Germaine de Staël

GENERAL BONAPARTE

ROBESPIERRE could claim for the Reign of Terror that some, at least, of its victims were the scum of the earth.  In the case of the “Little Terror” which Barras conducted on the morrow of his victory, it was the honest men who suffered at the hands of the rogues.  Germaine and her lover, having helped to place lechery, debauchery, depravity, brigandage and bloody murder in power, found themselves under the necessity of defending a tyranny which refused trial, forbade free speech, denied public opinion and sent thousands of good citizens to rot in tropical swamps.  They made no bones about it, though Germaine helped her friends to escape and so moved Talleyrand to remark :  “ She throws people into the water for the pleasure of pulling them out again.”

France, as Lavalette had foreseen, was less complaisant.  A week after Barras’s coup d’état the Royalist bogy was everywhere recognised for what it was, and men understood that they had sacrificed the great Carnot in a harlots’ Sabbath presided over by Thérèse Tallien.  One of the Jacobin newspapers called Germaine :

“ Baroness of baronesses, the pride of her sex, the pearl among women, the goddess of oligarchies, the darling of the god Constancy, the protectress of emigrés, the universal woman.”

What matter, since Barras was going to pay the £100,000, since she could keep open house and show herself, every day, in the drawing-rooms of the Luxembourg, with Benjamin by her side ?  The autumn grew old ;  Bonaparte’s triumph over the Austrians became the sole topic.  In November the young conqueror of Italy, whose victories, Lodi, Arcole, Rivoli and a dozen others, belonged already to universal history, got the terms of peace he demanded and turned his face homewards.  He travelled through Switzerland and paid a courtesy call at Coppet, without, however, finding Jacques at home.  France welcomed him as a bride her groom.  On December 5, 1797, he descended at his own door in the rue des Victoires, formerly the rue Chantereine, and immediately sent an aide­de-campe to Talleyrand asking when he might call at the Foreign Office.  The Bishop, with a gesture of profound respect, suggested the following morning at 11 o’clock and notified Germaine.

She could scarcely contain herself.  Was this the long-delayed answer to her letters ?  Was it because Bonaparte had expressed a wish to meet her that Talleyrand had sent his invitation ?  She had called Bonaparte “the best Republican in France ;  the greatest Liberal”;  had her words reached him ?  Her lively imagination vaulted into the saddle and galloped away :  Bonaparte and she were the Man and the Woman of the century ;  they would reign, she promised herself, side by side, bestowing the blessings of their wisdom on the whole world.  Benjamin should be their prophet.  (She had already persuaded the Bishop to mention Benjamin favourably to the General.)  The next day arrived.  Talleyrand introduced Bonaparte.  He muttered some politeness about her father and turned away.  That was all.

“ General Bonaparte,” she wrote,¹ “had become as famous by reason of his character and mind as on account of his victories, and the imagination of the French was stirred by him in the most lively fashion.  People kept recalling his proclamations to the Cisalpine and Ligurian Republics.  In one of these the following phrase had been specially remarked :  ‘ You were divided and bound by tyranny ;  you were in no condition to regain your freedom.’  In the other :  ‘ The true conquests, the only ones which leave no regrets, are those we win over ignorance.’  There was a tone of moderation and nobility in his style which contrasted strikingly with the revolutionary bitterness of the French civil chiefs.  The soldier spoke like a magistrate, while the magistrates were expressing themselves with soldierly violence.  General Bonaparte had not put the laws against the emigrants into execution in his army.  It was said that he was deeply in love with his wife, whose nature was full of sweetness ;  it was said again that he was charmed by the beauties of the poet Ossian ;  people took delight in convincing themselves that he possessed every generous quality capable of throwing his amazing powers of mind into high relief.  Finally, everybody was so tired of oppressors who borrowed the name of Liberty, of oppressors who wept for the loss of arbitrary power, that admiration had no bounds since General Bonaparte seemed to unite in his own person every quality capable of winning it.

