Roger gained all this inside information while assisting Bourrienne, mainly in translating documents and writing précis of confidential reports. He would have given a great deal to be able to send a report himself to Mr. Pitt, but for the time being he had no means of doing so. He could only wait until an opportunity arose for him to return to Venice and hope to get one through by one of the secret couriers who must, he knew, be keeping Mr. Watson in touch with London.
Meanwhile, as one of the personal entourage, he saw Napoleon and Josephine every day and sometimes was invited to spend the evening with them. The former never tired of hearing more about Egypt and India, and the latter found him an asset to the family’s amusements. She loved amateur theatricals, charades and childish games, and in private the great man was by no means averse to looking on or joining in the games, provided always that he was allowed to be the winner.
It was some ten days after Roger’s arrival at the Chateau Montebello that chance revealed to him that childish games were by no means the only ones played there by the General-in-Chief. Having woken early one morning, he went down from his attic in a chamber robe and soft slippers to Bourrienne’s office to collect some papers with the intention of reading them in bed. As he walked noiselessly along a corridor on the first floor, he passed a door that was not quite closed, and heard someone on the other side of it say:
‘You saw the General come out of her room. Do not deny it.’
He recognised the voice as that of Constant, the General’s valet, and, halting in his tracks, he listened intently to catch the rest of the conversation. From it he learned that Boneparte was having an affaire with one of Josephine’s ladies-in-waiting and going to her room by stealth at night. On this occasion they had fallen asleep so Constant had gone to her door and tapped on it to wake him. Some minutes later, he had hurried back to his own apartments and had caught sight of a housemaid watching him from a window that overlooked the corridor. Believing her to be a spy placed there by his wife, he had sent Constant to warn her that if she breathed a word she would be instantly dismissed.
Roger had soon discovered that the immorality rampant in the Paris of the Directory had arrived with the dozens of beautiful and fashionable women who now graced the General-in-Chief’s court at Montebello, and that nearly all of them had become the mistress of one, if not more, of the gallant blades who trailed their sabres in its splendid salons. Several of them had, in fact, made him quite open overtures; but he still wore the rope of Clarissa’s golden hair round his neck, and had taken a vow not to kiss another woman until he had revenged her. Yet, in this gilded brothel, Napoleon and Josephine appeared to be a couple apart, and a model of connubial bliss; so he was both surprised and intrigued to find that this was not so.
During the day he made tactful enquiries of several men with whom he had become fairly intimate and soon learned what he would have learned much earlier had his mind not been too occupied with other matters.
The intensity of Boneparte’s first passion for Josephine could not be doubted and only the glamour of at last having an army to command had caused him to tear himself away from her within a few days of their marriage. That marriage, to her, had so far been only an episode into which she had been persuaded to secure a promising future for her children; so on his departure she had swiftly slid back into her old way of life.
She was a voluptuous, lazy creature and without being in the least vicious quite naturally accepted the immoral way of life led by her friends. Boneparte had written again and again, covering reams of paper with passionate pleas for her to join him, but she had lingered on for many months in Paris before at last doing so, and he had had ample grounds for believing that during them she was being unfaithful to him.
His love for her had not cooled, but his physical passion could at times be as demanding as his craving for glory; so quite early in their separation he had spent occasional nights with other women.
When she had eventually arrived at Mantua the violence of his passion had again frightened her, and to such a degree that she had become cold towards him. Feeling certain that she had given herself freely to other lovers, this had driven him into a frenzy of fury, and a climax had been reached when he intercepted a letter to her from Lazare Hoche whom he knew to have paid her marked attention in Paris. As that brilliant young General was his only serious rival to fame, and the letter was decidedly more than affectionate, his rage had known no bounds. He kicked a pug-dog that Hoche had given her to death before her eyes, and the fact that he had later had a memorial erected to it in the garden was small consolation in view of her passionate love of animals.
