Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/211

Rh 1797.] NAPOLEON 199 and issued a declaration of war. The feeble Government could only submit. A revolution took place at Venice, and French troops took possession of the town on May 16th. A treaty was now concluded by Bonaparte &quot; establishing peace and friendship between the French republic and the republic of Venice,&quot; and providing that &quot; the French occu pation should cease as soon as the new Government should declare that it no longer needed foreign assistance.&quot; &quot;A principal object of this treaty,&quot; as Bonaparte candidly explained to the Directory, &quot;was to obtain possession without hindrance of the city, the arsenal, and everything.&quot; At the time that he was thus establishing friendship he was, as we know, ceding the territory of Venice, including at last the town, to Austria. When we read the letters written by him at this period we see that already, only a year after he assumed for the first time the command of an army, he has fully conceived the utmost of what he afterwards realized. Had he been shown in vision at this time what he was to be at his zenith in 1812, when he was the astonishment and terror of the world, he would probably have said that it fell short of his expectations. One concession he had made in order to prevent Hoche and Moreau from sharing his laurels ; at Leoben he had granted good terms to Austria. But the definitive treaty was not yet concluded, and it was still possible to with draw this concession. This was the more possible as Austria might now be threatened with an attack from Bonaparte and Hoche at the same time. By virtue of the new principle she might also be bribed. The town of Venice might be ceded to her as well as the province, and in return for the left bank of the Rhine indemnity might be granted to her within the Germanic empire. The principle of ceding what is not one s own is evidently capable of wide application. But Austria had still one hope, for it seemed impossible that France herself could suffer Bonaparte to run his headlong career without inter ference, especially as she now had popular assemblies. The difficulty which Bonaparte had dissipated by his cannon in Vende miaire had returned, as it could not fail to do. A Jacobinical regicide republic had to support itself in the midst of a nation which was by no means Jacobinical, and which had representative assemblies. These assem blies, renewed by a third for the second time in the spring of 1797, placed Pichegru, suspected of royalism, in the chair of the Five Hundred, and Europe began to ask whether the restoration of the Bourbons was about to follow. Bonaparte at Montebello found that the Austrian negotiators were bent upon delay. The rising party was not perhaps mainly royalist ; its most conspicuous representative, Carnot, the Director, was himself a regicide. In the main it aimed only at respectable government and peace, but a minority were open to some suspicion of royalism. This suspicion was fatal to the whole party, since royalism had at this time been thoroughly discredited by the follies of the emigres. An outcry is raised by the soldiers. We can measure the steady progress which had been made by the military power since Vende miaire ; it had then been an instru ment in the hands of the Government, now it gives the law and makes the Government its instrument. The armies of the Rhine, represented by Hoche, oppose the new movement ; as to Bonaparte, he was driven into op position by self-defence. Dumolard, a deputy, had called attention to his monstrous treatment of the Venetian re public ; he anticipated the judgment of history by com paring it to the partition of Poland. Bonaparte had already divulged to a friend the secret that he despised republicanism, but this attack made him once more, for the last time, a republican and a Jacobin. It is, however, probable that he would in any case have sided with the majority of the Directory, since anything which favoured the Bourbons was a hindrance to his ambition. And thus the armies of the republic stood united against the tendency of public opinion at home. Imperialism stood opposed to parliamentary government, believing itself such was the bewilderment of the time to be more in favour of the sovereignty of the people than the people itself, and not aware that it was paving the way for a military despot. The catastrophe came on 18th Fructidor (September Coup 4, 1797), when Augereau, one of Bonaparte s generals of d & at of division, who had been sent by Bonaparte to Paris, sur- 5 rounded the Corps Le gislatif with twelve thousand men and arrested the most obnoxious representatives, while another force marched to the Luxembourg, arrested the Director Barthelemi, and would have arrested Carnot had he not received warning in time to make his escape. This stroke was followed by an outrageous proscription of the new party, of whom a large number, consisting partly of members of the Councils, partly of journalists, were transported to die at Cayenne, and the elections were annulled in forty-eight departments. Such was Fructidor, which may be considered as the third of the revolutions which compose the complex event usually known as the French Revolution. In 1789 the absolute monarchy had given place to a constitutional monarchy, which was definitively established in 1791. In 1792 the constitutional monarchy fell, giving place to a republic which was definitively established in 1795. Since 1795 it had been understood that revolution was over, and that France was living under a constitution. But in Fructidor this constitution also fell, and govern ment became revolutionary again. It was evident that a third constitution must be established ; it was evident also that this constitution must set up a military form of government, that is, an imperialism; but two more years passed before this was done. The benefit of the change was reaped in the end by Bonaparte. Naturally he favoured it and took a great share in contriving it. But it seems an exaggeration to represent him as the exclusive or even the principal author of Fructidor. Hoche took the same side as Bonaparte; Augereau outran him (and yet Augereau at this time was by no means a mere echo of Bonaparte) ; the division of the army of Italy commanded by Bernadotte, which had been recently detached from the army of Sambre-et-Meuse, and stood somewhat aloof from Bonaparte s influence, sided with him in this instance. The truth is that the rising party of Moderates gave offence to the whole military world by making peace their watchword. Outside the armies too there was profound alarm in the whole repub lican party, so that the circle of Madame de Stael was strongly Fructidorian, and this certainly was not guided by the influence of Bonaparte, though at this time Madame de Stael was among his warmest admirers. When the blow had been struck, Bonaparte knew how to reap the utmost advantage from it, and to exhibit it in its true light as mortal at the same time to the Moderates and to the republican Government itself, which now ceased to be legal and became once more revolutionary, and as favourable only to the military power and to the rising imperialism. He congratulated the armies on the fall of &quot; the enemies of the soldier and especially of the army of Italy,&quot; but accorded only the faintest approval to the Directory. The death of Hoche, occurring soon after, removed from Bonaparte s path his only rival in the affections of the already omnipotent soldiery. Hoche alone among the generals beside Bonaparte had shown political talents;