“ In my own case, at any rate, I saw him in Paris for the first time with such feelings in my heart.  I could find no words to answer him when he came up to me to tell me that he had called upon my father at Coppet and was sorry he had passed through Switzerland without meeting him.  But when the agitation caused by the admiration I felt had subsided a little, a lively sense of fear followed.  Bonaparte, at that moment, had no power ;  indeed, it was generally believed that the dark suspicions of the Directory constituted a real danger for him.  So that the fear which he inspired can only have been due to the singular influence exerted by his personality on almost all those who approached him.  I have met men worthy in every way of respect ;  I have met fierce men ;  there was nothing in the effect exerted on me by Bonaparte which in any way recalled the impressions of either of these types.  I soon saw, on the different occasions on which I met him during his stay in Paris, that his character could not be described in ordinary words :  he was neither good nor violent nor sweet-tempered nor cruel as are ordinary men.  He was more, or less, than a man. . . .

“ Far from becoming easier in his company as time went on, I grew more afraid.  I had a vague feeling that no emotion could exert any influence on him. . . . Each time I heard him speak I was struck by his superiority. . . . The difficulty of breathing which I felt in his presence never became less. . . . His face, thin then and pale, was pleasant enough. . . .”

Bonaparte would not recognise his soul’s mate.  She saw him again on December 10, four days later, at the reception given him by the Directors, when Talleyrand delivered an oration in his honour and a hymn, composed by Chénier, was sung by massed choirs.  She was losing her head ;  she began to pester him.  Wherever he went she went ;  to balls, dinners, receptions.  The moment he appeared she stared at him and kept on staring.

“ I examined Bonaparte’s face with attention,” she wrote, ² in describing a dinner party, “but each time he noticed me looking at him he had the art to blank out all expression from his eyes so that these eyes might have been carved in marble.  His face at these moments was quite still except for the faint smile with which he met and defeated my every attempt to read his thoughts.”

The young soldier was much embarrassed.  But the more he hid himself from her the more violent grew her desire to possess him.  She invited him to a ball, he didn’t come.  She followed him to Talleyrand’s ball and, as Hortense de Beauharnais, Josephine’s daughter, tells, “pestered him” the whole evening, till he scarcely knew how to escape her.

“General,” she asked him in a loud voice, “whom do you consider the greatest woman in the world, dead or alive ? ”

“ The one with the most children.” ³

A little later she called at his house and tried to enter his study.  He was changing his uniform at the moment and had to drive her out.  “ What does it matter ?” she said through the door, “ Genius has no sex.” ⁴

Bonaparte asked to be given the task of attacking England, the task nobody had attempted since Louis XVI relinquished it.  His plans were made.  He would go to Egypt, conquer that country, cut a canal at Suez, open up a new short route between France and India, and so double the labours of the British navy.  Nothing was lacking but money.  That was waiting in Switzerland, in the coffers of the oligarchy of Berne, those reactionary old gentlemen against whom Germaine had so often made protest.  The Swiss Liberals had already sent emissaries to Paris (La Harpe⁵ was one of them) asking that France should possess their country and deliver it from the Bernese.  Barras received the emissaries, listened to their grievances and sent orders to the army of the East to seize the prize without delay in the name of Liberty.  Next day he had a visit from Benjamin and Germaine.  They came, as Swiss of position and substance, to protest.  What, they asked, was to happen to the feudal dues on which the families of both relied ?  The Director had no idea.  But he inquired slyly how it came about that people who, in France, were the boldest of Liberty’s apostles, should wish to deny Liberty to Switzerland, their native land.  Were they not, then, sincere in their professions ?  Germaine, panic-stricken, for a large part of Necker’s income was derived from feudal dues, rushed off to Bonaparte.

“ This cause,” she wrote, ⁶ “seemed to me so sacred that I refused to believe that it could be impossible to enlist Bonaparte as its supporter.  All through my life, my mistakes in politics have arisen from the idea that men must necessarily be won by truth if it is presented to them forcibly.

“ I remained nearly an hour with Bonaparte.  He gave me a kind and patient hearing because he wanted to know if what I was telling him had any bearing on his own schemes.  But Demosthenes and Cicero combined could not have moved him an inch in the direction of sacrificing his personal interest.  Many mediocre men called that ‘reason’; it is reason of the second class. . . .

“ In the course of our discussion General Bonaparte quoted the position (in relation to Berne) of the Pays de Vaud as a reason for sending French troops into Switzerland.  He told me that the inhabitants of that area were under the heels of the aristocrats of Berne and that men could not live without political rights.  I tempered this republican ardour of his as much as I could by explaining that the Vaudois were perfectly free in all their everyday relations and that, when Liberty exists in fact, it is unnecessary in order to obtain it in law to expose a country to the greatest of all misfortunes—that of seeing itself invaded by foreigners.

