The War of Wars (28 page)

He abolished the Austrian administrative system in northern Italy and set up a ruling congress of state and municipal councils. Lombardy was to be governed under a separate system. Then he tried to marry the two together in mid-1797 into a ‘Cisalpine state’ with a Directory of its own and an upper and lower house of Ancients and Juniors. Napoleon gravely declared:

In order to consolidate liberty and with the sole aim of your happiness, I have carried out a task such as hitherto had been undertaken only from ambition and love of power . . . Divided and bowed under tyranny for so long, you could not have won your
own freedom; left to yourself for a few years, there will be no power on earth strong enough to take it from you.

Soon afterwards Genoa was turned into a republic. Yet only a few months later, in October, he was warning Talleyrand: ‘You do not know the Italian people. They are not worth the lives of forty thousand Frenchmen. Since I came to Italy I have received no help from this nation’s love of liberty and equality, or at least such help has been negligible. Here are the facts: whatever is good to say in proclamations and printed speeches is romantic fiction.’ Whether this was pure cynicism or a negotiating ploy was unclear. Meanwhile negotiations with the Austrians continued for a formal peace treaty, which was eventually signed at Campo Formio in the Veneto on 17 October, with France now securing control of the Ionian Islands.

In December 1797, Napoleon returned to Paris a national hero. He declared grandiosely to the puppet French Assembly, speaking of France and Austria:

The feudal system, and monarchy have in turn governed Europe for twenty centuries, but from the peace you have just concluded dates the era of representative governments. You have succeeded in organizing this great nation so that its territory is circumscribed by the bounds which nature herself has set. You have done even more. The two most beautiful countries in Europe, once so famous for arts, sciences and the great men whose cradle they were, behold with joyful expectation the Spirit of Liberty rise from the graves of their ancestors.

Two contemporary despatches spoke of the general whom all France was curious to see. Madame de Remusat, one of Josephine’s intimates, remarked:

Napoleon Bonaparte is of low stature and ill-made; the upper part of his body is too long in proportion to his legs. He has thin chestnut hair, his eyes are greyish-blue, and his skin, which was yellow while he was slight, has become of late years a dead white, without any colour. His eyes were ordinarily dull; when angry, his aspect became fierce and menacing . . . an habitually ill-tempered man . . . He did not know how either to enter or to leave a room, how to bow, how
to rise, or how to sit down. Whatever language he speaks, it always sounds like a foreign tongue.

Napoleon’s own private secretary confirmed that ‘when excited by any violent passion, the face of Napoleon assumed a terrible expression. A sort of rotary movement very visibly produced itself.’

All-powerful in his own Italian republic and successful general that he was, Napoleon was still merely a subordinate in France and one of three top generals. The most celebrated was Lazare Hoche, the favourite of Paul Barras, the most powerful man in the Directory. Indeed Barras planned to make Hoche stage a military coup to end the constant quarrels within the Directory, but even as he was preparing for this, as well as for an invasion of Ireland, Hoche mysteriously died before the age of thirty. The cause was variously attributed to the impact of personal attacks, depression, tuberculosis or even that he was murdered by poisoning. Otherwise his name today might be more famous than Napoleon’s. Bernadotte, Napoleon’s other military rival, was soon dismissed because of his publicly proclaimed left-wing Jacobin views. But Napoleon was not above criticism, even from his mentor, Barras, for being too hard on the Austrians. Political power remained firmly in the hands of the Directory.

Early in 1797, while Napoleon was still in Italy, French politics had lurched sharply to the right after an extreme left-wing plot to topple the Directory. Two new members now joined the Directory, one General Charles Pichegru, widely seen as favouring the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy, the other his ally, François Barthélemy. Carnot, the architect of France’s military triumphs of the past three years, was also believed to favour the royalists. That left Napoleon’s old patron, Barras, as head of the republican faction.

