I: The Day After the Wedding

Bonaparte's glory had been, one might say, the work of an instant. The feeling in Paris was one of profound surprise. Even Josephine had been amazed at such swift and unexpected successes. Every one was asking for details about this young man who was known only from the part he played in the day of Vendemiaire, and whose origin was shrouded in mystery; but none knew anything more than how his name was pronounced and spelled. Of his family, his beginnings, his fortune, his character, the public knew absolutely nothing. But no one ever equalled Napoleon in the art of getting himself talked about. In his first proclamations to the army, in his first despatches to the Directory, we see this knowledge of effect which made the hero an artist. The Directory went to work to build him a pedestal with their own hands.

At first the Moniteur mentioned the success of the Army of Italy without special emotion. It was on the last page of the number of May 10, 1796, that was printed the account of the reception of the flags, a ceremony at which Josephine was present.

The Moniteur spoke thus: "The Directory received to-day, in public session, twenty-one flags captured by the French Republicans from the Austrians and the Sardinians, at Millesimo, Dego, and Mondovi. The Minister of War, in presenting the officer who brought these trophies, made a speech in which he paid homage to the valor of this Army of Italy which, to the glory of finishing the campaign by its victories, adds that of opening it again by its triumphs, the precursors of a peace worthy of the French Republic. The officer then spoke with the virile accent and modest air which characterize the heroes of liberty.

In the name of his fellow-soldiers he swore that they the last drop of their blood in defence of the Republic, in behalf of the enforcement of the laws, and of the support of the Constitution of 1795. The President of the Directory replied with an emotion which rendered the dignity of his words more touching. He offered the brave officer a sword and gave him a fraternal kiss. This session, which lasted but half an hour, presented a spectacle as imposing as it was moving. The sounds of military music added to the general enthusiasm, which frequently manifested itself by cries of "Long live the Republic!"

In her interesting memoirs, the Duchess of Abrantas speaks of the effect produced on that day by Madame Bonaparte and Madame Tallien, who were two of the principal ornaments of this patriotic festival.

"Madame Bonaparte," she says, "was still charming.... As for Madame Tallien, she was then in the flower of her wonderful beauty. Both were dressed after the fashion of antiquity, which was at that time regarded as the height of elegance, and as sumptuously as was possible for the middle of the day. Junot must surely have been very proud to give his arm to two such charming women, when they left the Directory after the reception. Junot was then twenty-five years old: he was a handsome young man, and had a most striking martial air; on that day he wore a magnificent uniform of a colonel of hussars (the uniform of Berchini), and all that the richness of such a dress could add to his fine appearance had been employed to make the young and brave messenger, who was still pale from the wounds which had stained those flags, worthy of the army he represented.

On leaving, he offered his arm to Madame Bonaparte, who had precedence as the wife of his general, especially on this formal occasion; the other he gave to Madame Tallien, and thus he descended the staircase of the Luxembourg."

Would not Junot, as colonel of hussars, with Josephine on one arm and Madame Tallien on the other, on the staircase of the palace of Maria de Medici, make a charming subject of a genre picture? The Duchess of Abrantes describes the excitement of the crowd, who were anxious to see the young hero and the two fashionable beauties. "The throng," she says, "was numberless. They surged and pressed for a better view. 'See; there's his wife! that's his aide-de-camp! How young he is! And how pretty she is! Long live General Bonaparte!' shouted the people. 'Long live Citizeness Bonaparte! She is kind to the poor!' 'Yes, yes,' said a fat marketwoman; I she is certainly Our Lady of the Victories.'"

The poet Arnault, in his Souvenirs of a Sexagenarian, also describes the effect produced by Josephine's beauty on this occasion. Madame Bonaparte, who was much admired, shared the sceptre of popularity with Madame Tallien and Madame Recamier. "With these two women for her rivals," says Arnault, "although she was less brilliant and fresh, yet, thanks to the regularity of her features, the wonderful grace of her figure, and her agreeable expression, she too was beautiful. I still recall them all there, dressed in such a way as to bring out their various advantages most becomingly, wearing beautiful flowers on their heads, on a lovely May day, entering the room where the Directory was about to receive the battle-flags: they looked like the three spring months united to celebrate the victory."