“ ‘ Self respect and imagination,’ replied the General, ‘ are both increased when a man has a part in the government of his country.  It’s an injustice to exclude a body of citizens from these advantages.’

“ ‘ Nothing, General, could be truer in principle,’ I replied, ‘ but it’s equally true that a nation ought to win its liberty by its own efforts and not by calling in an outside Power which must necessarily be dominant.’

“ I insisted again on the happiness and beauty of Switzerland and on the tranquillity she had for centuries enjoyed.

“ ‘ Yes, undoubtedly,’ interrupted Bonaparte, ‘ but men ought to have political rights.  Yes,’ he repeated like a lesson, ‘ yes, political rights.’

“ And changing the subject, because he wanted to hear no more about it, he spoke to me of his liking for solitude, for the country, for the fine arts, and was at pains to display himself to me in such a light as he supposed would accord with my own type of mind.”

Bonaparte, like Barras, had a sense of humour.  Germaine received a broad hint from the police that she had better return to Switzerland, since her intrigues to interfere with the policy of the Government were resented.  She had decided to go in any case, because she wished to be near her father when the threatened invasion took place.  Early in January she returned with her baby to Coppet.  On January 22, 1798, she wrote to Meister : ⁷

“ I’ve got back ;  I must ask you to excuse my prolonged silence. . . . Alas ! peaceful times are gone for Switzerland.  I’m in despair at the state in which I find our unhappy country.  Is it possible that the wise heads of Zurich cannot come to my help ?  I have no fear that the troops which are going to pass through Geneva have any intention of attacking the Pays de Vaud, but rumour runs that way, accomplishing revolution by fear.  I believe what I have always believed, namely, that the sole object of the French is to get a contribution out of the Swiss. . . . They never cease to prate about the outflow of (metallic) money (from France into Switzerland) and about the war (which they allege is) being waged by the (Swiss) financiers (against their paper money).  That means only that they want a few millions.”

Meister received another letter at the same time, from Suard, a victim of Barras’s coup d’état, as follows : ⁸

“ I have had a letter from Madame de Staël.  She has come for the show (bagarre).  Her poor father writes me that she doesn’t fear them (the French).  Unhappy man ;  why has this most unexpected revolution come to trouble his old age and rob him of the little which the other revolution left him !  When I think of his lot I feel ashamed to bother about my own.  What a deluge of sorrows, public and private ! . . . What does she (Madame de Staël) think now of the ‘ good day ’ of the 18th Fructidor ? ”

The French troops entered Switzerland on January 28, 1798.

“ When we had positive news of the coming of the French,” Germaine wrote, ⁹ “my father and I were alone, with my children of tender age, in the Chateau de Coppet. . . . Our servants, inspired by curiosity, went down to the end of the avenue ;  my father and I, awaiting our fate together, stood on the balcony, where we had a view of the high road along which the troops were coming.  Although it was mid-winter, it was a magnificent day.  The Alps were reflected in the lake and only the rolling of the drums broke the silence.  My heart was beating cruelly from fear of the fate hanging over my father.  I knew that the Directors spoke of him with respect ;  but I knew also the force exerted by the revolutionary laws on those who had made them.  ¹⁰ . . . I saw an officer leave his men to come up to our chateau.  Mortal terror seized me.  But what he said instantly relieved my mind.  He had been ordered by the Directors to offer my father an assurance of safety.”

Very soon Necker and his daughter were entertaining the French staff at luncheon.  Things, they concluded, might have been a great deal worse.  But one trouble was succeeded by another.  News reached them from Paris that Eric Magnus had been reinstated in his post as Swedish Ambassador and had finally made up his mind to get quit of his wife.  Mathieu, back again in Paris, at once began to exert himself to prevent this calamity, but found that a separation had been decided upon for political as well as for personal reasons.  Germaine was frankly impossible as the wife of an Ambassador who cherished any hope of keeping his job.

“ I add a word,” he wrote to Albertine Adrienne in June, ¹¹ “about our friend, whom I always speak of as a being apart.  What you and I fear for her depends entirely on the political interests of her partner.  Men of his stamp have only one concern—namely, to avoid compromising their jobs when these are threatened.  Here is a further reason for pursuing the course she has adopted.”

