On the political level, the adventure of Egypt proved even more disastrous, at least as far as the Directory’s interests were concerned. The excellent work of the Institute excepted, none of its original objectives were achieved. A permanent possession was not obtained; the traditional policy of friendship with the Sultan went by the board; England’s interests in the Near and Far East were not permanently impaired. On the other hand, the expedition did a great deal to hasten the formation of the Second Coalition by showing Europe how far-reaching and dangerous were the ambitions of France, while the decline in prestige suffered by the Republic after Nelson’s naval victory rapidly brought the waverers into Pitt’s camp. As will be seen, France was fortunate to survive the War of the Second Coalition, indeed it was to prove fatal for the Directory, and all that there was to show for the venture of Egypt, originally designed to be the masterstroke of French strategy, was a minor advantage at the conference table in 1801.
The Rosetta Stone—key to the decipherment of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. Discovered by French scientists accompanying Bonaparte to Egypt; confiscated by the British authorities, 1801.
For Bonaparte, it was a period both of fulfilment and frustration. His military skills proved equal to the problems set by the new environment, and the victories of the Pyramids, Salalieh, Mount Tabor and Aboukir redound to his credit. His attempts to refashion the institutions of Egypt were genuine if transitory, and he spared no effort to achieve a measure of coexistence with the Moslems. The visit to the plague hospitals of Jaffa is a justly famed episode in his life.
On the other hand, the sinister characteristics of the tyrant were making their appearance. The prospect of power had always attracted him, but in his pursuit of it he now became increasingly autocratic, ruthless and selfish. The massacre of Jaffa and the judicial murders in the citadel of Cairo illustrate these growing tendencies; his inhuman demands on his own followers during the desert marches, the episode of Croisier, the plan to poison the sick, and finally the dubious justification of his return to France—these reveal his lack of real concern for his men. To Bonaparte armies were merely instruments for his use; if one broke in his hand, he felt no compunction about casting it away and taking up another. How far this change in his character was due to latent traits and how far to the disappointments of his private life is debatable, but there is little doubt that the man that returned from Egypt was a different being to the one that set out from Toulon. In later years it pleased Napoleon to look back with dreamy and inaccurate nostalgia to the days of 1798. On one occasion in the 1800’s he described his Oriental daydream to Madame de Rémusat: “In Egypt, I found myself freed from the obstacles of an irksome civilization. I was full of dreams. I saw myself founding a religion, marching into Asia, riding an elephant, a turban on my head and in my hand a new Koran that I would have composed to suit my need. In my undertaking I would have combined the experience of the two worlds, exploiting for my own profit the theater of all history, attacking the power of England in India…. The time I spent in Egypt was the most beautiful of my life because it was the most ideal.”22 Megalomaniac tendencies and a capacity for self-delusion are revealed by this extract, and few of his deserted troops in Egypt would have agreed with him that the Egyptian enterprise formed the pleasantest part of their lives; but then, the passage of time can play tricks with the memory, especially that of a dictator. The promise of six acres of land was never to be redeemed, but future successes in Europe would soon conceal this omission. His impact on Levantine affairs was even more transitory. A Moslem historian, writing of 1799, failed to mention the French invasion of Egypt, merely recording that “this year the pilgrimage to Mecca was discontinued.” Sic transit gloria.
PART FIVE
Toward the Summit: The Conspirator and Peacemaker
THE COUP D’ÉTAT OF BRUMAIRE AND THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN OF 1800
23
THE RIPENED FRUIT
T
HE SAME, DAY that General Bonaparte returned to Paris an interesting interview took place at the residence of Gohier, President of the Directory. The young general was accompanied by his friend, Monge, when he hurried to pay his respects and explain his arrival to the head of state, and Gohier has recorded, perhaps a little acidly, their conversation.
“How happy I am, dear Mr. President, to find the Republic triumphant at our return,” exclaimed Monge as he embraced me.
“I am equally overjoyed,” interposed Bonaparte, rather embarrassed. “The news that reached us in Egypt was so alarming that I didn’t hesitate to leave my army, but set out at once to come and share your perils.”
“General,” I replied, “they were indeed great, but now we have gloriously overcome them. You have arrived in good time to help us celebrate the numerous triumphs of your comrades-in-arms….”
The next day Bonaparte presented himself before the Directory as we had arranged…. Bonaparte tried to justify his desertion on the grounds of our successive defeats and the indignation felt when he heard that our frontiers were again endangered by the foreigner. He clearly attributed all our troubles to his absence…. “Citizen-Directors,” he declared (laying his hand on the hilt of his sword), “I swear that this will never be drawn except in defense of the Republic and its Government.”
As President of the Directory, I replied as follows: “Citizen-General, the Executive Directory, like all of France, greets your unanticipated return with pleasure mingled with a little surprise. Only your enemies, whom we naturally regard as our own, could put an unfavorable interpretation on the patriotic motives which induced you, temporarily at least, to abandon your colors…. In fact the triumph of your old comrades-in-arms have already saved the Republic, but there are still laurels to be earned in those fields which saw your memorable exploits….”
