The wanton princess rb-8 Page 7

  But it was not only Brittany and Normandy that had long been in a state of anarchy. Every Province in France was infested with bands of marauders. Measures were being taken to put them down, others to make travel swifter by forcing Communes to have the roads put into sound repair, and others again to recreate a reliable service for posting along them by horse and diligence.

  Closely associated with this policing of the Provinces was the restoration in them of regularly held Courts of Law, the dispensation of proper justice, and the collection of taws. At the date of Brumaire there had been the huge sum of eleven hundred million francs owing and less than one hundred thousand in the Treasury. To deal with this fantastic situation Bonaparte had appointed Gaudin Minister of Finance. He had worked in the Finance Department for thirty-seven years, was skilful, honest and industrious, and the sound measures he was taking had already led to a rise in the price of Government annuities from seven francs to forty-four, but a vast amount was still outstanding and, as a result of the Revolution, the collection of taxes had become nearly impos­sible.

  In consequence Bonaparte resolved to revolutionize the entire administrative system of the country. His intention was to deprive the Communes of the right to elect their own officials, great numbers of whom were corrupt or inefficient, and replace the Mayors with men of his own choosing to be called Prefects. They would be accountable only to the Central Government, and in turn be given the power to appoint their own subordinates. This, in fact, would amount to a restoration of the old Monarchical system of Royal Intendants and would, at one stroke, abolish the freedom from rule by autocracy that the people had won in the Revolution.

  The leading Jacobins saw at once that this concentration of power in Bonaparte's hands foreshadowed his intention to becomc a Dictator. His brother Lucien led the Opposition, upbraiding him fiercely for seeking to pass a law contrary to the oath he had taken to adhere to the Constitution and preserve the liberties of the people: then, as Minister of the Interior, he had refused to lend himself to such a measure.

  Bonaparte, determined to have his way promptly dis­missed Lucien. His other critics he could afford to ignore as, owing to his tremendous popularity, the vast majority of the people did not care how he ran the country as long as he continued to clean it up and give them the security they had lacked for so long.

  There remained one danger—that his enemies might bring the attention of the masses to his real intentions and cause them to rise against him. For long periods during the Revolu­tion, the Press had been suppressed: but recently it had regained its freedom, and editors of the Left were already making full use of it to criticize the Government. In order to prevent discussion of his projects he instructed Fouche to bring the Press to heel. Henceforth only journals favourable to him were allowed to continue publication and even they were subjected to a severe censorship, with the result that without fully realizing it the French people let him deprive them of their rights as citizens.

  This replacement of democracy by a hierarchy entailing as it did the selection and instruction of a vast number of new officials meant an immense amount of work for Bonaparte and his personal staff; and on top of it there were the projects concerning education, the Church, finance, the posts, Emigres and many others; so throughout the Spring Roger was kept hard at it. But he felt that he was doing a tremen­dously worthwhile job and tackled with enthusiasm the scores of problems that came his way.

  The only relaxation he got was when on Decedais—the 'tenth-day,' substituted during the Revolution for Sun­day—he accompanied Bourrienne to Malmaison. the charm­ing property outside Paris that Josephine had purchased and furnished at great cost while Bonaparte was in Egypt. There she was under no necessity to receive her enemies - the members of his family. Such parties usually consisted no more than a dozen people; her two children, a few close friends, Duroc and Bonaparte's personal assistants With the latter he would spend hours walking under the trees of the avenue, his hands clasped behind his back, discussing new projects. But in the evenings he cast all cares aside. Gathered in the big drawing room they amused themselvcs with amateur theatricals and charades into which he threw himself with zest, crawling about the floor making comical grimaces and laughing with the abandon of a school boy. Sometimes he would make up and tell stories and. as he had a taste for the horrific, have all but one candle put out, delighting to make the women give little exclamations of fright in the gloom as he described ghosts and vampires. It was on such evenings that he displayed all his best qualities as an affec­tionate husband and father, with a love of gaiety for which he had so little time, a charming host and generous friend.