That course was to hide herself with her children at Coppet.  She soon tired of it.  The separation took place.  She decided to go back to Paris.

“ My father,” she wrote, ¹² “ found himself changed into a French citizen by the annexation of Geneva.  He had always been that in any case both in feeling and by reason of his career.  It was necessary, however, that he should get his name removed now from the list of emigrants, so as to be able to live in peace in a Switzerland occupied by the Directory’s troops.  He gave me a memorandum, truly a masterpiece of dignity and logic, to take to Paris.  When the Directors had read it they decided unanimously to remove from the list the name of M. Necker.  And, although that was a bare act of justice, I was so pleased that I retain a feeling of gratitude.

“ I at once entered into negotiations with the Directors for the payment of the £100,000 which my father had left in the public treasury.  The Government recognised the debt, but offered to pay it in Church property.  My father refused, not that he ranged himself with those who thought the sale of these goods illegal, but because he was averse from throwing even a particle of doubt on his perfect impartiality by any marriage of opinion with interest.”

Meanwhile Necker’s property, Saint-Ouen, was restored to him.  Germaine, warned by Barras that no salons would be tolerated, went to live there and was soon joined by Mathieu, who wrote to Albertine Adrienne on September 4, 1798 : ¹³

“ The bulletin moral of our friend is much more satisfactory than that which you gave me in the latter part of her stay with you.”

Benjamin was living at Hérivaux, close at hand.  He had been a candidate for the Council of Five Hundred but had failed to secure a seat.  He was disappointed, disgruntled, angry, but by no means cured of his ambitions.  Like Eric Magnus, he had begun to find Germaine more of a liability than an asset and wished, secretly, to be rid of her.  ¹⁴  But this young man with his indolent, slanting, half-closed eyes and eloquent lips was better able to make love to women than to run away from them.  He had to consent to her plan for a new candidature, this time at Geneva.  She took a room there in January, 1799, and constituted herself his election agent to the grave scandal of the Swiss and the added affliction of Jacques.  Benjamin polled heavily but was not elected.  “I can understand the wrath of ‘ Our Lady ’,” remarked Madame de Charrière viciously.

Benjamin went back to Paris.  Germaine followed him in April and opened her own house in the rue de Grenelle.  She found everything changed.  Barras, recognised as blackguard, had lost much of his power ;  all the dogs were at each other’s throats and nobody knew or cared which was going to survive.  Meanwhile the whole of Bonaparte’s conquest of Italy had been lost again to the Austrians, with whom Russian forces were co-operating, and an Austrian army was advancing through Zurich.  The treasury was empty, the paper-money (the assignats) was become worthless, and the great fleet in which Bonaparte had sailed to Egypt had been destroyed by Nelson at the Battle of the Nile.  In her evil hour France turned to the only man who seemed possessed of any kind of authority or reputation, the Abbe Sieyès.  He had been on a mission to Berlin to attend the coronation of King Frederick William III.  On May 16, 1799, he was appointed President of the Directory, and let it be known that, as the Republic was the child of Reason, it must now find its salvation in a return to its mother’s knee.  In his private memoirs he wrote :

“ They (his fellow-Directors) pursue me, and I hate their society because they do not believe in moral goodness.  They offend me, and my first act, if I gave the matter my attention, would be to say to them :  ‘ You ought to be ashamed of yourselves ;  because you are scoundrels and villains, you lightly suppose that everyone must be like you.’  I shall end by hating them.”

Germaine imagined that she was listening once more to the voice of Jacques, and wrote to that effect to her father, who seems to have felt a little jealous.

“ You appear to be very much pleased,” he wrote to her, “at the ascendency of Citizen Sieyès :  I think myself that we can congratulate the Republic on it.”

Congratulation did not last long.  The architect of constitutions was no tamer of lions ;  when they roared he ran away.  The roarings of the Jacobins in Paris, of the Royalists in Brittany and other remote districts, robbed him of his courage in a few weeks.  He gave up the presidency of the Directory to a nominee of the Jacobins, Gohier, who, with his friend Moulins, had just been thrust upon that body, and hid himself, for all his fine words about moral goodness, behind Barras’s chair.  For that man still had his following in the thieves’ kitchen of high finance and among the women.  Sieyès’ eclipse at the hands of the Jacobins was followed, immediately, by reprisals against those who had smitten the Jacobins on the 18th Fructidor.  Germaine and Benjamin were ordered to leave Paris.

