if so, his delicacy in sparing her character, as well as his policy in sparing his own, is to be commended, and seems to furnish an indication that, at the time of his marriage, he at all events believed in her innocence. On the whole we do not think M. Lanfrey's proofs quite justify the insinuation conveyed against the memory of a lady who, commonplace enough in herself, has become through circumstances a national heroine. And, after all, his words are not so explicit, but that they leave the denial of the insinuation itself possible. Whether Buonaparte was much in love with Madame de Beauharnais is another question. He appeared to be so, but he was a consummate actor, while she at first seems to have made no secret of her indifference; the social éclât which both would derive from the marriage, sufficiently accounting for their having ultimately come together. It is remarkable that, in the marriage contract, Buonaparte seems to have added a year to his age, and Josephine to have subtracted four from hers, so as to make their ages correspond, and that Paul Barras's name was in the list of witnesses a fact rather in favour than otherwise of the honourable nature of his former relations with Josephine. The marriage took place on the 9th March 1796, and a few days afterwards Buonaparte left to take the command, and was fairly launched on the career of his wonderful successes. It was perfectly well understood by the Directory and their General, that the war now entered upon was to be of a different character from those that had preceded it. The "idea" was to be a secondary consideration. It had been found that a propaganda for the Rights of Man and universal emancipation did not pay its way; and the main object was now to fill the empty coffers of the State. The army that the General had to lead into Italy was a pack of famished wolves, and, with a cynicism which

VOL. CII-NO. DCXXI.

almost overacted its part, he addressed them accordingly. "Soldiers," he said, " you are badly fed, and hardly clad at all. The Government is much in your debt, but can do nothing for you. Your patience and courage do you honour, but get you neither profit nor glory. I am going to lead you into the most fertile plains in the world: you will find there large towns and wealthy provinces. You will find there honour, glory, and riches. Soldiers of Italy, under such circumstances, will you be lacking in courage?" This new form of address was the beginning of the transformation of the soldiers of the Republic into the soldiers of the Empire, and its effect on the ragamuffin bands may easily be imagined. As a consequence, they took to indiscriminate pillage on their private account, which was not part of the General's programme, and he expressed his moral reprobation of such acts in no measured terms, and affected to punish them with the greatest severity. But he was the first to excuse those he was obliged to punish. "These poor creatures," he said, "after having sighed for it for three years from the summit of the Alps, arrived at the promised land, and they will have a taste of it." In his proclamations to his soldiers he called Italy a conquest; while in those addressed to the Italians themselves, he told them that he was come to break their chains. The orders sent from the Directory to Buonaparte from home, showed how thoroughly the spirit of rapine had taken possession of the Government, so that, if he had wished, he had no more the power of restraining the movement than his keeper has in controlling a tiger that has tasted blood. Even the states which had not been subdued by arms, but only by the terror inspired by the victories over Piedmont and Austria, and which hoped for better terms by appearing to court the alliance of France, were to

E

be treated no better than her open enemies. Those who pretended to deliver the Milanese from the yoke of Austria wrote: "It is especially the Milanese territory which must not be spared. Raise contributions there in ready money, and during the first terror that the approach of our arms will inspire, let the eye of economy watch over the employment of them." And no less explicit were the directions to be observed with respect to Rome: "If Rome makes advances, the first thing to require is that the Pope should immediately order public prayers for the prosperity of the French arms. Some of his fine monuments, his statues, his pictures, his medallions, his libraries, his silver Madonnas, and even his bells, will indemnify us for the expenses of the visit we may find necessary to make him." This kind of spoliation was entirely new; for all the conquerors of Italy had respected her monuments, the alienation of which was equivalent to the destruction of her past history. The only question with regard to it is whether it was suggested by Buonaparte himself in the first place, or whether he was only carrying into effect a scheme which had originated with others, but with a zeal as to details which left them nothing to desire. Another scheme of the Directory-the division of the command of the army of Italy -did not please him so well. It was four days after his brilliant success at Lodi that he received the letter announcing that he had for the future to share his position with Kellermann. His resolution was taken in a moment. He tendered his resignation, in a letter which began by announcing the conquest of Lombardy, and ended by remarking that one bad general was better than two good ones, and that he could not consent to share his command. It was rather inconsistent with an opinion he had expressed, to the effect that too much power ought not to be given

to one general, when there was a question of uniting the commands of the armies on the eastern frontier. The Directory did not send an answer to his communication for a fortnight; but in the interval the news they received of new and yet more signal successes forced their hand, and he was requested to continue in that sole command which had proved so profitable to the Republic. Though a purist himself, he willingly connived at the peculations of his generals and others who served under him, since the knowledge that he had the power to ruin them made them more convenient instruments of his will. When the exactions of the French had driven the people in Milan and Pavia to revolt against their liberators, the insurrection was repressed with the utmost severity, and made the excuse for fresh exactions. The deliberate violation of the territory of Venice, which had refused to join the coalition against France, and the subsequent annexation of the republic on the pretext of acts of hostility, which the intrusion of French arms had studiously fomented, was the most glaring of all the acts of perfidy and injustice perpetrated during the Italian campaigns. M. Lanfrey lays great stress on the treatment of Venice, as more calculated than any other series of events to dissipate the halo of romance which still surrounds Buonaparte's victories as a republican general, not only in the eyes of France, but of Europe. He clearly shows by facts that it was not only