The ceremony ended with a fraternal embrace, which was neither given nor received in a markedly brotherly fashion.1
Swords were clearly already being measured.
Despite this somewhat chilling official reception fraught with innuendos Bonaparte was not long deluded by Gohier’s sarcasm. Even as he arrived to visit the Directory the sentries at the gate had presented arms crying “Vive Bonaparte!” and the genuine warmth of the people’s greeting during his earlier journey to Paris appeared to have revealed France’s true feelings—and served to dissuade the Directors from ordering his immediate arrest. Riddled with jealousy and incompetence the Directory was ripe for dissolution, and Bonaparte’s wisdom in deciding to bide his time in 1798 was soon to bear fruit. By October 1799, the inefficiency and unpopularity of the Government had passed all rational limits. The Directors had lamentably failed to provide France with a stable government, the first duty of any administration, so that one political crisis followed another; Fructidor, Floréal, and most recently Prairial had in turn rocked the ship of state, but by dint of sheer equivocation and a policy of alternately courting and repressing the dangerous Jacobin opposition, the Directory managed to weather each storm in turn and sail on—ever more battered and leaking—toward the next maelstrom. Frequent changes in the men composing the supreme executive organ did nothing to improve the record. Complete disillusion in its ability was not restricted to the Royalist right and the Jacobin left; indeed the most insidious critics actually shared in the Directory’s deliberations, saying one thing and planning another. Of the five contemporary Directors, at least two, Sieyès and Roger-Ducos, were actively plotting their own government’s overthrow, and it was common knowledge that the support of the notorious Barras, archpriest of corruption, was open to the highest bidder. Riddled with internal decay, the Directory could no longer hope to survive the pressures being brought to bear against it.
That the Directory had survived so long was little short of miraculous. The series of political upheavals at Paris had led to the virtual breakdown of government in the Departments as the local officials were successively purged. In several areas there was complete anarchy as a wave of brigandage swept the cou
ntry, and the general situation was only slightly improved by the appointment of military tribunals. Political uncertainty was inevitably linked with economic dislocation. The Directory attempted to replace the worthless assignats of the early Revolution with new mandats, but the only result was the creation of two depreciated currencies instead of one. To finance its expensive wars, the Directory came to rely increasingly on fines, confiscations, the loot from foreign conquests, and on the product of a progressive property tax and forced loans which finally alienated the bourgeoisie.
Nothing showed up the Directory’s incompetence in a clearer light than its misconduct of the war. The formation of the hostile Second Coalition was almost wholly the outcome of French diplomatic mismanagement and political cupidity. In late 1797, with Austria out of the war, and England facing a combination of problems that included the aftermath of the Nore and Spithead naval mutinies, a bad harvest, and rising industrial unemployment, even the implacable William Pitt was probably prepared to accept an unfavorable peace. However, French distrust of the British Government’s true motives and the Directory’s need for an “external threat” to disguise the internal chaos, coupled with a certain degree of haughty incompetence on the part of Pitt’s negotiator, Lord Malmesbury, had resulted in the breakdown of the talks. This left Pitt with no alternative but to seek new allies. A series of French blunders and high-handed territorial annexations did not make these hard to find, since the covetousness of the lawyers of the Directory and the unabated thirst of France’s generals for further military aggrandizement were not long in creating an extremely explosive European situation.
In Germany, the French Government was unable to resist the temptation to meddle in the rivalry that flared up between Prussia and Austria over the control of Bavaria, and further attempted to make political capital out of the fears of the German princelings whose possessions bordered the Rhine, many of them faced with the prospect of disinheritance, by fostering the formation of the League of the Rhine. Such moves could only cause bitter resentment in both Berlin and Vienna. Similarly, in Italy, a series of unscrupulously “engineered” incidents throughout the peninsula made a new Austrian challenge to the French hegemony doubly certain. After repressing the revolt of the Cisalpine Republic, the French Government used the assassination of a French general in Rome (December 1797) as a pretext for the seizure and pillaging of the Eternal City the following February. Similar treatment was accorded to the states of Piedmont and Tuscany. Local revolutions fostered by the French were used to drive King Victor Amadeus to Sardinia, and the Grand Duke of Tuscany was rapidly expelled from his possessions. To complete the French subjugation of Italy, a French army fell upon the inefficient forces of the Kingdom of Naples in November 1798, following King Ferdinand’s unsupported and premature declaration of war on the French Republic at the instigation of Admiral Horatio Nelson and his inamorata, Lady Emma Hamilton. Nor was French acquisitiveness restricted to Germany and Italy. Holland also was compelled to substitute close satellite status for the loose alliance of friendship with France that dated from 1795, and in March 1798 French armies used the excuse of unrest amongst the Bernese cantons to create the Helvetic Republic and to annex Geneva and Basel as the price of their “liberating” endeavors. This was a brilliant strategical success, for it afforded France the control of the vitally important Alpine passes linking Germany and North Italy, but such high-handed action was diplomatic dynamite. It is amazing that widespread war did not come at once, especially when Malta and Egypt were added to this imposing list of French gains. But a combination of universal distrust for Tsar Paul, the self-styled “protector of small states,” together with the selfish wiles of the Austrian statesman Thugut, who was determined to utilize French influence for his own ends, and the British preoccupation with the problem of the first Armed Neutrality all contributed toward the postponement of the formation of an active alliance until the spring of 1799.
