Marengo Read online

  Before we uncover the events following this momentous 9 October 1799, let us first refresh our memories as to what had gone before. Fully ten years had passed since the powder keg of revolution had detonated in France. A decade before, France had been a feudal society, where the people were divided into three classes or estates. The First Estate was the Catholic clergy; the nobility formed the Second Estate. These two classes owned most of the land, enjoyed fantastic privileges and, crucially, were exempt from taxes. Everyone else, around 25 million people, formed the Third Estate. From the most successful merchant to the scrawniest hawker, these were the people who toiled and were taxed heavily for the privilege. Unlike in England, where the monarch ruled through the shackles (or wise council) of a parliament, the French monarch believed his power on earth was absolute and derived directly from God. An ‘Estates General’ (a gathering of all three social orders) had not occurred since 1614. However, in 1789, after successive poor harvests and rocketing bread prices, such was the perilous financial position of France that all three estates were summoned to Versailles. The king wanted more money. In a response reminiscent of the American cry ‘no taxation without representation’, the Third Estate wanted real and meaningful political representation in return for said money. When the latter did not appear to budge, the representatives of the Third Estate formed a National Assembly on 20 June 1789 and made the Serment du Jeu de Paume – the Tennis Court Oath – a pledge not to separate until France had a written constitution. This was the great principled act giving birth, for better or worse, to a new European age.

  So what about the storming of the Bastille, Quatorze Julliet and all that? Well, while the representatives debated, the people became impatient. Many believed King Louis XVI had summoned foreign mercenaries to butcher the good people of Paris and put an end to this unwanted political debate. Being largely recruited from Parisians, the Regiment of French Guards mutinied and sided with the protestors. With Paris awash with rumour and counter-rumour, and the bloodthirsty mercenaries expected at any minute, some of the guardsmen and a mob of their fellow Parisians marched off towards the Bastille fortress looking for gunpowder. It was the afternoon of 14 July. When this mob of 1,000 or so people arrived at the Bastille, the governor of the fortress, the Marquis de Launay, refused to open the gates and hand over the gunpowder. One can understand why. A negotiation ensued, in which the people of Paris exhibited their famous propensity for violent impatience. The drawbridge was cut down, a shot was fired and all hell broke loose. By the end of the day, de Launay’s head was skewered on a pike and paraded up and down the streets. For all the fine and enlightened words spoken in the tennis courts of Versailles, the French Revolution ultimately proved to be a succession of bloody, violent acts.

  The history of the revolution and the detail of what happened next are a complex subject fit for a lifetime of study, mercifully outside the scope of this account. However, there are a few key events we should remember. One should know the first experiment with constitutional monarchy did not work out quite as planned. Feudalism was abolished; a constitution was written, and rewritten; and there was even a Declaration of the Rights of Man. However, there was a suspicion that the king was not quite as enthusiastic about his changed circumstances as the people had hoped. With their feudal privileges curtailed and the political atmosphere decidedly ugly, the French nobility voted with their feet. They boarded up their chateau and emigrated. In June 1791, the king decided to join these émigrés, but was caught in the act and unceremoniously escorted back to Paris. Although Louis XVI signed the declaration of war against Austria on 20 April 1792, the suspicion was that he did so hoping the Austrians would win and restore his authority.

  Then came the real revolution. On 10 August 1792, a group of hard-line revolutionaries stormed the Tuileries Palace and massacred the king’s Swiss Guard. The monarchy was suspended and the remaining members of the royal family imprisoned. Louis XVI lost all his titles and was given the surname ‘Capet’ - the family name of the first king of the Franks. On 22 September 1792, France became a republic. On 21 January 1793, at 10.22 in the morning, Citizen Louis Capet went to the guillotine. France was now, for want of a better word, governed by the real firebrands of the revolution - the Jacobins. Employing state control over almost every facet of human existence, they sought to eradicate all vestiges of feudal life, replacing Christianity with a cult of the Supreme Being based on the virtues of ‘reason’ and even introducing a new calendar, an attempt to erase from history the era before the declaration of the republic. Where they encountered resistance (real or imagined) to their radical dogma, they terrorized the population into acquiescence, slaughtering anyone and everyone who offered the least token of resistance. With the country now seemingly at war with everyone (including itself), the French state became something of an armed camp. The churches became stables and foundries. Everything was geared towards supporting the war machine, and with the largest, youngest population in Western Europe at the time, it was not long before columns of blue-clad soldiers were marching on the frontiers with their martial hymns, ready to export the revolution abroad.

