All honor to the ruler who commences his reign by words and deeds which suggest that he has somewhere heard and heeded the golden text, “Blessed are the peacemakers!”

There had been riots in France and the clash of faction; there had been massacre of Catholic by Protestant and of Protestant by Catholic; there had been civil war in La VendÉe. Napoleon had no sooner become master than his orders went forth for peace, and a year had not passed before quiet reigned from Paris to all the frontiers. Royally he pardoned all who would accept his clemency, giving life and power to many a secret foe who was to help pull him down in the years to come. France tranquillized within, the First Consul turned to the enemies without,—to the foreign powers which had combined against her.

On Christmas Day, December 25, 1799, Napoleon wrote to the King of England and to the Emperor of Austria nobly worded letters praying that the war might cease. Written with his own hand, and addressed personally to these monarchs, the question of etiquette is raised by royalist writers. They contend that letters, so addressed, were improper. Think of the coldness of nature which would make the lives of thousands of men turn on a pitiful point like that! These letters were not sincere, according to Napoleon’s detractors. How they come to know this, they cannot explain; but they know it. The average reader, not gifted with the acumen of the professional detractor, can only be certain of the plain facts of the case, and those are, that Napoleon made the first overtures for peace; that his words have the ring of sincerity, and the virtue of being positive; and that his conciliatory advances were repelled, mildly by Austria, insolently by Great Britain.

So arrogant was the letter of reply which Grenville, the English minister, sent to the French foreign office that even George III. disapproved of it. With incredible superciliousness the French were told by the English aristocrat that they had better restore the Bourbons under whose rule France had enjoyed so much prosperity at home and consideration abroad. Inasmuch as England had but recently despoiled Bourbon France of nearly every scrap of territory she had in the world,—Canada, India, etc.,—Grenville’s letter was as stupidly scornful of fact as it was of good manners. The Bourbon “glory” which had sunk so low that France had not even been invited to the feast when Poland was devoured; so low that the French flag had been covered with shameful defeat on land and sea, was a subject which might have made even a British cabinet officer hesitate before he took the wrong side of it.

The honors of the correspondence remained with Napoleon; and by way of retort to Grenville’s plea, that the Bourbons were the legitimate rulers of France, whom the people had no right to displace, the surly Englishman was reminded that the logic of his argument would bring the Stuarts back to the throne of England, from which a revolting people had driven them. The truth is that Pitt’s ministry believed France exhausted. Malta and Egypt were both coveted by Great Britain, and it was believed that each would soon be lost by France. It was for reasons like these that Napoleon’s overtures were rejected.

With the Emperor of Russia the First Consul was more fortunate. The Czar had not liked the manner in which he had been used by his allies, England and Austria. In fact, he had been shabbily treated by both. Added to this was his dissatisfaction with England because of her designs on Malta, in whose fate he took an interest as protector of the Knights of St. John.

Napoleon cleverly played upon the passions of the Czar (who was more or less of a lunatic), flattered him by releasing the Russian prisoners held by France, and sending them home in new uniforms. Soon Napoleon had no admirer more ardent than the mad autocrat Paul, who wrote him a personal letter proposing a joint expedition against India.

Prussia had declared her neutrality. Napoleon sent Duroc and a letter to the young King urging an alliance, Hamburg being the bait dangled before the Prussian monarch’s eyes. He was gracious, and he was tempted, but he did not yield: Prussia remained neutral.

Great Britain had good reasons for wishing for the restoration of the Bourbons, from whose feeble hands so much of the colonial Empire of France had dropped; she had good reason to believe that a continuation of the war would increase her own colonial empire, but the manner in which she repelled Napoleon’s advances gave to France just the insult that was needed to arouse her in passionate support of the First Consul.

Forced to continue the war, his preparations were soon made.

It may be doubted whether any victory that he ever won held a higher place in the memory of the great captain than that of Marengo. He never ceased to recall it as one of the most glorious days of his life. We see a proof of this in the Memoirs of General Marbot. The year was 1807, the battle of Eylau had been fought, the armies were in motion again; and Lannes, hard-pressed by the Russian host at Friedland, had sent his aide-de-camp speeding to the Emperor to hurry up support.

