The Rape Of Venice

Chapter 25

The Uncrowned King

Having learned from Mr. Watson that Malderini had established himself as the head of a conspiracy which aimed, at the first opportunity, to oust French influence from Venice, Villetard's disclosure showed that the Venetian was playing a double game. That did not surprise Roger, but he could not reveal the source of information, so could do no more than throw suspicion on his enemy; and he said with a frown:

'You surprise me greatly. After all, he is an ex-​Senator, so he must be strongly antagonistic to the new Republican regime., In fact, I heard a rumour a few days ago which led me to believe that he is actually involved in a conspiracy to overthrow it. If we had him here we might find means to get the truth out of him; and it may well transpire that he is double-​crossing you.'

Villetard put a finger to his long nose and smiled. 'Such a proceeding is quite unnecessary, Citizen. Trust me to know what goes on in Venice. Between us two, the rumour you heard has substance. Since his return from India he has made himself the head of a resistance movement and he keeps me informed about it. He is hard at work encouraging all the disaffected elements here to unite. When the time is ripe, they will prepare a rising. He will let me know shortly before it is to take place, and we shall pounce. Thus, in one swoop, we shall net all our most dangerous enemies. You see now how, for the time being, it is absolutely essential that he should be left at liberty.'

This complete check to Roger's plans filled him with intense annoyance, but clearly there was no way in which he could overcome it; so, after a moment, he asked, 'And after this fine coup has taken place? What then?'

'Oh, he will claim his reward.' Villetard shrugged. 'If Venice retains her independence, he hopes to persuade General Boneparte to agree to some modification of its Government. It would have to remain a People's Republic, of course, with an elected Chamber of Deputies, but the office of Doge might be revived as a substitute for Mayor, and it is that which he hopes for. But once a traitor, always a traitor. We'd be fools to leave such a man here as First Magistrate. Far better throw him to the lions or, in this case, to you. Once he has served his purpose, I'd have no difficulty in finding an excuse to put him in the Leads for as long as you like, or, if you prefer, have him knifed for you one dark night.'

Roger would have much preferred to see the business concluded within the next few days, but that would have meant his seeking out and killing Malderini himself and, strong as his position now was, he was greatly averse to risking being charged with murder, particularly as the deliberate wrecking of Villetard's plans might jeopardise the extent of French protection he could otherwise have relied on. After only a moment's thought he decided that he must leave Malderini a few more weeks of life, and rely on Villetard's promise to ensure having his revenge after the coup had taken place.

That afternoon, he was one of the gilded throng that attended Madame Boneparte on a water procession up the Grand Canal, but unfortunately the splendid spectacle was spoiled by one of the terrific thunderstorms to which Venice is subject. In the evening there were further festivities at the Doge's Palace, and a fine display of fireworks. Then on the following morning, August 26th, having acted as her husband's Ambassador and conveyed to the people of Venice his most friendly feelings and deep concern for their future welfare, she set out on her return journey to his headquarters.

As one of her suite, Roger accompanied her and, now that he was again a free man with no immediate problems to worry him, he thoroughly enjoyed taking part in this semi-​royal progress. The procession of barges left Venice to the roar of cannon and were received by the forts at Mestre with another volley of salutes, but their passengers did not land there. Instead, they continued on by the Brenta canal past graceful Palladian villas and between smiling vineyards and cherry-​orchards up to Padua, where they spent the night.

Next day the journey was resumed with the ladies in coaches, the gentlemen riding beside them, and with a full regiment of Chasseurs clattering along before and behind as escort. They travelled by Vicenza, Verona and Brescia, at each being lodged in the sumptuous apartments of some great palace and being lavishly entertained by the authorities of the city. The fifth day was their longest stage, but relays of horses were always ready for them every few miles, and as twilight fell they arrived at the imposing Chateau Montebello, three miles outside Milan, which Boneparte had made his permanent residence since the cessation of the fighting.

Soon after the arrival of Josephine's cortege, Junot spoke to Duroc, the Master of the Household, about accommodation for Roger, but the Chateau was so crowded that only an attic could be found for him. Having freshened himself up as well as he could there, he went down to the great chambers of the building, and mingled with the many people who were lounging and gossiping in them, until the General made his appearance with Josephine on his arm on their way to supper.

From what Junot had said, and various remarks made on the journey, Roger had been prepared to find a big change between Buonaparte, as he had known him in Paris, and Boneparte the conqueror; but, even so, it far exceeded his expectations.