  But as the Spring advanced his thoughts turned to war. In Germany, Moreau had crossed the Rhine, inflicted a series of defeats on the Austrian General, Kray, and was pushing him back upon the stronghold of Ulm; but things were far from well with the Army of Italy. Greatly outnumbered by the Austrians, the French Army had been cut in two. The left wing under Suchet had been driven through Nice and now, only with difficulty, was holding the line of the Var; while the main force had been compelled to retire on Genoa. Massena and his other two divisional commanders, Soult and Oudinot, were putting up a stubborn resistance but they were now besieged in the city with only fifteen thousand troops, and a hundred and ten thousand civilians to feed. As a British Fleet under Admiral Lord Keith was blockading the port no reinforcements or supplies could be sent to them; so their situation must soon become desperate.

  On April 20th an officer who had succeeded in passing through the enemy lines reached Paris and reported Massena's plight to Bonaparte. He had replied that he would cross the Alps himself and relieve Genoa. In the meantime Massena must somehow manage to hold out.

  Had the public been informed of the situation they would have believed Bonaparte to have been caught napping as, to all appearances, he had no troops available to form another Army of any size. But that was far from being the case. On the rejection of his peace offers he had at once decided to take the field again in the early summer and had charged Berthier with creating an Army of Reserve. This had attracted no attention, as the units for its composition had been mustered and trained far from one another, scattered all over France. Now, they were already concentrating and on the way to Lausanne and Geneva, where large quantities of stores had been collected. To conceal his intentions for as long as possible from the enemy's spies Bonaparte selected Dijon as the Headquarters of the Army of Reserve, but in March Berthier left that city for Zurich. As First Consul, Bonaparte was debarred from taking command of an Army so, nominally, Berthier remained its Commander-in-Chief. But on May 6th Bonaparte set out for Geneva.

  Roger accompanied him. As he mounted his horse he little thought that he would come very close to death before he saw Paris again.

  5

  Marengo

  While centred on Dijon the Army of Reserve constituted a threat to both the Austrian fronts, for it could have moved with equal ease towards Swabia to reinforce Moreau or down into Italy to rescue Massena, and so swift was the transi­tion to Geneva that the Austrians had no idea that its Head­quarters had moved. Bonaparte's immediate staff was aware that he intended to descend into Italy but he did not make up his own mind until the last moment about what route he would take. To cross the Alps by the Simplon Pass was the obvious route, but the St. Bernard would bring him im­mediately upon the rear of the Austrian Army, cut its com­munications and force General Melas to fight him with his back to Massena's forces in Genoa. The difficulties of con­veying a large Army and all its gear over the Great St. Ber­nard were immense, but after Bonaparte's engineers had re­ported that only fifteen miles of the route were impassable for carriages, he decided to take it.

  Working tirelessly by day and through the greater part of the night he dealt with the thousand and one matters neces­sary to ensure the success of the crossing. On May 15th, satisfied that no more could be done, he ordered the crossing to begin. Five days later he set out himself: not as
was afterwards depicted by the famous painter, David, on a prancing steed, but on a sure-footed mule led by a Swiss mountaineer of long experience.

  Up in the mountains the cold was bitter, and in some places the many thousands of men had to progress along narrow ledges where a false step would have meant a fall into the abyss and death on the rocks far below. The horses could be led and the gun carriages carried in sections, so the great problem had been how to transport the weighty cannon. Marmont had solved it by having tree trunks hollowed out and the great iron barrels wedged inside them, then hiring hundreds of peasants to draw these home-made sledges. On the steepest slopes, the peasants gave up exhausted: so the troops, filled with enthusiasm for this great adventure on which they were being led, volunteered to replace them. To the strains of martial music from the bands and singing patriotic songs, they managed to drag the cannons to the summit of the pass.

  There stood the ancient monasterv of St Bernard.

