II: The Festival of the Victories

The young and valiant army which had just made its triumphant entrance into Milan was full of ardor, fire, and enthusiasm. All were young, -- the commander, the officers, and the men, -- as were their ideas, feelings, and hopes. These short men of the South, with their sunburned faces, their expression of wit and mischief, their eyes of fire, had a proud and free air. They had the merits of the French Revolution without its faults. They were brave and kind, terrible and generous, magnificent in the battle, and gay and amusing on the day after the victory.

Full of imagination, rather inclined to talking and bragging, but yet so worthy of respect for their heroism, their self-denial, their unselfishness; they were not ambitious for themselves, but only for their country. They had no jealousy of one another, and did not care for rank or money. The military career was not their trade, but a vocation, a passion. They preferred their ragged uniforms to the luxury of a millionnaire. They despised everything which was not military. Not only had they no fear of danger, they loved it, and lived in it as if it were their element.

In the redoubt of Dego, Bonaparte exclaimed, "With twenty thousand such men, one could march through Europe."

A Gascon grenadier answered aloud, "If the little corporal will always lead us in that way, I promise that he will never see us in retreat." Since Caesar's legionaries there had been nothing seen that could be compared with Bonaparte's soldiers. They were very happy at Milan. They who had so long been without shoes,

"Barefooted, without bread, deaf to cowardly alarms,
All marched to glory with the same step,"

Good shoes are a great happiness to a poor soldier. They were in this city, which is a sort of earthly paradise, with its magnificent marble cathedral, its beautiful women, its enchanting views. The city is surrounded by a remarkably fertile country: meadows, woods, fields, gilded by the sun; in the distance appears the huge chain of the Alps, the summits of which, from Monte Viso and Monte Rosa as far as the mountains of Bassano, are covered with snow all the year round.

The air is so pure and limpid that the nearest points of the Alpine chain, though really a dozen or fifteen leagues away, seem scarcely more than three. The soldiers gazed with rapture at this glowing panorama, at the rich fields of Lombardy, this promised land; at gigantic Monte Viso, which had so long risen over their heads, and now they were to see the sun set behind it.

Bonaparte entered Milan May 15, 1796. He found there a large force of the National Guard, wearing the Lombard colors, green, white, and red. Under the command of a great nobleman of the city, the Duke of Serbelloni, it was drawn up in line along his path. Cheers filled the air. Pretty women were looking out from every window. When Bonaparte reached the Porta Romana, the National Guard presented arms before him.

With a large detachment of infantry in advance, and surrounded by his guard of hussars, he went on as far as the Place in front of the Archducal Palace, where he was quartered, and there was served a dinner of two hundred plates. A liberty-tree was set out in the square, amid shouts of "Hurrah for Liberty! Long live the Republic!"

The day closed with a very brilliant ball, at which appeared several ladies of the city, wearing the French national colors.

The same day, one of Bonaparte's aides-de-camp, Marmont, who was later Duke of Ragusa, wrote to his father: "Dear Father, we are to-day in Milan. Our triumphal entry recalled the entrance of the ancient Roman generals into Rome when they had deserved well of the country. Milan is a very fine city, large and populous. Its inhabitants are thoroughly devoted to the French, and it is impossible to express all the signs of affection they have given us.... It is easy to forget all the fatigues of a war as hot as this has been, when victory is our reward, Our successes are really incredible. They make General Bonaparte's name forever famous, and it is perfectly clear that we owe them to him. Any one else in his place would have been beaten, and he has gone on simply from one triumph to another.... This campaign is the finest and most brilliant that has ever been known. It ought to be recorded and read. It is full of instruction, and those who can understand it will get great profit from it. Such, dear father, is a faithful picture of our situation."

That evening Bonaparte asked his aide-de-camp,

"Well, Marmont, what do you suppose people are saying about us in Paris? Are they satisfied?"

"They must be filled with admiration for you."

"They haven't seen anything yet," replied Bonaparte; "there are still greater successes for us in the future. Fortune has not smiled on us to-day for me to despise her favors; she is a woman, and the more she does for me, the more I shall demand of her.... In our time, no one has devised anything great; I must set an example."

Bonaparte possessed to a wonderful degree the art of striking the imagination. One would have said that in him was revived one of the great men of Plutarch. His genius, fed on the history of the ancients, transported antiquity into modern times. All his words and actions, even when they appeared most simple, were arranged for effect. He thought continually of Paris, as Alexander used to think of Athens. The feeling which he was anxious to inspire was a mixture of admiration and surprise.

With an unrivalled audacity, and the adventurous spirit of a gambler who stakes everything for everything, he united a knowledge of the human heart most astounding in a man of his age. Nothing is rarer than this combination of a boundless imagination with a positive and scheming mind.

There were in Bonaparte two different and complementary persons, the poet and the practical man. He dreamt and he acted; he adored at the same time Ossian and mathematics; he passed from the wildest visions to the most precise realities; from the sublimest generalities to the humblest and most trivial details. It is this harmony between generally incompatible qualities that makes him such an original figure.

