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$Title{Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte And Life Of Josephine
Chapter V}
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$Author{Tarbell, Ida M.}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{bonaparte
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$Date{1906}
$Log{See Bonaparte At Arcola*0003801.scf
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Title:       Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte And Life Of Josephine
Book:        Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte
Author:      Tarbell, Ida M.
Date:        1906

Chapter V

The First Italian Campaign - Napoleon's Way Of Making War

     But Napoleon had much to occupy him besides his separation from
Josephine.  Extraordinary difficulties surrounded his new post.  Neither the
generals nor the men knew anything of their new commander.  "Who is this
General Bonaparte?  Where has he served?  No one knows anything about him,"
wrote Junot's father when the latter at Toulon decided to follow his artillery
commander.

     In the Army of Italy they were asking the same questions, and the
Directory could only answer as Junot had done: "As far as I can judge, he is
one of those men of whom nature is avaricious, and that she permits upon the
earth only from age to age."

     He was to replace a commander-in-chief who had sneered at his plans for
an Italian campaign and who might be expected to put obstacles in his way.  He
was to take an army which was in the last stages of poverty and
discouragement.  Their garments were in rags.  Even the officers were so
nearly shoeless that when they reached Milan and one of them was invited to
dine at the palace of a marquise, he was obliged to go in shoes without soles
and tied on by cords carefully blacked.  They had provisions for only a month,
and half rations at that.  The Piedmontese called them the "rag heroes."

     Worse than their poverty was their inactivity.  "For three years they had
fired off their guns in Italy only because war was going on, and not for any
especial object - only to satisfy their consciences." Discontent was such that
counter-revolution gained ground daily.  One company had even taken the name
of "Dauphin," and royalist songs were heard in camp.

     Napoleon saw at a glance all these difficulties, and set himself to
conquer them.  With his generals he was reserved and severe.  "It was
necessary," he explained afterward, "in order to command men so much older
than myself." His look and bearing quelled insubordination, restrained
familiarity, even inspired fear.  "From his arrival," says Marmont, "his
attitude was that of a man born for power.  It was plain to the least
clairvoyant eyes that he knew how to compel obedience, and scarcely was he in
authority before the line of a celebrated poet might have been applied to him:

          "'Des egaux?  des longtemps Mahomet n'en a plus.'"

     General Decres, who had known Napoleon well at Paris, hearing that he was
going to pass through Toulon, where he was stationed, offered to present his
comrades.  "I run," he says, "full of eagerness and joy; the salon opens; I am
about to spring forward, when the attitude, the look, the sound of his voice
are sufficient to stop me.  There was nothing rude about him, but it was
enough.  From that time I was never tempted to pass the line which had been
drawn for me."

     Lavalette says of his first interview with him: "He looked weak, but his
regard was so firm and so fixed that I felt myself turning pale when he spoke
to me." Augereau goes to see him at Albenga, full of contempt for this
favorite of Barras who has never known an action, determined on
insubordination.  Bonaparte comes out, little, thin, round-shouldered, and
gives Augereau, a giant among the generals, his orders.  The big man backs out
in a kind of terror.  "He frightened me," he tells Massena.  "His first glance
crushed me."

     He quelled insubordination in the ranks by quick, severe punishment, but
it was not long that he had insubordination.  The army asked nothing but to
act, and immediately they saw that they were to move.  He had reached his post
on March 22d; nineteen days later operations began.

     The theatre of action was along that portion of the maritime Alps which
runs parallel with the sea.  Bonaparte held the coast and the mountains; and
north, in the foot-hills, stretched from the Tende to Genoa, were the
Austrians and their Sardinian allies.  If the French were fully ten thousand
inferior in number, their position was the stronger, for the enemy was
scattered in a hilly country where it was difficult to unite their divisions.

     As Bonaparte faced his enemy, it was with a youthful zest and
anticipation which explains much of what follows.  "The two armies are in
motion," he wrote Josephine, "each trying to outwit the other.  The more
skilful will succeed.  I am much pleased with Beaulieu.  He manoeuvres very
well, and is superior to his predecessor.  I shall beat him, I hope, out of
his boots."

     The first step in the campaign was a skilful stratagem.  He spread rumors
which made Beaulieu suspect that he intended marching on Genoa, and he threw
out his lines in that direction.  The Austrian took the feint as a genuine
movement, and marched his left to the sea to cut off the French advance.  But
Bonaparte was not marching to Genoa, and, rapidly collecting his forces, he
fell on the Austrian army at Montenotte on April 12th, and defeated it.  The
right and left of the allies were divided, and the centre broken.

     By a series of clever feints, Bonaparte prevented the various divisions
of the enemy from reenforcing each other, and forced them separately to
battle.  At Millesimo, on the 14th, he defeated one section; on the same day,
at Dego, another; the next morning, near Dego, another. The Austrians were now
driven back, but their Sardinian allies were still at Ceva.  To them Bonaparte
now turned, and, driving them from their camp, defeated them at Mondovi on the
22d.

