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One was to foster a soldier’s strong sense of identification with his regiment.
Napoleon instinctively understood what soldiers wanted, and he gave it to them.
And at least until the battle of Aspern-Essling in 1809 he gave them what they wanted most of all: victory.
He would later on occasion take off his own cross of the Légion d’Honneur to give to a soldier whose bravery he’d witnessed.
Napoleon genuinely enjoyed spending time with his soldiers; he squeezed their earlobes, joked with them and singled out old grognards (literally ‘grumblers’, but also translatable as ‘veterans’), reminiscing about past battles and peppering them with questions.
His constant references to the ancient world had the intended effect of giving ordinary soldiers a sense that their lives – and, should it come to that, their deaths in battle – mattered, that they were an integral part of a larger whole that would resonate through French history.
Napoleon taught ordinary people that they could make history, and convinced his followers they were taking part in an adventure, a pageant, an experiment, an epic whose splendour would draw the attention of posterity for centuries to come.
The notion that le petit caporal was on their side against les gros bonnets (‘big-hats’) was generally held throughout the army.
Caesar had laconically agreed to his soldiers’ demands to be demobilized, but then he addressed them with ill-concealed contempt as ‘citizens’ rather than ‘soldiers’ or ‘comrades’. The impact was swift and telling. ‘Finally,’ he concludes, ‘the result of this moving scene was to win the continuation of their services.’
‘Severe to the officers,’ was his stated mantra, ‘kindly to the men.’
That it was he rather than a plenipotentiary from Paris who negotiated and signed the document was a significant indication of how the balance of power with the Directory had tipped in his favour.
‘My civil career shall resemble my military career by its simplicity.’ He was surely imagining himself as the ancient hero Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus,
the doge and senate – whose forefathers had once held the mighty Ottoman Empire at bay – meekly abolished themselves after 1,200 years as an independent state.
the lion of St Mark must lick the dust.’
12 On May 16, 5,000 French troops under General Louis Baraguey d’Hilliers entered Venice as ‘liberators’ and the four bronze horses that may once have graced Trajan’s Arch in Rome were removed from the portico of the Basilica di San Marco and taken to the Louvre, where they remained until they were returned in 1815.
Napoleon’s main residence in the spring of 1797 was the palazzo of Mombello outside Milan,
It was at this time, with many of them under his eye at Mombello, that Napoleon began his persistent interference in the love-lives of his siblings.
On July 17, Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand became foreign minister for the first of his four terms in the post.
For many years Napoleon held a seemingly unbounded admiration for him, writing to him often and confidentially and calling him ‘the King of European conversation’, although by the end of his life he had seen through him completely, saying, ‘He rarely gives advice, but can make others talk … I never knew anyone so entirely indifferent to right and wrong.’
The Fructidor coup took place in the early hours of September 4, 1797 (18 Fructidor in the republican calendar) and was a complete success.
Augereau occupied the important strategic points in Paris,
The reliable republicans Philippe Merlin de Douai and François de Neufchâteau joined the Directory in place of the purged Carnot and Barthélemy, and the re-radicalized body took extra powers to close newspapers and political clubs (such as the Clichy).
Napoleon was ‘intoxicated with joy’ when he heard of the outcome.
Napoleon’s letters from this period refer constantly to his supposed ill-health – ‘I can hardly get on horseback; I require two years’ repose’ – and are replete once again with threats of resignation for not being properly appreciated by the government,
He also continually complained about the difficulty of negotiating with Cobenzl.* In the course of a frank discussion over the future of the Ionian Isles, Napoleon smashed on the floor either a beautiful piece of antique china (the Austrian version) or a cheap tea set (the Bonapartist version), or possibly Cobenzl’s ‘prized porcelain teacups that had been given him by sovereigns such as Catherine the Great’ (Napoleon’s own version twenty years after the event).
Whatever was broken, Cobenzl remained calm, merely reporting back to Vienna: ‘He behaved like a fool.’
October 13, 1797,
‘Our Government must destroy the Anglican monarchy, or expect itself to be destroyed by the corruption of these intriguing and enterprising islanders. The present moment offers us a fine opportunity. Let’s concentrate all our activity upon the naval side and destroy England. That done, Europe is at our feet.’
the Congress of Rastatt
Napoleon understood the power that spectacle held over the public imagination, and wanted the new French Republic to make the same visual impact that the old European monarchies enjoyed.
The Treaty of Campo Formio was officially ratified at Rastatt on November 30.
At that time there were 16 million Germans who didn’t live in either Austria or Prussia, and Napoleon wanted France to make a vigorous bid for their support since the glory days of the Holy Roman Empire that had once united them were now long gone.
As he had presciently put it in a letter to the Directory on May 27: ‘If the concept of Germany didn’t exist, we would need to invent it for our own purposes.’
the perfect opportunity for a calculated act of diplomatic rudeness,
December 2, 1797,
(Freemasons tended to be supporters of his modernization programme, especially in Italy.)
The extent of Josephine’s almost psychotic extravagance may be discerned in the fact that she had spent 300,000 francs decorating it with Pompeian frescoes, mirrors, cupids, pink roses, white swans and so on, when it was still only rented.
He feared this might get him poisoned,
Placing oneself in the limelight while seeming modestly to edge away from it is one of the most skilful of all political moves, and Napoleon had mastered it perfectly.
Napoleon was much happier on Christmas Day, when he was elected a member of the Institut de France, then (as now) the foremost intellectual society in France, in place of the exiled Carnot.
‘The true conquests, the only ones that cause no regret, are those made over ignorance.’
‘I well knew that there was not a drummer in the army but would respect me the more for believing me to be not a mere soldier,’
His proposers and supporters at the Institut undoubtedly thought it a boon to have the foremost general of the day as a member, but Napoleon was a bona fide intellectual, and not just an intellectual among generals.
He was to impress Goethe with his views on the motives of Werther’s suicide and Berlioz with his knowledge of music.
Napoleon showed considerable tact when, having been offered a major role by the Directory in the no-longer-popular anniversary celebrations of Louis XVI’s execution on January 21, he modestly attended in his Institut rather than his military uniform, sitting in the third row rather than next to the Directors.
on March 5 they gave him carte blanche to prepare for and command a full-scale invasion of Egypt in the hope of dealing a blow to British influence in and trading routes through the eastern Mediterranean.
For Napoleon it represented an opportunity to follow in the footsteps of both his greatest heroes, Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, and he did not rule out the possibility of using Egypt as a stepping-stone to India. ‘Europe is but a molehill,’ a delighted Napoleon told his private secretary, ‘all the great reputations have come from Asia.’
but if it emerged that Napoleon’s own wife was also profiting from corrupt army provisioning, one of his strongest appeals to the populace – his integrity – would vanish overnight.
As he contemplated a new campaign in Egypt, Napoleon thus had every reason to wish to escape Paris, a place he had come to equate with corruption, disloyalty, heartache, secret malice and the potential for deep embarrassment.
He always had a certain idea of himself as a noble knight, like Clisson from his own short story, and the behaviour of both the Directory and Josephine threatened the ideal. It was time to double the stakes once again.