"When tortured by ambition's sting, The hero sunk into the king;" but from the commencement of his command, that Buonaparte, though a consummate captain, was never to be looked upon as a hero in the just sense of the word. "Our relations at that time with Venice were such as serve best to characterise the spirit of this war, and it is to the purpose to carefully follow the incidents of them if we

wish to form an impartial judgment on the final result. It is not less indispensable to consider under what conditions that offer of alliance was made with which our historians have so often armed themselves against that republic. We had at first violated the neutrality of Venice in occupying Brescia-an act which led the Austrians to violate it in their turn by occupying Peschiera for the purpose of defending the passage of the Mincio. Then, under the pretext of punishing Venice for having suffered this second violation, which was the consequence of the former, and which in any case she had no power to prevent, we took possession of most of her strong places on the continent. We partly drove her garrisons away from them that we might make ourselves more at home in them—we plundered her arsenals and her magazines, we required her to feed and supply the wants of our troops. That was not all as a reparation for the evil we had done her, we now gave her to understand that she would have to pay an indemnity of several millions. All this was done under pretexts which Buonaparte in his correspondence admits to be entirely without foundation, after he had invented them and appealed to them so loudly. It was at this stage that the unhappy republic, crushed by our exactions, compromised with Austria, driven to despair, had recourse somewhat late to an expedient which might have saved her at first-that of arming, no less for the purpose of causing her neutrality to be respected, than of defending herself against insurrectionary tendencies which began to reveal themselves obscurely in her continental provinces. This measure had only the effect of eliciting fresh reproaches on our part. From the 12th July (1796) Buonaparte denounced these armaments. He seized with eagerness this new text of recrimination; he warned the Directory not

to let slip so precious an opportunity of accusation and complaint. 'Perhaps,' he wrote to them on this subject, you will think it advisable to begin at once a little quarrel with the Venetian Minister at Paris, that, after I have driven away the Austrians from the Brenta, it may be more easy for me to enforce the demand of a few millions which you wish me to make from them.' It is not difficult to realise the sentiments which such a policy was calculated to inspire in those who were its victims-a policy by no means calculated to pave the way to an alliance. Nevertheless, such was the terror inspired by our arms, that the Senate of Venice bore it all, if not without complaint, at least without attempting resistance. To these measures the iniquity was soon added of not paying the Venetians for the stores which they had advanced to the army. By the 20th of July they had already furnished to the amount of three millions, and had only received in payment, by dint of importunity, a letter of exchange for 300,000 francs. But the very wrongs which we did them were imputed to them as a crime, and became the occasion of new machinations against the republic. Thus this payment of 300,000 francs, inadequate and illusory as it was, was in Buonaparte's eyes a real fault, and became the source of such vexations that the Venetians had, as it were, an interest in never being paid. This payment was, he said, a fault, because it let them see that by importunity and neglecting of services they had the power to get money out of us. So that,' he continued, 'I am obliged to put myself in a passion with the purveyor, to exaggerate the assassinations they commit against our troops, to complain bitterly of the armament which they did not resort to at the time that the Imperialists were the stronger party, and by these means I shall oblige them to furnish all I want, in order to ap

pease my wrath. That is the way to manage these people. They will continue to supply me, partly by fair means, partly by foul, until I have taken Mantua, and then I will declare to them openly that they must pay me the sum mentioned in your instructions, a measure which will be easily carried into execution.'' It is not surprising after this that the Venetians elected to remain neutral, in a case, however, where neutrality was impossible. The assassinations mentioned by Buonaparte referred to some disturbances raised by the exactions of the French soldiers, in which a few of the latter had been slain, the outraged peasants having taken the law into their own hands. If the Venetians had accepted the French alliance, it might have saved them from being handed over to Austria by the Treaty of Campo Formio, but they would only have exchanged the Austrian yoke for the French. As it was, their refusal of the alliance of France sealed the doom of their republic. Buonaparte finding, notwithstanding that he had carried all before him in Italy, and beaten one Austrian army after another, until that most long-suffering of states was almost reduced to despair, that the army of the Rhine, which ought to have fought its way to a junction with him inthe Tyrol, made little progress, and fearing to compromise his position by involving himself further in the mountains without support, wrote to the Archduke Charles, on the 31st of March 1797, making propositions of peace. He invited that Prince to deserve 'the title of the benefactor of humanity,' declaring that, as far as he was concerned, 'if the proposition which he had the honour of making him would have the effect of saving the life of a single man, he should feel prouder of the civic crown that would be his due in such a case than of any melancholy glory which could result from military successes."" What his humanity was

