Napoleon Bonaparte

by Alan Schom

  Napoleon ordered him to hold on as best he could, while privately acknowledging the strong possibility of his surrender, given the odds against him, not to mention the lack of supplies and mutinies he found in the besieged city. But Masséna was holding down a large number of Austrian troops, thereby permitting Bonaparte, with Berthier’s Reserve Army, to descend southward from the staging area in Geneva. Masséna was soon forced to surrender Genoa, but permitted to withdraw with his entire army intact, while General Suchet’s small force was attempting to defend Nice from the Austrian troops pouring through the Colle de Tenda. A series of minor but often dramatic battles ensued, as Berthier and Bonaparte descended through Châtillon, Ivrée, Chiusella, Verceil, Chivasso, and Piacenza. Murat’s victorious troops, along with Napoleon, reached Milan on June 2, where a Te Deum was chanted “to celebrate the fortunate delivery of Italy from the heretics and infidels” — that is, the Roman Catholic Habsburgs — as the first consul announced to the world.[517] But so quick were the victories and advances of the French that Napoleon’s commanders sometimes received three or four conflicting sets of orders on the same day. Such was the background leading to Marengo.

  Berthier, as “general-in-chief” of the Reserve Army now spearheading operations in Italy (with Napoleon looking over his shoulder), prepared for the confrontation with Melas’s main force. Generals Lannes and Victor defeated the Austrian General Ott at Montebello (and years later Lannes would tardily receive the title duke of Montebello for this battle). Napoleon moved in for the kill despite his inferior force. In fact, of Berthier’s force of fifty-eight thousand men, only thirty thousand (with a mere forty-one pieces of artillery) formed the actual field force. The Reserve Army crossed the Po at San Cipriano on June 11, the saryie day as General Desaix arrived after his long journey from Egypt. It next crossed the River Scrivia in search of the Austrians, who Bonaparte mistakenly thought were avoiding a confrontation.

  Through a series of bogus and misinformed intelligence reports, Napoleon was hardly expecting the major battle with the Austrians he had so long sought, when, early on Sunday morning, June 14, 1800, he and his entire army were caught completely off guard by a full-scale attack by Melas’s thirty-one thousand Austrian troops and their one hundred cannon. Napoleon still completely misjudged the entire situation and remained at Torre-di-Garfoli, thinking this just an Austrian side action.[518] Indeed, he even detached some troops from Berthier’s command. But finally the penny dropped, although even with the arrival of Lannes’s and Murat’s troops to support Victor, Berthier still had only fifteen thousand men and very few guns. Napoleon ordered Lapoype’s division and General Desaix at the head of Monnier’s division to reinforce them in the plain of Marengo, before the River Bormida and the city of Alessandria.

  Although he already considered the battle lost by three o’clock, with the arrival of Desaix’s fresh division in further support of the hard-pressed Generals Victor and Lannes, later reinforced by the brilliant young Brigadier Kellermann (whose talents Napoleon so resented back in Italy in 1796) at the head of his small but now most effective cavalry unit, a couple of hours later Napoleon launched one final, fateful counterattack. Breaking through the Austrian ranks, the French Army suddenly turned near-defeat into a spectacular victory, after twelve grueling hours of intense fighting in sweltering temperatures.

  The price paid was heavy for both sides, including some seven thousand French casualties, among them the unfortunate Desaix, killed early on. The Austrians had suffered a worse fate with fourteen thousand casualties, almost half the men actually engaged in the fighting on the plains of Marengo, not to mention the loss of forty cannon. Within twenty-four hours, an amazed Melas was forced to ask for a temporary armistice, resulting in the Convention of Alessandria, which eventually gave France the whole of northern Italy. (In one of the great ironies of history, both Desaix, killed at Marengo, and Kléber, who was assassinated by an Arab in Cairo, fell on the same day, June 14, 1800.) If there was not the promise of an immediate peace treaty with Vienna, at least negotiations were on course, permitting a triumphant Bonaparte to leave Italy for Paris on June 17. Immediately after his return to the French capital, Bonaparte ordered his brother Lucien at the Interior Ministry to commission “the six best artists” to paint large scenes of the battles of Rivoli, Moekirsch, Mt. Tabor, the Pyramids, Abukir, and of course Marengo (most of which he had not even witnessed).[519] The great Egyptian myth was about to be born.