From that point the urgency of his physical desire for her appeared to have cooled somewhat, but she still inspired in him a strong affection, and he showed great kindness and thoughtfulness towards her. It was this which caused him to exercise caution in his amours, as both of them continued to be jealous where the other was concerned, and he went to great lengths to spare her knowledge of his infidelities.
All this gave Roger much food for thought, and that night a plan evolved in his mind by which he might both serve his country well and bring Malderini to book in a highly suitable manner. He had to bide his time for a further day and a half until chance left him alone with Boneparte in the map-room and the General was not engaged on any matter of importance, Then he said, casually:
‘Mon General. In view of the great interest you take in all things connected with the East, I have been wondering if it would amuse you to dine, tête-à-tête, one night with a very beautiful Indian Princess?’
26
The Rape of Venice
‘An Indian Princess,’ Boneparte repeated. ‘That would certainly be an experience. But surely there is not such a woman here in Milan, or I would have heard of her?’
‘No. She lives in Venice. I thought perhaps when you next go on one of your tours of inspection…’
‘Yes, I could arrange to spend a night there. Tell me more of her. Would she prove readily complaisant?’
‘That I cannot guarantee,’ Roger smiled. ‘But I should have thought, mon General, that you would have found women as easy to conquer as enemy fortresses. I can only vouch for it that she is in her early twenties, has beauty and a noble carriage, speaks Italian and French fluently, and hates her husband.’
‘Presumably, then, she has had numerous lovers.’
‘I doubt that. Her husband is a Venetian ex-Senator and he keeps her like a bird in a gilded cage. The poor lady has had no more chance to succumb to temptation than if she had continued to live as the inmate of a seraglio in her native India.’
‘Pst!’ Boneparte exclaimed with annoyance. ‘That makes her ten times more alluring, yet rules her out for me. Why arouse my interest when you must know well enough that it means the sort of adventure which can so easily end in scandal and that, for the sake of Madame my wife, I am determined to have no scandal attaching to my name.’
‘There will be no scandal if you leave the matter to me.’
‘How can you be sure of that? Husbands have an uncanny knack of returning unexpectedly when a lover has been introduced into the house.’
‘I should get her out of it to sup with you in some place where there was no risk of your being disturbed.’
‘Since she is so jealously guarded, even if she were willing, that savours of abduction. Were it discovered that I had connived at the abduction of an ex-Senator’s wife for my pleasure, it would set all Venice by the ears. Policy made it necessary for me to despoil Venice of all her mainland territories, but I have brought freedom to the people of the city, and they bless me for it. They rely upon me now to maintain their independence, and look on me as their protector. To have raped the Serene Republic politically was one thing. To as good as rape the wife of one of its leading citizens is quite another. Did it become known, I would at once lose their esteem and be accounted a villain.’
Roger shrugged. ‘Your fears are needless. I can so arrange matt
ers that there will be no scandal, and am prepared to guarantee that the husband shall be given no grounds for complaint. All you have to do is to give me a chit to Villetard ordering him to carry out my instructions. Only a handful of people need ever know that you have spent the night in Venice and, unless you distrust your personal staff, none of them will afterwards bear word to Madame Boneparte that you supped with the Princess. On that I pledge my head. But, if this little project of mine for providing you with a few hours’ interesting relaxation from your immense labours has no real appeal to you, let us say no more about it.’
‘An Indian Princess,’ Boneparte muttered, and he began to walk up and down the room with his hands clasped behind his back. ‘An Indian Princess. Yes; well, why not, if you are so certain that the matter can be arranged discreetly? You are prepared to take complete responsibility for that, eh?’
‘I am. I’ll answer for it with my head,’ Roger repeated.
‘Very well then. When next I go on a journey which will bring me within easy distance of Venice, remind me of it.’
