4
However much Napoleon Bonaparte’s thoughts might turn back to Paris and to Josephine, these would be years of relentless campaigning for the young general – campaigning that kept him away from France for long periods of time. From late 1795 his military career took off quite dramatically. The long months of enforced idleness in Paris, and his tendency to depression and melancholia that accompanied them, became an increasingly irrelevant memory. For while the repression of the royalist insurrection in Vendémiaire may not have been truly significant from the viewpoint of military strategy, what it did demonstrate was his willingness to serve the political leadership of the day loyally and unswervingly, even against his own people. His period of disgrace – his refusal to serve in the Vendée, even his abrupt removal from the list of officers – was now over, and the gossip and calumny that he had suffered damaged him less. But the rumours persisted, so much so that on Saint Helena he could reminisce that once he became a major political figure, he was still attacked for his part in the Terror, with odious claims made about his responsibility for the bloodletting at Toulon. To answer such lies, he declared, would degrade him further, so he remained aloof and silent, taking solace in the promotions and the shows of public esteem that rained down on him.1
On the very day of the insurrection he had been restored to his previous rank of brigadier-general, and made second-in-command of the Army of the Interior. Before the month was out, a rather jittery government, preparing to apply the new constitution and make way for the Directory and desperate for an army on whom it could rely, rewarded Bonaparte with further responsibilities. First he was promoted to the rank of général de division in the artillery, his command extended to a full division rather than a single brigade; then, only ten days later, he found himself promoted for a second time, to général en chef of the Army of the Interior. For this post he remained in Paris, since this was the army that dealt with incidents of insurrection, public disorder and counter-revolution in France itself. It was a highly sensitive posting in political terms, one that might at any moment involve fighting and killing fellow Frenchmen in defence of the Directory and the interests of the French state. The position could not be entrusted to anyone whose loyalty was in any way suspect. Thus, from being a relatively obscure young officer whose reputation stemmed largely from a solitary success at Toulon, Napoleon suddenly found himself in a position of real power in the army, a position which reflected his political support and which attracted envious looks from those who felt themselves outmanoeuvred.2
October 1795 was a month of heady change and a seemingly vertiginous rise, though his letters to Joseph seem calm and factual, betraying little of the excitement he must have felt or the ambition with which he is so often credited. ‘You will have read in the public prints everything that concerns me’, he wrote on 11 October, shortly after his first promotion. ‘I have been appointed by decree as second-in-command of the Army of the Interior’. Then, in the next breath, he added the words ‘Barras having been appointed commander-in-chief’. Paul Barras was Bonaparte’s patron, his supporter in the corridors of power, a voice and a source of intercession on whom he believed that he could rely. Barras was important to him, as the continual references in his correspondence with his brother surely demonstrate. On 20 October, he discusses the elections that are being held to renew the Convention, showing his close interest in the politics of the moment and noting, quite specifically, that ‘Barras, Chénier and Sieyès have been selected in several departments’. He himself, he says, without complaint, is being kept very busy; his responsibilities are preventing him from writing at greater length.3 But he clearly enjoys them, relishing the trust that has been placed in him, and keeping a close eye on the political manoeuvres in the capital. On 1 November, for instance, after barely drawing breath to tell Joseph that he has been placed in command of the Army of the Interior, he turns once again to the political situation in Paris: ‘The councils of 250 and 500 have now met. The first of these has already drawn up its list of candidates for the Directory’, he tells him, adding, almost incidentally, that among those nominated was Paul Barras.4 The tone of his correspondence with Joseph, the brother with whom he had most in common and with whom he was most likely to share his feelings, shows not a shrill triumphalism, but a quiet satisfaction with his change of fortune and a realistic concern for the political future of the nation. Nothing in these letters was suggestive of vaulting ambition or of the political career that lay ahead.