  After the signing of a full armistice on July 5 in Italy, further victories and pressure by Moreau’s Army of the Rhine pushing up the Danube resulted in the Battle of Hohenlinden on December 3, 1800, finally forcing the Austrian emperor to admit defeat and sign the Peace of Luneville on February 9, 1801.

  Lunéville was indeed a triumph, confirming the terms of the Treaty of Campo Formio (the cession to the French of most of northern Italy, the left bank of the Rhine, and Belgium). The Austrians recognized the three French satellite states — the Batavian, Cisalpine, and Helvetian Republics. What is more, Archduke Ferdinand ceded Tuscany to the Spanish infanta, married to the Duke of Parma. With the French flag officially replacing that of the Habsburgs on the left bank of the Rhine, Napoleon was effectively beginning what would result in the total collapse of the thousand-year-old Holy Roman Empire, to be confirmed in a few years by the creation of the French-controlled Confederation of the Rhine.

  With these great diplomatic and military victories behind him, added to the overwhelming desire for peace at home, Napoleon decided to press for a peace treaty with the one remaining French enemy, England. That, however, could not be concluded until the Egyptian question had been settled.[520]

  Following Napoleon’s abandonment of the Army of the Orient on August 23, 1799, morale had plummeted in Egypt, resulting in Desaix’s surrender to Commodor Sir William Sidney Smith at al-Arish on January 28, 1800. But Smith’s rather lenient terms, allowing the French to retain their arms and return to France, were rejected out of hand by the commander in chief of the Mediterranean fleet, Lord Keith. Instead he demanded unconditional surrender, rejected by Desaix this time. The fighting had then resumed, Kléber winning a decisive victory with his reduced force of about 10,000 men against a Turkish army of 75,000 at Heliopolis on March 21.

  But Napoleon, who had apparently given up any real hope of retaining Egypt — despite dramatic public words to the contrary — had, as already seen, ordered four of his best generals there, including Desaix, to return to France. This had left Kléber and General “Abdullah” Menou in command. Turkish armies were closing in from al-Arish, and Gen. Sir Ralph Abercromby’s sixty-thousand-man force landed at Abukir Bay, defeating the French on March 21, 1801. With the death of Kléber on June 14, Cairo fell to the Turks thirteen days later. Menou officially surrendered with his remaining eleven thousand men (out of the original thirty-four thousand) to the British on September 2. Bonaparte’s great Egyptian fiasco was complete.[521]

  Desaix of course had brought news of the tragic events in Egypt, and Napoleon realized, even before learning of the subsequent death of Kléber and surrender by Menou, that for his army there — without provisions and reinforcements since the initial landings in 1798, and with its best commanders dead or now in Europe — all was lost.

  “And what were the results of that memorable expedition?” Bourrienne asked in retrospect. “The destruction of one of our finest armies, the loss of the best of our generals, the utter destruction of our navy, the loss of Malta, and the complete domination of the Mediterranean by the English. And what remains of all that today? A scientific work.”[522]

  Earlier, on March 21, 1801, France had signed the Treaty of Aranjuez, confirming the articles of the San Ildefonso Agreement, binding Spain more closely to France, while another secret treaty, that of Madrid, on September 29, 1801, authorized the passage of French troops across Spanish territory to attack Portugal. And in March 1801 the king of Naples had, like the Spaniards, finally buckled under French threats, agreeing to
close his ports to the English navy while ceding a minor islet, by the name of Elba, to France. Still earlier that same year, however, Napoleon had learned of the destruction of the Danish fleet at the Battle of Copenhagen on April 2, 1801, by Admirals Nelson and Hyde Parker to end their “armed neutrality.” Malta of course had also fallen to the British, who remained everywhere triumphant. Then came the bad news received in Paris on April 12, 1801, of the death of France’s ally, Czar Paul I. Napoleon was at once checked in the Baltic, the Mediterranean, and the Caribbean (with the loss and failure of the Leclerc expedition to Santo Domingo).