He went to his country house, she returned to Coppet.  She snatched up her pen and, in great haste, wrote a pamphlet entitled Des Circonstances Actuelles qui peuvent terminer la Révolution et des Principes qui doivent fonder la République en France.  It was never published, for events moved faster, even, than her pen ;  but it affords a useful summary of Sieyès’ views, of which it is, for the most part, a rehash.  ¹⁵  The Republic, she urged, ought to be built anew on a basis of Reason, by the hands of philosophers working under the protection of a great soldier.  (Sieyès had employed the phrase :  “ Who can establish anything with boobies and talkers ?  We need two things :  namely, a head and a sword.”)  He had a new constitution in his pocket and was on the look-out for a soldier to protect him against the roaring lions while he carried it into effect.  Germaine had already decided who this soldier was to be.  Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign, the meaning of which was hidden from her, appealed to her stagy instincts.  She pictured him in the land of Cleopatra, who, as she often recalled, had been a seductive rather than a beautiful woman.  He was greater than Alexander ;  greater than Cæsar.  “ How she would have loved,” remarked Madame de Chastenay, “to go and join him among the ruins of Thebes and share his destiny.”

Germaine’s mouth watered to devour Bonaparte.  “He is,” she wrote in those summer days, “the most fearless warrior, the deepest thinker, the most amazing genius that history has ever known. . . . What Republican has not felt regret that . . . he is not yet forty ? ”¹⁶  News had reached her in Paris that the hero had sent for her book on the Passions.  She had written at once to her father to proclaim the tidings, but Jacques, with Narbonne and Ribbing in mind, had shied.

“ So,” he replied, ¹⁷ “your glory has spread to the banks of the Nile !  Alexander of Macedon called philosophers and wise men from the four corners of the world to dispute with him ;  the Corsican Alexander, to save time, enters only into communication with the mind of Madame de Staël.  He knows how to do things.”

So much for the “sword.”  The “head,” with apologies to General Bonaparte, must be a civilian, Jacques for preference, failing him, Sieyès, with Benjamin as second fiddle and herself as nursing-mother of the Elect.  As she warmed to her work, splendid visions unrolled themselves among the mists on the mountain tops across the lake.  France must have the English Constitution, modified suitably to Republican uses ;  the Upper Chamber must be composed of the elite of brains and personality, for example, “a man whose reputation increases year by year, M. Benjamin Constant.”  But no sans-culottes.

“ In France at least we may always hope that talent will be given the highest place ;  but talent is the exception, and in regard to ability men are now, or now think they are, more on one level than formerly, and therefore the weight of influence and consideration will rest permanently on wealth.  We must not try to fly in the face of this natural order of things. . . . (The People consists of) a mass of egoistic men who make fun of the enthusiasts who get themselves talked about.  These egoists manage to live out their lives far from public affairs, in private businesses and concerns dealing with trade and property.  Below these we find the vulgar herd which is moved by nothing but superstition and ranting.”

How could such people be induced to choose wise rulers ?  The populace, having destroyed the old aristocracy, had created “a peerage of criminals” to replace it and “the Republic has run away from its guides.”  So “we must hasten the work of time by all the best methods of public instruction and reestablish the ascendancy of mind and institutions. . . . The Government must encourage thinkers of a certain order by every kind of favour and distinction.  These men, through the medium of a free Press, must enlighten the nation . . . for men and women of letters are the source of all the good that France may hope for. . . .”  But :

“ The Catholic religion, which we wish to destroy, must be cut off from all distinctions of ambition and interest, and no priest shall be allowed to hold public office.  Anyone applying for any public office must be required to make a declaration altogether incompatible with Catholic dogmas.  In this way we shall weed out from this religion all honest men ready to be enlightened and all ambitious hypocrites who will be disgusted with the check on their temporal advancement.  And above all, I should insist on the propagation in France of another faith, by all the means of which a free state, backed by public opinion, can so easily dispose.”

She was for a form of Protestantism not greatly different from Robespierre’s worship of the Supreme Being.

