by Paul Johnson
In February-March 1793, Revolutionary France declared war on Britain, Holland, and Spain. Civil war broke out in Brittany and the Vendée. In the south the royalists tried to take Marseilles and succeeded in seizing the great naval port of Toulon. On 29 August they were joined by British and Spanish units, under the protective shadow of the Royal Navy. Bonaparte had called attention to himself by writing and publishing a call for national unity, a pamphlet entitled Le Souper de Beaucaire; he had also been engaged, in Valence, in re-equipping and retraining the artillery. In an inspired moment, the war commissioners in Paris sent him to Toulon. He arrived there on 16 September and at once reorganized the artillery of the besieging forces. Within weeks his decisiveness, professionalism, and ingenuity made him effectively the director of operations, though he was much junior in rank and age to the nominal commanders. There were some brilliant future generals in this operation, too: Marmont, Suchet, Junot, Desaix, Victor, and others. But it was Bonaparte who planned the assault and led it on 16 December. General Du Teil recommended him to Paris thus: “I lack words to list Bonaparte’s merits: much science, and equal intelligence, and perhaps even too much courage.” He added: “You, the Ministers, must consecrate him to the glory of the Republic.” The recklessness with which the young man exposed himself while storming Toulon was remarked, indeed, by both sides. The great English historian G. M. Trevelyan recalled: “I once came across the following item of intelligence while turning over the files of an English newspaper of 1793: ‘Lieutenant Buonaparte has been killed in one of the recent encounters before Toulon.’” He added: “Everything I have learned since has increased my regret that the news proved inaccurate.” Bonaparte not only survived but was immediately promoted to brigadier, skipping the ranks of major and colonel.
Toulon, then, launched Bonaparte’s career. He was now known. But it also increased his exposure to danger. The Revolution was devouring its children, even the great Georges Danton, whose motto, “L’audace, encore l’audace, toujours l’audace!,” might have been Bonaparte’s own. During the Terror, he remained in France, reorganizing the artillery in preparation for an invasion of Italy. It was Augustin de Robespierre, younger brother of Maximilien, leader of the Terror, who was responsible, as army commissioner, for pushing Bonaparte forward, commending his “transcendent merit.” But Maximilien Robespierre fell from power on 27 July 1794 and was promptly guillotined. In Nice, where Bonaparte was stationed, he was immediately identified as a Robespierre protégé and arrested. He was right to thank his stars for his survival, for many were executed on much less evidence. But France was sickening of the slaughter, and in September he was quietly released.
Suspicion remained, however, and he was not restored to his prospective command of the artillery for the Italian campaign. But his services were used. Bonaparte now knew as much about cannon, in theory at least, as any officer in the army (many experts had been cashiered as royalists or shot, or were in exile or serving with foreign armies). The artillery textbooks by the comte de Guibert and Pierre-Joseph de Bourcet, which Bonaparte had read, insisted that the whole point of successful use of artillery was to concentrate maximum firepower on one point of the enemy’s line, usually the weakest. It was reiterated in a book by Bonaparte’s mentor, Du Teil, L’usage de l’artillerie nouvelle, which applied the principle to the more powerful and mobile guns now coming into service. This was the work of the comte de Gribeauval, who had been in charge of gun manufacture under the ancien régime. He introduced standardization of cannon design. As a result, the artillery the republic inherited was equipped with standard four-, eight-, and twelve-pounder field guns, as well as a six-inch howitzer (heavier pieces were designated siege artillery). These weapons were considerably lighter than their predecessors, thus increasing their mobility and the speed with which they could be brought into action and resited.