  The Jacobin ‘Terror’ effectively ended with the execution of its leader, Maximilien Robespierre, on 28 July 1794. The Terror had turned in on itself and devoured its chiefs. The National Convention went on to approve a new constitution on 22 August 1795, the so-called Constitution of Year III. This created a new form of government, a five-man ruling executive called ‘The Directory’, with a parliament composed of two houses: a council of 500 representatives (Conseil des Cinq-Cents) and a council of 250 senators or ‘elders’ (Conseil des Anciens). The executives were appointed by the senators from a list put forward by the representatives. History has not been kind to the memory of this executive, which is roundly portrayed as only borderline-democratic, stinkingly corrupt and if not incompetent, then at best ineffective.

  At this stage, we need to know about one key event in the history of this government: 13 Vendémiaire. Not everyone had been happy to see Louis XVI led to the guillotine. Nor were they enamoured by the subsequent death of Queen Marie Antoinette by the same method on 16 October 1793. Hotbeds of royalist support remained, particularly in the west and south of France, and these were stoked up by British agents and émigrés in equal measure. Since the death from sickness in June 1795 of the incarcerated 10-year-old Dauphin (crown prince), Louis-Charles, the legitimate line of succession passed to the brother of the executed king, the Count of Provence and self-styled Louis XVIII. There was therefore a legitimate successor to Louis XVI, and there were many Frenchmen sympathetic to the restoration of the royal line. With the west of France in open civil war, the pretender’s brother, the Count of Artois, landed in the Vendée with several thousand British troops: a counter-revolution seemed all too possible. Buoyed by news of this landing, an insurrection in Paris began to bubble over, with several parts of the city openly declaring support for the royalists. On 5 October, one of the Directors, Paul Barras, turned to a young brigadier general residing in the capital named Napoleon Bonaparte and charged him with protecting the government. In turn, Bonaparte instructed a cavalry officer, Joachim Murat of the 12th Chasseurs, with collecting forty cannon from a nearby park and positioning them around the convention building. At 3.00 pm, a crowd of 25,000 royalists surrounded the building. Barras gave the authorization, and Bonaparte commanded the guns to fire. For three-quarters of an hour, they fired canister shot, pummelling the protestors and leaving 300 of them dead on the cobblestones. The government was saved and ‘General Vendémiaire’ became hero of the hour. In reward for saving the government, Bonaparte was made a full general of division and given command of the Army of the Interior, then the Army of Italy. Barras even introduced him to one of his mistresses, a general’s widow named Rose de Beauharnais. Bonaparte married ‘Josephine’, as he preferred to call her, and thus began one of the great historical love affairs.

  At the end of his Italian campaign in 1797, Bonaparte had be
come something of a double-edged sword for the Directory. There was no denying his talent, or his success. Had anyone really expected the relatively inexperienced general in his mid-twenties to conqueror Italy and dictate peace terms in the heart of Austria? No, and that was the problem. Bonaparte was too successful, too independent, and impatient to boot. This was a very dangerous mix from the point of view of the politicians. Ever since France went to war in 1792, various governments had been alive to the threat of caesarism; that a popular and successful general would turn his army on Paris and seize control, as Julius Caesar had done in ancient Rome. There were already signs that Bonaparte might become this very man: so what to do with Bonaparte now there was peace?

  At first there was the possibility of an invasion of Great Britain. An Army of England was planned, but then the Directory started to think about Egypt. What if they put together a mighty Mediterranean fleet and sent off Bonaparte and his army with suitably nebulous instructions to form a French colony, create new markets for French goods and perhaps even threaten the British domination of India? Egypt was a land almost no one knew anything about, but to Bonaparte it was an exciting opportunity to emulate the heroes of antiquity, to follow in the footsteps of Alexander and Caesar, and above all, to exercise total power. Far from Paris, he would have free rein to engage in conquest and scientific inquiry. For not only would he take his soldiers, but he would have an army of savants – engineers, artists and scientists - and would record the marvels of antiquity for all mankind. The government encouraged Bonaparte to think big with this expedition, and probably breathed a hearty sigh of relief when the fleet cast anchor and set sail from Toulon on 19 May 1798.