  Bonaparte had sent on to it in advance a great sore of provisions and the hospitable monks added to them from their own reserves. As the seemingly endless column of half-frozen soldiers passed the Monastery, from behind long tables set out in from of it, the monks supplanted their hard biscuits and cheese with bowls of hot soup and spiced wine. The troops then began to slither down the even more dangerous descent.

  Lannes was in command of the vanguard and when Bonaparte reached the monastery, to his great annoyance, he learned from him that unexpectedly the descent into Italy was blocked. The Army had to pass through the narrow valley of Dora Baltea and at its entrance lay the village and fort of Bard, which was being held by an Austrian garrison.

  Hurrying forward. Bonaparte personally surveyed the posi­tion. Marmont had got some of his cannon remounted but, owing to the position of the fort on a pinnacle of rock, it could not be bombarded; and the fusillades of musketry directed at it by the French were having little effect on its stubborn defence by the Austrians.

  Led by the intrepid Lannes, a body of infantry worked their way round the fort by a goat track and, on the 22nd took the town of Ivrea: but it would have been impossible to follow with the guns, and without artillery Bonaparte could not hope to defeat the main Austrian Army down in the plains of Italy.

  With his usual resourcefulness, Bonaparte devised a way to overcome the obstacle that threatened to ruin his plans. All the Austrian troops in the village had retired into the fort, so he ordered that when darkness fell straw should be spread thickly in the village street; then, taking advantage of a night of storm which further muffled the rumble of their wheels, the guns were sent forward. It was not until the greater part of the artillery train was through the village that the Austrians realized what was happening and when they opened fire their cannon did little damage.

  Bonaparte passed the Alps with forty-one thousand troops, only a handful of whom had become casualties, and his men acclaimed him as having achieved the impossible. But Roger, having read his classics, was secretly of the opinion that Hannibal's crossing had been a much greater achievement; for Bonaparte had met with only the slight opposition at Bard, whereas the Carthaginian General had been harassed the whole way by swarms of fierce Gauls and Helvetians.

  Nevertheless, the Austrians, too. had thought it impossible, and their General, Melas, was taken entirely by surprise. Concentrating his Army as swiftly as he could in the neigh­bourhood of Turin, he planned to fall upon Bonaparte's flank as he advanced to the relief of Genoa.

  Anticipating this, the First Consul decided on a new and bolder stroke. Further east Moncey was crossing the St. Gotthard with another eighteen thousand men and Turreau's division was coming over the Mont Cenis pass. By leaving Massena temporarily to his fate and joining them instead, Bonaparte would have under him a force of seventy thousand. With it he could throw the Austrians out of Lom­bardy, thus cutting Melas' lines of communications and iso­lating him between two French Armies. Lannes had already surprised and occupied Aosta. On June 2nd Bonaparte, almost unopposed, arrived in Milan, the capital of Lombardy.

  He was greeted with wild acclaim by the pro-French popu­lation, and at once re-established the Cisalpine Republic which he had founded there in '96. For seven days he remained in the city reinstating the officials who had been proscribed when the Austrians had recaptured it during his absence in Egypt. Meanwhile his troops had seized Cremona, with its great store of enemy provisions and war material, and he had despatched Mural and Lannes across the Po to take Piacenza.

  There they met strong opposition from an Austrian corps under General Ott, but with the aid of Victor's division and Murat's cavalry, on June 9th at Montebello, Lannes inflicted a crushing defeat on the enemy.

  By the time Bonaparte reached Milan, Massena was in desperate straits. In Genoa, horses, dogs, cats and rats were being used as food and whenever a sortie was made from the city thousands of the starving inhabitants followed the troops out to gather grass and nettles to boil for soup. Driven to the last extremity by Massena's refusal even lo consider sur­render, they broke into open revolt. He put it down with the utmost ruthlessness and gave orders that whenever more than four citizens were seen gathered together they should be fired upon.

  But by June 4th his position became hopeless. Still refusing to surrender, he informed the Austrians that he meant to evacuate Genoa and if they refused to let him pass he would cut his way through them with the bayonet. His courageous defiance led to the enemy's allowing him and the eight thousand troops that had survived the siege to march out with colours flying and the honours of war.