Perhaps luckily for his military career, Napoleon did not stay long with the Army of the Interior, which was in some ways a poisoned chalice, a role always likely to be seen by the Republic’s enemies as ideologically driven. Reliability and loyalty to the Directory were paramount, and in Bonaparte’s case were only accentuated in the public gaze by his association with Barras, a man widely seen as lacking real political principle, a manipulator and power-monger tainted by a suspicion of corruption. In Paris Napoleon had no choice but to be the government’s man. During the short period of his command there, he ordered the closure of the neo-Jacobin Pantheon Club, supervised the policing of the theatres – one of the traditional focal points of opposition politics – and purged royalists and right-wingers from the War Ministry.5 To stay in Paris too long would of necessity mean a close identification with the regime, one that would risk him losing popularity and public esteem. In the meantime, French arms had chalked up some notable successes along the frontiers, so that a war which had started out as a desperate defence of the Republic from the assaults of its neighbours had turned into one of invasion, occupation and annexation by a triumphant Republic.
France had first aimed to secure the natural frontiers of the Rhine and the Scheldt, which had been the traditional foreign policy objective of every monarch since Louis XIV and had essentially been secured under the Jacobins. Thereafter, the main focus of attack was the German lands across the Rhine, electorates and city states which progressively came under French domination. By early 1796, the First Coalition had largely collapsed, so that only Austria, Britain and, somewhat waveringly, Piedmont remained at war with France. The international situation had swung dramatically in France’s favour since the desperate days of 1793, when the Spanish had besieged Perpignan and the Convention had had to turn its armies against the rebels of the Vendée and the federalists of Lyon.
The War Minister, Carnot, saw expansion east of the Rhine as France’s primary target, overrunning the various temporal and ecclesiastical territories that blocked the route of the advancing armies, annexing some directly to France, and elsewhere creating a series of buffer states, or sister republics, in what are now Belgium and Holland. Most of the territories they entered, from Aachen to Mainz to Cologne, had been part of the now badly fading Holy Roman Empire, and hence dependent on Austrian arms for their defence. It was for this reason that, in the spring of 1796, Carnot dreamt of opening up another front in Italy to attack Austria’s possessions beyond the Alps – especially Milan and the rich Lombard plain. A new Army of Italy was established, a force of some fifty thousand men, to complement the main French armies in Germany and attack the Austrians in their northern Italian fastnesses. It was to the command of this army that Bonaparte, doubtless to his considerable relief, now found himself transferred. His ambitions for an Italian offensive were well known in Paris, and Barras was once again instrumental in pressing the claims of his protégé with the political leadership. For Bonaparte it was the chance to open a new phase of his career, offering him the possibility of victory, of riches, and of military glory. Looking back, he would see this move as critical, since there could have been no future for him in Paris. ‘A young general of twenty-five could not remain any longer at the head of the Army of the Interior’, was the terse, almost dismissive epitaph on his first command that he wrote twenty years later.6 He was perhaps twenty-six rather than twenty-five in the spring of 1796, but otherwise his assessment surely stands as a measure of his restless ambition.
It is difficult not to be struck by the enormity of the risk that the revolutionary authorities seemed to be taking in choosing the young Corsican for his first operational command. Bonaparte might be favoured at court by Barras and his immediate circle, but that was hardly a guarantee of success on the battlefield. He was still only twenty-six – not in itself a disadvantage in the revolutionary army, which had something of a tradition of promoting its officers young – but he was little known in the high command, he had no field experience, and his only previous campaigning had been against uprisings and insurrections inside France. It might not seem the most appropriate preparation for the plains of Lombardy or the steep mountain passes of the Alps, where barbets – guerrilla troops indistinguishable from the bandit gangs from whom they were recruited – waited to ambush the advancing French armies. Yet not all the auguries were unpropitious. By 1796 the French were in the ascendant in Germany, having progressed from defence to offence during the months of the Terror and now pushing eastwards beyond the Rhine. And the Army of Italy, though deemed the least important of France’s five armies and hence the least favoured in matters of supply and equipment, had at least the merit of being undefeated on the battlefield. Its low morale was due to hunger and neglect rather than to military experience.
