LITMIR.BIZ

      ‘Pero non fu gran cosa,’ Bonaparte commented that evening at dinner in the residence of the Bishop of Lodi. But he was determined that to the outside world it should be a grandissima cosa. ‘The battle of Lodi, my dear Director, gives the whole of Lombardy to the Republic,’ he wrote to Carnot that evening, announcing that he was about to pursue and finally defeat Beaulieu. His description of the capture of the bridge was predictably florid, and he claimed for this ‘battle’ a significance which it would acquire only thanks to his efforts. Saliceti followed up with an account that was outright poetic. These would be broadcast to the public in France, and would soon be supplemented by images. Bonaparte asked the French minister in Genoa, Guillaume Faipoult, to commission an engraving of the glorious feat, the result of which was an image of himself, standard in hand, leading his men across the bridge under a hail of shot. He made sure that from now on every feat of arms was immortalised by an icon.4

      He needed to enhance his authority by any means available. While at Lodi he had received two letters from Paris, one welcome, one less so. The first was from Murat, informing him that Josephine had only delayed coming out to join him in Italy because she was pregnant and feared travelling. It was not true, but she could think of no other excuse to avoid leaving Paris. Bonaparte was pleased by the news that he was to become a father, and while he was concerned for her health, he felt that her supposed condition would guarantee her fidelity.5

      Earlier that day he had received less welcome news. The Directory felt he had accomplished his prescribed aim of creating a diversion to assist the two French armies operating in Germany, and now sent him new instructions. They ordered the remainder of the Army of the Alps into Italy, and planned to divide the French forces on the peninsula into a northern one under the sixty-five-year-old professional soldier and acclaimed victor of the invading Prussians at Valmy in 1792, General Kellermann, and a southern under Bonaparte, which was to march on Rome and overthrow ‘the last of the popes’.

      This did not suit him at all, as he was set on his cherished enterprise of the subversion of Italy. On 1 May he had written to Faipoult in Genoa asking for material on the topography, resources, constitutional arrangements and economic potential of every state on the peninsula. During his march to Piacenza he had crossed territory belonging to the neutral duchy of Parma. He had made a feint as though he were about to attack its capital, which prompted the duke to despatch envoys to ask for his neutrality to be respected – which it was, in return for a huge bribe in silver, corn, oats and other victuals, 1,600 horses, twenty works of art, and an undertaking to maintain hospitals for the French wounded. ‘These little princes need to be managed,’ Bonaparte commented in his report to the Directory, ignoring the fact that it was not his business to manage anybody beside his soldiers. ‘The war in Italy at this moment is half military and half diplomatic,’ he explained, instructing his superiors in Paris on the positions they should take in negotiating a treaty with the King of Sardinia.6

      He sent off three letters protesting against the plan to split the command – an official one to the Directory, one to Carnot, and one to Barras – all three couched in a mixture of petulance and disingenuousness. ‘If I have lost the trust I enjoyed at the beginning of the campaign, I entreat you to let me know,’ he wrote to Barras. ‘In that case I would ask to be allowed to resign. As well as certain talents, nature has endowed me with a strong character, and I cannot be of any use here unless I have your entire confidence. If the intention is to make me play a secondary role, to oblige me to flap about under the orders of commissioners, to be subjected in my operations to a German whose principles I esteem no more than his manner, then I will leave the field to him.’ That, as the Directors well knew and Saliceti reminded them, would not have gone down well with the public, which had just received news of the epic feat of Lodi. To drive home his usefulness, Bonaparte sent a number of messages over the next few days, announcing the despatch of two million francs in gold from here, a fortune in jewellery and ingots from there, not to mention a hundred ‘fine horses, the finest that could be found’ for the Directors’ own carriages.7

      ‘It is only after Lodi that it struck me that I might become a major actor on our political scene,’ he would later tell his secretary. ‘It was then that the first spark of a higher ambition was ignited in me.’ He was sitting, lost in thought, by the fireside in the corner of a room on the evening of 7 May when it dawned on him that he was better qualified than the government he was serving. In writing up the fluke result of his actions at Lodi as a grand feat of arms he seems to have convinced himself that he possessed, or was possessed by, some kind of superior force. This is not entirely surprising, given that over the past four weeks success had followed success in an almost miraculous progression. Writing home to his father, Marmont could not contain his wonder. The less than admiring Costa de Beauregard reflected that ‘Bonaparte makes one think of those heroes who would cleave mountains with a flourish of their sword,’ a kind of magician who could do anything. A few days after Lodi, Bonaparte told Marmont that Fortune had singled him out and become his mistress. Such grandiloquent, emotionally charged phrases might sound like so much hot air, but they did express genuine thoughts and aspirations.8

      The

Скачать книгу