“ What idea can we have of the perfectibility of the human spirit unless we can form an idea of the Absolute in mental and moral value ? . . . Only morality, in conjunction with religious opinions, will give a complete code for all the actions of life, a code which unites men in a sort of pact of souls, preliminary and indispensable to all social pacts.” ¹⁸

She had two ends in view in writing this pamphlet—namely, to give Bonaparte a lead and to interest him in herself.  She had no doubt that he would come back from Egypt ;  her loins were girded and her lamp was burning.  Sieyès in Paris felt less sure.  The news from Cairo suggested that the French were in evil plight and that the General would be lucky if he managed to beat off the Turkish armies which surrounded him.  In these circumstances the Mother of Constitutions bethought him of other soldiers able to serve his purpose.  Hoche was dead ;  Joubert killed.  There remained Bernadotte and Moreau.  It was Hobson’s choice.  He had dismissed Bernadotte from the post of Minister of War because of his plottings with the Jacobins ;  Moreau was timid.  Sieyès, whom Robespierre had called “the mole of the Revolution,” found himself at the end of his burrow.  He was walking in the gardens of the Luxembourg with Moreau one day in the late autumn of 1799 when they were joined by Lucien Bonaparte, deputy of Corsica to the Council of Five Hundred.  Lucien came to tell them that his brother, Napoleon, had just landed in France.

“ There’s your man,” said Moreau, and vanished.

Sieyès turned to Lucien :  “ The die is cast,” he declared.  “ It is round your brother that we must rally.”

In every village of France men were embracing one another.  They spoke not of Bonaparte, but of “ The Saviour.” ¹⁹  The sound of joy-bells, marching like an army, laughed, thrilled, exulted from Fréjus to Lyons, from Lyons to Paris.  The booming of guns too ;  the cheers of men ;  the songs of girls.  The General, pale, very grave, could rarely be induced to speak to the frenzied people who mobbed his carriage.  When he did speak, it was only of the plight of France, this “great nation,” as he called it, which had forgiven in advance the loss of its fleet at Aboukir and the failure to open a new sea passage to India, because in Egypt its claim to world power had been upheld before all men.

“ I am able to-day,” wrote Germaine from Coppet to Meister on October 15, 1799, ²⁰ “to tell you wonderful news.  The guns are being fired in Geneva in honour of the arrival of Bonaparte at Fréjus and later at Lyons, which city he and Berthier passed through on the 12th.  It is said that he has returned with 1,000 men, having made a treaty of peace with Turkey.  Be that as it may, this is a great event.  This man . . . doesn’t find it necessary to his happiness to make war on the Republic.  His destiny is invincible. . . . I am off, then (to Paris), without saying good-bye.”

Germaine believed that she could now defy the Jacobins and their order of expulsion.  Sieyès, on the contrary, discovered new fears of these “tigers and lions” as the time to attack them drew nearer.  Robespierre’s death had not cured this timid man of his dread of Robespierre’s friends ;  could he trust young Bonaparte ?  Generals came and went ;  few, no matter how great their popularity, stayed long.  The “mole of the Revolution” went underground again and dug out a maze of tunnels.  That none of his enemies saw him at work is the best tribute to his efficiency.  Early in November the job was done.  ²¹  At his instance the Council of Ancients, in which he commanded a majority, was summoned for the morning of November 9, 1799 (18th Brumaire), at six o’clock, that is to say before dawn.  He submitted that France was in danger, and proposed that special sittings of the two Chambers should take place on the morrow at St. Cloud and that, meanwhile, the command of the troops in Paris should be given to General Bonaparte.  He did not disguise that he was concerned to prevent any attempt at intimidation by the Parisian mob.  The motion carried, messengers were sent to summon Bonaparte.  They found him entertaining some hundreds of soldiers, mostly general officers, to breakfast.  The rue de la Victoire was crowded with officers, so that the messengers had to fight their way to the door.  Among the civilians in the house were Talleyrand and Fouché, the latter returned from hiding to be Minister of Police.  Bonaparte, having read the summons, stepped out on the balcony.

