Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/207

1795.] NAPOLEON 195 Joins the Bonaparte now passes out of the civil into the foreign army of war . The military system of the Convention is by this Italy- time in full operation. Distinct armies face each enemy, and the great military names of the Revolution are already in men s mouths. The army of the north has Jourdan, Leclerc, Vandamme, Brune, Mortier ; that of the Moselle has Hoche, Bessieres, Moreau ; that of the Rhine Pichegru, Sche rer, Berthier ; that of the West Marceau and Kleber. Bonaparte joins the army of Italy as general of artillery and inspector-general; to the same army is attached Masse"na as general of division ; Dumerbion is general-in- chief. It is now that for the first time we find Bonaparte s exceptional ability remarked. Restless pushing ambition he had shown all along, but that he was more than a mere intriguer seems to have been first discerned by the younger Robespierre, who in a letter of April 5, 1794, describes him as "of transcendent merit." In the brief campaign of the army of Italy which occupied the month of July 1794 he took no part, while Masse na commanded in the illness of Dumerbion. But in July he made his first essay in diplomacy. Genoa was among the earliest of the many feeble neutral states which suffered in the conflict of the Revolution with the great powers, and at the expense of which the revolutionary empire was founded. Bonaparte was sent by the younger Robespierre to remonstrate with the Genoese Government upon the use which they suffered the Coalition to make of their neutral territory. He was in Genoa from July 16 to July 23 ; he urged the French claim with success ; he returned to Nice on July 28. But July 28, 1794, is the 9th Thermidor, on which Bonaparte s patron perished with his elder brother on the scaffold. Con- Probably the connexion of Bonaparte with the Robes- nexion pierres was closer than Bonaparte himself at a later time with the iik e( j t j iave it thought. " He was their man, their plan- pierres. maker," writes Salicetti ; " he had acquired an ascendency over the Representatives (i.e., especially Robespierre junior) which it is impossible to describe," writes Marmont. Accordingly after Thermidor the Representatives in Mission who remained with the army of Italy, viz., Salicetti, Albitte, and Laporte, suspended Bonaparte from his functions, and placed him provisionally under arrest (August 6). He was imprisoned at the Fort Carre" near Antibes, but fortu nately for him was not sent to Paris. On the 20th he was set provisionally at liberty on the ground of "the possible utility of the military and local knowledge of the said Bonaparte." His escape was due, according to Marmont, to Salicetti s favour and to the powerful help he himself succeeded in procuring ; " he moved heaven and earth." His power of attaching followers also now begins to appear ; Junot and Marmont, who had become acquainted with him at Toulon, were prepared, if he had been sent to Paris, to set him free by killing the gens d armes and carrying him into the Genoese territory. Marmont has graphically described the influence exerted upon himself at this time by Bonaparte; "there was so much future in his mind," he writes. This was a passing check; early in 1795 he suffered a greater misfortune. He had been engaged in a maritime expedition of which the object was to recover Corsica, now completely in the power of the English. On March 3d he embarked with his brother Louis, Marmont, and others on the brig "Amitie." On the llth the fleet set sail. It fell in with the English, lost two ships, and returned defeated. The enterprise was abandoned, and by the end of the same month we find Lacombe Saint Michel, member of the Committee of Public Safety, sending orders to the general of brigade Bonaparte to proceed immediately to the army of the west in order to take command of the artillery there. He left Marseilles for Paris on May 5, Ordered feeling that all the ground gained by his activity at Toulon, to the and by the admiration he had begun to inspire, was lost a f my . of . again, that his career was all to recommence, and in pecu liarly unfavourable circumstance.?. This is the last ill tarn he ever received from fortune. It has been attributed to the Girondist spite of a certain Aubry against the Montagnard Bonaparte. The truth seems rather to be that the Committee of Public Safety- felt that the Corsican element was too strong in the army of Italy ; they remarked that " the patriotism of these refugees is less manifest than their disposition to enrich themselves." Lacombe Saint Michel knew Corsica; and the new general of the army of Italy, Sche rer, remarks of Bonaparte just at this moment that " he is a really good artillerist, but has rather too much ambition and intrigue for his advancement." The anecdote told by Bonaparte himself of his ordering an attack of outposts in order to treat a lady to a sight of real war, " how the French were successful, but necessarily no result could come out of it, the attack being a pure fancy, and yet some men were left on the field," belongs to the last months of his service in the army of Italy. It is worthy of notice, as showing his cynical insensibility, that he acted thus almost at the very beginning of his military career, and not when he had been hardened by long familiarity with bloodshed. On his arrival at Paris Remains he avoids proceeding to the army of the west, and after in Paris - a time obtains from Doulcet de Ponte"coulant a post in the topographical section of the war office. Here he has an opportunity of resuming his old work, and we find him furnishing Doulcet, as he had before furnished Robespierre junior, with strategical plans for the conduct of the war in Italy. Late in August he applies for a commission from Government to go to Constantinople at the head of a party of artillerists in order to reform that department of the Turkish service. He sends in a testimonial from Doulcet which describes him as " a citizen who may be usefully employed whether in the artillery or in any other arm, and even in the department of foreign affairs." But at this moment occurs the crisis of his life. It coincides with a remarkable crisis in the history of France. The Second Revolution (1792) had destroyed the mon archy, but a republic, properly speaking, had not yet been established. Between 1792 and 1795 the government had been provisionally in the hands of the National Conven tion, which had been summoned, not to govern, but to create a new constitution. Now at length, the danger from foreign enemies having been averted, the Convention could proceed to its proper work of establishing a definite republic. But there was danger lest the country, when appealed to, should elect to undo the work of 1792 by recalling the Bourbons, or at least should avenge on the Mountain the atrocities of the Terror. To preserve the continuity of government an expedient was adopted. As under the new constitution the assemblies were to be renewed periodically to the extent only of one-third at a time, it was decreed that the existing Convention should be treated as the first Corps Ldgislatif under the new system. Thus, instead of being dissolved and making way for new assemblies, it was to form the nucleus of the new legislature, and to be renewed only to the extent of one-third. This additional law, which was promulgated along with the new constitu tion, excited a rebellion in Paris. The sections (or wards) called into existence a revolutionary assembly, which met at the Ode"on. This the Convention suppressed by military force, and the discontent of the individual sections was thereby increased. At the same time their confidence was