At that time too, another major figure made his appearance on the scene, with far-reaching implications for Napoleon: the new foreign minister, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Perigord. This extraordinary émigré figure had been born in 1754 of an aristocratic family and had been brought up by his grandmother. Against his will he had been sent to a seminary to study for the priesthood and later promoted to become bishop of Autun just after the Revolution. Snobbish, and with a
haughty and somewhat sardonic manner, he was a brilliant writer and talker. Barras was later to claim that he bore a remarkable physical resemblance to Robespierre, although he could not have been more different in most respects. Both supporters and detractors agreed that he had a huge intellect and sharp tongue.

A close ally of Mirabeau when the Revolution broke out, he attracted intense opprobrium from the aristocracy by ordering the seizure of church lands and then swearing allegiance to the Revolution – both of which brought about his excommunication. An American observer, Gouverneur Morris, with whom Talleyrand shared a mistress, wrote of him that ‘the Bishop is partly blamed [for indulging in pleasure]: not so much for adultery, because that was common enough among the clergy of high rank, but for the variety and publicity of his amours, for gambling, and above all for stock jobbing during the ministry of M. de Calonne, with whom he was on the best of terms, and therefore had opportunities which his enemies say he made no small use of. However, I do not believe in this, and I think that, except for his gallantries and a mode of thinking rather too liberal for a churchman, the charges are unduly aggravated.’

As war with Britain approached, he departed on a mission to London to try and secure that country’s neutrality. He was snubbed by the King and Queen, received coldly by Pitt and listened to by Grenville, all of whom distrusted the haughty, clever Frenchman. Although supported by Danton, as the Revolution took an ugly turn, Talleyrand fled to England and became part of a small circle of French émigrés. There he provided a remarkable statement of modern foreign policy for his own country.

We have learnt, a little late no doubt, that for states as for individuals real wealth consists not in acquiring or invading the domains of others, but in developing one’s own. We have learnt that all extensions of territory, all usurpation, by force or by fraud, which have long been connected by prejudice with the idea of ‘rank’, of ‘hegemony’, of ‘political stability’, of ‘superiority’ in the order of the powers, are only the cruel jests of political lunacy, false estimates of power, and that their real effect is to increase the difficulty of
administration and to diminish the happiness and security of the governed for the passing interest or for the vanity of those who govern . . . France ought, therefore, to remain within her own boundaries, she owes it to her glory, to her sense of justice and of reason, to her own interest and to that of the other nations who will become free.

He was expelled from England in 1794, for reasons that are obscure but may have been connected to suspicions of spying, and went to America to live with the French colony in Philadelphia. In 1797, with the fall of Robespierre, he was recalled to Paris and, on the initiative of Madame de Staël, appointed minister of foreign affairs. Following an affair with the wife of his predecessor, Madame Charles Delacroix, which resulted in a child, he married a stunningly beautiful Creole wife, Madame Grand.

There followed some extremely murky politics. With an impressive election victory for the royalists, who secured a third of the members of the National Assembly, it seemed clear that the royalist Pichegru, supported by Carnot, would make an attempt to seize power, Napoleon still in Italy, whose new and large fortune had permitted the acquisition of three newspapers, launched a campaign against the royalists, almost certainly at the behest of his patron Barras, supported by Talleyrand.

Privately however, the increasingly self-confident Napoleon despised Barras almost as much as the royalists and the creator of the modern French army, Carnot, whom he saw as a rival. He told a confidant at Mombello that August: ‘Do you believe that I triumph in Italy for the Carnots, Barras, etc . . . I wish to undermine the republican party, but only for my own profit and not that of the ancient dynasty . . . I have tasted authority and I will not give it up. I have decided that if I cannot be the master I will leave France. But it’s too early now, the fruit is not yet ripe . . . Peace would not be in my interest right now . . . I would have to give up this power. If I leave the signing of peace treaties to another man, he would be placed higher in public opinion than I am by my victories.’ Napoleon even threatened the Directory, proclaiming to his Army of Italy. ‘Mountains separate us
from France: but if it were necessary to uphold the constitution, to defend liberty to protect the government and the republicans, then you would cross them with the speed of an eagle.’

He despatched his lieutenant, General Augereau, to help Barras. On the night of 3 September 1797 (‘Fructidor’) a coup d’état was staged: the Tuileries was surrounded and Pichegru was arrested for deportation to the West Indies – although he later escaped. Carnot escaped in his night-dress to exile in Germany, but was later brought back in 1800 as a prisoner of war. There are suggestions that Talleyrand arranged the coup in consultation with Napoleon at a distance.