“Citizens,” he cried, “France is in danger.  The Ancients have just decided to remove the Parliament to St. Cloud and have appointed me Commander-in-Chief of all the troops in the 17th Military Division of the National Guard.  I rely on you to help me.  Will you help me ? ”

His guests answered him by grasping the hilts of their swords, a curious thudding sound, the more impressive because dawn had, as yet, scarcely broken.  He embraced Josephine, descended, mounted his horse, and, followed by a long cavalcade, rode down to the Tuileries.  Some of the veterans of his Italian campaign were on duty round the palace ;  he spoke to them before entering and got their blessing.  “Citizen representatives,” he told the Ancients, “the Republic was on the point of perishing.  Your decree has saved it.  Woe to those who shall attempt to foment disorder !  Aided by all my comrades-in-arms, here assembled around me, I shall find means to frustrate such efforts.  In vain examples are sought in the past to disturb your minds.  Nothing in history resembles the Eighteenth Century and nothing in this century resembles its close.  We will have the Republic ;  we will have it founded on genuine liberty, on the representative system.  We will have it ;  I swear in my own name and in the names of my comrades-in-arms.”

By this voluntary oath, the oath to uphold the existing constitution, required of every general on receiving a command, was avoided, an indication of the thoroughness of Seyès’ preparations.  Bonaparte followed up his address to the Ancients by reviewing the troops, and the review was still in progress under a cloudless sky when the members of the Council of Five Hundred, in which the Jacobins were strongly represented, began to arrive for their sitting at 11 o’clock.  The Jacobins had not been informed of the early meeting of the Ancients, and realised, as they watched Bonaparte riding up and down the lines and heard the soldiers and the crowd cheering him, that Seyès had out-manoeuvred them.  The moment the session of the Five Hundred began, detachments of troops were sent to occupy the Hôtel de Ville and the headquarters of the Sections, and notices were posted forbidding loitering in the streets.  Some Jacobin deputies protested against going to St. Cloud, but were reminded by Lucien Bonaparte, who was in the chair, that the Ancients had acted within their rights.  Lucien refused to allow any discussion.  ²²

Before midday Paris was lost to the Jacobins.  Seyès and his fidus Achates, Roger Ducos, resigned their Directorships.  Of the three remaining Directors, two, Goheir and Moulins, were Jacobins.  Nobody knew exactly where Barras stood, but, as his resignation was necessary if the power of the executive was to be destroyed, Bonaparte sent Talleyrand, accompanied by an admiral, to demand it of him.  And Barras, aware that every dog has his day, submitted.  Seyès, well content, but anxious, advised Bonaparte to lay his hands on some fifty of the Jacobin members of the Five Hundred who were likely to give trouble on the morrow.  He was met by a refusal.

“I swore in the morning,” said the General, “to protect the representatives of the Nation.  I will not, now, violate my oath.”

Late that evening Germaine drove into Paris.  Benjamin met her at the gates and told of the day’s events about which, however, she already knew something.

“ I arrived in Paris from Switzerland,” she wrote, ²³ “on the night of the 18th Brumaire.  As I was changing horses a few leagues from the city, I was informed that the Director Barras, with an escort of gendarmes, had just passed through on his way to his estate of Gros Bois.  The postillions gave me bits of news, and their way of talking made these more lively.  It was the first time since the Revolution that I had heard on everybody’s lips the name of one man. . . . The entire city was excited about the issue of the coming day, and without any doubt most honest men, fearing the return to power of the Jacobins, hoped that General Bonaparte would triumph.”

November 10, the 19th Brumaire, witnessed such an exodus from Paris as recalled the march of the mob to Versailles ten years earlier.  Before dawn the road to St. Cloud was crowded with vehicles.  A warm sun brought the people out, all in their best clothes, good-humoured, merry with the first draught of that excitement which was Bonaparte.  Grenadiers stood at the gates of Marie Antoinette’s chateau to prevent the passage of any but deputies and officers on duty.  In the orangery of the chateau workmen were busy till late in the morning, building benches for the Five Hundred.  Seyès came early and left behind him at the gates a coach-and-six, ready for a long journey in case his plan miscarried.  Bonaparte remained closeted with him till the Councils assembled, and then visited the Ancients to explain his proposals.  Excitement strangled oratory.  He broke down, faltered, forgot his speech and became incoherent.  The scene ended nevertheless in a vote in his favour.  ²⁴  Pale as death, he entered the orangery with an escort of four tall grenadiers.  The Jacobin deputies leaped to their feet shouting :  “ Soldiers here :  away with him ! ”  He was jostled before he could open his mouth.  Lucien, in the chair, arrayed in his toga, kept ringing his bell and calling for order.  But the hubbub increased.  Somebody moved that General Bonaparte be declared an outlaw.  The President refused to accept the motion.  Shaken and fainting, Bonaparte was helped from the chamber.  He mounted his horse and surveyed the proceedings through the window.  He saw Lucien strip off his toga and descend from the Tribune.  The Jacobins fell on Lucien.  Bonaparte sent his grenadiers to his brother’s rescue.  Then both brothers addressed the troops, telling them that a handful of deputies in the pay of England were threatening the representatives of the Nation.  The grenadiers were under the command of Murat, who was in love with Caroline Bonaparte.  They seemed to hesitate.  Lucien drew his sword and declared he would plunge it in his brother’s heart if, at any time, he raised hand against the Republic.  Murat gave the order to advance and clear the orangery.  The rattle of bayonets reached the deputies ;  then the roll of drums.  The Jacobins climbed out through the windows and fled across the lawns.