Bonaparte’s contribution, therefore, was to accept the basic equipment (though he later replaced the four-pounders with six-pounders and increased the proportion of twelve-pounders), but to ensure that the increased mobility and firepower of the army was used with effect, by rigorous training and practice. Under the Gribeauval system, each regiment was standardized with twenty companies, with its own depot and training unit. It was Bonaparte’s aim to ensure that all gunnery officers, and where possible NCOs also, understood the mathematical principles of aiming and could read maps. In theory field guns could fire, unsighted, twelve rounds a minute. Bonaparte thought this a waste of ammunition. But he insisted that the minimum three rounds a minute of aimed shots could be improved, and his tactic of power concentration, of course, helped to accelerate the round delivery from each gun. Cannon were not merely Bonaparte’s trade; they embodied the power principle that was always at the heart of his thinking. The object of power, in his view, was not only to crush opposition to his will, but more usually to inspire fear, so that power did not need to be used at all. An opposing army must be made to fear you, because once terror began to creep over it, the battle was half won. The best way to inspire terror, he reasoned, was by the noise and havoc of guns. But they must be accurate, for Bonaparte knew that soldiers, like himself, were fatalistic, especially in facing big guns. They believed that if your “number” was not on a shell or roundshot, you had nothing to fear, and rounds falling harmlessly some distance away reinforced their stoicism. This was Bonaparte’s battle psychology, and it is impossible to overemphasize the role cannonading played in his success on the field.
When Bonaparte was released, he was still obsessed by the chance to apply his artillery warfare to the Italian front. During the summer turmoil over Robespierre in Paris, the campaign had been halted, and the Austrians had advanced toward the Genoa coast, with the Royal Navy assisting them at sea. The orders from Paris were to remain on the defensive. But that was contrary to all Bonaparte’s instincts, and as soon as he was released he set about persuading General Pierre Dumerbion, the army’s commander, a cautious, elderly veteran, to mount a preemptive attack on 17 September 1794. It embodied what was to become another Bonaparte principle—separating opponents and attacking them individually—by driving between the armies of Austria and Savoy. On 21 September, following Bonaparte’s plans, the Austrians were surprised and badly beaten at Dego on the Savona River, losing forty-two guns. As this was the first field battle for which Bonaparte was responsible, it is worth noting for its surprise, speed of attack, and point of attack from the rear, a favorite tactic of his where possible. Bonaparte’s instinct was to reinforce success by pressing the advance speedily into the Italian plain. But Dumerbion overruled him on 24 September, being anxious to end on a high note, and withdrew to a defensive line. Two months later he retired, but not before he had generously attributed the success of the campaign to his young artillery commander.
Effectively out of a posting, Bonaparte went to Paris, following his principle of going direct to where power lay. His object was to get the ear of the politicians as a military adviser, and from that spring to a top command. His first efforts failed, and it was then in the winter of 1794-95 that he thought of going to Turkey. His eventual success came about indirectly. The National Convention intended to introduce a new republican constitution, to be adopted by referendum. But the participants wished to keep their places and salaries, so an accompanying decree insisted that two-thirds of the seats in the proposed new legislative assembly be occupied by members of the old Convention. This was unpopular, and as a safeguard the regime entrusted Vicomte Paul de Barras (1755-1829) with plein pouvoir (unlimited authority) to maintain order.
Bonaparte had got to know Barras, an unscrupulous former royalist officer who had thrown in his lot with the Jacobins, at Toulon. He learned from Barras how effective brutal reprisals against royalists could be, and how the advent of Revolutionary “justice” could be made into an opportunity to amass wealth as well as a chance to grab top positions. Barras had changed coats again in 1794, helping to dismantle the Terror and slaughter those who had impo
sed it. He was the most powerful single member of the Directory, which succeeded the Robespierre junta. He was already rich, and survived all the various changes and chances of the next two decades to die rich under the Restoration. He was also a highly successful coureur des dames. One of his mistresses, in the early 1790s, was a youngish and beautiful Creole widow, Marie-Josèphe-Rose Tascher de la Pagerie (1763-1814). Born in the West Indies, she was six years older than Bonaparte and a fellow aristocrat (by birth and quarterings), but poor and dependent for advancement on her own wits and charm. She had both, and at the age of sixteen she married a better-provided aristocrat, Alexandre de Beauharnais, who sided with the Revolution and became one of its leading generals. They had two children, one of whom, Eugène de Beauharnais, became a key figure in Bonaparte’s schemes. But old Beauharnais fared badly at Mainz in 1793, was accused of treason, and was guillotined. His wife, briefly in prison, could easily have met the same fate. Indeed it is important to remember that virtually all the leading French figures during these years were at one time or another under imminent threat of violent death, and had seen friends, family, enemies, or colleagues go to the scaffold, thus creating the stoicism or indifference with which they regarded the spilling of blood. Without a husband, Josephine kept afloat in Paris society, where she shone in a dim and grisly era, by affairs with numerous politicians, ending with the powerful Barras.