     It was phenomenal in Italy.  In ten days the "rag heroes," at whom they
had been mocking for three years, had defeated two well-fed armies ten
thousand stronger than themselves, and might at any moment march on Turin.
The Sardinians sued for peace.

     The victory was as bewildering to the French as it was terrifying to the
enemy, and Napoleon used it to stir his army to new conquests.

          "Soldiers!" he said, "in fifteen days you have gained six
     victories, taken twenty-one stands of colors, fifty-five pieces of
     cannon, and several fortresses, and conquered the richest part of
     Piedmont.  You have made fifteen hundred prisoners, and killed or
     wounded ten thousand men.

          "Hitherto, however, you have been fighting for barren rocks, made
     memorable by your valor, but useless to the nation.  Your exploits now
     equal those of the conquering armies of Holland and the Rhine.  You
     were utterly destitute, and have supplied all your wants.  You have
     gained battles without cannons, passed rivers without bridges,
     performed forced marches without shoes, bivouacked without brandy,
     and often without bread. None but republican phalanxes - soldiers of
     liberty - could have borne what you have endured.  For this you have
     the thanks of your country.

          "The two armies which lately attacked you in full confidence, now
     fly before you in consternation. . . . But, soldiers, it must not be
     concealed that you have done nothing, since there remains aught to do.
     Neither Turin nor Milan is ours. . . . The greatest difficulties are
     no doubt surmounted; but you have still battles to fight, towns to
     take, rivers to cross. . . ."

     Not less clever in diplomacy than in battle, Bonaparte, on his own
responsibility, concluded an armistice with the Sardinians, which left him
only the Austrians to fight, and at once set out to follow Beaulieu, who had
fled beyond the Po.

     As adroitly as he had made Beaulieu believe, three weeks before, that he
was going to march on Genoa, he now deceives him as to the point where he
proposes to cross the Po, leading him to believe it is at Valenza. When
certain that Beaulieu had his eye on that point, Bonaparte marched rapidly
down the river, and crossed at Placentia.  If an unforeseen delay had not
occurred in the passage, he would have been on the Austrian rear. As it was,
Beaulieu took alarm, and withdrew the body of his army, after a slight
resistance to the French advance, across the Adda, leaving but twelve thousand
men at Lodi.

     Bonaparte was jubilant.  "We have crossed the Po," he wrote the
directory.  "The second campaign has commenced.  Beaulieu is disconcerted; he
miscalculates, and continually falls into the snares I set for him. Perhaps he
wishes to give battle, for he has both audacity and energy, but not genius. .
. . Another victory, and we shall be masters of Italy."

     Determined to leave no enemies behind him, Bonaparte now marched against
the twelve thousand men at Lodi.  The town, lying on the right bank of the
Adda, was guarded by a small force of Austrians; but the mass of the enemy was
on the left bank, at the end of a bridge some three hundred and fifty feet in
length, and commanded by a score or more of cannon.

     Rushing into the town on May 10th the French drove out the guarding
force, and arrived at the bridge before the Austrians had time to destroy it.
The French grenadiers pressed forward in a solid mass, but, when half way
over, the cannon at the opposite end poured such a storm of shot at them that
the column wavered and fell back.  Several generals in the ranks, Bonaparte at
their head, rushed to the front of the force.  The presence of the officers
was enough to inspire the soldiers, and they swept across the bridge with such
impetuosity that the Austrian line on the opposite bank allowed its batteries
to be taken, and in a few moments was in retreat.  "Of all the actions in
which the soldiers under my command have been engaged," wrote Bonaparte to the
Directory, "none has equalled the tremendous passage of the bridge at Lodi.
If we have lost but few soldiers, it was merely owing to the promptitude of
our attacks and the effect produced on the enemy by the formidable fire from
our invincible army.  Were I to name all the officers who distinguished
themselves in this affair, I should be obliged to enumerate every carabinier
of the advanced guard, and almost every officer belonging to the staff."

     The Austrians now withdrew beyond the Mincio, and on the 15th of May the
French entered Milan.  The populace greeted their conquerors as liberators,
and for several days the army rejoiced in comforts which it had not known for
years.  While it was being feted, Bonaparte was instituting the Lombard
Republic, and trying to conciliate or outwit, as the case demanded, the nobles
and clergy outraged at the introduction of French ideas.  It was not until the
end of May that Lombardy was in a situation to permit Bonaparte to follow the
Austrians.

     After Lodi, Beaulieu had led his army to the Mincio.  As usual, his force
was divided, the right being near Lake Garda, the left at Mantua, the centre
about halfway between, at Valeggio.  It was at this latter point that
Bonaparte decided to attack them.  Feigning to march on their right, he waited
until his opponent had fallen into his trap, and then sprang on the weakened
centre, broke it to pieces, and drove all but twelve thousand men, escaped to
Mantua, into the Tyrol.  In fifty days he had swept all but a remnant of the
Austrians away from Italy.  Two weeks later, having taken a strong position on
the Adige, he began the siege of Mantua.