Benjamin witnessed that last agony of the Revolution and sent a courier to Germaine with the good news.  He had advised her, earlier, that the Jacobins had won, and she was sitting on her boxes ready to flee.  She broke down now and sobbed with joy.  At midnight, in the orangery, the Councils, purged of Jacobins, abolished the Directorate and appointed Bonaparte, Seyès and Roger Ducos as “Consuls.”

1 Considerations, Part III, Chap. XXVI ;  also Talleyrand, Mémoires, Vol. I, p. 259, and Paul Gautier, Madame de Staël et Napoléon, p. 4.

2 Considerations, Part III, Chap. XXVI. See also Hortense, Mémoires, Vol. I, and Gourgaud, Journal inédite de Sainte-Hélène, Vol. I, p. 12.  See also Madame de Staël et Napoléon, p. 6.  The word used about Madame de Staël’s attentions to Napoleon is harcela, and this Gautier considers to be fully justified.

3 Napoleon :  Mémoires, Vol. I, p. 368.

4 This Story is given in The Memorial, Vol. I, Chap. iii.  The authority is not, perhaps, as good as might be wished, but, all the same, the reply of Madame de Staël has the authentic ring.

5 The tutor of the Emperor Alexander of Russia.

6 Considerations, Part III, Chap. XXVI.

7 Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 148.

8 Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, p. 150.

9 Considerations, Part III, p. 214.

10 Necker was sttill on the list of emigrants and so liable to be put to death if he fell into French hands.

11 Mathieu de Montmorency et Madame de Staël, p. 125.  It should be noted that there was no divorce, as has often been stated, but only a legal separation.

12 Considerations, Part III, p. 236.

13 Mathieu de Montmorency et Madame de Staël, p. 127.

14 See his Correspondence with his aunt and cousin.

15 Knowledge about this manuscript is due to the diligent and scholarly researches of M. Paul Gautier.  He notes (Madame de Staël et Napoléon) :  “ This manuscript is deposited with other papers of Madame de Staël’s in the Bibliothèque Nationale under the title ‘ Nouvelles acquisitions françaises 1300.’  It was written in the last months of 1798 or at the beginning of 1799.  (See the study we have published on this subject in the Revue des Deux Mondes of Nov. 1, 1899.).”  It lay for years in the desk of Madame Récamier.  Several quotations from this work follow in the text.

16 And so eligible for election to the Directory.

17 Letter in the Archives of Coppet, quoted by Paul Gautier (Madame de Staël et Napoléon, p. 13).

18 The preceding quotations are from Des Circonstances actuelles (see, for a full account and criticism of this work, A.G. Larg’s Madame de Staël).

19 Hortense and Josephine heard this title spoken on their way to meet Bonaparte.  Hortense :  Mémoires.

20 Madame de Staël à Henri Meister.

21 Some time elapsed before Bonaparte and Sieyès were brought together, for they distrusted each other.  Sieyès could not forget that the general had professed Jacobin sentiments and been the friend of Augustin Robespierre.  Bonaparte despised Sieyès as a dreamer, though he realised his importance.  Talleyrand effected their reconciliation.

22 Lucien had been elected to the chair of the Five Hundred as a tribute to his brother.  He was one of the members sitting for a Corsican seat.

23 Considerations, Part III, p. 237.

24 There are numberless accounts of this scene.  Bourrienne’s is one of the best.  He was present.  Mémoires.