However, when the governments of the Second Coalition at last mobilized their might and moved against the French armies, it appeared that the Directory, which had “sown the wind,” was about to “reap the whirlwind” with a vengeance. The famous Suvorov led a Russian army to join the Austrian Kray in North Italy, and in a vigorous campaign defeated first Schérer and then Moreau, overrunning the Cisalpine Republic, occupying Turin and in due course compelling General Macdonald to abandon Rome and beat a hasty retreat to the Riviera. In similar fashion, a British force, backed by the fleet, reoccupied Naples, and by the end of June the French had lost all their conquests in Italy with the exceptions of Genoa and a narrow strip of the Ligurian coast; these reverses constituted a particularly severe blow to French prestige. Defeat also faced French armies in Germany, where the Archduke Charles flung back the offensive of the unfortunate General Jourdan (whose nickname in the army was “The Anvil” because he was always being hammered), driving him back into the Black Forest and toward the Rhine. Without waiting to clinch his victory, however, Charles turned against Massena in Switzerland, where he won the battle of First Zurich in May thereby reopening the passes to Allied armies moving between Germany and North Italy, but failing to dispose of the veteran ex-smuggler who fought a series of brilliant actions from his strong position around Limmat. Finally, the arrival of an Anglo-Russian army in north Holland, led by the Duke of York, added a further complication to France’s military situation.
Faced by what appeared to be impending disaster, the Directory gave further proof, if this were needed, of its futility and inadequacy. Years of war, endemic financial chaos and administrative neglect had sadly depleted Lazare Carnot’s Thirteen Armies of 1794, and, in a desperate search for men to fill the ranks, the French Government enforced (June 1799) Jourdan’s unpopular Conscription Law, first formulated in December the previous year. In the event, this did little to meet the requirements, but created a new problem by inducing many young men of military age to avoid conscription by taking to the hills-and forests as réfractaires. Manpower apart, almost every other commodity was in still shorter supply; munitions, muskets, boots, horses, even ammunition were lacking, and the old rallying cry of “The Fatherland in Danger” had lost some of its magic. Nevertheless, the patriotism of the French people and the valor of its soldiery came to the Government’s rescue, and the fight went on, although the Directory lost the last shreds of popular respect through its floundering attempts to retrieve an apparently hopeless situation of its own creation. Schérer lost much of Italy thanks to his Government’s insistence that a large part of his army should be diverted to Naples, and Jourdan on the Rhine was similarly starved of troops when the Directory employed his reinforcements in the task of hunting down refractory conscripts in the interior instead of sending them to the battlefront.
That Republican France survived this combination of crisis and mismanagement was at least as much due to the errors and dissensions of her foes as to her own efforts. The Allied strategy was ill-conceived, being based on the principle of clearing the Danube and Po valleys before tackling the strategically vital massifs of Switzerland. They would have been far better advised to concentrate all their efforts against Massena, for Switzerland was the true key to the strategical situation. Even more damaging were the mutual suspicions and jealousies that split the Allied camp from top to bottom. Thugut ruined successive offensives through his envy of Russian achievements in Italy, his distrust of English intentions in the Netherlands, and his overriding desire for “compensation” in Belgium. On his insistence, Archduke Charles was diverted from Switzerland toward Holland, and Suvorov transferred from Italy to take command against Massena. The execution of these significant moves in mid-campaign created an inevitable hiatus which the French armies—at this time always more professionally competent than their generally stronger but less organized enemies—lost no time in exploiting. Making the most of the temporary easing of pressure, Massena seized his opportunity on September 26 and fell, with 50,000 men, on the 45,000 Russians under the incompetent General
Korsakov at Second Zurich. He achieved a crushing victory before Suvorov could move to his comrade’s assistance, and so at one blow reestablished French hegemony over Switzerland. This Allied defeat led to much mutual recrimination between the Courts of St. Petersburg and Vienna, eventually leading to Russia’s withdrawal from active participation in the Alliance the following January, and firmly returned the initiative to the French. This decisive victory, undoubtedly the turning point of the war, was soon supplemented by a slighter success in Holland. A short while after Bonaparte’s return General Brune fought off the “Grand Old Duke of York” at Bergen, and thereafter persuaded the brother of George III to evacuate his forces back to England (October 18). This withdrawal still further exacerbated Allied relations, for the Russian portion of the expeditionary force found themselves deposited in the Channel Isles on an alien diet of potatoes, a form of nourishment completely unappreciated by the warriors of “Holy Russia.” Thus Pitt was faced with the problem of another rapidly crumbling alliance, and once again, more by better luck than judgment, the Directory found that it had managed to weather another storm.
The Campaigns of Napoleon Page 34