“Mounted on my swift Lisette, I met the Emperor leaving Eylau. His face was beaming. He made me ride up by his side, and as we galloped I had to give him an account of what had taken place on the field of battle before I had left. The report finished, the Emperor smiled, and asked, “Have you a good memory?”—“Pretty fair, sire.”—“Well, what anniversary is it to-day, the 14th of June?”—“Marengo.”—“Yes,” replied the Emperor, “and I am going to beat the Russians to-day as I beat the Austrians at Marengo.” And as Napoleon reached the field, and rode along the lines, he called out to his troops, “It is a lucky day, the anniversary of Marengo!” The troops cheered him as he rode, and they won for him the great battle of Friedland.”

The old uniform, sabre, spurs, hat, he had worn on that sunny day in Italy, in 1800, he scrupulously kept. In the year he was crowned Emperor he carried Josephine to see the plain he had immortalized, fought again in sham fight the battle of Marengo, wearing the faded uniform he had worn on that eventful day.

Even on his last journey to dismal St. Helena, it seems that these relics of a glorious past were not forgotten. We read that when the dead warrior lay stark and stiff in his coffin on that distant rock, they spread over his feet “the cloak he had worn at Marengo.”

It was indeed a brilliant campaign, great in conception, execution, results.

Moreau’s army lay upon the Rhine, more than one hundred thousand strong. MassÉna with the army of Italy guarded the Apennines, facing overwhelming odds. From Paris the First Consul urged MassÉna to hold his ground, and Moreau to advance. Against the latter was a weak Austrian commander, Kray, and forces about equal to the French. Much time was lost, Napoleon proposing a plan which Moreau thought too bold, and was not willing to risk. Finally the First Consul yielded, gave Moreau a free hand, and the advance movement began. The Rhine was crossed, and Moreau began a series of victories over Kray which brought him to the Danube. But the Austrians, taking the offensive against the army of Italy, cut it in two, and shut up MassÉna in Genoa, where the English fleet could coÖperate against the French.

It was then that Napoleon, almost by stealth, got together another army, composed partly of conscripts, partly of veterans from the armies of La VendÉe and Holland, and hurried it to the foot of the Alps. The plan was to pass these mountains, fall upon the Austrian rear, and redeem Italy at a blow. His enemies heard of the Army of the Reserve which he was collecting at Dijon. Spies went there, saw a few thousand raw recruits, and reported that Napoleon had no Army of Reserve—that he was merely trying to bluff old Melas into loosening his grip on Genoa. It suited Napoleon precisely to have his new army treated as a joke. With consummate art he encouraged the jest while he collected, drilled, and equipped at different points the various detachments with which he intended to march.

Under the constitution the First Consul could not legally command the army. He was not forbidden, however, to be present as an interested spectator while some one else commanded. So he appointed Berthier, General-in-chief.

Early in May, 1800, all was ready, and the First Consul left Paris to become the interested spectator of the movements of the Army of the Reserve. At the front, form and fiction gave way to actuality, and Napoleon’s word was that of chief. At four different passes the troops entered the mountains, the main army crossing by the Great St. Bernard.

Modern students, who sit in snug libraries and rectify the arduous campaigns of the past, have discovered that Napoleon’s passage of the Alps was no great thing after all. They say that his troops had plenty to eat, drink, and wear; thousands of mules and peasants to aid in the heavy work of the march; no foes to fight on the way; and that his march was little more than a military parade. Indeed, it was one of those things which looked a deal easier after it had been done than before. And yet it must have been a notable feat to have scaled those mighty barriers on which lay the snow, to have threaded those paths up in the air over which the avalanche hung, and below which the precipice yawned—all this having been done with such speed that the French were in Italy before the Austrians knew they had left France. Much of the route was along narrow ledges where the shepherd walked warily. To take a fully equipped army over these rocky shelves,—horse, foot, artillery, ammunition, supplies,—seems even at this admire-nothing day to have been a triumph of organization, skill, foresight, and hardihood. Only a few months previously a Russian army, led by Suwarow, had ventured to cross the Alps—and had crossed; but only half of them got out alive.

