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Rh His excellent materials would often justify Mr. Seeley in being more sure of things than he appears ; and when he is not sure he employs precautions which a compendium ought, if possible, to avoid. He doubts whether Bonaparte showed any remarkable firmness of character in Vendémiaire ; whether Carnot chose him for the command in Italy ; whether he bribed Sieyès, as he boasted, with public money. He does not know whether Monge suggested the expedition to Egypt ; whether the marriage with an archduchess was part of the original plan ; whether the sudden illness at Pirna and the poisoning at Fontainebleau are real ; whether or no the allies resolved upon the march to Paris on 24th March. Nearly all these things are ascertainable. When there was some hesitation about using force against the rising of Vendémiaire, Bonaparte said: "Attendez-vous que le peuple vous donne la permission de tirer sur lui?" The Italian appointment does not rest on the unsupported word of a Terrorist. La Réveillère, whose memoirs are an apology for Fructidor and an attack on the Reponse à Bailleul, who reviles Carnot for the favour he enjoyed during the empire, affirms that the nomination was not the act of Barras. If he could have said that it was not the act of Carnot, he would have said it. We learn from Lavallette that Monge discussed Egypt, not that he proposed the expedition. Bonaparte is not our only authority for the gift of public money to Sieyès. The other consul, Roger Ducos, informed Gohier that Sieyès had taken £16,000, and he himself £4000, and that the First Consul had said to him : "II faut gorger ce prètre de biens pour en avoir raison." The Austrian match was so little part of the original plan that Napoleon preferred a Russian grand- duchess. Alexander himself directed his thoughts towards Vienna, and Metternich had proposed the marriage before the divorce. In February 1810 a French diplomatist wrote to him that Talleyrand had done the most to alter the emperor's choice, adding : "We shall be on bad terms with Russia in less than five months, and at war in eighteen." Thiers and Bernhardi support the