  While Bonaparte had been in Italy for the Marengo campaign, however, Talleyrand was concluding the Franco-Portuguese Treaty of June 6, 1801, signed initially by brother Lucien Bonaparte and Pinto de Sousa, at Badajoz, then modified, ratified, and exchanged on October 19, giving France not only a large portion of Portuguese Guiana in South America but also a stranglehold over Portuguese naval support of British ships, which so badly depended on that nation’s strategically situated neutral ports.[523] The French had further countered British military success with the successful Italian campaign, leading to the victory at Marengo over England’s subsidized allies, the Austrians, culminating in the Treaty of Lunéville. Four days earlier, on February 5, William Pitt tendered his resignation as prime minister, to be replaced by the much more malleable Addington. The last English coalition against France had collapsed with Lunéville, and Addington, who had long opposed Pitt’s unrelenting war against France, immediately opened negotiations at Amiens with Napoleon’s government, leading to the Peace of Amiens, signed on March 25, 1802.

  That treaty clearly represented the British government’s avid wish for peace, regardless of their own great military victories, and despite the great losses of territory and prestige they were willing to suffer as a result of this new agreement with France.

  “My unchangeable opinion is that firmness will, and that firmness alone can, extricate the country [England] from the difficulties which the success of France upon the Continent have brought upon us,” Lord Grenville had advised Lord Hawkesbury, his successor at the Foreign Office.[524] But Hawkesbury, like the new prime minister, was bent on peace, no matter the cost. With the Americans, Portuguese, and Austrians at peace with the French, and with Belgium in French hands and Holland under the iron control of Paris as well, and the new czar not committed to Britain at this stage, Lord Hawkesbury felt that England had no choice. Nevertheless, negotiations advanced slowly and painfully until the very end of December, when Napoleon finally gave Joseph Bonaparte authorization to conclude them quickly.

  The treaty was signed at the Amiens Hôtel de Ville on March 25, 1802, by France, Holland, Spain, and England. The British were to restore Malta to the Order of St. John of Jerusalem within three months of the treaty’s ratification, and Egypt was to be returned to the Ottoman sultan. The various islands the British navy had taken over the years were to be restored to Spain, Holland, and France, except Ceylon (Dutch) and Trinidad (Spanish). (No mention was made of the French seizure of Belgium and Piedmont.) The Cape of Good Hope was to be given back to the Dutch, its ports open to all countries. The Republic of the Seven (Ionian) Isles was recognized. French troops were to evacuate Rome and the Kingdom of Naples, and the British to evacuate Elba and all the other Mediterranean or Adriatic ports and isles occupied by them. Finally the Treaty of Amiens declared that henceforth there should be peace and friendship among the contracting parties.

  Although France and England were still wary of each other, after ten years of unremitting warfare there was nevertheless a real sense of relief and joy on both sides of the Channel. An astonished General Lauriston, bringing the signed preliminaries of the treaty to London, found himself surrounded by a large delirious crowd that unhitched the horses from his carriage,[525] pulling it and him the two miles across the English capital to his new apartment. Nor was there less excitement in Paris. “The epoch of the Peace of Amiens must be considered as the most glorious in the history of France,” Bourrienne rejoiced.

  On May 6, 1803, the peace treaty was duly presented to the Tribunate for ratification. That same day a grateful nation, or to be more precise, the hand-picked Senate, rewarded its head of state with an extension of his national mandate by ten years. This didn’t satisfy Napoleon. He wanted the position for life (including his official state salary of five hundred thousand francs a year).