In less than a week the French made good the daring attempt, and were in the valleys of Italy marching upon the Austrian rear. They had brought cavalry and infantry almost without loss. Cannon had been laid in hollowed logs and pulled up by ropes. The little fort of Bard, stuck right in the road out of the mountains, had, for a moment, threatened the whole enterprise with ruin. Napoleon had known of the fortress, but had underrated its importance. For some hours a panic seemed imminent in the vanguard, but a goat-path was found which led past the fort on rocks higher up. The cannon were slipped by at night, over the road covered with litter.

Remaining on the French side to despatch the troops forward as rapidly as possible, Napoleon was one of the last to enter the mountains. He rode a sure-footed mule, and by his side walked his guide, a young peasant who unbosomed himself as they went forward. This peasant, also, had his eyes on the future, and wished to rise in the world. His heart yearned for a farm in the Alps, where he might pasture a small flock, grow a few necessaries, marry a girl he loved, and live happily ever afterward. The traveller on the mule seemed much absorbed in thought; but, nevertheless, he heard all the mountaineer was saying.

He gave to the young peasant the funds wherewith to buy house and land; and when Napoleon’s empire had fallen to pieces, the family of his old-time guide yet dwelt contentedly in the home the First Consul had given.

So completely had Napoleon hoodwinked the Austrians that the Army of the Reserve was still considered a myth. Mountain passes where a few battalions could have vanquished an army had been left unguarded; and when the French, about sixty thousand strong, stood upon the Italian plains, Melas could with difficulty be made to believe the news.

Now that he was in Italy, it would seem that Napoleon should have relieved Genoa, as he had promised. MassÉna and his heroic band were there suffering all the tortures of war, of famine, and of pestilence. But Napoleon had conceived a grander plan. To march upon Genoa, fighting detachments of Austrians as he went, and going from one hum-drum victory to another was too commonplace. Napoleon wished to strike a blow which would annihilate the enemy and astound the world. So he deliberately left MassÉna’s army to starve while he himself marched upon Milan. One after another, Lannes, leading the vanguard, beat the Austrian detachments which opposed his progress, and Napoleon entered Milan in triumph.

Here he spent several days in festivals and ceremonials, lapping himself in the luxury of boundless adulation. In the meantime he threw his forces upon the rear of Melas, spreading a vast net around that brave but almost demoralized commander.

On June 4 MassÉna consented to evacuate Genoa. His troops, after having been fed by the Austrians, marched off to join the French in Italy. Thus, also, a strong Austrian force was released, and it hastened to join Melas.

When Bourrienne went into Napoleon’s room late at night, June 8, and shook him out of a sound sleep to announce that Genoa had fallen, he refused at first to believe it. But he immediately rose, and in a short while orders were flying in all directions, changing the dispositions of the army.

On June 9, Lannes, with the aid of Victor, who came up late in the day, won a memorable victory at Montebello.

Napoleon, who had left Milan and taken up a strong position at Stradella, was in a state of the utmost anxiety, fearing that Melas was about to escape the net. The 10th and 11th of June passed without any definite information of the Austrian movements. On the 12th of June his impatience became so great that he abandoned his position at Stradella and advanced to the heights of Tortona. On the next day he passed the Scrivia and entered the plain of Marengo, and drove a small Austrian force from the village. Napoleon was convinced that Melas had escaped, and it is queer commentary upon the kind of scouting done at the time that the whereabouts of the Austrian army was totally unknown to the French, although the two were but a few miles apart. Leaving Victor in possession of the village of Marengo, and placing Lannes on the plain, Napoleon started back to headquarters at Voghera. By a lucky chance the Scrivia had overflowed its banks, and he could not cross. Thus he remained near enough to Marengo to repair his terrible mistake in concluding that Melas meant to shut himself up in Genoa. Desaix, just returned from Egypt, reached headquarters June 11, and was at once put in command of the Boudet division. On June 13 Desaix was ordered to march upon Novi, by which route Melas would have to pass to Genoa.