The young poet, who more than once had the honor of escorting Josephine, was very proud to accompany her and Madame Tallien to the first performance of Lesueur's Telemaque at the Theatre Feydeau. "I will confess," he says, "that it was not without some pride that I found myself seated between the two most remarkable women of the time, and it is not without some pleasure that I recall the fact: those feelings were natural for a young man enthusiastic for beauty and for glory. It was not Tallien whom I should have loved in his wife, but it was certainly Bonaparte whom I admired in his."

At that time, Bonaparte passed for a perfect Republican. He had written to the Directory, May 6:

"For a long time nothing has been able to add to the esteem and devotion which I shall display at every opportunity for the Constitution and the government. I have seen it established amid the most disgusting passions, all tending equally to the destruction of the Republic and of the French commonwealth; I was even able by my zeal and the force of circumstances, to be of some use at its beginning. My motto shall always be to die in its support."

The Directors thought that a general who expressed such an ardent devotion to Republican ideas ought to receive every encouragement and all praise. With no suspicions of the conqueror's future conduct, they were anxious to adorn themselves, as it were, with his victories, and to make them redound to the glory of their government. Hence the ceremony of May 10 seemed insufficient; they decided that the new festivals should be more brilliant and impressive. It was on the 10th of May, the day when the Directory formally received the flags captured in the first victories, that Bonaparte won the battle of Lodi, a glorious day that made a deep impression on the imagination of the populace. None thought of anything except of the bridge over which, in spite of the fire of the enemy converging on its long and narrow path, the young hero had led his grenadieresalalthtihme double quick. They already had begun to infallible and irresistible. May 15, he made his triumphal entry into Milan.

The Directory was entranced. Its Commissary General of the Array of Italy, Salicetti, had written, May 11: "Citizens Directors, immortal glory to the brave Army of Italy! Gratitude for the chief who leads it with such wise audacity! Yesterday will be famous in the annals of history and of war. . . . The Republican column having formed, Bonaparte passed through the ranks. His presence filled the soldiers with enthusiasm; he was greeted with incessant cries of 'Long live the Republic!' He had the charge sounded, and the men rushed on the bridge with the speed of lightning."

To celebrate these new triumphs, the Directory prepared a festival, half patriotic, half mythological, one more Pagan than Christian, in which reminiscences of Plutarch mingled with those of Jean Jacques Rousseau; one in which, besides the heroic feeling of the time, there found expression its fondness for declamation and its love of extravagant language.

The "Festival of Gratitude and of the Victories" (such was its official title) was celebrated at the Champ de Mars, the 10th Prairial, Year IV., May 29, 1796. In the middle of the Champ de Mars, which was called also the Champ de la Reunion, there had been raised a platform about twelve feet high. There led to it four flights of steps, each about sixty feet broad. At the foot of the steps were lions, "the symbol of force, courage, and generosity," according to the Moniteur.

The circle describing the limits of the space devoted to the ceremony was formed by cannon which served as barriers; between the cannon, flags were arranged which were connected by festoons of flowers.

On a pedestal in the middle of the rising ground appeared the statue of Liberty seated amid various military trophies, with one band resting on the Constitution, and in the other holding a wand, on the top of which was William Tell's cap. Perfumes were burning in antique tripods placed about the statue. On one side arose a high tree on which were hung, like trophies, the captured battle-flags. Near by, on pedestals, stood the Victories, like figures of Fame. Each one of them held in one hand a palm, and in the other a military trumpet raised to her lips.

Finally, on an altar, were oak and laurel leaves which the Directors were to distribute in the name of the grateful country.

At ten in the morning, a salvo of artillery announced the beginning of the festival. The slopes of the Champ de Mars were covered with tents. The Parisian National Guard, with its arms and banners, marched forward in fourteen sections, representing the fourteen armies of the Republic.