By 1794, however, Barras was after younger prey. But he wished to retain Josephine’s friendship and therefore devised a plan to unload her onto Bonaparte, whom he regarded as a promising protégé. Volumes can be, and indeed have been—many times!—written about Bonaparte’s relationship with Josephine, but many aspects of it remain obscure and therefore debatable. What seems clear is that initially, at least, the ardor was all on Bonaparte’s side. Josephine, who had excellent taste, was taken aback by the limitations (as she saw it) of this short, thin, sallow-faced young soldier, praised to the skies by the oleaginous Barras, for reasons she found no difficulty in divining, with a bright future perhaps but with no obvious advantages to offer her in the present. What pressure Barras put on her to accept Bonaparte’s courtship we do not know. More likely, it was the urgings of the young man himself, enacted with all the almost desperate determination of which he was capable, that warmed her to him. She was a sophisticated, désabusé woman—that I suspect was the chief reason Bonaparte fell for her, a type he had not come across before—but she could be hotly responsive once aroused.
In any case, by the time they were ready to marry, Bonaparte’s position had again been transformed. Opposition to the Convention, discredited by its self-perpetuation plan, rose during the summer and early autumn of 1795. Parts of Paris were still almost entirely medieval, with narrow streets fringed by rookeries of crumbling, many-chambered houses, in which thousands of the poor lived and groaned. They could form a vast mob at short notice, capable of overawing troops without decisive commanders. But there were at least three mobs: the Jacobins, the most desperate; the royalists, now scenting a wind of change; and the so-called modérés. Elements of all three joined hands in early October to destroy the Convention. Barras did not trust the loyalty of the nominal commander of the Troops of the Interior. He gave the second-in-command place to Bonaparte, and with it effective control of the regular units in Paris.
On 5 October 1795 (13 Vendemière by the new republican dating, soon to be abandoned), about 30,000 malcontents, many armed National Guardsmen, a Revolutionary force now obsolescent, were on the Paris streets. Bonaparte decided to use artillery, the embodiment of his fear principle. That meant choosing his ground carefully and encouraging the mob to move into open spaces, near the Tuileries Palace and the Church of Saint Roche, which they had made their headquarters, where the guns could sweep them with their fire. It also meant a careful choice of shot. Ball or shell was most effective against regular troops. Bonaparte preferred musket balls encased in tins, known as canister or caseshot, or in canvas bags, known as grapeshot. The advantage of grapeshot was that it scattered over a wide area, tending to produce a lot of blood and often maiming its victims, but had to be fired at close range. It rarely killed and thus, while effective as drastic crowd control, did not enable opponents to create the myth of a “massacre.” Its aim was to frighten and disperse. Bonaparte took a great risk in maneuvering his guns to point-blank range to give the mob “a whiff of grapeshot,” as he put it. It was more than a whiff, of course: a number were killed or died of their wounds. But it ended the attempted coup forthwith, and with it the Revolution itself: the era of the mob yielded to a new era of order under fear. The shotmarks on the façade of Saint Roche are still there to mark the decisive moment. Bonaparte was both the instrument and the beneficiary. Old General de Broglie had advised King Louis XVI to use grapeshot six years before. He had been ignored, and ruin had followed. “Now,” as Thomas Carlyle put it in his epic book, “the time is come for it, and the man; and behold, you have it; and the thing we specifically call French Revolution is blown into space by it, and becomes a thing that was!”
