Array Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne - The Collected Works of Napoleon Bonaparte

His conversation dazzled by its ease and richness. It was quoted everywhere. Some of it was calculated to arouse concern in high quarters - "What I have done so far," he said, "is nothing. I am but at the beginning of the career I am to run. Do you imagine that I have triumphed in Italy in order to advance the lawyers of the Directory" . . . Let the Directory attempt to deprive me of my command and they will see who is the master. The nation must have a head who is rendered illustrious by glory." Two years later he saw to it that she had such a head.

The treaty of Campo Formio initiated the process of changing the map of Europe which was to be carried on bewilderingly in the years to come. Neither France, champion of the new principles of politics, nor Austria, champion of the old, differed in their methods. Both bargained and traded as best they could and the result was an agreement that contravened the principles of the French Revolution, of the rights of peoples to determine their own destinies, the principle of popular sovereignty. For the agreement simply registered the arbitrament of the sword, was frankly based on force, and on nothing else. French domestic policy had been revolutionized. French foreign policy had remained stationary.

By the Treaty of Campo Formio Austria relinquished her possessions in Belgium to France and abandoned to her the left bank of the Rhine, agreeing to bring about a congress of the German states to effect this change. Austria also gave up her rights in Lombardy and agreed to recognize the new Cisalpine Republic which Bonaparte created out of Lombardy, the duchies , Parma and Modena, and out of parts of the Papal States and Venetia. In return for this the city, the islands, and most of the mainland of Venice, were handed over to Austria, as were also Dalmatia and Istria. Austria became an Adriatic power. The Adriatic ceased to be a Venetian lake.

The French people were enthusiastic over the acquisition of Belgium and the left bank of the Rhine. They were disposed, however, to be indignant at the treatment of Venice, the rape of a republic by a republic. But they were obliged to take the fly with of the the ointment and to adapt themselves to the situation. Thus ended the famous Italian campaign, which was the stepping-stone by which Napoleon Bonaparte started on his triumphal way.

He had, moreover, not only conquered Italy. He had plundered her. One of the features of this campaign had been that it had been based upon the principle that it must pay for itself and yield a profit in addition, for the French treasury. Bonaparte demanded large contributions from the princes whom he conquered. The Duke of Modena had to pay ten million francs, the Republic of Genoa fifteen, the Pope twenty. He levied heavily upon Milan. Not only did he make Italy support his army but he sent large sums to the Directory, to meet the ever-threatening deficit.

Not only that, but he shamelessly and systematically robbed her of her works of art. This he made a regular feature of his career as conqueror. In this and later campaigns, whenever victorious, he had his agents ransack the galleries and select the pictures, which he then demanded as the prize of war, conduct which greatly embittered the victims but produced pleasurable feelings in France. The entry of the first art treasures into Paris created great excitement. Enormous cars bearing pictures and statues, carefully packed, but labeled on the outside, rolled through the streets to the accompaniment of martial music, the waving of flags, and shouts of popular approval: 'The Transfiguration' by Raphael; 'The Christ' by Titian; the Apollo Belvedere, the Nine Muses, the Laocoon, the Venus de Medici.

During his career Bonaparte enriched the Museum of the Louvre with over a hundred and fifty paintings by Raphael, Rembrandt, Rubens, Titian, and Van Dyck, to mention only a few of the greater names. After his fall years later many of these were returned to their former owners. Yet many remained. The famous bronze horses of Venice, of which the Venetians had robbed Constantinople centuries before, as Constantinople had long before that robbed Rome, were transported to Paris after the conquest of Venice in 1797, were transported back to Venice after the overthrow of Napoleon and were put in place again, there to remain for a full 100 years, until the year 1915, when they were removed once more, this time by the Venetians themselves, for purposes of safety against the dangers of the Austrian war of that year.

After this swift revelation of genius in the Italian campaign the laureled hero returned to Paris, the cynosure of all eyes, the center of boundless curiosity. He knew, however, that the way to keep curiosity alive is not to satisfy it, for, once satisfied, it turns to other objects. Believing that the Parisians, like the ancient Athenians, preferred to worship gods that were unknown, he discreetly kept in the background, affected simplicity of dress and demeanor, and won praises for his "modesty," quite ironically misplaced. Modesty was not his forte. He was studying his future very carefully, was analyzing the situation very closely. He would have liked to enter the Directory. Once one of the five he could have pocketed the other four. But he was only twenty-eight and Directors must be at least forty years of age. He did not wish or intend to imitate Cincinnatus by returning with dignity to the plow. He was resolved to "keep his glory warm." Perceiving that, as he expressed it, "the pear was not yet ripe," he meditated, and the result of his meditations was a spectacular adventure.

After the Peace of Campo Formio only one power remained at war with France, namely England. But England was most formidable England because of her wealth, because of her colonies, because of her navy. She had been the center of the coalition, the pay-mistress of the other enemies, the constant fomenter of trouble, the patron of the Bourbons. "Our Government," said Napoleon at this time, "must destroy the English monarchy or it must expect itself to be destroyed by these active islanders. Let us concentrate our energies on the navy and annihilate England. That done, Europe is at our feet." The annihilation of England was to be the most constant subject of his thought during his entire career, baffling him at every stage, prompting him to gigantic efforts, ending in catastrophic failure eighteen years later at Waterloo, and in the forced repinings of St. Helena.

The Directory now made Bonaparte commander of the army of England, and he began his first experiment in the elusive art of destroying these 'active islanders.' Seeing that a direct invasion of England was impossible he sought out a vulnerable spot which should at the same time be accessible, and he hit upon Egypt. Not that Egypt was an English possession, for it was not. It belonged to the Sultan of Turkey. But it was on the route to India and Bonaparte, like many of his contemporaries, considered that England drew her strength, not from English mines and factories, from English brains and characters, but from the fabulous wealth of India. Once cut that nerve and the mighty colossus would reel and fall. England was not an island; she was a world-empire. As such she stood in the way of all other would-be world-empires, then as now. The year 1914 saw no new arguments put forth by her enemies in regard to England that were not freely uttered in 1797. Bonaparte denounced this "tyrant of the seas" quite in our latter-day style. If there must be tyranny it was intolerable that it should be exercised by others. He now received the ready sanction of the Directors to his plan for the conquest of Egypt. Once conquered, Egypt would serve as a basis of operations for an expedition to India which would come in time. The Directors were glad to get him so far away from Paris, where his popularity was burdensome, indeed, a constant menace. The plan itself, also, was quite in the traditions of the French foreign office. Moreover the potent fascination of the Orient for all imaginative minds, as offering an inviting, mysterious field for vast and dazzling action, operated powerfully upon Bonaparte. What destinies might not be carved out of the gorgeous East, with its limitless horizons, its immeasurable, unutilized opportunities? The Orient had appealed to Alexander the Great with irresistible force as it now appealed to this imaginative young Corsican, every energy of whose rich and complex personality was now in high flood. "This little Europe has not enough to offer," he remarked one day to his schoolboy friend, Bourrienne. "The Orient is the place to go to. All great reputations have been made there." "I do not know what would have happened to me," he said later, "if I had not had the happy idea of going to Egypt." He was a child of the Mediterranean and as a boy had drunk in its legends and its poetry. As wildly imaginative as he was intensely practical, both imagination and cool calculation recommended the adventure.