Napoleon was aware, too, of other problems he might face with his own army. The product of a revolutionary amalgame in 1793, it had brought together in the same units line soldiers from the 1780s, tried and battle-hardened in the service of the King, and the volunteers and requisitioned men of the revolutionary levies. Discipline could often be lax, and the commitment to drill and training uncertain. Besides, the Army of Italy had necessarily been thrown together hastily, with soldiers transferred from other fronts which, as the French had learned in the Vendée, was not always a proven means of assembling the best and most committed troops.7 In theory Bonaparte had over sixty thousand men at his disposal, but in practice, their numbers decimated by disease and the fatigues of war, they seldom amounted to more than thirty-eight thousand fit for active service. At any one time many thousands were absent, sent back to France to hasten their recovery.8 This meant that they were, numerically at least, no match for the Austrians and the Piedmontese with whom the new young commander would have to engage. Nor were they well equipped or supplied. Here, as in many of the French revolutionary armies, too little attention was paid to military logistics; there were too few carters and horses, and insufficient mules to carry heavy supplies across the Alps. There were reports of troops without shoes, deprived of adequate stores, and paid months in arrears. Supply problems both undermined military effectiveness and drained the soldiers’ morale.9
But we should not dwell overly on the shortcomings of the situation Napoleon inherited, for there was promise, too. Its leaders were men who, like himself, had achieved their promotions on merit rather than through birthright. Napoleon understood their attitudes and commitment, qualities that he was prepared to develop and exploit since he came to his command imbued with many of the reformist instincts of the later eighteenth century, the redrafting of military ideas that had been initiated by such noted authors and practitioners as Guibert, Servan and Gribeauval. He felt unconstrained by the more conservative tactics of the Bourbon army, believing instead in the virtues of rapid movement and the tactics of surprise, which he found especially valuable as a response to the slow-moving and largely predictable Austrians. Napoleon was well aware of the weaknesses of the Austrian army that was ranged against him, and he believed that he could exploit them: a shortage of officers compared with the numbers in the ranks, a formalism that could lead to a lack of flexibility on the battlefield, and a rather cumbersome administrative structure. The Austrian army moved slowly and stolidly, in part the result of its laboured decision-making and communication.10
He also believed quite unshakably in his own judgement, in his inborn talent as a strategist on the battlefield, and this belief enabled him to be bold and incisive in his decision-making. Once installed at the head of his new army, he lost little time in imposing his authority on those under his command, in particular on the older and more experienced officers who surrounded him, and who might have maintained their own cliques and coteries had they been given any leeway by their new commander. He impressed them with his knowledge and bent them to his will, a vital step if he was to maintain unity in the ranks and guarantee a single, effective command. And he gave them responsibility in battle, responsibility which the younger officers, in particular, accepted with relish. For Italy was not just the scene of some of Napoleon’s greatest triumphs; it was also the breeding ground for future marshals of the imperial army like Augereau and Lannes, Sérurier and Masséna, who served under him as divisional commanders.