worth M. Lanfrey shows from a quotation from the words of Napoleon himself, in Las Casas's Memoirs, in which, during his early campaigns in Italy, he caused a position to be uselessly attacked near the Col di Tenda, sacrificing the lives of a number of men for the sake of showing a favourite lady what war was like. He admitted, however, that his conscience had always reproached him for the act. In the negotiations which followed this letter, Buonaparte soon showed that he intended the republic of Venice to be the scapegoat which should bear the sins of France. Under various pretexts, the French army took possession of the town, and superseded the government. Venice was condemned to pay several millions, to cede to France three ships of the line, two frigates, provisions of all kinds, and, in accordance with the rule now established in Italian spoliation, twenty pictures and five hundred manuscripts, at the discretion of the conqueror, as the price of the friendship of France. Painful as this treaty was, it was a relief to the Venetians to have their independent political existence still recognised, since it was possible that all they had suffered might be repaired by time. But they were not allowed to remain long under the influence of any such illusion. Buonaparte, in a letter to the Directory, explained his reasons for sparing Venice for the present, but added that it would be soon desirable to annex it to the newlyformed Cispadane Republic, which was a mere dependency of France. In the mean time, he took every advantage of the helpless situation of the republic. He sent a commissioner to Corfu and the other Venetian dependencies, with full instructions as to the means of keeping the authorities of the republic faithful to the French connection, in which this very characteristic passage occurs-"If the inhabitants of the country should

be inclined to independence, you will flatter their taste, and not fail, in the different proclamations which you address to them, to speak of Greece, of Sparta, and of Athens." In accordance with these instructions, the French envoy, Gentili, presented himself at Corfu as the agent of the new government, and, introducing himself into the fortress, assumed the tone of a master, took possession of the whole navy, five hundred guns, and immense stores. Nevertheless, Buonaparte continued to lull the suspicions of the Venetians with fine speeches and promises of liberty and future greatness, for whose performance he made himself personally responsible, at the precise time when, in his letters to the Directory, he was proposing to hand them over body and soul to Austria, to indemnify her for the loss of the rest of Italy.

Notwithstanding that the struggles of parties in Paris at this time drew off the attention of the Government from foreign affairs, the conduct of Buonaparte with regard to Venice and the other Italian states was questioned in the Legislative Body, to his extreme indig nation. He wrote letters to the Directory fulminating against his accusers, and accusing them of being in the pay of England, and of favouring the emigration; and threw himself into the arms of the army, who promised devotion without limits to his person and to the Executive, and destruction to the enemies of the State, by which he understood those who called his acts in question. He was ably seconded by the Directory at home, who wished to make the pure and patriotic Hoche the instrument of their will, by ordering him to direct a body of troops on Paris, under the pretext of marching them to the ocean for an attempt on Ireland. This did not, however, quite suit Buonaparte, who was jealous of Hoche, and sent Augereau to Paris as a better instrument for carrying

out the contemplated coup-d'état, and Augereau was supported by Bernadotte and Lavalette. On the 18th Fructidor (4th September 1797), Augereau with 12,000 men invested the Tuileries, where the Legislative Body was sitting, and, securing all the avenues that led to it, took possession of the palace in the middle of the night with little resistance from the guard, most of whom had been previously gained over. The bolder deputies still tried to enter, but were received with fixed bayonets, and had to return; and those devoted to the triumvirate met at the Odéon and School of Medicine to ratify their acts, and proscribed a large number of their former colleagues. This coup-d'état changed the government into a tyrannical oligarchy, and paved the way for the more decisive one of the 18th Brumaire, which was destined to further change it into a dictatorship. Though licence reigned as before, it was the end of liberty. Though Augereau boasted that there had been no blood shed, the transportations to Cayenne that followed his success were equally calculated to strike terror into the vanquished party. By the death of Hoche, which followed soon after, Buonaparte was deprived of a dangerous rival-the more dangerous because above corruption, although he suffered himself to be made for a time the tool of a corrupt party, "The 18th Fructidor," says M. Lanfrey, "was, in fact, the almost immediate contre-coup of the violations of right which we had committed at Venice. The protests of the Legislature brought about the threatening manifestations of Buonaparte and his soldiers; the irritation of the army furnished the Directory with a weapon without which it would never have been able to triumph over the Councils; and by a just expiation France saw her own liberty struck by the same deathblow which had destroyed the independence of Venice." Up to this time the Republican régime