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despotism of the Directory was, for a time, most firmly established.

Such being the immediate result of this atrocious revolution, it was natural that Barras and his two associates should incur the whole odium attached to it, whilst the master-mover of the plot, whose projects had not yet been revealed, excited little indignation or notice. Even the death of Hoche, who was known to have died by poison, and the appointment of Augereau to his command, were ascribed to the Directory, although they had no interest in the removal of the one, or the elevation of the other; and though the petitions from the army of Italy; the mission of Augereau to Paris; the journey of General Desaix to Italy, connected as it was with Moreau's famous letter, the arrest of Pichegru, and the flight of Carnot, were calculated to awaken suspicion respecting the real author of the whole.

Six months had elapsed since the signature of the preliminaries of Leoben, and it was not till the 17th of October that Buonaparte, who had often threatened to break off the conferences, at length concluded the treaty of peace with Austria at Campo Formio near Udina. Perhaps he may have wished, in the event of a civil war in France, to reserve to himself the means of securing possession of the kingdom of Italy by a separate negociation with the emperor; but the attainment of a greater object was now insured to him.

The negociation with Lord Malmesbury at Lisle had, of course, been rendered abortive by the proscription of all the friends of peace; the intention of invading England was proclaimed, and the command of the expedition given to Buonaparte, who, at a general review of his troops, after thanking them for their past services, announced to them his design of meeting them on the shores of the Channel. You have given peace to the Continent,' (said he,) and Great Britain is our only remaining enemy. I will lead you to London, where whole cellars are filled with gold and silver. You shall then return to France, loaded with guineas, which you shall spend at home with your mistresses. Long live the Republic!' The troops, instead of re-echoing his last words, uttered, to his great delight, a general shout of Long live Buonaparte!'

Having, at the request of the Directory, completed the organization of the Cisalpine republic, and afterwards assisted at the opening of the congress of Rastadt, he proceeded to Paris, where he was received, with the highest honours, by the members of the government which he had established, and by the foreign ministers; but he carefully avoided all appearance of ostentation, secluded himself from the curious gaze of the public, became a member of the Institute, attended the lectures on natural philosophy and che

mistry,

mistry, and, in general, seemed to be devoted to his studies. The Directory, whom he loaded with caresses and with presents, and who willingly adopted every measure which he suggested, were, probably, not less surprized than the rest of the world, when he proposed to lead an army into Egypt, and to take upon himself all the expenses of the enterprize. It is now known that a similar plau had been formerly offered to the French government by the celebrated Leibnitz, who saw that the possession of a country once the granary of Europe, might be rendered far more valuable to France than that of all her more distant colonies; and this conquest, the real facility of which no man was more able to estimate than Buonaparte, was perhaps still more likely to attract his wishes by the blaze of chivalrous glory with which its achievement was likely to invest him, than by the territorial or commercial advantages which it would open to France, or even by the plunder which he might hope to acquire for himself. But he had many other motives. He could not immediately rekindle in Europe the war which he had so lately extinguished, and he wanted an army to command, and a field for enterprize. Perhaps, as our author hints, he wished to expend a certain number of officers who, though trained to military subordination, were too sensible of the value of civil liberty.

He set sail on the 19th of May, 1798. On the 8th of June he got sight of Malta, and was joined by Desaix, with the squadron from Civita Vecchia. On the 10th he commenced his attack; and on the 12th Malta was given up to him. He proceeded from thence on the 19th; disembarked at Alexandria on the 2d of July; captured and pillaged that town; set off for Cairo on the 7th, and entered it on the 22d, after losing numbers of men from fatigue, and not a few from the fire of the enemy. He had probably anticipated greater difficulties than he encountered, thus far, in his military operations; but he certainly had not foreseen the total destruction of his fleet by Lord Nelson; and it may perhaps be true, that his expedition into Syria, in February 1799, was undertaken, chiefly, because he was annoyed by the monotony and inactivity of the life to which he was reduced in his insulated pachalic of Cairo. Having taken El Arish and Jaffa, and murdered in cold blood the garrison of the latter, he arrived with his army of 16,000 picked men before St. Jean d'Acre on the 19th of March; but being unexpectedly disconcerted in all his attacks by the talents and gallantry of Sir Sidney Smith, was, on the 20th of May, compelled to raise the siege, and to retreat through the desert; leading back to Egypt, from this crusade, not quite one half of the force which he had carried to the attack. His situation now became rather embarrassing. His troops had murmured; and he had little prospect of regaining

VOL. VI. NO. XI.

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regaining their attachment by any fresh victory. He had reason to believe that his presence in France was much wanted, but the passage from Egypt was by no means free from danger. Fortune, however, again favoured him, by bringing to Aboukir a Turkish army, which he defeated on the 25th of July; and by keeping out of the course of his vessel the numerous English cruizers by whom he was likely to have been intercepted. He embarked at Alexandria on the 23d of August, and having first steered to Ajaccio, continued his voyage towards Fréjus, near which, on the 8th of October, he was landed on the beach.

The auspicious moment to which he had so long looked forward, was now arrived. The Directory, at all times the objects of detestation, were now become the objects of universal contempt. They even appeared to be conscious of their own imbecility. Some change in the government was become absolutely necessary, and it was plain that the executive power of the state must be transferred from a college of equal members to a single chief. On the other hand, it was impossible that any individual should unite the suffrages of all the parties in the country. It was therefore requisite that this, like the preceding changes, should be effected by means of a conspiracy, and this conspiracy had been organized, during Buonaparte's absence in Egypt, by his brother Lucien, who had chosen as his associates a few of the ablest of the Jacobins, the only faction from which any serious opposition could be expected. The Abbé Sieyes, ever fertile in plaus of government, had prepared one for the occasion, and the 8th of November, 1799, (the 18th Brumaire of the republican calendar,) was fixed for the execution of a plot, the dangers of which were foreseen, and guarded against by every possible precaution. Yet it seems that the ultimate success of the enterprize was wholly owing to the intrepidity of Lucien, who, arrayed in his robes, rushed out of the council, harangued the wavering grenadiers, and ordered them to follow him into the refractory assembly of which he was the legitimate president, whilst his brother Napoleon, put to flight by the terrorists, and confounded by the novelty of the scene, was incapable of making any exertion. The remainder of that, and the whole of the succeeding day, were employed in procuring the acquiescence of those persons whose protracted opposition to the new revolution might have proved formidable; and on the 11th of November, Buonaparte, under the title of First Consul, became the real monarch of France.