To each one of these fourteen sections was added a certain number of disabled veterans or wounded soldiers, and care had been taken to place them in the section representing the army in which they had received their wounds. Carnot spoke first, as President of the Directory. His speech was, so to speak, a military eclogue.

The former member of the Committee of Public Safety celebrated military glory after the fashion of a pastoral. He blew in turn the trumpet and the shepherd's pipe. Sensibility mingled with warlike ardor. It was a sermon of a Tyrteous.

Few documents so well reflect the ideas and tastes of the society of that time as this speech, which is full of words of war, and, at the same time, of humanity. It begins thus: "At this moment, when nature seems to be born anew, when the earth, adorning itself with flowers and verdure, promises us rich harvests, when all creatures announce in their language the beneficent intelligence which makes over the universe anew, the French people gather, in this solemn festival, to render fitting homage to the talents and the virtues loved by the country and by every human being. What day could more fitly unite all hearts? What citizen, what man, can be insensible to the feeling of gratitude? We exist only by means of a long series of benefits, and our life is but a continual interchange of services. Feeble, without support, our parents' love watches over our infancy. They guide our first steps; their patient solicitude aids the development of our members; from them we receive our first notions of what we are ourselves and of what is out side of us."

After this exordium comes the usual praise of sensibility, the fashionable term, which the most ferocious of the Terrorists, Robespierre himself, had employed with so much emphasis. "Sensibility," said Carnot, "does not confine itself to the narrow sphere of the family circle; it goes forth to find the needy in his hovel, and pours into his breast the balm of aid and consolation, and though already rewarded for its benevolence by the feeling of benevolence, it receives a further recompense from gratitude. Humanity, how delicious is thy practice! how pitiable the greedy soul who knows thee not!"

After this dithyramb in honor of nature, the family, and sensibility, come martial descriptions; as after the harp, the trumpet. "The new-born Republic arms its children to defend its independence; nothing can stem their impetuosity: they ford rivers, capture retrenchments, scale cliffs. Then, after a host of victories, they enlarge our boundaries to the barriers which nature itself has set, and pursue over the ice the fragments of three armies: there, they are about to exterminate the hordes of traitors and of brigands vomited forth by England, they punish the guilty leaders and restore to the Republic their brothers, too long lost; here, crossing the Pyrenees, they hurl themselves from the mountain top, overwhelming every obstacle, and are stopped only by an honorable peace; then, scaling the Alps and the Apennines, they dash across the Po and the Adda. The ardor of the soldier is seconded by the genius and the audacity of his leaders, who form their plans with wisdom and carry them out with energy, now arranging their forces with calmness, now plunging into the midst of dangers at the head of their companions."

Carnot concluded his speech with an expression of gratitude to the soldiers of the Republic.

"Accept," he exclaimed, "accept this solemn testimonial of national gratitude, O armies of the Republic! . . . Why is nothing left but your memory, ye heroes who died for liberty? You will at least live forever in our hearts; your children will be dear to us. The Republic will repay to them what it owes you; and we have come here to pay the first, in proclaiming your glory and its recognition. Republican armies! represented in this enclosure by some of your members, ye invincible phalanxes whose new successes I see in the future, advance and receive the triumphal crowns which the French people orders to be fastened to your banners."

Later, there was dancing on the Champ de Mars until nightfall. In the evening there was a great Republican banquet at which was sung a hymn, half patriotic, half convivial, composed for the occasion by the poet Lebrun -- Pindar Lebrun, as he was then called. It ran as follows:

O day of undying memory,
Adorn thyself with our laurels!
Centuries, you will find it hard to believe
The prodigies of our warriors.
The enemy has disappeared in flight or has drunk the black wave.

Under the laurels, what charms has Bacchus?
Let us fill, my friends, the cup of glory
With a nectar fresh and sparkling!
Let us drink, let us drink to Victory,
Faithful mistress of the French.

Liberty, preside over our festivities;
Rejoice in our brilliant exploits!
The Alps have bowed their heads,
And have not been able to defend the kings.
The Eridanus recounts to the seas our swift conquests," etc., etc.

We have seen what was going on in Paris. What had happened at Milan?