But it was not just his officers who learned to trust his judgement; Napoleon also, and famously, took great care to cultivate the men in the ranks. He did not forget that they too had fears and frailties, and he sought to win their affection and devotion, playing on his image as a general who had risen through the ranks and who shared their fears and apprehensions. He made clear to his troops just what he expected of them. He set before them clear military objectives and strategic goals; and he knew how to flatter them when flattery was required to give them the self-belief they so badly needed. An army that has not been paid and lacks adequate food supplies cannot be expected to respond to hollow appeals to patriotism, as he well understood. So he harassed suppliers and military commissioners, exacting supplies for his men; in March 1796, for instance, he noted with satisfaction that several companies were now actively providing supplies of meat, grain and hay for his troops, while sixteen hundred mules were arriving to assist the artillery.11
He turned to oratory, too, in persuading his men that they had a general who was one of them, who shared their hardships and discomforts and who understood their everyday concerns. In a speech to the troops which he later crafted into a resounding – but sadly apocryphal – declaration, he described the plains of Lombardy as a land of conquest where they would find all the riches, all the food and drink that they could dream of. His words have become famous – or, at least, the words that he later recorded for posterity: ‘Soldiers, you are hungry and naked. The government owes you much; it can give you nothing . . . I want to lead you into the most fertile plains on earth. Rich provinces, great towns will be in your power; there you will find honour, glory and riches.’12 It was not quite an invitation to plunder, but it came close. It was a message that an unpaid, ill-nourished soldier would surely appreciate. Later, as the army prepared the assault on Mantua, he would add another promise, that of peace: ‘The peace of Europe, the happiness of your parents, these will be the results of your courage. Let us do once more what we have done so often in the past and Europe will not challenge our claim to be the bravest and most powerful nation on earth.’13
But he did not promise riches alone; he also emphasised that he would lead them to honour and glory, which could only result from success in the field. For soldiers, victory is not just about medals and promotions, though Napoleon was quick to promise these, too. It was also the key to survival. Like all soldiers, everywhere, they admired a general who looked after their needs and rewarded them with victory on the battlefield, largely because victory raised morale, reduced casualties and saved needless slaughter.
Before arriving in Italy he had studied both the geography of the country and past campaigns that had been conducted in that theatre of war. He had also taken the first steps in securing the coast traffic on which military supply would depend,14 and very soon he would achieve a dazzling reputation as a general in the field. Indeed, it was the Italian campaign that provided Napoleon with his credentials as a great military leader, a man who could turn a battle by brilliant tactical deployment, a sharp-witted strategist who could read a battlefield like a book and outpace his opponent. It was not that his tactics had fundamentally changed from traditional Old Regime armies: the composition of the armies was little different from that in the Seven Years War; their weaponry remained largely unchanged, and the drill manuals were the same as under Louis XV. What had changed was the speed of French manoeuvres and of their response to attack, a lightning speed that repeatedly took the enemy by surprise and which lay at the very heart of Napoleon’s battle plan. It would underpin an unprecedented series of victories as Napoleon thrust into Lombardy, first defeating the Piedmontese – thus ending in the space of two weeks a stubborn war of attrition that had lasted four years – before turning against the main Austrian army.15 Tactically it was an impressive start: he moved his army speedily and incisively, taking advantage of its greater manoeuvrability and the resort to lighter artillery to cut off enemy advances and mount surprise attacks.
He had had to act quickly. The Austrians tried to pre-empt his offensive with a surprise attack that resulted in Napoleon’s first real battle, at Montenotte, on 10 April 1796. Victory here, and the seizure of the strongholds of Alba, Fossano and Cherasco, not only cemented the self-belief of the French but provided them with the supplies and provisions they so badly needed. They then crossed the Po and took the important crossroads city of Alessandria. For the Austrians, too, the psychological impact was important, for, even if the French usually ensured that they went into battle with superior numbers, this series of defeats sapped Austrian morale and left their commanders dejected and bewildered. They had lost the fortresses that could slow down the French advance, and had left the road to Milan exposed and undefended. Besides, news of this rapid series of defeats, combined with the fear spread by lurid stories of looting and plunder by the French armies, led King Victor Amadeus of Sardinia to sue for peace, and to withdraw his army from the coalition against France. As Napoleon told his victorious soldiers, they had achieved great things: winning six victories, taking enemy positions and capturing the richest part of Piedmont. They had taken fifteen thousand prisoners and killed or wounded more than ten thousand men. And they had done so in conditions of great deprivation. ‘You have won battles without cannon, crossed rivers without bridges, made forced marches without shoes, drink or bread.’16 But they were not finished. Milan was Napoleon’s next objective, the capture of the Lombard capital being seen as a decisive strike against Austrian power in northern Italy.