Roger gave a secret sigh of satisfaction. It had required skilful handling to lure the lean, lank-haired panther, even with such an attractive piece of meat. But he had felt that Boneparte’s snobbishness would prove a helpful factor; for, despite his passion for Josephine, he had gone to the length of marrying her only because a union with her, as the widow of a nobleman of the ancien régime, would lift his own social status, and his rise to greatness was still recent enough for a Princess to have, in his mind, a mystic superiority over ordinary women. That, combined with the way in which anything to do with the East held a special fascination for him, had done the trick.
In these September days there was an atmosphere of suppressed excitement among the small intimate circle surrounding the General-in-Chief, as they awaited the resolving of the crisis in Paris which could not be long delayed.
It was one of the great weaknesses in the Constitution of the Year III that Ministers, instead of being selected from the Five Hundred and the Ancients, were outside them and appointed or dismissed entirely at the will of the Directors. Recently the majorities in the two Chambers had been pressing hard for a reshuffle, in the hope that men of more moderate views might be put into several of the key posts, but their intrigues to that end had weakened instead of strengthened their position. Rewbell, Larevèllie and Barras had not only retained the men the Moderates wished to oust, but had seized the opportunity to get rid of Cochon, the Minister of Police, and Petiet, the Minister of War, both of whom were devoted to Carnot, and replace them with old revolutionaries.
At this, the resentment of the Moderates, egged on by the Clichyan Royalists, had become definitely threatening, so Barras had sent to Hoche for armed support. Some months before Jourdan, having long failed to maintain the reputation he had achieved as a General during the early wars of the Revolution, had been relieved of his command of the Army of the Sambre and Meuse, and been replaced by Hoche. On the excuse of moving troops towards Brest in preparation for another attempt against Ireland, Hoche had marched some fifteen thousand men to the neighbourhood of Paris, and a body of his cavalry had overrun the limit beyond which troops, other than the Constitutional Guard, were forbidden to approach the capital. The result was a frightful outcry in the two Chambers, and Carnot and Barthèlemy had vigorously protested to their co-Directors; but as they were in the minority no action was taken against Hoche.
In the meantime, definite evidence had come to light that General Pichegru had sold out to the Royalists. On the French entering Venice, they had arrested a royalist agent named Comte d’Entraigues and seized his papers. Among them was an account of Pichegru’s treacherous agreement, while commanding the Army of the Rhine, with two other royalist agents, the Comte de Montgailliard and M. Fauche-Borel, who were acting on behalf of the Prince de Condé.
When Roger learned of this his heart had, for a moment, stopped beating, for he too had been deeply involved in the affair and had actually bought Pichegru, on Mr. Pitt’s behalf, for a million francs in gold, obtained against British Treasury bills from the house of Rothschild in Frankfurt. But fortunately he had known Montgailliard to be a rogue before taking any part in the matter, so had refused to have anything to do with him; and he had swiftly got over his fright on realising that, had any mention been made of him in d’Entraigues’s documents, Bourrienne would certainly have known about it and already had him arrested.
Boneparte had sent the papers to Paris, and their contents had since been confirmed from another quarter. It transpired that General Moreau had also known of Pichegru’s treacherous dealings with the Prince de Condé, but out of friendship for his brother General had not reported the matter. But Moreau was a staunch Republican, and now that the Directory was in danger had come to Paris and denounced Pichegru to it. Yet, even so, presumably from fear of Pichegru’s arrest proving the signal for a general rising against them, they had so far taken no action against him.
Thus matters stood at the moment, and everyone at Montebello was anxiously waiting to see if Pichegru, possibly supported by Carnot, would launch a counter-revolution, and, if so, whether Barras and Co, supported by Hoche and Augereau, would succeed in suppressing it.
Roger had never met Pierre Augereau, but he had heard a great deal about him. He was the son of a working mason, and a typical gamin of the Paris gutters. As a young footman, then as a waiter, he had been dismissed from both posts for seducing young women, then he had gone into the army and soon become the best swordsman in the Royal cavalry. The number of his fellow N.C.O.s that he had seriously wounded or killed in duels was legendary; and when a young officer struck him with his cane, he had promptly killed him too, which necessitated his bolting to Switzerland on a stolen horse.
