Adam Zamoyski - Napoleon

These were eventually concluded, and the treaty was to be signed on 11 October, but at the last moment Bonaparte insisted a guarantee be inserted that France would obtain the left bank of the Rhine. Cobenzl demurred. Bonaparte, who had spent two sleepless nights, was in an agitated state and fortified himself with numerous glasses of punch as he read out his proposed draft of the treaty. When Cobenzl attempted to explain the impossibility of his acceding to the new terms, Bonaparte got up from the table clearly drunk, put on his hat and stormed out of the room, vomiting barrack-room imprecations. By his own account, he smashed Cobenzl’s favourite coffee set before walking out, pursued by a vainly emollient Gallo.29

Bourrienne records that two days later he awoke to see snow on the mountaintops and informed Bonaparte of it as he roused him. With winter on its way, a French threat to Vienna through the passes was dissolving fast, and Bonaparte realised he had to conclude speedily. The treaty was signed on the night of 17–18 October, and named after a place equidistant from the two in which the negotiations had been conducted, the village of Campoformido, mis-spelt by a French secretary as Campo Formio. Bonaparte had gained most of what he wanted. He was in high spirits, and at dinner he entertained the Austrians by telling them his favourite ghost stories.30

‘My services have earned me the approbation of the Government and the nation,’ He wrote to the Directory. ‘I have received many marks of its esteem. It now remains for me only to step back into the crowd, take up the plough of Cincinnatus and set an example of respect for the magistrates and aversion for military rule, which has destroyed so many republics and undermined several States.’31

On 5 November he received his nomination as commander of a projected Army of England and also as plenipotentiary at the congress due to convene at Rastatt to settle questions arising from France’s acquisition of the left bank of the Rhine. On the morning of 17 November he left Milan with Eugène de Beauharnais. Travelling fast and through the night he was at Mantua the next day, where he paused only to review the troops stationed there, hold a ceremony in honour of the deceased Hoche and attend the theatre, before rushing on, to reach Turin at two on the morning of 19 November. He remained there long enough to have a talk with Miot de Melito, in the course of which he again expressed his conviction that ‘those Parisian lawyers who have been put in the Directory understand nothing about government’. ‘As for me, my dear Miot, I tell you that I cannot obey; I have tasted command and I would not be able to give it up. I have made up my mind: if I cannot be master, I will leave France …’32

At three that afternoon he left Turin, and two days later he was in Geneva. People came out to catch sight of him as he passed through, not just to see the victorious hero whose reputation was spreading over the Continent, but to cheer the man who had brought peace after so many years of war. ‘ Vive Bonaparte, vive le pacificateur! ’ they shouted. According to Bourrienne, Bonaparte was furious when one of their former colleagues from Brienne now living in Switzerland came to see him and addressed him with the familiar ‘ tu ’.33

He was even angrier when, after rushing on, through Berne, Basel and Huningue and reaching Augereau’s headquarters at Offenburg, he was informed that the commander of the Army of Germany was busy getting dressed and could not see him. He hurried on to Rastatt, which he drove into on 26 November in a magnificent coach drawn like a sovereign’s by eight horses, with an escort of thirty hussars, before installing himself in the Margrave of Baden’s residence.34

He impressed the representatives of the Imperial Diet not just by his grand manner but by his familiarity with the Golden Bull of 1356, the constitution of the Holy Roman Empire and the Treaty of Westphalia. On 29 November he met the prime minister of Baden, and exchanged the ratified copies of the Treaty of Campo Formio. On the same day he received a despatch from the Directory summoning him to Paris.35

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