It is not necessary, for our present purpose, to pursue this little sketch any farther, because we shall probably have frequent occasion to revert to the subject; we shall therefore now give a few extracts from the volume before us, taking the liberty, however,

when

when we think it expedient, to condense and arrange under one head, passages selected from different parts of the work.-The following character is thus compiled:

'Buonaparte has been much misrepresented by the injustice of his enemies, and by the ridiculous enthusiasm of his friends. He is fond of study; his mind is intelligent, and his memory retentive. He is an extraordinary physiognomist. He writes his language correctly, and speaks it without affectation. He possesses just that degree of personal courage which it is dishonourable to want, and which his interest requires. He has not that brilliant intrepidity of General Lannes, which used to communicate itself to his columns of grenadiers, and precipitate them into the full torrent of the enemy's tire; but though nature has refused to him this instinctive quality, she has made him amends by the rare talent of selecting and of moulding to his purpose, the men who are most capable of carrying into execution his vast conceptions. His chief merit is not his military skill, though no man is superior to him in the art of combining all the dispositions preparatory to a battle: his grand secret is his knowledge of the human heart. The field of action is not his proper element; it is the sagacity with which he detects, and profits by the lurking meanness of an enemy; and the discernment with which he discovers amongst his own followers, and rewards, either by honours or by wealth, the fittest instruments for his purposes, which render him formidable. Independently of these talents, the principal causes of his success may be comprehended in two words; numbers and temerity." It is not without reason that the Institute thought fit to class him in the section of mechanics, because, on every occasion, he has endeavoured to assemble, and to direct against the point of attack, a mass of power superior to that which was opposed to him. He places at the heads of his columns those officers on whose desperate audacity he can perfectly rely, and whose example cannot fail to animate the troops, Of such men he has always a provision. He often spends six hours in the review of a single regiment; carefully examines the colonels, the chiefs of battalions, and the captains; and never fails to take notes of those, of whose spirit and intelligence he receives a favourable impression. The excellent conduct of his officers has often made amends for the deficient instruction of the troops, and sometimes for the mistakes of the general.

'It has been said, that his military system is of his own creation; but this is a mere chimera. He makes war as all generals who had common sense have made war since the beginning of the world. It has excited some surprise that his armies are all well supplied, though unprovided with magazines: but the country which they occupy must be at their disposal; and the soldier, when fed by the peasants on whom he is quartered, suffers less fatigue than when he is obliged to attend at the delivery of his rations. It has also been said, that the French officers are not allowed any baggage. This, again, is an error. A caisson is allotted, for this purpose, to every battalion. Nothing is done by enchantment. Every service is performed, indeed with cele

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rity,

rity, but that celerity is the result of method and regularity. All orders are transmitted from Buonaparte, through his aides-de-camp, to the marshals; who cause them to be executed by their several generals of division. These, again, issue their instructions to the generals of brigade, and they to the colonels of regiments; each of these officers being personally responsible for that part of the execution which relates to his own department. Circumstances may require very rapid marches; and these are occasionally performed: but as it would be ridiculous to exact exertions disproportioned to the strength of men, the colonels are authorised to put in requisition all the means of transporting the weak or disabled soldiers. Even during the most active pursuit of an enemy, the cavalry and voltigeurs are always supported by columns of infantry, and no detachment is hazarded so far as to be completely insulated. In an attack, the favourite manœuvre of Buonaparte, whenever the situation of the ground will permit, is to break through the centre of the enemy; but whatever may appear, after a careful survey of his position, to be his weakest point, that is opposed by superior numbers, who advance not in line, but in a close column of regiments or battalions, and these masses, which are very formidable, seldom deploy, except for the purpose of resisting a charge of cavalry, and then only partially. In general, the modern military system of France contains little, if any innovation, except in point of language; and is chiefly remarkable from its simplicity. The soldier receives his orders from his own officer, who knows what is to be done; who ought to know the means of doing it, and who is responsible for the literal performance of his duty.'

The following anecdote respecting General Mack is too curious to be omitted. Buonaparte is made to say in his confession, (p. 69,)

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My intrigues at the Court of Vienna were very useful to me. I had previously gained over General Mack, who was a prisoner at Dijon when I returned from Egypt. After the 18th Brumaire I caused him to be transferred to Paris. Our bargain was concluded by the present payment of a sum of money, and by the promise of a principality in partibus, to be conferred on him when I should have placed one of my lieutenants on the throne of my present father-in-law Francis. The easy but brilliant successes of my campaign were owing to the complaisance of my associate Mack; because the capture of Ulm enabled me to gain the battle of Austerlitz, and to dictate the peace of Presburgh.'

This anecdote, it is evident, is firmly believed by General Sarrazin; for he reverts to it in p. 273, when he is speaking in his own name, and says, that in relating it,

He only repeats the expressions of the officers of the staff of General Jellachick, who was taken prisoner, together with his column, in the Voralberg. During the orgies which took place at Ulm, after Mack's scandalous capitulation, the captors were so indiscreet as to

declare,

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