     The French were victorious, but their position was precarious. Austria
was preparing a new army.  Between the victors and France lay a number of
feeble Italian governments whose friendship could not be depended upon.  The
populace of these states favored the French, for they brought promises of
liberal government, of equality and fraternity.  The nobles and clergy hated
them for the same reason.  It was evident that a victory of the Austrians
would set all these petty princes on Bonaparte's heels.  The Papal States to
the south were plotting.  Naples was an ally of Austria.  Venice was neutral,
but she could not be trusted.  The English were off the coast, and might, at
any moment, make an alliance which would place a formidable enemy on the
French rear.

     While waiting for the arrival of the new Austrian army, Bonaparte set
himself to lessening these dangers.  He concluded a peace with Naples. Two
divisions of the army were sent south, one to Bologna, the other into Tuscany.
The people received the French with such joy that Rome was glad to purchase
peace.  Leghorn was taken.  The malcontents in Milan were silenced.  By the
time a fresh Austrian army of sixty thousand men, under a new general,
Wurmser, was ready to fight, Italy had been effectually quieted.

     The Austrians advanced against the French in three columns, one to the
west of Lake Garda, under Quasdanovich, one on each side of the Adige, east of
the lake, under Wurmser.  Their plan was to attack the French outposts on each
side of the lake simultaneously, and then envelop the army.  The first
movements were successful.  The French on each side of the lake were driven
back.  Bonaparte's army was inferior to the one coming against him, but the
skill with which he handled his forces and used the blunders of the enemy more
than compensated for lack of numbers. Raising the siege of Mantua, he
concentrated his forces at the south of the lake in such a way as to prevent
the reunion of the Austrians.  Then, with unparalleled swiftness, he fell on
the enemy piecemeal.  Wherever he could engage a division he did so, providing
his own force was superior to that of the Austrians at the moment of the
battle.  Thus, on July 31st, at Lonato, he defeated Quasdanovich, though not
so decisively but that the Austrian collected his division and returned
towards the same place, hoping to unite there with Wurmser, who had foolishly
divided his divisions, sending one to Lonato and another to Castiglione, while
he himself went off to Mantua to relieve the garrison there, Bonaparte engaged
the forces at Lonato and at Castiglione on the same day (August 3d), defeating
them both, and then turned his whole army against the body of Austrians under
Wurmser, who, by his time, had returned from his relief expedition at Mantua.
On August 5th, at Castiglione, Wurmser was beaten, driven over the Mincio and
into the Tyrol.  In six days the campaign has been finished.  "The Austrian
army has vanished like a dream," Bonaparte wrote home.

     It had vanished, true, but only for a day.  Reenforcements were soon
sent, and a new campaign started early in September.  Leaving Davidovich in
the Tyrol with twenty thousand men, Wurmser started down the Brenta with
twenty-six thousand men, intending to fall on Bonaparte's rear, cut him to
pieces, and relieve Mantua.  But Bonaparte had a plan of his own this time,
and, without waiting to find out where Wurmser was going, he started up the
Adige, intending to attack the Austrians in the Tyrol, and join the army of
the Rhine, then on the upper Danube.  As it happened, Wurmser's plan was a
happy one for Bonaparte.  The French found less than half the Austrian army
opposing them, and, after they had beaten it, discovered that they were
actually on the rear of the other half.  Of course Bonaparte did not lose the
opportunity.  He sped down the Brenta behind Wurmser, overtook him at Bassano
on the 8th of September, and of course defeated him.  The Austrians fled in
terrible demoralization. Wurmser succeeded in reaching Mantua, where he united
with the garrison. The sturdy old Austrian had the courage, in spite of his
losses, to come out of Mantua and meet Bonaparte on the 15th, but he was
defeated again, and obliged to take refuge in the fortress.  If the Austrians
had been beaten repeatedly, they had no idea of yielding, and, in fact, there
was apparently every reason to continue the struggle.  The French army was in
a most desperate condition.  Its number was reduced to barely forty thousand,
and this number was poorly supplied, and many of them were ill. Though living
in the richest of countries, the rapacity and dishonesty of the army
contractors were such that food reached the men half spoiled and in
insufficient quantities, while the clothing supplied was pure shoddy. Many
officers were laid up by wounds or fatigue; those who remained at their posts
were discouraged, and threatening to resign.  The Directory had tampered with
Bonaparte's armistices and treaties until Naples and Rome were ready to spring
upon the French; and Venice, if not openly hostile, was irritating the army in
many ways.