  With the benefit of hindsight, the adventure was a costly mistake. Things started well, with the capture of Malta en-route. However, once landed in Egypt, the British sank the French fleet in Aboukir Bay on 1 August 1798. This effectively cut off Bonaparte and his army from any chance of reinforcement or return. He defeated the Ottoman Empire’s Mamelukes outside Cairo too, but his attempts to appear as a liberator to the Egyptians hit a cultural barrier. Bonaparte considered converting the army to Islam, but admitted he could never ask a French army to make a pledge never again to drink wine. Before long, Bonaparte and his army became viewed as a force of occupation. On 22 October 1798, there was a bloody revolt in Cairo and a brutal response. In the following year, Bonaparte learned the Ottomans were preparing an offensive against the French, so he took pre-emptive action, marching his army into Syria. By mid-March, Bonaparte was encamped outside the city of Acre and became bogged down by a combination of bubonic plague and the Governor of Acre, Achmet Pasha, better known as ‘Djezzar’ (the Butcher), a man perhaps even more ruthless than the French commander. Supported by a handful of Britons, the garrison held out against the French army, and on 20 May 1799, Bonaparte retired on Cairo, claiming the campaign had achieved its objectives.

  Although he portrayed his Syrian adventure as a great triumph (Bonaparte was an absolute genius at self-promotion), the reality began to sink in that he was cut off from France, from the centre of the action, with very few options. He had also learned that Josephine had been unfaithful and was seeing a certain Monsieur Charles. He in turn reacted with a spell of infidelity of his own, having an affair with Pauline Fourès, the wife of an officer on the expedition. While Lieutenant Fourès was sent on an urgent and perilous mission back to France, Bonaparte kept Pauline with him. This was all very much common knowledge, so much so the soldiers nicknamed her ‘Cleopatra’. Thoughts kept returning to home.

  After defeating an Ottoman army at Aboukir on 25 July 1799, Bonaparte decided to quit his army and return to France. He set sail on 23 August with a detachment of soldiers and some of his closest generals, including Berthier, Murat and Lannes. He left in secret, leaving command of the army to General Jean-Baptiste Kléber, who reacted to the news of Bonaparte absconding with the thunderous remark: ‘He’s left us with his breeches full of shit.’ With outstanding luck (or a secret deal), Bonaparte’s two frigates stole past a British blockade and made their way across the Mediterranean unmolested, arriving in Ajaccio Bay in Corsica on 1 October.1 There was a five-night delay to the journey here, which proved extremely fortuitous because news of the victory at Aboukir reached France just two days before Bonaparte’s own arrival.

  For the best part of 1799, the Directory had been in a state of turmoil. In Germany, its forces had been beaten at Stockach on 25 March 1799. Switzerland had come under attack and Zurich was taken by the Austrians in June. Italy was becoming a graveyard of its forces and Holland was invaded by an Anglo-Russian force. In the west of France, the royalists had raised the flag of rebellion and a British invasion force was expected to land in support at any minute; while in the south of France, banditry had broken out. New military conscription laws had failed to bring forward the number of recruits needed, while those conscripts arriving in the depots found them empty of stores. The supply services feeding and re-equipping the soldiers already in the field, had failed badly. In places, especially in Italy, men dressed in rags were forced to pillage their rations from the local population. Yet despite this, by the autumn, somehow the country had not collapsed. In Switzerland, the very able General André Massena recaptured Zurich. The Austrians did not press their advantage in southern Germany after Stockach, and General Guillaume Brune was successful in Holland against the Anglo-Russians. It was almost as if the allied coalition just could not land that last, knockout blow. Therefore, by the end of September and early October, there was a period of relative calm. Had Bonaparte arrived sooner in the year, he might have found himself more enthusiastically received by the government, but as it happened, his arrival in Paris on 16 October met with a muted response. His first visit was not to his wife or brothers, but to the president of the Directory, Gohier. Standing before him, Bonaparte said: ‘The news that reached us in Egypt was so alarming that I didn’t hesitate to leave my army, but set out at once to come and share your perils.’