Thus on the eve of one of the most famous battles in history, the soldier who won it was completely at fault as to the position and the purpose of his foe. His own army was widely scattered, and it was only by accident that he was within reach of the point where the blow fell. The staff-officer whom he had sent to reconnoitre, had reported that the Austrians were not in possession of the bridges over the Bormida. In fact they were in possession of these bridges, and at daybreak, June 14, they began to pour across them with the intention of crushing the weak French forces at Marengo and of breaking through Napoleon’s net. About thirty-six thousand Austrians fell upon the sixteen thousand French. Victor was driven out of the village, and by ten o’clock in the morning his troops were in disorderly retreat. The superb courage of Lannes stayed the rout. With the utmost firmness he held his troops in hand, falling back slowly and fighting desperately as he retired. At full speed Napoleon came upon the field, bringing the consular guard and Monnier’s division. Couriers had already been sent to bring Desaix back to the main army; but before these messengers reached him, he had heard the cannonade, guessed that Melas had struck the French at Marengo, and at once set his columns in motion toward the field of battle.

Napoleon’s presence, his reËnforcements, his skilful dispositions, had put new life into the struggle; but as the morning wore away, and the afternoon commenced, it was evident that the Austrians would win. The French gave way at all points, and in parts of the field the rout was complete. Napoleon sat by the roadside swishing his riding-whip and calling to the fugitives who passed him to stop; but their flight continued. A commercial traveller left the field and sped away to carry the news to Paris that Napoleon had suffered a great defeat.

Melas, oppressed by age and worn out by the heat and fatigue of the day, thought the battle won; went to his headquarters to send off despatches to that effect, and left to his subordinate, Zach, the task of the pursuit. But Desaix had come—“the battle is lost, but there is time to gain another.”

Only twelve pieces of artillery were left to the French. Marmont massed these, and opened on the dense Austrian column advancing en Échelon along the road. Desaix charged, and almost immediately got a ball in the breast and died “a soldier’s beautiful death.” But his troops pressed forward with fury, throwing back in confusion the head of the Austrian column. At this moment, “in the very nick of time” as Napoleon himself admitted to Bourrienne, Kellermann made his famous cavalry charge on the flank of the Austrian column, cut it in two, and decided the day. The French lines everywhere advanced, the Austrians broke. They were bewildered at the sudden change: they had no chief, Zach being a prisoner, and Melas absent. In wildest confusion they fled toward the bridges over the Bormida, Austrian horse trampling Austrian foot, and the French in hot pursuit.

Some sixteen thousand men were killed or wounded in this bloody battle, and very nearly half of these were French. But the Austrians were demoralized, and Melas so overcome that he hastened to treat. To save the relics of his army, he was willing to abandon northern Italy, give up Genoa, and all fortresses recently taken.

From the field of Marengo, surrounded by so many dead and mangled, Napoleon wrote a long letter to the Emperor of Austria, urgently pleading for a general peace.

Returning to Milan, he was welcomed with infinite enthusiasm. He spent some days there reËstablishing the Cisalpine republic, reorganizing the administration, and putting himself in accord with the Roman Catholic Church. Just as earnestly as he had assured the Mahometans in Egypt that his mission on earth was to crush the Pope and lower the Cross, he now set himself up as the restorer of the Christian religion. He went in state to the cathedral of Milan to appear in a clerical pageant; and he took great pains to have it published abroad that the priests might rely upon him for protection.

Leaving MassÉna in command of the army of Italy, Napoleon returned to Paris by way of Lyons. The ovations which greeted him were as spontaneous as they were hearty. Never before, never afterward, did his presence call forth such universal, sincere, and joyous applause. He was still young, still the first magistrate of a republic, still conciliatory and magnetic, still posing as a public servant who could modestly write that “he hoped France would be satisfied with its army.” He was not yet the all-absorbing egotist who must be everything. Moreau was still at the head of an army, Carnot at the war office, there was a tribunate which could debate governmental policies; there was a public opinion which could not be openly braved.