After Toulon and Dego, Vendemière was Bonaparte’s third widely publicized success. All were achieved by cannon. He blew himself into the stratosphere of power from the brazen mouth of his own guns. He was now commander in chief of the interior troops, but he wanted the supreme command in Italy. That, he calculated, would have been Caesar’s choice. A general who commands the home front is, ex offi cio, a man of great political power. But one returning from a campaign of victory and conquest abroad has the nation at his feet, as well as an army behind him. So Italy was what he asked for, and got.
It has often been argued that Bonaparte got the Italian command through his friendship with Barras and his willingness to take Josephine, Barras’s discarded mistress, off his hands by marrying her. But it is more likely that he would have got the command anyway, since Lazare Carnot (1753- 1823), who had been in charge of France’s overall war effort since August 1793, and who strongly approved of Bonaparte’s war plan for Italy, felt he was the man to carry it out. Carnot was a Burgundian republican who became a député in 1791, and distinguished himself by leading the levée en masse, or general uprising, that was the Revolution’s reply to the invasion of France by the combined monarchies of Europe. As head of the War Section of the Committee of Public Safety, he reorganized both the army of the Revolution itself, creating thirteen field armies, and the workshops that supplied them with arms, and the methods by which they were financed. He thus produced, as it were, the raw material, in human terms, with which Bonaparte fashioned Europe’s largest and most successful war machine. And he did more. He seized upon the semaphore system, invented by Claude Chappe in 1792 and installed between Paris and Lille, to construct a national communications system between the capital and France’s frontiers (often beyond), which enabled military messages to be carried at about 150 miles per hour in clear weather. This fit almost magically into Bonaparte’s strategy of speeding up the movements of French armies. He also, to Bonaparte’s delight, improved the cartographic resources of the army and concentrated its central command into what he called the Bureau Topographique, the first general staff in history.
It was to Carnot that Bonaparte submitted, early in 1796, a revised plan for the invasion of Italy. It was duly approved by the Directory, and Bonaparte was appointed. He left for Italy two days after his wedding. He had already, in effect, ended the Revolution itself. His assumption of the new command marked another historical turning point: the moment when the republican regime moved from the defensive to the large-scale offensive and became an expansionist force, determined to roll up the old map of Europe and transform it on principles formed by its own ideology.
This program could not have been successfully carried out without Bonaparte—that is certain. But equally certain is that Bonaparte would not have possessed the ruthless disregard of human life, of natural and man-made law, of custom and good faith needed to carry it through without the positive example and teachin
g of the Revolution. The Revolution was a lesson in the power of evil to replace idealism, and Bonaparte was its ideal pupil. Moreover, the Revolution left behind itself a huge engine: administrative and legal machinery to repress the individual such as the monarchs of the ancien régime never dreamed of; a centralized power to organize national resources that no previous state had ever possessed; an absolute concentration of authority, first in a parliament, then in a committee, finally in a single tyrant, that had never been known before; and a universal teaching that such concentration expressed the general will of a united people, as laid down in due constitutional form, approved by referendum. In effect, then, the Revolution created the modern totalitarian state, in all essentials, if on an experimental basis, more than a century before it came to its full and horrible fruition in the twentieth century. It also became, as Professor Herbert Butterfield has put it, “the mother of modern war . . . [heralding] the age when peoples, woefully ignorant of one another, bitterly uncomprehending, lie in uneasy juxtaposition, watching one another’s sins with hysteria and indignation. It heralds Armageddon, the giant conflict for justice and right between angered populations, each of which thinks it is the righteous one. So a new kind of warfare is born—the modern counterpart of the old conflicts of religion.”
