Napoleon's Wars_ An International History, 1803-1815 - Charles Esdaile [46]
In this state of affairs, it was announced that General Bonaparte had disembarked at Fréjus. The news spread with the speed of light. Hope was reborn in every heart. All the parties rallied to him. The remembrance of his brilliant campaign in Italy, the memorable achievements of his armies in Egypt, did not permit any other choice. He was carried in triumph from Fréjus to Paris, and some days later proclaimed First Consul.69
This, of course, is much too simplistic. Modern scholars recognize that France’s condition was by no means as dark as it was painted by Napoleon’s later apologists and collaborators. In reality, the Directory had introduced a variety of salutary reforms that in principle gave the Republic a much stronger army and a more effective fiscal system. Meanwhile, a series of good harvests had reduced food prices very considerably, while the twin menace of rebellion and military defeat had been overcome. At the same time, one should neither be too deterministic about the consulate nor forget that the plot that brought Napoleon to power was the work, not of l’italique, but of a group of civilian politicians who were not even thinking of Napoleon as the ‘sword’ that could execute their will - had he not fallen at the battle of Novi, the general in command would probably have been Joubert, whilst Sieyès was supposedly actually engaged in the task of persuading Moreau to accept the role when he received the news that the conqueror of Egypt had landed. The arrival of a Napoleon bent on establishing himself in power completely changed the situation however. It was a decisive moment, and one that finally brought Napoleon to the top. As Germaine de Staël recalled, ‘It was the first time since the Revolution that one heard one name in every mouth. Until then it had always been “the Constituent Assembly, the people, the Convention”. Now, however, nobody spoke of anyone except the man who was going to take the place of everyone else and render the human race anonymous.’70
In a sense, then, we are back where we started. Although we have yet to examine the process by which this occurred, France was in the hands of a single towering personality. Given what we have seen of the evolution of Napoleon’s character, there can be no doubt what this portended. For all the claims of his apologists, a critical review of the new French ruler’s early years produces a picture of a man who was very far from being the hero and liberator of legend. So far as Napoleon was concerned, by 1799 ideology was something that he had jettisoned long ago. Moreover, even when it had been a genuine part of his life, it seems clear that it was never there for its own sake. Let us take, for example, Napoleon’s Corsican nationalism. Fierce though this was, in the end it was at heart an affectation. In his schoolboy years a means of asserting his personality, it very quickly became merely a vehicle for his family interests and vaunting personal ambition, and was jettisoned as soon as it became clear that the Bonaparte clan had lost the battle to secure control of its native island. Much the same applies, meanwhile, to Napoleon’s Jacobinism. Privately disgusted by the excesses of the Revolution, he very quickly became convinced that the radical politicians who egged on such scenes were no more than self-seeking demagogues. Yet recognizing the power of their ideas and, above all, their importance in the army, which remained the element in French society most devoted to the radicalism of 1792-3, he made use of them to establish an unassailable powerbase in its ranks. But throughout, ideology was a matter of secondary importance to him. In northern Italy he defied government