The general's great merit lay in perceiving at once what he could do with such men as he had under his command. So humdrum a society as ours cannot easily understand heroic times when the richest banker is inferior to a simple sub-lieutenant, when the military spirit was every day calling forth fabulous exploits. Bonaparte's soldiers believed in him, and he believed in them. The strength of this unrivalled army lay in this, that they had confidence.

The French are knights by birth. The Republic, far from changing their character, only made them more enthusiastic. As soon as they had received their baptisms of fire, the Jacobins became paladins, the Sans Culottes found themselves filled with the aspirations of the Crusaders. The companions of Charlemagne or of Godfrey of Bouillon were not braver or more ardent. What an irresistible fire there was in that revolutionary chivalry, the nobility of a day, which already effaced the old coats of arms, and when applauded by the aristocracy of Milan, it could proudly say, like Bonaparte, "One grows old quickly on the battle-field."

Stendhal knew how to describe most accurately this glorious poverty of the heroes of the Army of Italy, in the characteristic anecdote which he tells of one of the handsomest of its officers, a M. Robert.

When he reached Milan, in the morning of May 15, M. Robert was invited to dinner by a marchioness, to whose house he had been billeted. He dressed himself with great care, but what he needed was a good pair of shoes; of his own, only the uppers were left. These he fastened very carefully with little, well-blacked cords; but, I repeat, the shoes had no soles at all. He was received most cordially by the marchioness, and he found her so charming, and was in such uneasiness lest his poverty should have been detected by the lackeys in magnificent livery who were waiting on the table, that when he rose, he dropped a six franc piece into their hands: it was every penny he had in the world.

At that time, society was not thoroughly honeycombed with corruption; there were great ladies who loved for the sake of love, and money was not the sole attraction. The desire of pleasure was most keen in those days when one counted on a short life.

The deadlier the battles, the greater the eagerness for amusement. The more they braved death, the more feverishly they pursued what makes life agreeable. What could be bought for money they did not care for; but what could not be bought, like love and glory, they sought with the utmost ardor.

Moreover, from the moment they entered Milan, the soldiers enjoyed a comfort to which they had long been strangers. They began to grow fat; they had good bread and meat to eat, and good wine to drink; they changed their rags for new uniforms supplied by the city. Monday, May 16, Bonaparte received the oath of allegiance from the city authorities: that evening there was a concert in the theatre of La Scala, which was brilliantly lit.

The 18th, a new liberty tree was planted, and a national feast was announced in the name of the Society of the People, in a decree dated Year I. of the Lombard Republic.

The 19th, the city was illuminated, and everywhere was posted this proclamation, signed by Bonaparte and Salicetti: "The French Republic, which has sworn hatred to tyrants, has at the same time sworn fraternity with the people. . . . The despot who so long held Lombardy beneath his yoke did great harm to France; but the French know that the cause of kings is not that of their people. It is sure that the victorious army of an insolent monarch would spread terror throughout a defeated nation; but a republican army, compelled to make war to the death against the kings it combats., promises friendship to the people whom its victories deliver from tyranny."

Bonaparte seemed happy, yet even at the moment of his victory he was suffering. Stendhal has said:

"Seeing this young general under the handsome triumphal arch of the Porta Romana, it would have been hard for even the most experienced philosopher to guess the two passions which tormented his heart."

These were the hottest love excited by madness to jealousy, and anger due to the determination of the Directory. The very evening before his victorious entry into Milan, Bonaparte, unknown to any of those about him, had sent to Paris his resignation. He had just been informed by the Directory, that henceforth the Army of Italy was to be divided into two armies, one of which, that of the South, was to be confided to him, and was to set forth to conquer the southern part of the Peninsula; while the other, that of the North, was to be commanded by General Kellerman.

Bonaparte perceived that this arrangement robbed him of his glory, and would destroy his power and fame.

May 14, he wrote to the Directory a letter containing this passage: "I regard it as very impolitic to divide the Army of Italy; it is equally unfavorable to the interests of the Republic to set it under two different generals. I have conducted the campaign without consulting anyone; I should have failed if I had been compelled to adapt myself to another's methods. I have gained some advantages over greatly superior forces, when I was in absolute need of everything, because, confiding in your trust in me, my march was as swift as my thought. . . . I feel that it takes much courage to write to you this letter; it exposes me to the charge of ambition and pride. But I owe to you this statement of my feelings."

The same day he wrote privately to Carnot a letter which closed thus: "I am very anxious not to lose, in a week, two months of fatigue, toil, and danger, and also not to be fettered. I have begun with some glory, and I desire to continue to be worthy of you. Believe, moreover, that nothing will diminish the esteem which you inspire in all who know you."

Thus the successful general, at the very beginning of his career, was threatened with the loss of the command which had brought him so much renown. Possibly it was not this thought which most sorely wrung his passionate heart. He had besought his wife to join him, and yet she had not come. Days and weeks passed, but he received no news of her starting. Perhaps, -- he thought in his heart, -- perhaps she does not come because she is detained in Paris by love for some one else. This tormenting thought marred the joy of his triumph.