Hence it was a national hero whom the French welcomed home, not a master before whom flatterers fawned. All Paris was illuminated from hut to palace. Thousands pressed forward but to see him; the Tuileries were surrounded by the best people of Paris, all eager to catch a glimpse of him at a window, and greeting him wherever he appeared with rapturous shouts. He himself was deeply touched, and said afterward that these were the happiest days of his life. The time was yet to come when he would appear at these same windows to answer the shouts of a few boys and loafers, on the dreary days before Waterloo.

With that talent for effect which was one of Napoleon’s most highly developed traits, he had ordered the Consular Guard back to France almost immediately after Marengo, timing its march so that it would arrive in Paris on the day of the great national fÊte of July 14. On that day when so many thousands of Frenchmen, dressed in gala attire, thronged the Field of Mars and gave themselves up to rejoicings, the column from Marengo, dust-covered, clad in their old uniform, and bearing their smoke-begrimed, bullet-rent banners, suddenly entered the vast amphitheatre. The effect was electrical. Shout upon shout greeted the returning heroes; and with an uncontrollable impulse the people rushed upon these veterans from Italy with every demonstration of joy, affection, and wild enthusiasm. So great was the disorder that the regular programme of the day was thrust aside; the men of Marengo had dwarfed every other attraction.

About this time the Bourbons made efforts to persuade Napoleon to play the part of Monk in restoring the monarchy. Suasive priests bearing letters, and lovely women bearing secret offers, were employed, the facile Josephine lending herself gracefully to the intrigue. The First Consul was the last of men to rake chestnuts out of the fire for other people, and the Bourbons were firmly advised to accept a situation which left them in exile.

Failing in their efforts to bribe him, the monarchists determined to kill him; and the more violent Jacobins, seeing his imperial trend, were equally envenomed. It was the latter faction which made the first attempt upon his life. The Conspiracy of Ceracchi, Arena, and Topino-Lebrun was betrayed to the police. Ceracchi was an Italian sculptor who had modelled a bust of Napoleon. Arena was a Corsican whose brother had aimed a knife at Napoleon on the 19th of Brumaire. Topino-Lebrun was the juryman who had doubted the guilt of Danton, and who had been bullied into voting death by the painter David. They were condemned and executed.

A yet more dangerous plot was that of the royalists. An infernal machine was contrived by which Napoleon was to have been blown up while on his way to the opera. The explosion occurred, but a trifle too late. Napoleon had just passed. The man in charge of the machine did not know Josephine’s carriage from Napoleon’s, and approached too near in the effort to make certain. A guard kicked him away, and while he was recovering himself Napoleon’s coachman drove furiously round the corner. A sound like thunder was heard, many houses were shattered, many people killed and wounded.

“Drive on!” shouted Napoleon; and when he entered his box at the opera, he looked as if nothing had occurred. “The rascals tried to blow me up,” he said coolly as he took his seat and called for an opera-book. But when he returned to the Tuileries he was in a rage, and violently accused the Jacobins of being the authors of the plot. FouchÉ in vain insisted that the royalists were the guilty parties; the First Consul refused to listen. Taking advantage of the feeling aroused in his favor by the attempts to assassinate him, he caused a new tribunal to be created, composed of eight judges, who were to try political offenders without jury, and without appeal or revision. By another law he was empowered to banish without trial such persons as he considered “enemies of the State.” One hundred and thirty of the more violent republicans were banished to the penal colonies.

For the purpose of feeling the public pulse, a pamphlet was put forward by Fontanes and Lucien Bonaparte, called a “Parallel between CÆsar, Cromwell, Monk, and Bonaparte.” It was hinted that supreme power should be vested in Napoleon, that he should be made king. The pear was not quite ripe, the pamphlet created a bad effect. Napoleon, who had undoubtedly encouraged its publication, promptly repudiated it; and Lucien, dismissed from his office as Secretary of the Interior, was sent to Spain as ambassador.