  Melas meanwhile was concentrating his forces round the great stronghold of Alessandria and ordered his troops on the Var to join him there. Suchet immediately recrossed the river, recaptured Nice and furiously harassed their retreat. Now that the Austrians were almost encircled, Bonaparte was preparing to give battle. On June 9th he left Milan and advanced through Stradella. With Genoa open to him Melas' wisest course would have been to retire on the city and evacuate his Army in the British ships, but pride decided him to stand at Alessandria and fight with the hope of breaking right through the French. And, although he was unaware of it, his decision had much to recommend it; as Bonaparte's forces were now spread over a great area and when he arrived opposite Marengo, a village some three miles south­east of Alessandria, on June 14th, he had only eighteen thousand men under his hand to oppose the breakout of thirty-one thousand Austrians.

  A few days earlier, Desaix had arrived unexpectedly upon the scene. This paladin was Bonaparte's favourite General; but as his decision to leave Egypt had been taken so abruptly and Desaix was then commanding a corps far up the Nile, he had had to be left behind. Having succeeded in getting back to Europe, Desaix had at once decided to rejoin his former Chief, and Bonaparte was overjoyed to see him. Detaching six thousand men from the twenty-four thousand he by then had available, he sent Desaix off with them in the direction of Genoa to prevent the Austrians from retiring on the port and escaping from it. Now, as battle was joined, he realized too late that he had made a big mistake and was heavily out­numbered.

  At dawn Melas opened the attack by pouring his troops across the Bormida river. They drove the French outposts back on Marengo but met with stout resistance from Victor, who was holding the village. This gave time for Lannes to bring up his division; but by ten o'clock the full force of the Austrian assault had developed. Marengo was captured and Lannes, although contesting every inch of the ground, was being driven back. An hour later Bonaparte came up from the rear to find his troops giving way in the centre and outflanked on both wings. He at once threw his only reserve, the Consular Guard, into the battle. For an hour its one thousand men. formed up in square, fought valiantly, and by their stand enabled Victor and Lannes to get their battered divisions back into better shape. But by two o'clock only St. Cyr, on the right flank, was holding his ground. All but five of Marmont's guns had been put out of action, and the flood of white-coated Austrians was again forcing back the centre and
the left. Despite threats, pleas and exhortations from their officers and Bonaparte himself, many of the men were throwing down their weapons and several units were in full retreat. There could be no doubt about it, the French were being beaten.

  Early that morning Desaix had heard the distant sound of gunfire and, turning his columns about, set off in that direc­tion. Then, in mid-morning, one of Bonaparte's A.D.Cs came galloping up to him with an urgent order to hasten to his Chiefs assistance; but to reach Marengo meant many hours of forced marching. Despite his doing his utmost it was not until five o'clock that he arrived on the field of battle. By then, although many French units were still fighting gallantly, the line was broken in several places and the Austrian cavalry through, cutting down fleeing men from shattered battalions.

  As Desaix rode up Bonaparte said to him glumly, 'What do you think of it?'

  Glancing at the terrible scene of carnage. Desaix replied, 'This battle is lost, but there is still time to gain another.'

  Bonaparte swiftly made fresh dispositions. Marmont had just brought up a reserve battery of thirteen guns from the rear. They were deployed to fire through the gaps torn in the French line. Desaix was despatched to take up a position behind Marengo village and a nearby hill. Kellermann, the son of the veteran General, was in command of the heavy cavalry. It had already done good service throughout the day and had suffered heavy casualties, but was still capable of making a charge, and was sent round behind Desaix to the extreme French left. When these troops had taken up their positions Bonaparte launched his counter-attack.

  The sudden appearance of Desaix's six thousand tired, but still unused, troops advancing in parade ground formation over the hill put new life into the other divisions; their impact on the enemy stayed the retreat, but was not sufficient to force them back. For another hour the terrible struggle raged, swayed first one way then the other, and it remained uncer­tain which Army would emerge victorious.