From there, as a traveller in watches, he had gone to Constantinople and on to Odessa where, finding a war in progress, he had enlisted in the Russian Army. Not liking the Russians, he had deserted, worked his way via Poland to Prussia and enlisted in the army of Frederick the Great. Not liking the Prussians either, he had deserted again and, the penalty being death, had protected himself from capture by taking sixty other troopers with him; they had fought their way over the frontier into Saxony.
For a while he had earned his living as a dancing-master, then drifted to Athens, whence he had eloped with a beautiful Greek girl to Lisbon. There, the French Revolution having broken out, his violent advocacy of revolutionary principles had led the Portuguese Government to put him in prison; but, with the aid of a French merchant captain, he had got back to France, where he had enlisted in a volunteer regiment and fought the Whites in La Vendee with such ruthless ferocity that he had soon been elected Chef de Bataillon. By ’93 he had been made a Divisional Commander.
He was now forty years of age, a huge hawk-nosed brute of a man, licentious, foul-mouthed, quarrelsome; but a magnificent soldier. His division was the best cared for and the most reliable in the Army of Italy. It was always where it was wanted, he had a marvellous flair for timing its attacks and led them with complete disregard for personal danger.
He had moral courage, too, and, although he had become a loyal admirer of Boneparte, was not afraid to stand up to him. In fact, on the one occasion during the campaign when the little Corsican had lost his nerve, or at least appeared to have done so, it was Augereau who had taken charge and pulled him through.
That had been at Castiglione. With his usual daring he had placed himelf between the three Austrian armies commanded by Generals Würmser, Quosdanovich and Davidovich, but one of his own Generals, Valette, had practically thrown away a key position, thus rendering the situation of the French army extremely precarious. This had sent Boneparte into such a transport of fury that, apart from reducing the wretched Valette to the ranks, his mind had seemed to lose the faculty of forming any decision. At a night conference of Generals he had talked vaguely of a retreat to the Adda. Augereau had violently opposed retreat and eventually stamped out of the meeting i
n a passion. Next morning another conference was called and the argument recommenced. This time, on Augereau’s again pressing for a vigorous attack, it was Boneparte who had walked out, simply remarking, ‘Well, I wash my hands of it, and I am going away.’ The astonished circle were stricken dumb, except for Augereau, who shouted after him, ‘If you go, who is to command?’ The reply, called back over Boneparte’s shoulder, was ‘You.’
Augereau had promptly given battle, leading the first charge himself. Soon afterwards Boneparte had resumed the direction of operations, but Augereau had also delivered the final stroke that had routed the Austrians; so it was undoubtedly his victory. Nevertheless, it was the opinion of some people that Boneparte’s apparent temporary mental collapse was simply a cunning ruse, and that the wily Corsican, finding himself in a position which threatened to mar his unbroken record of victories, had deliberately left the decision, either to fight or retreat, to someone else, so that if things did go wrong he could escape being blamed for it. Having regard to the extraordinary duplicity of Boneparte’s character, that was certainly a possibility; but, even so, Roger did not see how by just walking out, a General-in-Chief could shrug off his responsibility. The fact remained, too, that Boneparte was most generous in his praise of Augereau, and for years afterwards whenever anyone complained to him about the great swashbuckling gamin, he would reply: ‘Ah, but look what he did for us at Castiglione.’
A few weeks after despatching Augereau to Paris, Boneparte had sent Bernadotte after him with some more captured flags; but that was a very different story. Charles Jean Bernadotte was, like Murat, a Gascon, and later as the sovereigns of Naples and Sweden they became known as ‘The Gascon Kings’. But Bernadotte, although in appearance another splendid-looking, large-nosed swashbuckler, had a subtle and treacherous brain. He was a great flatterer, greatly liked by his troops and junior officers, and always charming to civilians, but universally hated by his brother Generals, and to that feeling Boneparte was no exception.
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