed for people to even imagine resolving their differences.’

  Napoleon knew that Lucien was right. But unless they tried to draw the French people back together their foreign enemies would not be able to resist exploiting the issues of religion and class that divided France. As long as there were émigrés who claimed to speak on behalf of the downtrodden church and nobility, then France would be at war with itself even as it was at war with other nations.That must end, Napoleon decided firmly, before France devoured itself and left England gloating over the ravaged carcass of its longtime enemy.

  ‘So, then, what do you propose, Napoleon? An amnesty for the priests and aristos?’

  Napoleon took a deep breath. ‘I propose that we abolish the laws proscribing the nobles and allow them to return to France. Furthermore, we return their property to them.’

  ‘Not the land already in the hands of the peasants, surely? If we did that there’d be another revolution. One we’d not survive.’

  ‘Very well,’ Napoleon conceded.‘We return as much property as we can. And one other thing. We must make a treaty with the Church of Rome.’

  ‘What kind of treaty?’

  ‘We have to restore the church in France.’

  ‘Are you mad, brother? After all that the church has done to the common people over the centuries? After all the money it has taken from their purses? After all the food it has taken from their mouths? The radicals would not stand for it. In case you hadn’t noticed, most of those radicals happen to be in the army. Are you prepared to put their loyalty to the test?’

  ‘No.That is why any such treaty must be negotiated in secret. And the church must be subordinate to the state. The common people can have their religion, they can have their Catholic church, as long as it is controlled by us, and not by Rome.’

  ‘Forgive me, First Consul,’ Fouché said quietly, ‘but your brother is right - my agents keep me briefed on the feeling amongst the soldiers. It is too dangerous to even attempt it.’

  ‘It is too dangerous not to,’ Napoleon replied. ‘We need the common people behind us.We need to deny them any reason to offer their loyalty to our enemies. Besides, soldiers forget their politics the moment they march off to war.’

  Talleyrand stirred. ‘That sounds like an argument for making war.’

  ‘Not this time.’ Napoleon reflected for a moment. ‘But war does serve a purpose as much within a society as without.’

  ‘Until a society grows weary of it. As weary as France is now.’

  ‘We’ll know if that’s true soon enough,’ Napoleon concluded. ‘In the meantime we must deal with Austria. If they play their game as they did before they will drag the negotiations out for as long as possible while they prepare to renew the fight. In which case there will be more war, whether our people like it or not. It is your job, Fouché, to silence those we cannot win round.’

  ‘I will see to it,’ Fouché replied evenly.

  ‘Good.’ Napoleon nodded. Fouché’s slightly reptilian features unnerved him. Napoleon had no doubt that the Minister of the Interior would use any measure needed to suppress opposition to the new order. It was regrettable, thought Napoleon, but the need for repressive action had been forced on him by the enemies of France. Political freedom was a luxury at the best of times. Besides, what did the common peasant or soldier in the ranks really care about such refined notions as a free press? As long as they were fed and entertained then they were content. And, better still, they could be counted on to support Napoleon against the lawyers, philosophers and radicals who formed the core of those opposed to the consulate. In time, when there was true peace, there might be occasion to let people express themselves more freely.

  Until then France must be saved from herself before she could be saved from her enemies.

  Having signed the peace preliminaries the Austrians delayed moves towards a peace treaty when negotiations opened at Lunéville, just as Napoleon had expected. The Austrian envoys presented a long list of their terms, few of which Napoleon could agree to. Nevertheless it granted the French armies a chance to rest through the long summer months. Meanwhile, in Paris, Napoleon worked feverishly to reform the governance of the country.

  A commission was set up to frame a new legal code that would sweep away all the regional anomalies and update the civil, criminal and financial laws of France. Napoleon attended as many meetings as he could, driving its business forward until the first draft was ready four months later. Plans were made to improve roads, ports and canals.Theatres were to be subsidised to help keep the people entertained and provision was made for the care of more than ten thousand wounded veterans who had returned from the wars. Joseph led a small party of church figures to Rome to open negotiations with the Pope for the restoration of the Catholic church in France. Before Joseph left Paris, Napoleon made it clear to him that the final concordat would not include any provision for priests to collect tithes, nor would any property of the church be returned, and the appointment of bishops would have to be approved by the French government.

  All this frantic activity consumed much of Napoleon’s time. He rose before dawn and was dressed and had breakfasted by six in the morning. Then he went to his private office, read the pile of documents prepared for him by Bourrienne and scribbled notes in the margins, and dictated his responses to the team of secretaries standing by, pens poised. At noon he had a brief lunch and moved on to attend some of the committees he had instituted to rebuild the nation along more modern, efficient lines.Then there would be a late dinner, after which, if there was no pressing business that still needed attending to, Napoleon joined Josephine and a small inner circle of his family and friends for entertainment. Sometimes it was cards, Napoleon favouring pontoon or whist, at which he invariably cheated.

  ‘Why do you do that?’ Josephine asked him irritably, one evening in early autumn, as they said good night to their guests and retired to their sleeping quarters.

  ‘Do what, my love?’

  ‘Cheat at cards.You do it every time we play.’

  ‘Do I?’

  She dug her elbow into his side. ‘You know you do. Why?’

  He shrugged. ‘It means that I win every time.’

  Josephine paused to look at him as they entered her bedchamber. She placed her palm against his cheek and gently caressed it. ‘Is it so important to you to win at everything? To be the best all the time?’

  ‘What else is there? Why should a man aim any lower than the best in his ambitions?’ He eased her gently inside and closed the door behind them.Then he slipped his arms round her waist and pulled her towards him. The scent of her perfume filled his head as he kissed the curve of her neck, marvelling at its silken texture. He whispered, ‘I want to be the best lover that you have ever had . . .’

  ‘You are,’ she purred, tilting her head aside as she enjoyed the sensation of his lips grazing her flesh there. ‘You are the best.’

  Napoleon wanted to believe it, more than anything he had ever believed in his life. Yet the knowledge of her infidelities twisted in his mind like a blade and his body trembled with rage.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Nothing. Take your clothes off.’

  She pulled away and looked at him. There was a wild glint in his eye that she took for passion and she murmured, ‘Yes, my love.’

  He stood and watched as she hurriedly removed her dress, her bodice, her stockings and finally undid the lace straps of her underwear. Then she stood before him, naked, and trembling in the cold air even though a servant had lit the fire in the corner of the room. He took one of her small breasts in his hand and rolled his thumb over her dark brown nipple, all the time staring into her eyes. Then he let his hand slide down her ribs, over her stomach and in between her legs. Josephine shut her eyes and bit gently on her lip.

  He suddenly withdrew his hand and wrenched at the buttons of his jacket. Josephine took the opportunity to draw away from him and jump into the bed, sliding down under
the thick coverings and curling into a ball. It took him a fraction of the time it had taken her to undress and then he clambered in beside her. There was no preamble. He mounted her, thrust himself inside and worked to a swift, vigorous climax and then collapsed on to her with a groan.

  ‘That was quick,’ she muttered with a trace of disappointment evident in her tone.

  ‘I’m a busy man,’ he replied huskily as his heart pounded.

  ‘Too busy to pleasure me it seems.’