     Bonaparte, in face of these difficulties, was in genuine despair:

          "Everything is being spoiled in Italy," he wrote the Directory.
     "The prestige of our forces is being lost.  A policy which will give
     you friends among the princes as well as among the people, is
     necessary. Diminish your enemies.  The influence of Rome is beyond
     calculation.  It was a great mistake to quarrel with that power.
     Had I been consulted I should have delayed negotiations as I did
     with Genoa and Venice.  Whenever your general in Italy is not the
     centre of everything, you will run great risks.  This language is not
     that of ambition; I have only too many honors, and my health is so
     impaired that I think I shall be forced to demand a successor.  I can
     no longer get on horse-back.  My courage alone remains, and that is not
     sufficient in a position like this."

     It was in such a situation that Bonaparte saw the Austrian force outside
of Mantua, increased to fifty thousand men, and a new commander- in-chief,
Alvinzi, put at its head.  The Austrians advanced in two divisions, one down
the Adige, the other by the Brenta.  The French division which met the enemy
at Trent and Bassano were driven back.  In spite of his best efforts,
Bonaparte was obliged to retire with his main army to Verona.  Things looked
serious.  Alvinzi was pressing close to Verona, and the army on the Adige was
slowly driving back the French division sent to hold it in check.  If
Davidovich and Alvinzi united, Bonaparte was lost.

     "Perhaps we are on the point of losing Italy," wrote Bonaparte to the
Directory.  "In a few days we shall make a last effort." On November 14th this
last effort was made.  Alvinzi was close upon Verona, holding a position shut
in by rivers and mountains on every side, and from which there was but one
exit, a narrow pass at his rear.  The French were in Verona.

     On the night of the 14th of November Bonaparte went quietly into camp.
Early in the evening he gave orders to leave Verona, and took the road
westward.  It looked like a retreat.  The French army believed it to be so,
and began to say sorrowfully among themselves that Italy was lost. When far
enough from Verona to escape the attention of the enemy, Bonaparte wheeled to
the southeast.  On the morning of the 15th he crossed the Adige, intending, if
possible, to reach the defile by which alone Alvinzi could escape from his
position.  The country into which his army marched was a morass crossed by two
causeways.  The points which it was necessary to take to command the defile
were the town of Arcola and a bridge over the rapid stream on which the town
day.  The Austrians discovered the plan, and hastened out to dispute Arcola
and the bridge. All day long the two armies fought desperately, Bonaparte and
his generals putting themselves at the head of their columns and doing the
work of common soldiers.  But at night Arcola was not taken, and the French
retired to the right bank of the Adige, only to return on the 16th to reengage
Alvinzi, who, fearful lest his retreat be cut off, had withdrawn his army from
near Verona, and had taken a position at Arcola.  For two days the French
struggled with the Austrians, wrenching the victory from them before the close
of the 17th, and sending them flying towards Bassano.  Bonaparte and his army
returned to Verona, but this time it was by the gate which the Austrians,
three days before, were pointing out as the place where they should enter.

     It was a month and a half before the Austrians could collect a fifth army
to send against the French.  Bonaparte, tormented on every side by threatened
uprisings in Italy; opposed by the Directory, who wanted to make peace; and
distressed by the condition of his army, worked incessantly to strengthen his
relations, quiet his enemies, and restore his army.  When the Austrians, some
forty-five thousand strong, advanced in January, 1797, against him, he had a
force of about thirty-five thousand men ready to meet them.  Some ten thousand
of his army were watching Wurmser and twenty thousand Austrians shut up at
Mantua.

     Alvinzi had planned his attack skilfully.  Advancing with twenty- eight
thousand men by the Adige, he sent seventeen thousand under Provera to
approach Verona from the east.  The two divisions were to approach secretly,
and to strike simultaneously.

     At first Bonaparte was uncertain of the position of the main body of the
enemy.  Sending out feelers in every direction, he became convinced that it
must be that it approached Rivoli.  Leaving a force at Verona to hold back
Provera, he concentrated his army in a single night on the plateau of Rivoli,
and on the morning of January 14th advanced to the attack.  The struggle at
Rivoli lasted two days.  Nothing but Bonaparte's masterly tactics won it, for
the odds were greatly against him.  His victory, however, was complete.  Of
the twenty-eight thousand Austrians brought to the field, less than half
escaped.

     While his battle was waging, Bonaparte was also directing the fight with
Provera, who was intent upon reaching Mantua and attacking the French
besiegers on the rear, while Wurmser left the city and engaged them in front.
The attack had begun, but Bonaparte had foreseen the move, and sent a division
to the relief of his men.  This battle, known as La Favorita, destroyed
Provera's division of the Austrian army, and so discouraged Wurmser, whose
army was terribly reduced by sickness and starvation, that the he surrendered
on February 2d.

     The Austrians were driven utterly from Italy, but Bonaparte had no time
to rest.  The Papal States and the various aristocratic parties of southern
Italy were threatening to rise against the French.  The spirit of independence
and revolt which the invaders were bringing into the country could not but
weaken clerical and monarchical institutions.  An active enemy to the south
would have been a serious hindrance to Napoleon, and he marched into the Papal
States.  A fortnight was sufficient to silence the threats of his enemies, and
on February 19, 1797, he signed with the Pope the treaty of Tolentino.  The
peace was no sooner made than he started again against the Austrians.

