The Rape of Venice (62 page)

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 in 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.

Bernadotte had won his fame with the army of the Sambreet-Meuse and had expected to succeed Jourdan on his retirement. Instead, the Directory, at last acceding to Boneparte's plea for reinforcements for his final drive into Austria, had ordered Bernadotte to march his division down to Milan. The result had not been a happy one.

The French armies of the North were still practising the old war technique of ponderous march and counter march, with plenty of prolonged periods in between for drill and sprucing themselves up. Bernadotte's division were good fighters when they actually got into a battle, but when they joined the Army of Italy neither they nor their General sought to hide their contempt for the slovenly mobs which had performed such
prodigies of valour under Augereau and Masséna. The latter were largely ex
sans-culottes
, the former moderates, and as soon as the campaign was over open strife broke out between them. Brune, who was temporarily commanding Masséna's division, had called on Bernadotte's Chief-of-Staff and asked him to forbid the use of the word ‘Monsieur' among his officers. The Chief-of-Staff had refused and challenged Brune to a duel. Officers and men had taken up their leaders' quarrel with the result that, within twenty-four hours, fifty men had been killed and three hundred wounded.

Boneparte and Bernadotte had disliked one another on sight, and the former's Chief-of-Staff, Berthier, had developed a positive hatred for the handsome, long-nosed supercilious Gascon. But at least they had good reason to believe him loyal to the Directory; so they had got rid of him by pushing him off to Paris after Augereau.

Couriers came galloping in from Paris night and day, but even with the best speed they could make, their news was over a week old before it got to Montebello. It was therefore not until September 13th that Boneparte and his staff had first particulars of events on 18th of the month in the revolutionary calendar named Fructidor.

This date, by the old reckoning September 4th, 1797, was to rank with 13th Vendémiaire, and later 18th Brumaire, as key dates in the short life of the Directory. The corrupt but courageous Barras, and the brutal but bold Augereau, managed everything between them. The former did not even tell his colleagues Rewbell and Larevelliére what was planned until a few hours before the blow was struck.

Augereau's troops surrounded the two Chambers and demanded the surrender of the Constitutional Guard, a large part of which had been suborned beforehand. When asked by what right he did so, he had grinned, drawn his huge sabre, and declared: ‘By that of the sword.'

Next day the Five Hundred and the Ancients were summoned to meet in the Odeon Theatre and the School of Medicine, respectively. Few who were not partisans of the Left dared to do so. To these were put resolutions that Barras and his friends had drafted overnight. The principle of these was the completely arbitrary cancellation of the recent elections in forty-eight Departments, thus throwing out at one stroke the greater part of the Deputies who represented the moderate views now held by a majority of the people of France.

After this first news of the
coup d'état
couriers arrived almost every hour at Montebello bringing further details. Some fifty members of the two Chambers, among them Generals Pichegru and Willot and such famous anti-Terrorists as Boissy d'Anglas, Bourdon of the Oise and Barbé-Marbois, had been placed under arrest and condemned to transportation; so, too, had the able and honest Director, Barthélemy, to whom, as a diplomat, France owed the withdrawal of Prussia from among her active enemies. Carnot's arrest had also been ordered, but he had taken the precaution of hiding in his bedroom at the Luxembourg a spare key to a small gate in the garden and, warned only just in time by his brother, he had escaped through it.

No one could have been more pleased at this last piece of news that Roger. Although Carnot had been one of Robespierre's colleagues, he had taken no part in the Terror and, as a professional soldier, concerned himself only with the defence of France. He had not only raised, armed and trained her great new armies, but for five years been solely responsible for the strategy by which she had kept her many enemies at bay. He had, too, been in a large part personally responsible for the great republican victory at Wattignies; for, having planned the battle with Jourdan at his field-headquarters, he had later, on seeing a wing of the French front break, leapt into the fray, rallied the retreating
sans-culottes
and, waving his hat on the end of his cane, himself led them back in a victorious charge. He was a great man in every sense, honourable, generous, courageous, compassionate, and with high ideals for the real betterment of the masses; and Roger regarded him with more respect than he had for any other revolutionary leader.

After a further week or so, to the relief of most people, it became apparent that the Left did not intend to use its triumph to launch a renewal of the Terror. With shocking barbarity the shilly-shallying Pichegru, the unfortunate Barthélemy, and a number of others were transported in iron cages through France to La Rochelle, before being shipped off to ‘la
guillotine sec
', as exiles in the fever-ridden swamps of Cayenne. Apart from this, no acts of tyranny were indulged in and Paris, although trembling, remained quiet. But the laws against
emigrés
and priests were once more rigidly enforced, the Royalist Clubs were closed, and a heavy censorship was placed upon the press. Merlin of Douai and Françoise de Neuf-château were elected as Directors to replace Carnot and
Barthélemy, much to Augereau's annoyance, as he had hoped to become a Director himself; but to console him he was made General-in-Chief of the Armies of the Rhine.

News of a further result of the
coup d'état
reached Peschiera, on Lake Garda, to which Boneparte had moved at the end of September. The peace negotiations at Lille had dragged on since July, because Mr. Pitt, although willing to buy peace by giving the French practically everything for which they asked, still refused to give up the Cape of Good Hope. The French were, it is true, demanding its return to the Dutch, but everyone knew that now they dominated Holland so completely it would be turned into a French naval base, and with the French at the Cape it would not be long before they cut Britain's invaluable shipping route to India.

The French Republicans had always regarded Britain as their most deadly enemy and had no desire for peace with her. Now that they had succeeded in crushing the Moderates, who favoured peace, they broke off the negotiations and, on September 17th, Lord Malmesbury had been told in the most cavalier fashion to leave France within twenty-four hours.

Roger had hated the thought of Britain making such a humiliating peace after all the years of effort, thousands of lives and millions in treasure that she had poured into the war; yet he needed no telling how black her future looked now that, once the Austrian business was settled, she must fight on alone. The only escape from invasion and the annihilation he could see for his country was that, by hook or by crook, she must once more arouse Europe against France and provide her again with enemies on the Continent.

The greatest hope for that lay in the fact that France was still bankrupt. Only the huge indemnities that Boneparte had been extracting from the Italian States had kept her going during the past eighteen months. And Boneparte had altered the whole aspect of the war to one of open aggression and plunder. If that policy was continued, and it must be unless France was to collapse, the next victims would be the small German states on the far side of the Rhine. At that Prussia and Russia would become alarmed and might be drawn in to Britain's assistance. Austria too was very far from being down and out. She now had Dalmatia, with its hardy population of Croat and Slovene fighting men to draw upon, as well as Hungary and her other vast dominions. With such a huge reservoir of manpower, given a few months to recover from the blow
Boneparte had dealt her, she could again put great armies in the field. That, Roger felt, made it all the more imperative that nothing possible should be left undone which would strengthen Austria's hand in launching a new campaign, and his mind turned once more to Venice.