The French march on Milan was interrupted, however, by an Austrian defence of the bridge at Lodi, over the river Adda, and battle was joined. For posterity, this would become one of the key engagements of the young general’s military rise, and Napoleon himself would make much of it. But historians are agreed that this was a relatively minor battle, involving small forces and comparatively contained losses; and if it must count as a victory, with the French left in control of the bridge and the town, Bonaparte did not achieve all his objectives. His army had been held up on their march, and the Austrian commander, Beaulieu, managed to escape with his troops; Lodi cannot be said to have ended the war in Lombardy. On the other hand, Bonaparte could now enter Milan, while Murat took Genoa. By the end of the year, he had taken Modena, signed a treaty with Naples, and secured Verona. He had also engaged the Austrians in the more conclusive battle at Arcola, the site of another bridge which his campaign would make famous, and took the town after three exhausting days of combat.
The war ground on throughout the winter between two tired and battered armies until, in February 1797, Napoleon played his master card at Rivoli, dispersing the Austrians into the surrounding mountains and capturing the heavily defended fort town of Mantua. The consequences were decisive. An Austrian garrison of thirty thousand men surrendered; Napoleon forced the Pope to sign a treaty at Tolentino whereby he agreed to offer Austria no further aid; and he made as if to march against Vienna itself. At first the Austrian Archduke refused any truce or offer of peace, but in April he reluctantly accepted the terms that Napoleon held out to him. The Austrians agreed to cede Belgium and Holland to France, along with the west bank of the Rhine and the Ionian Islands; they also agreed to recognise the Cisalpine republic, the sister republic which Napoleon had fashioned out of the Austrian lands in Lombardy. Back in Paris these terms were hailed as testimony to the brilliance of the young general, though there were those in Italy who felt that the treaty had been drawn up to impress public opinion back in France, with little concern for Italian interests. In particular, there was anger that Venice had been sacrificed in the peace negotiations by being handed back to the Austrians – some would even use the word ‘betrayed’ – so that the deal could be quickly sewn up.
The peace treaty was finalised the following autumn at Campo Formio – a rare instance of a diplomatic treaty seemingly dictated by a general in the field without referring back to Paris.17 It was a moment that demonstrated Napoleon’s impetuous nature and his disdain for conventional niceties or questions of diplomatic precedence. In conducting peace negotiations he was certainly exceeding his authority as a general. But it also hinted at something else: political as well as military ambition. He was keen to achieve a settlement and to present Paris with a diplomatic coup to add to his military triumph, a triumph that would show him in a new and different light. Already he had forged a high reputation as a soldier. Now he was also a diplomat and a peace-maker.
It was in Italy that Napoleon established his claims to military genius, in his own mind as much as in the minds of those who served under him. After his victory at Lodi, he would later recount, ‘I no longer regarded myself as a simple general but as a man called upon to decide the fate of peoples. It came to me then that I really could become a decisive actor on our national stage. At that point was born the first spark of high ambition’.18 And though this may seem an implausible claim – there were plenty of hints before Lodi that the young Bonaparte had already had dreams of future grandeur – it justifies closer examination. For what had Napoleon achieved at this early stage in the Italian Campaign that could turn his head to this extent? What did Lodi mean to him? In military terms it is almost customary to dismiss the battle as a minor engagement, yet it came to be at the heart of the Napoleonic myth which he himself did so much to propagate. It was a hard-fought battle, but not a major engagement of the two armies. And yet it was a first successful illustration of the rapid deployment which was Napoleon’s own version of Blitzkrieg, and as such it could be seen to have had a wider significance.
The English military historian Spenser Wilkinson, who does not hide his admiration for Bonaparte as a tactician, describes the significance of Lodi in unambiguous terms, claiming that:
The four weeks’ campaign that ended at Lodi revealed a great commander. It contained the germ, and more than the germ, of all his future exploits. It exemplified all his principles: the original distribution of the troops into three groups or camps about twelve miles distant from one another; their swift concentration by a forward march begun before dawn; the seizure of a central position from which to strike the separated portions of the enemy; the aim at the enemy’s communications; the spreading of the divisions like a net to enclose the enemy’s flanks; the drawing in of the net to envelop the enemy; the combination of a frontal attack with a surprise attack on the flank; the use of a river to mask a movement against the enemy’s rear; the collection on the battlefield of a superior force; above all, the unprecedented rapidity of movement, and the incessant, never-ending energy of the action.19
If Wilkinson is right, then it is not difficult to see why Napoleon attributed such great importance to the battle, nor yet why the Italian campaign offered him such opportunities for building his reputation back in France, both with the Directory and in the eyes of a wider public. The process of mythologising, which would consume much of Napoleon’s energy throughout his career, had already begun.