     When Mantua fell, and Austria saw herself driven from Italy, she had
called her ablest general, the Archduke Charles, from the Rhine, and given him
an army of over one hundred thousand men to lead against Bonaparte. The French
had been reenforced to some seventy thousand, and though twenty thousand were
necessary to keep Italy quiet, Bonaparte had a fine army, and he led it
confidently to meet the main body of the enemy, which had been sent south to
protect Trieste.  Early in March he crossed the Tagliamento, and in a series
of contests, in which he was uniformly successful, he drove his opponent back,
step by step, until Vienna itself was in sight, and in April an armistice was
signed.  In May the French took possession of Venice, which had refused a
French alliance, and which was playing a perfidious part, in Bonaparte's
judgment, and a republic on the French model was established.

     Italy and Austria, worn out and discouraged by this "war of principle,"
as Napoleon called it, at last compromised, and on October 17th, one year,
seven months, and seven days after he left Paris, Napoleon signed the treaty
of Campo Formio.  By this treaty France gained the frontier of the Rhine and
the Low Countries to the mouth of the Scheldt. Austria was given Venice, and a
republic called the Cisalpine was formed from Reggio, Modena, Lombardy, and a
part of the States of the Pope.

     The military genius that this twenty-seven-year-old commander had shown
in the campaign in Italy bewildered his enemies and thrilled his friends.

     "Things go on very badly," said an Austrian veteran taken at Lodi. "No
one seems to know what he is about.  The French general is a young blockhead
who knows nothing of the regular rules of war.  Sometimes he is on our right,
at others on our left; now in front, and presently in our rear.  This mode of
warfare is contrary to all system, and utterly insufferable."

     It is certain that if Napoleon's opponents never knew what he was going
to do, if his generals themselves were frequently uncertain, it being his
practice to hold his peace about his plans, he himself had definite rules of
warfare.  The most important of these were:

     "Attacks should not be scattered, but should be concentrated."

     "Always be superior to the enemy at the point of attack."

     "Time is everything."

     To these formulated rules he joined marvelous fertility in stratagem. The
feint by which, at the beginning of the campaign, he had enticed Beaulieu to
march on Genoa, and that by which, a few days later, he had induced him to
place his army near Valenza, were masterpieces in their way.

     His quick-wittedness in emergency frequently saved him from disaster.
Thus, on August 4th, in the midst of the excitement of the contest, Bonaparte
went to Lonato to see what troops could be drawn from there.  On entering he
was greatly surprised to receive an Austrian parlementaire, who called on the
commandant of Lonato to surrender, because the French were surrounded.
Bonaparte saw at once that the Austrians could be nothing but a division which
had been cut off and was seeking escape; but he was embarrassed, for there
were only twelve hundred men at Lonato. Sending for the man, he had his eyes
unbandaged, and told him that if his commander had the presumption to capture
the general-in-chief of the army of Italy he might advance; that the Austrian
division ought to have known that he was at Lonato with his whole army; and he
added that if they did not lay down their arms in eight minutes he would not
spare a man.  This audacity saved Bonaparte, and won him four thousand
prisoners with guns and cavalry.

     His fertility in stratagem, his rapidity of action, his audacity in
attack, bewildered and demoralized the enemy, but it raised the enthusiasm of
his imaginative Southern troops to the highest pitch.

     He insisted in this campaign on one other rule: "Unity of command is
necessary to assure success." After his defeat of the Piedmontese, the
Directory ordered him, May 7, 1796, to divide his command with Kellermann.
Napoleon answered:

          "I believe it most impolitic to divide the army of Italy in
     two parts.  It is quite as much against the interests of the republic
     to place two different generals over it. . . .

          "A single general is not only necessary, but also it is
     essential that nothing trouble him in his march and operations.  I
     have conducted this campaign without consulting any one.  I should
     have done nothing of value if I had been obliged to reconcile my
     plans with those of another. I have gained advantage over superior
     forces and when stripped of everything myself, because persuaded that
     your confidence was in me.  My action has been as prompt as my thought.

          "If you impose hindrances of all sorts upon me, if I must refer
     every step to government commissioners, if they have the right to
     change my movements, of taking from me or of sending me troops, expect
     no more of any value.  If you enfeeble your means by dividing your
     forces, if you break the unity of military thought in Italy, I tell
     you sorrowfully you will lose the happiest opportunity of imposing
     laws on Italy.

          "In the condition of the affairs of the republic in Italy, it is
     indispensable that you have a general that has your entire confidence.
     If it is not I, I am sorry for it, but I shall redouble my zeal to
     merit your esteem in the post you confide to me.  Each one has his own
     way of carrying on war.  General Kellermann has more experience and
     will do it better than I, but both together will do it very badly.

          "I can only render the services essential to the country when
     invested entirely and absolutely with your confidence."