However willing Austria might be for peace, she could not make it without the consent of England, her ally. The British ministry viewed with the spirit of philosophy the crushing blows which France had dealt Austria, and, secure from attack themselves, encouraged Austria to keep on fighting. Not able to send troops, England sent money. With $10,000,000 she bought the further use of German soldiers to keep France employed on the Continent, while Great Britain bent her energies to the capture of Malta and of Egypt. Thus it happened that the armistice expired without a treaty having been agreed on; and the war between the Republic and the Empire recommenced (November, 1800). Brune defeated the Austrians on the Mincio; Macdonald made the heroic march through the SplÜgen Pass; Moreau won the magnificent victory of Hohenlinden (December 4, 1800).

It seems that, with a little more dash, Moreau might have taken Vienna, exposed as it was to the march of three victorious armies. But Austria asked for a truce, gave pledges of good faith, and the French halted. On February 9, 1801, the Peace of LunÉville put an end to the war. France had won the boundary of the Rhine; and, in addition to the territory made hers by the treaty of Campo Formio, gained Tuscany, which Napoleon had promised to Spain, in exchange for Louisiana.

Napoleon’s position on the Continent was now very strong. Prussia was a friendly neutral; Spain an ally; Italy and Switzerland little more than French provinces; the Batavian republic and Genoa submissive subjects; Portugal in his power by reason of his compact with Spain; and the Czar of Russia an enthusiastic friend. England was shut out from the Continent almost completely. Her insolent exercise of the right of search of neutral vessels on the high seas, a right which had no basis in law or justice, had provoked the hatred of the world, and Napoleon took advantage of this feeling and of Russia’s friendship to reorganize the armed neutrality of the northern powers for the purpose of bringing England to reason. Her reply was brutal and effective. She sent her fleet, under Parker and Nelson, to bombard Copenhagen and to destroy the Danish navy. The work was savagely done, and the northern league shattered. The English party at St. Petersburg followed up this blow by the murder of the Czar Paul. Hardly had the young Alexander been proclaimed before he announced his adhesion to the English and his antagonism to the French. He may, possibly, have been free from the guilt of conniving at his father’s murder; but it is not to be denied that he continued to reward with the highest offices the chief assassins—Bennigsen, for example.

KlÉber, who had gloriously maintained himself in Egypt, was assassinated on the day of Marengo. It is one of the mysteries of Napoleon’s career that he allowed the incompetent Menou to succeed to a command where so much executive and administrative ability was required. One is tempted to think that even at this early date the genius of Napoleon was overtaxed. In trying to do so many things, he neglected some. Egypt he certainly tried to relieve by sending reËnforcements; but he slurred all, neglected all, and lost all, by allowing so notorious an imbecile as Menou to remain in chief command. Why he did not appoint Reynier or Lanusse, both of whom were already in Egypt, or why he did not send some good officer from France, can only be explained upon the theory that his mind was so much preoccupied with other matters that he failed to attach due importance to the situation of the Army of the East.

Menou’s administration was one dreary chapter of stupidities; and when the English landed at Alexandria, they found an easy conquest. With little effort and little bloodshed the French were beaten in detail, and agreed to quit the country.

When the tidings reached Napoleon, his anger and chagrin were extreme. He jumped upon his horse and dashed off into the forest of Bougival as if the furies were after him. Hour after hour he rode frantically in the wood, to the wonder of his staff, who could not guess what it was all about. At last, when the storm had spent itself, he unbosomed himself to the faithful Junot. That night Junot said to his wife, “Ah, my General suffered cruelly to-day: Egypt has been taken by the English!”

Malta having been captured also, Napoleon had the mortification of realizing that his expedition to the East had had no other result than to sow seed for an English harvest.

However, Great Britain was dismayed at the increase of her public debt, oppressed by the load of taxation, and somewhat intimidated by the energy which Napoleon began to show in building up the French navy. A monster demonstration at Boulogne,—where he gathered an immense number of armed sloops, apparently for the purpose of invading England,—and the failure of an attack which Nelson made on this flotilla, had an effect; and in March, 1802, to the joy of the world, the Peace of Amiens was signed.

For the first time since 1792 universal peace prevailed in Europe.