Of his many achievements during the Italian campaign, his adroit manipulation of the news and his command of propaganda were arguably as significant as his skills on the battlefield. Already he was demonstrating a command of words and an appreciation of the importance of heroic images that would not have shamed a political leader of a much later and more media-conscious age, a capacity to choose a telling phrase, or spin a story in a particular way that was guaranteed to capture the public mood of the moment. His sense of the popular pulse rarely deserted him; in that sense, as in many others, he would prove himself to be a singularly modern figure in an age of authoritarian monarchs, narrowly defined elites and restricted electorates. Notably, once he was established in power, he would manipulate both the arts world and the media, setting the topics for art competitions, leaning heavily on journalists, or restoring the monopoly of the Paris book trade. For a man who had claimed in his youth to be a true son of the Enlightenment, he would show a powerful desire to control expression, and he took little interest in encouraging free speech.
In 1796 in Italy his interest in the media was rather different. He sought to bolster his public image, to lay claim to heroic status, and to establish himself in the public imagination. And he believed that the various media that lay at his disposal had an important military role to play, whether in appealing to civilians, dampening enemy morale, or bolstering the confidence of his soldiers. His resort to propaganda was, then as later, multi-layered. Addresses to his troops, proclamations to the inhabitants of besieged cities, and newspaper articles strategically placed in the official Paris newspaper, the Moniteur, were all parts of a strategic campaign of self-promotion.20
Napoleon’s message was quite deliberately directed at different audiences, and for different purposes, too. First and foremost was the army itself, where Bonaparte showed himself to be a creative publicist, using well-chosen news stories to bestow praise, raise confidence and improve morale. The military press was not his invention: the Revolution, and especially the Jacobin years, had seen the rise of a tradition of newspapers written by and for the army – papers like Carnot’s Soirée du camp, which distributed its highly political message among the troops in all of France’s armies, and the more local papers, limited in their news and circulation to a single army, and often a single frontier. The papers fed upbeat reports of developments elsewhere in the war; soldiers read them eagerly, and they played a significant part in spreading confidence and reassurance.21 During 1797 Napoleon himself created and financed two such papers, both written from within the army – first the Courrier de l’Armée d’Italie, then, some days later, the more ephemeralLa France vue de l’Armée d’Italie, both of which circulated among the troops, though they were aimed also at a political readership and excerpts and articles were reprinted from them in the Paris press.22
The papers were subtly different in tone: if the Courrier courted the new revolutionary elite, he issued a second paper specifically to reassure more traditional elements in both French and Italian society.23 These papers helped to inculcate a spirit of pride andprofessionalism in the troops, and to keep them abreast of the principal political developments back in France. In the press that was produced from within the army, and also in the confident proclamations he issued to his soldiers, Napoleon established a powerful medium through which he could communicate directly with his men and stir their deepest emotions. This was the traditional function of newspapers in wartime: to reaffirm soldiers’ confidence in the cause for which they were fighting, while troubling and undermining the confidence of the enemy.24 It required a special language, one that created a special rapport.25
But the troops were seldom Napoleon’s principal target for propaganda, even as battles raged around him. The newspapers also served to inform the public back home of the army’s exploits in Italy, and in doing so they presented an image of Napoleon that came close to that of the classical hero. He was portrayed as a supreme strategist who would lead them to glory; as a military thinker who could outwit any opposing general; and as a man capable of sometimes impetuous but always incisive decisions that could turn a battle and decide the fate of thousands. As a political appointee himself, fully aware of his debt to men like Salicetti and Barras for his rapid preferment, he understood how important it was to make his achievements known back in Paris: his daring strategies, his blistering troop movements, his decisive victories in the service of government. He was astute enough to realise the value of a supportive press, one that would keep his name on the front pages and in the public eye. Italy was not the Directory’s principal theatre of war, and without the oxygen of publicity Bonaparte risked being relegated from the headlines, dismissed as the general of a minor army in a secondary conflict. He had no intention of allowing this to happen. He chose as his editors men with experience of both journalism and revolutionary politics, men who still retained connections in the capital – the former Jacobin Marc-Antoine Jullien for the Courrier, and the more moderate Regnault de Saint-Angély for La France.26