     He remained in charge, and throughout the rest of the campaign continued
to act more and more independently of the Directory, even dictating terms of
peace to please himself.

     It was in this Italian campaign that the almost superstitious adoration
which Napoleon's soldiers and most of his generals felt for him began.
Brilliant generalship was not the only reason for this.  It was due largely to
his personal courage, which they had discovered at Lodi.  A charge had been
ordered across a wooden bridge swept by thirty pieces of cannon, and beyond
was the Austrian army.  The men hesitated, Napoleon sprang to their head and
led them into the thickest of the fire.  From that day he was known among them
as the "Little Corporal." He had won them by the quality which appeals most
deeply to a soldier in the ranks - contempt of death.  Such was their devotion
to him that they gladly exposed their lives if they saw him in danger.  There
were several such cases in the battle of Arcola.  The first day, when
Bonaparte was exposing himself in an advance, his aide-de-camp, Colonel
Muiron, saw that he was in imminent danger.  Throwing himself before
Bonaparte, the colonel covered him with his body, receiving a wound which was
destined for the general.  The brave fellow's blood spurted into Bonaparte's
face.  He literally gave his life to save his commander's.  The same day, in a
final effort to take Arcola, Bonaparte seized a flag, rushed on the bridge,
and planted it there.  His column reached the middle of the bridge, but there
it was broken by the enemy's flanking fire.  The grenadiers at the head,
finding themselves deserted by the rear, were compelled to retreat; but,
critical as their position was, they refused to abandon their general. They
seized him by his arms, by his clothes, and dragged him with them through shot
and smoke.  When one fell out wounded, another pressed to his place.
Precipitated into the morass, Bonaparte sank.  The enemy were surrounding him
when the grenadiers perceived his danger.  A cry was raised, "Forward,
soldiers, to save the General!" and immediately they fell upon the Austrians
with such fury that they drove them off, dragged out their hero, and bore him
to a safe place.

[See Bonaparte At Arcola: In a final effort to take Arcola, Bonaparte seized a
flag, rushed on the bridge, and planted it there.]

     His addresses never failed to stir them to action and enthusiasm. They
were oratorical, prophetic, and abounded in phrases which the soldiers never
forgot.  Such was his address at Milan:

          "Soldiers!  you have precipitated yourselves like a torrent
     from the summit of the Apennines; you have driven back and dispersed
     all that opposed your march.  Piedmont, liberated from Austrian
     tyranny, has yielded to her natural sentiments of peace and amity
     towards France. Milan is yours, and the Republican flag floats
     throughout Lombardy, while the Dukes of Modena and Parma owe their
     political existence solely to your generosity.  The army which so
     haughtily menaced you, finds no barrier to secure it from your courage.
     The Po, the Ticino, and the Adda have been unable to arrest your
     courage for a single day.  Those boasted ramparts of Italy proved
     insufficient.  You have surmounted them as rapidly as you cleared the
     Apennines.  So much success has diffused joy through the bosom of
     your country.  Yes, soldiers, you have done well; but is there
     nothing more for you to accomplish?  Shall it be said of us that we
     knew how to conquer, but knew not now to profit by victory?  Shall
     posterity reproach us with having found a Capua in Lombardy?  But
     I see you rush to arms; unmanly repose wearies you, and the days
     lost to glory are lost to happiness.

          "Let us set forward.  We have still forced marches to perform,
     enemies to conquer, laurels to gather, and injuries to avenge.  Let
     those tremble who have whetted the poniards of civil war in France;
     who have, like dastards, assassinated our ministers, and burned our
     ships in Toulon. The hour of vengeance is arrived, but let the people
     be tranquil.  We are the friends of all nations, particularly the
     descendants of the Brutuses, the Scipios, and those illustrious persons
     we have chosen for our models. To restore the Capitol, replace with
     honor the statues of the heroes who rendered it renowned, and rouse
     the Roman people, become torpid by so many ages of slavery - shall,
     will, be the fruit of your victories.  You will then return to your
     homes, and your fellow-citizens when pointing to you will say, 'He was
     of the army of Italy.'"

     Such was his address in March, before the final campaign against the
Austrians:

          "You have been victorious in fourteen pitched battles and
     sixty-six combats; you have taken one hundred thousand prisoners,
     five hundred pieces of large cannon and two thousand pieces of
     smaller, four equipages for bridge pontoons.  The country has
     nourished you, paid you during your campaign, and you have beside
     that sent thirty millions from the public treasury to Paris.  You
     have enriched the Museum of Paris with three hundred chefs-'aeuvre of
     ancient and modern Italy, which it has taken thirty ages to produce.
     You have conquered the most beautiful country of Europe.  The French
     colors float for the first time upon the borders of the Adriatic.
     The kings of Sardinia and Naples, the Pope, the Duke of Parma have
     become allies.  You have chased the English from Leghorn, Genoa, and
     Corsica.  You have yet to march against the Emperor of Austria."