The two men did not meet for the first time until December. Talleyrand gave this description: ‘At first sight, his face appeared to me charming. A score of victories go so well with youth, with fine eyes, with paleness, and with an appearance of exhaustion.’ Napoleon said, ‘You are the nephew of the Archbishop of Rheims who is with Louis XVIII (not the Count de Lille, as it was customary to call him in Paris). – I also have an uncle, who is an archdeacon in Corsica. He brought me up. In Corsica, you know, an archdeacon is the same as a bishop in France.’

The devious and calculating Talleyrand now played an unusual role. Having been interested in securing Napoleon’s military leadership to destroy the royalists, he seemed intent, possibly in deference to Barras, still the dominant figure on the Directory, on getting Napoleon out of Paris – whether because he feared him or because he believed a premature seizure of power would go wrong is unclear. Napoleon was appointed to plan the invasion of Britain in place of Hoche, who had suffered the nervous breakdown that was to lead to his early death.

Napoleon was thus the country’s most prominent soldier, but not the dominant political power. He played his hand skilfully, deliberately shunning the limelight, attending discreet dinner parties, and disparaging Augereau, his fellow general, who had pretensions to become a military strongman.

Meanwhile he fretted about Josephine’s continuing love affair with Hippolyte Charles, who at one stage he threatened to have executed. She was now meeting him at the house of a shady businessman who had made a fortune out of supplying poor equipment to the army of
Italy. When Napoleon confronted her, she placated him with a barrage of apologies and hysteria.

Napoleon went in February to inspect the French Channel ports from which it was proposed to invade England. There he came to the conclusion, with impeccable good sense and realism that the whole project was hopeless. He told the Directory: ‘To undertake an invasion of England without being masters of the sea would be the boldest and most difficult operation ever carried out.’ The invasion could only be mounted by night, to foil Britain’s navy, and in winter – but the crossing would take at least six to eight hours and at that time of year would be virtually impossible

Napoleon knew that it would be folly to besmirch his reputation by embarking on a project that was doomed to failure. The directors were furious, believing this to be a tactical ploy, and that Napoleon was plotting a military coup. Tension began to mount in Paris.

There was one area where British arms immediately performed remarkable, if not unchallenged, feats: the war at sea. The British navy at the outset of the war, was, unlike the army, far from unprepared: the last major war, in which it had played a major part, the American War of Independence, had ended only a decade earlier. It had overcome the previously enormous problem of scurvy, caused by a lack of fresh vegetables; and it had learnt to copper-bottom its ships so as to keep out worms and to provide extra speed. Since then too, the Controller of the Navy, Sir Charles Middleton, later Lord Barham, had put into effect a series of major administrative reforms which had placed the navy on a much more meritocratic footing, and speeded up mobilization in the event of war.

The first major naval engagements of the war involved, appropriately enough, frigates, those glamorous, sleek, middle-sized daring raiders of the sea, not so slow, clumsy and impressive as the larger ships of the line, but equipped with the armaments to engage all but the biggest enemy ships. The job of frigates was to scour the seas in search of French privateers, non-navy ships licensed to attack merchantmen of hostile powers to intercept lines of supplies.

From the beginning of the war the success of the British frigates was astonishing. In 1793 the British captured fifty-two French men-of-war and eighty-eight privateers, compared with the French captures of just six warships – not one of them a line-of-battle ship, those ships that sailed in the traditional line to engage in fleet action, bringing all their guns to bear. The following year, with fewer French ships exposing
themselves after the disastrous first year, the British captured thirty-six French warships, seven of them being line-of-battle ships, and lost only ten, including just one ship of the line. In 1795 the British took fifteen warships to the French six. During the war as a whole, as we shall see, the British captured 570 ships altogether, with nearly 16,000 guns; they lost just fifty-nine warships, with under 1,300 guns altogether. Although the British merchant fleet suffered dreadful losses of ships, it has been estimated that less than 2½ per cent of her annual trade was lost in this way. This was the lifeline that kept an island nation fighting.