News items were strategically placed in national newspapers back in Paris at moments that would achieve maximum impact. The policy was carried out with almost military precision. From the moment when the Italian campaign began in April 1796 Bonaparte’s army appeared in the French press more often than any other in the field. Items featured in the official Moniteur as a matter of course, but they were also placed in more polemical newspapers. During the months following September 1796, for instance, the conservative Nouvelles Politiques, whose editorialists included the highly influential Charles Lacretelle, was well connected with a powerful group of moderate right-wing deputies on the legislative councils, and was hence seen as an ideal conduit for Napoleon’s exercises in self-aggrandisement.27 It gave news from all France’s fronts, mentioning all four armies then on campaign. But the highest number of mentions was reserved for the Army of Italy, which was alluded to in sixty-six separate issues of the paper in a six-month period. And in thirty-one of these Bonaparte was reported as announcing some sort of victory. There were few indications of defeats or setbacks, with the result that it was difficult for readers of the paper not to associate the Italian campaign with an unbroken series of French advances, or to identify its young general with victory and military glory.28
This, of course, was Bonaparte’s intention from the outset. Using the papers he controlled or financed through the army as a shameless source of self-promotion ensured that, in the bitter faction-fighting that characterised Directorial politics, his name was not allowed to become besmirched or, worse, forgotten. To intensify his press campaign he launched a further paper in February 1797, with the suggestive title Journal de Bonaparte et des hommes vertueux, printed and distributed in Paris. Again the paper heaped praise on the Army of Italy and its victorious commander, and made the speed of the army, its style of campaigning and the bravery of its men its recurrent themes. As for Bonaparte himself, his despatches are faithfully reproduced, and his genius lauded. From the very first issue the masthead of the paper was adorned with a caption comparing him to a legendary general of Antiquity (`Hannibal slept at Capua, whereas Bonaparte does not sleep in Mantua’).29 It also talked of the enemies it was challenging: royalists, with whom it urged no compromise, and émigré priests who, in Bonaparte’s view, could safely be left alone as there was no law against their presence in Italy. From time to time the paper did not hesitate to criticise the Directory, or to compare the inactivity of France’s politicians, and their corruption, with the vigour and incisive judgement of Napoleon himself.30 The paper was rightly seen as far more than a vector of information to an admiring public. It was a mouthpiece for Bonaparte’s growing political ambitions, with the qualities he displayed in Italy being vaunted as those of a leader and visionary, a man of grandeur and destiny.
He also turned to the talents of others, of artists and men of letters. Poets used their literary licence to burnish his image, using words like ‘invincible’ and ‘immortal’ in odes and eulogies addressed to him, while on the battlefield his impact was presented as immediate and always decisive. After Arcola, indeed, the unbeaten army was transformed into an unbeatable one, with the very appearance of Bonaparte sufficient to determine the outcome. He was being recreated as a providential figure, the image at the heart of the Myth of the Saviour of later years. ‘Enemies flee, kings surrender, everything evaporates and trembles at the very sound of his name.’31 What poets could do in print, playwrights could provide for the stage, for the world of the Paris theatre which had become, during the Revolution and the Thermidorian Republic, a hotbed of partisan politics and satirical attack. Even at this early stage of his career Bonaparte took an active interest in the Paris theatre, and was aware of the significance of his representation there. The year 1797 alone saw a whole raft of plays about Bonaparte’s victories in Italy or set around the capitulation of Mantua, as the glory and colour of events in Italy were welcomed as a distraction from the rather drab political scene back in France.