     His approval was their greatest joy.  Let him speak a word of praise to a
regiment, and they embroidered it on their banners.  "I was at ease, the
Thirty-second was there," was on the flag of that regiment.  Over the
Fifty-seventh floated a name Napoleon had called them by, "The terrible
Fifty-seventh."

     His displeasure was a greater spur than his approval.  He said to a corps
which had retreated in disorder: "Soldiers, you have displeased me. You have
shown neither courage nor constancy, but have yielded positions where a
handful of men might have defied an army.  You are no longer French soldiers.
Let it be written on their colors, 'They no longer form part of the Army of
Italy.'" A veteran pleaded that they be placed in the van, and during the rest
of the campaign no regiment was more distinguished.

     The effect of his genius was as great on his generals as on his troops.
They were dazzled by his stratagems and manoeuvres, inspired by his
imagination.  "There was so much of the future in him," is Marmont's
expressive explanation.  They could believe anything of him.  A remarkable set
of men they were to have as followers and friends - Augereau, Massena,
Berthier, Marmont, Junot.

     The people and the government in Paris had begun to believe in him, as
did the Army of Italy.  He not only sent flags and reports of victory; he sent
money and works of art.  Impoverished as the Directory was, the sums which
came from Italy were a reason for not interfering with the high hand the young
general carried in his campaigns and treaties.

     Never before had France received such letters from a general.  Now he
announces that he has sent "twenty first masters, from Correggio to Michael
Angelo;" now, "a dozen millions of money;" now, two or three millions in
jewels and diamonds to be sold in Paris.  In return he asks only for men and
officers "who have fire and a firm resolution not to make learned retreats."

     The entry into Paris of the first art acquisitions made a profound
impression on the people:

          "The procession of enormous cars, drawn by richly caparisoned
     horses, was divided into four sections.  First came trunks filled
     with books, manuscripts, . . . including the antiques of Josephus,
     on papyrus, with works in the handwriting of Galileo. . . . Then
     followed collections of mineral products. . . For the occasion were
     added wagons laden with iron cages containing lions, tigers,
     panthers, over which waved enormous palm branches and all kinds of
     exotic shrubs.  Afterwards rolled along chariots bearing pictures
     carefully packed, but with the names of the most important inscribed
     in large letters on the outside, as, The Transfiguration, by Raphael;
     The Christ, by Titian.  The number was great, the value greater.
     When these trophies had passed, amid the applause of an excited
     crowd, a heavy rumbling announced the approach of massive carts
     bearing statues and marble groups: the Apollo Belvidere; the Nine
     Muses; the Laocoon. . . . The Venus de Medici was eventually added,
     decked with bouquets, crowns of flowers, flags taken from the enemy,
     and French, Italian, and Greek inscriptions.  Detachments of cavalry
     and infantry, colors flying, drums beating, music playing, marched at
     intervals; the members of the newly established Institute fell into
     line; artists and savants; and the singers of the theatres made the
     air ring with national hymns.  This procession marched through all
     Paris, and at the Champ de Mars defiled before the five members of
     the Directory surrounded by their subordinate officers."

     The practice of sending home works of art, begun in the Italian campaign,
Napoleon continued throughout his military career, and the art of France owes
much to the education thus given the artists of the first part of this
century.  His agents ransacked Italy, Spain, Germany, and Flanders for
chefs-d'oeuvre.  When entering a country one of the first things he did was to
collect information about its chief art objects, in order to demand them in
case of victory, for it was by treaty that they were usually obtained.  Among
the works of art which Napoleon sent to Paris were twenty-five Raphaels,
twenty-three Titians, fifty-three Rubenses, thirty-three Van Dykes, thirty-one
Rembrandts.

     In Italy rose Napoleon's "star," that mysterious guide which he followed
from Lodi to Waterloo.  Here was born that faith in him and his future, that
belief that he "marched under the protection of the goddess of fortune and of
war," that confidence that he was endowed with a "good genius."

     He called Lodi the birthplace of his faith.  "Vendemiaire and even
Montenotte did not make me believe myself a superior man.  It was only after
Lodi that it came into my head that I could become a decisive actor on our
political field.  Then was born the first spark of high ambition."

     Trained in a religion full of mysticism, taught to believe in signs,
guided by a "star," there is a tinge of superstition throughout his active,
practical, hardworking life.  Marmont tells that one day while in Italy the
glass over the portrait of his wife, which he always wore, was broken.

     "He turned frightfully pale, and the impression upon him was most
sorrowful.  'Marmont,' he said, 'my wife is very ill or she is unfaithful.'"
There are many similar anecdotes to show his dependence upon and confidence in
omens.

     In a campaign of such achievements as that in Italy there seems to be no
time for love, and yet love was never more imperative, more absorbing, in
Napoleon's life than during this period.