  ‘General, they were indeed great, but now we have gloriously overcome them,’ Gohier replied. ‘You have arrived in good time to help us celebrate the numerous triumphs of your comrades-in-arms.’

  At this short meeting, a time was arranged for Bonaparte to meet the full Directory the following day. Gohier’s recollection of this meeting depicted Bonaparte as attributing all the troubles France had faced to his absence. Then in a vain attempt to assure the Directors his intentions were honourable, Bonaparte placed his hand on the pommel of his sword and promised it would never be raised except in defence of the republic. Was it a threat? Gohier gave a very measured response that played down any notion of crisis. The Executive Directory, Gohier claimed, viewed Bonaparte’s ‘unexpected return with the same pleasure mixed with surprise that is spoken of all over France’. Gohier went on to assure Bonaparte that only the general’s enemies (who were naturally the government’s enemies too) could put an unfavourable interpretation on the way Bonaparte had temporarily abandoned the colours for patriotic motives.2

  The general must have left this meeting somewhat thwarted. The public acclamations which greeted his return must have given him a false impression. In truth, not everyone was pleased to see him. For example, General Bernadotte (future marshal of France and progenitor of the modern Swedish royal line, but at that time a committed Jacobin) apparently suggested Bonaparte should face a court martial for deserting his army in the field and ignoring the strict quarantine laws for those arriving in Europe from plague-stricken countries. There was also a great deal of luck for Bonaparte that his arrival in France had been preceded by news of his victory of the Battle of Aboukir, and not a stinging letter which Kléber wrote to the Directory, condemning the secrecy with which Bonaparte left Egypt, and the deplorable state of the army, its finances and the prospect of fighting the Ottoman army. If this had arrived before his meeting with the Directory, Bonaparte may well have found himself locked in chains.

  Temporarily checked, Bonaparte
withdrew from public view and began a reconciliation with his wife, if only not to become bogged down in the scandal of a divorce at such a politically sensitive time (Lannes was less fortunate – he found his wife pregnant on his return and a divorce was required). Fortunately for Bonaparte, political change was in the air. Before his arrival in Paris, the Director Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès had been looking to reform the Directory, seeking to reduce it to a three-man body, at the head of which would be a popular general – ‘a sword’. The man of choice was General Joubert, but he was killed in action at Novi. Bernadotte was too much a Jacobin for Sieyès to work with, which left Moreau, who turned Sieyès down immediately. Bonaparte’s arrival from Egypt was therefore quite opportune, although the two men formed an immediate enmity to one another, with the Director one of those who believed Bonaparte should be shot. Still, political expediency makes strange bedfellows – a plot was hatched.

  The coup was planned in two stages for 9‑10 November (18‑19 Brumaire in the revolutionary calendar). Bonaparte’s part in the coup was to ensure the loyalty of the Paris garrison. Sieyès, with the help of his fellow Director and ally, Roger-Ducos, would bring over the support of the Council of Elders. Bonaparte’s younger brother, Lucien, was conveniently placed as President of the Council of 500. Lucien’s role would be to defuse the Jacobins in the assembly long enough for the coup to occur. On the first day, Sieyès declared the government was in immediate danger from anarchists in the capital and both Houses should relocate to St Cloud for their own protection. He motioned for all the troops in Paris to come under the authority of General Bonaparte, who would supervise the councillors’ protection. This move was constitutional, although it was clear what it foretold. Sieyès and Roger-Ducos turned on the other three Directors: Bonaparte’s old mentor, Barras, conveniently resigned, while Moulin and Gohier found themselves escorted to the Luxembourg Palace and were held for their ‘own safety’. Bonaparte held reviews of the troops, ensured he could count on their loyalty and detached a large body of men under General Murat, to march on St Cloud to assure a satisfactory outcome of phase two of the coup the following day.