By 1798, however, Paris theatregoers were equally enthusiastic in lauding the end of the war and the signing of peace at Campo Formio. Many in Paris seemed to tire of battles and killing; it was the prospect of peace that most vividly captured the public imagination, a peace won by military prowess and a spark of individual genius.32 The Napoleonic myth assumed new forms, as he was increasingly hailed as the great peace-maker of his age.
Painters and artists also played their part in popularising the young general’s achievements and turning his portrait into a widely recognisable icon among the French public. Although at this time Bonaparte lacked the opportunity and resources of the imperial years – when he would commission the finest artists in Europe and set the themes for prizes at the Academy – the glamour and excitement of the Italian campaign was sufficient to attract painters and engravers to Italy, most on their own account, eager to paint portraits of the victorious generals and to depict the most dramatic battle scenes. Indeed, while he was still in Italy, engravings, busts and statues were appearing in the salons of Paris, and some went on to be imitated by popular colourists eager to profit from the mood of the moment. No other general could compete with his popularity or his artistic exposure. In Italy, Napoleon was able to attract the interest of several outstanding young painters, among them the Milanese artist Andrea Appiani, and the young Frenchman and student of David, Antoine-Jean Gros. Appiani produced the first portrait of the young Bonaparte, an image which by early 1797 had been engraved and widely commercialised.
As for Gros, he was carefully courted by Napoleon, and more especially by Josephine, and became a sort of official portraitist, a regular in the elite circle, rather like a royal court, that surrounded Bonaparte at the palace of Mombello. His principal output in this period was a series of portraits of those close to Bonaparte, most notably Josephine and Berthier, and the iconic image of Bonaparte on the Bridge of Arcole that hangs in the Louvre.33 This painting so pleased Napoleon that he offered Gros a sum of 250 louis to have engravings of it made, and these in turn helped popularise the future Emperor’s portrait across Europe. But it did not appear in the Paris salon until the Consulate, in 1801.34
The signing of the Treaty of Campo Formio, with the congress at Rastadt that followed, did, of course, bring Napoleon’s military activity to an abrupt halt, and peace was not something that necessarily augured well for an ambitious general. There was some diplomatic work to be concluded and the Directory sent him to Rastadt with full diplomatic powers. And no doubt he had some personal matters to sort out, too. From the moment he left for Italy, three days after his marriage, persistent rumours circulated that Josephine did not return his affection – she certainly did not reply to his letters – and that she was openly leading the life of a socialite in Paris, publicly admitting her lack of fidelity to her husband and seeking sexual gratification wherever it was offered. By the time of their return from Italy she had taken a lover, a young lieutenant in the hussars by name of Hippolyte Charles, to whom she remained devoted for at least another two years; she would break with him only in the summer of 1799, while her husband was away, this time in Egypt.35 It all made for an uneasy homecoming for Bonaparte, despite the profuse praise that was bestowed on him and the adulation of the Paris crowds. He had a fear of idleness and a desire for military action that made any prolonged period of furlough hard to bear; meanwhile, there is evidence that some at least of the Directors were wary of his popularity and his ability to mobilise political support. But how could he best, and most safely, be deployed? They first thought to place him at the head of the new army that was being prepared for an invasion of England, a force that was to incorporate many of those who had fought in northern Italy.
But in March 1798 there was a sudden volte-face. The idea of a cross-Channel invasion was dropped, and the Directory decided to pursue another form of attack on Britain and her Empire, one that had the added advantage that the army’s most overbearing general could be sent still further afield, beyond the limits of Europe itself. To disrupt the British in the Indian sub-continent, a new route to India had to be found, one that could be accessed without going round Africa and the Cape of Good Hope. So the Directory turned its attentions to the East, and the Mediterranean. In April it decreed the creation of the Army of the Orient, with Bonaparte as its commander-in-chief.
On 19 May 1798, he sailed out of Toulon for Egypt.