          "Oh, my adorable wife," he wrote Josephine in April, "I do not
     know what fate awaits me, but if it keeps me longer from you, I
     shall not be able to endure it; my courage will not hold out to that
     point.  There was a time when I was proud of my courage; and when I
     thought of the harm that men might do me, of the lot that my destiny
     might reserve for me, I looked at the most terrible misfortunes without
     a quiver, with no surprise.  But now, the thought that my Josephine
     may be in trouble, that she may be ill, and, above all, the cruel,
     fatal thought that she may love me less, inflicts torture in my soul,
     stops the beating of my heart, makes me sad and dejected, robs me of
     even the courage of fury and despair.  I often used to say, 'Man can
     do no harm to one who is willing to die;' but now, to die without
     being loved by you, to die without this certainty, is the torture of
     hell; it is the vivid and crushing image of total annihilation. It
     seems to me as if I were choking.  My only companion, you who have
     been chosen by fate to make with me the painful journey of life, the
     day when I shall no longer possess your heart will be that when for
     me the world shall have lost all warmth and all its vegetation. . . .
     I will stop, my sweet pet; my soul is sad.  I am very tired, my mind
     is worn out, I am sick of men.  I have good reason for hating them.
     They separate me from my love."

     Josephine was indifferent to this strong passion.  "How queer Bonaparte
is!" she said coldly at the evidences of his affection which he poured upon
her; and when, after a few weeks separation, he began to implore her to join
him she hesitated, made excuses, tried in every possible way to evade his
wish.  It was not strange that a woman of her indolent nature, loving
flattery, having no passion but for amusement, reckless expenditure, and her
own ease, should prefer life in Paris. There she shared with Madame Tallien
the adoration which the Parisian world is always bestowing on some fair woman.
At opera and ball she was the centre of attraction; even in the street the
people knew her.  Notre Dame des Victoires was the name they gave her.

     In desperation at her indifference, Napoleon finally wrote her, in June,
from Tortona:

          "My life is a perpetual nightmare.  A black presentiment makes
     breathing difficult.  I am no longer alive; I have lost more than life,
     more than happiness, more than peace; I am almost without hope I am
     sending you a courier.  He will stay only four hours in Paris, and then
     will bring me your answer.  Write to me ten pages; that is the only
     thing that can console me in the least.  You are ill; you love me; I
     have distressed you; you are with child; and I do not see you. . . .
     I have treated you so ill that I do not know how to set myself right
     in your eyes.  I have been blaming you for staying in Paris, and you
     have been ill there.  Forgive me, my dear; the love with which you
     have filled me has robbed me of my reason, and I shall never recover
     it.  It is a malady from which there is no recovery.  My forebodings
     are so gloomy that all I ask is to see you, to hold you in my arms for
     two hours, and that we may die together.  Who is taking care of you?
     I suppose that you have sent for Hortense; I love the dear child a
     thousand times better since I think that she may console you a little.
     As for me, I am without consolation, rest, and hope until I see again
     the messenger whom I am sending to you, and until you explain to me in
     a long letter just what is the matter with you, and how serious it is.
     If there were any danger, I warn you that I should start at once for
     Paris. . . . You!  you! - and the rest of the world will not exist for
     me any more than if it had been annihilated.  I care for honor because
     you care for it; for victory, because it brings you pleasure; otherwise,
     I should abandon everything to throw myself at your feet."

     After this letter Josephine consented to go to Italy, but she left Paris
weeping as if going to her execution.  Once at Milan, where she held almost a
court, she recovered her gayety, and the two were very happy for a time.  But
it did not last.  Napoleon, obliged to be on the march, would implore
Josephine to come to him here and there, and once she narrowly escaped with
her life when trying to get away from the army.

     Wherever she was installed she had a circle of adorers about her, and as
a result she neglected writing to her husband.  Reproaches and entreaties
filled his letters.  He begged her for only a line, and he implored her that
she be less cold.

          "Your letters are as cold as fifty years of age; one would think
     they had been written after we had been married fifteen years.  They
     are full of the friendliness and feelings of life's winter, . . . What
     more can you do to distress me?  Stop loving me?  That you have already
     done.  Hate me? Well, I wish you would; everything degrades me except
     hatred; but indifference, with a calm pulse, fixed eyes, monotonous
     walk! . . . A thousand kisses, tender, like my heart."

     It was not merely indolence and indifference that caused Josephine's
neglect.  It was coquetry frequently, and Napoleon, informed by his couriers
as to whom she received at Milan or Genoa, and of the pleasures she enjoyed,
was jealous with all the force of his nature.  More than one young officer who
dared pay homage to Josephine in this campaign was banished "by order of the
commander-in-chief." Reaching Milan once, unexpectedly, he found her gone.
His disappointment was bitter.

          "I reached Milan, rushed to your rooms, having thrown up
     everything to see you, to press you to my heart - you were not there;
     you are traveling about from one town to another, amusing yourself
     with balls. . . . My unhappiness is inconceivable. . . . Don't put
     yourself out; pursue your pleasure; happiness is made for you."

     It was between such extremes of triumphant love and black despair that
Napoleon lived throughout the Italian campaign.