  “I have lived but to serve my country,” he responded, and then indicated that he could consider such a magnanimous offer only if it were confirmed by a favorable national plebiscite. The Tribunate was upset, but they submitted in silence; not so, however, Lafayette, who, after arguing with Bonaparte, admitted, “I cannot do anything with him. It is frustrating.”[526]

  On August 2 Interior Minister Lucien Bonaparte, in charge of the national plebiscite, announced the (unsurprising) results: 3,600,000 to 8,374. Two days later Napoleon proclaimed the revised “Constitution of the Year X.” In fact Lucien, who had earlier perfected his vote “counting” when Napoleon’s new constitution was overwhelmingly approved, had now committed perhaps the greatest voter fraud thus far in French history, dumping millions of negative votes and adding fresh ones to give his brother the winning number he desired. Napoleon had in fact been disastrously defeated at the polls, but only he, Lucien, Fouché, and a few others were privy to this “recount.” With this crucial accomplishment behind him, the final steps — to hereditary rule for his family and his elevation as emperor — were child’s play. The Bonapartes now knew how to cope with future plebiscites. Confident of his new position, on November 2 Napoleon took the bold — but wise — step of firing the troublesome, prying Fouché, who was in on too many family secrets. At the same time he suppressed the Police Ministry (which he would restore, along with Fouché, in July 1804).

  The period from 1799 to early 1804 marked one of prodigious activity. The first consul submitted most of his productive projects at this time. “The Emperor labors relentlessly and yet never manages to sow any seed. Nothing so annihilates the present as that which kills the future,” Real commented to Victorine de Chastenay. And that was in fact Napoleon’s great tragedy: He did sow ample seed, but as a result of his other less admirable qualities, he personally destroyed the young plants before they had an opportunity to mature. Above all, his veritable obsession with dominating others — whether French, English, German, Austrian, Italian, Belgian, Dutch, Swiss, Polish, Russian, Spanish, or Portuguese, precipitating one unnecessary war after another — would lead his own armies to trample down the very seed he himself had so tenderly planted. He could never come to terms with his own deep internal anger, rejection by his own parents and humiliating schooldays, and the whole of Europe suffered as a result.

  But alas, despite all his protests to the contrary — “I do not wage war as a profession; no one in fact is more peaceful than I” — Napoleon was not in the least interested in peace.[527] It was hardly surprising then that barely a year later, by mid-May 1803, he was arming once again for renewed hostilities. The ostensible cause for it was Britain’s refusal to observe the terms of the Peace of Amiens by failing to withdraw from Malta. The British on the other hand blamed fresh French expansion in, and annexation of, Italian territory to be the root of the matter, contravening both the spirit and the letter of the treaties of Lunéville and Amiens. The British were also greatly disturbed by “Ambassador” General Sébastiani’s strongly anti-English report published by Napoleon in the Moniteur that spring, following that diplomat’s return from Constantinople and North Africa, where he had been attempting to convince the Turks to permit Egypt and most of the Maghrib to be handed over to France, if only as protectorates.[528] (The French capitulation to the British in Egypt had of course specifically recognized the return of Egypt to Turkey and the full permanent withdrawal of all French troops from that province.)

  Both England and France were right, but Napoleon was looking for any excuse, real or imaginary, to ren
ew the war and set in motion a vast new plan he had been secretly nurturing since the spring of 1802. In fact, the one country that was ever to defy and elude him was now, for the first and only time, to be his single, principal objective. With pathological obsessiveness he privately instructed his war and naval ministers to prepare for nothing less than the conquest of England. Clearly he had forgotten his own “first principle of justice” — that of “ensuring the public welfare.” He told Bourrienne, “It is true that in less than two years I have conquered Cairo, Milan, and Paris...Well, if I were to die tomorrow, ten centuries hence, only half a page in a world history would be dedicated to me.” Clearly that was an underestimation. After all, no one had forgotten William the Conqueror’s great feat of 1066. “[Napoleon] would have had to have changed very much indeed during the past six months since our last meeting,” Bourrienne concluded, “if he did not now feel a real thrill at the very idea of a vast new war whose various operations could be nourished by his insatiable genius.”

  Chapter Twenty – War Once Again

  ‘We have six centuries of insults to avenge.’

  To General Augereau, Summer 1803

  If Napoleon’s disastrous Egyptian expedition had taught him anything, it certainly did not seem apparent in the spring of 1803, as he contemplated an even more hazardous and utterly unnecessary campaign, based on even riskier, more fantastic assumptions and preparations — the invasion of Great Britain.