The change was not so much in the man himself as in the state of things he had created round him. In Paris he had only recently become acknowledged as a young General who might well have a future, and been somewhat feared for his sharp tongue. Here, he moved in an aura of adulation and glory, even grizzled veterans hanging on his words with bated breath whenever he spoke of war. Then, he had not long acquired his first coach, or been able to afford to replace his shabby clothes with such luxuries as an enormous hat laced with a three inch deep band of gold galloon. Now, although quietly dressed himself, he was the pivot around which revolved an amazing scene of pomp and splendour.

Roger had seen many Great Headquarters; not only those of Revolutionary Generals such as Dumouriez and Pichegru, but also those of the Prince de Conde on the Rhine, and of King Gustavus in Sweden. Compared with this, they were all as cottages to a mansion; for this was the Court of a mighty potentate. It was thronged not only with scores of officers in brilliant uniforms and lovely women, but also with ambassadors from many of the German States, the Swiss Cantons and the lands to the east of the Adriatic, and notabilities from every city in Italy, The presence of these last brought home to Roger more than anything else the fact that from Nice to Venice, and from Rome to the Brenner Pass, the young Corsican, who had celebrated his twenty-​eighth birthday only a fortnight before, ruled with supreme power and that, throughout all these many lands, his least word was law,

Nominally he was still the servant of the Directory, but even if he wished to consult them it took the best part of three weeks to get from Paris the answer to a question, and he rarely asked one. Meanwhile he acted like an absolute monarch, and played the part of a King as though he had been born to it.

During the campaign he had fed in private with his staff, and any of his senior officers who had been in the neighbourhood of his headquarters had always been welcome at his table. Now, like royalty, he had his meals served in public, in the great banqueting hall of the Chateau, with two or three hundred people looking on, and his Generals and other persons of importance were invited to eat with him only as a favour. Whenever he emerged from his private apartments, lanes of bowing courtiers formed for him to pass through, no one sat in his presence unless he indicated that they could, men removed their hats when he appeared, and only a very limited number of people enjoyed the privilege of addressing him unless he had spoken to them first.

To augment the semblance of a royal family, he had sent for his mother and his two eldest sisters, Eliza and Pauline. His features had a closer resemblance to those of Laetitia Boneparte than those of any of her other seven living children, and it was from her that he got all his strongest traits of character. His father, Carlo, had given him only a dash of gentle blood, a love of display and an open-​handedness with money. The mother was of near-​peasant stock. She had lost her husband twelve years before and had had a desperate struggle to bring up her large family. Honest, virtuous, strict and frugal, she had done so in a way that did her great credit; but her natural limitations deprived her of much of the pleasure she might now have derived from her son's rise to fortune. Tall, gaunt and plainly dressed, her very presence was a censure on the frivolity of Josephine and her circle. Tight-​lipped and frowning she showed her disapproval of the adulation paid to Napoleon, whom she continued to regard as an uncertain-​tempered young scatterbrain. Years of scraping had made her chronically mean, and his extravagance appalled her. But she had her principles, and remained the rock upon which the whole family was founded. For that he loved and honoured her.

Eliza was twenty; cold, hard and snobbish, from having been educated, although by Royal charity, at an academy for young ladies near Paris. She had recently married a Corsican noble, named Pasquale Baciocchi. Her mother had been pleased with the match and permitted it without consulting Napoleon. When he had heard of it, he had been furious as he had intended to provide her with a husband having better brains and fortune.

His elder brother, the pedestrian-​minded, yet industrious, Joseph, he had had appointed Ambassador to Rome, but he had already usurped the headship of the family from him, and on that account been even more enraged with his second brother, Lucien, than with Eliza. This young man was such a rabid revolutionary that he had changed his name to Brutus, and some time before, in true democratic style, married a girl named Christine Boyer who acted as barmaid in her father's inn at St. Maxime. In the spring of '96, Roger had bought a property in the South of France not far from that little town. to enable him to give out in Paris that he was going to stay there for a while, as cover for secret returns to England; so it chanced that he knew the girl slightly. He thought her pretty, honest and reasonably intelligent, but that did not make up for her lack of birth and fortune in the eyes of Robespierre's old protégé the poverty stricken little Captain of Artillery now that he had become the uncrowned King of Italy.

Pauline, however, was admirably sustaining her new role as a Princess. She was the beauty of the family, a lovely young creature of seventeen, gay, flirtatious and always surrounded by a group of admirers, although she too was married, and had been so only for a few months. But she had married, under Napoleon's auspices, the handsome and gallant General Charles Leclerc.

Louis, Laetitia's third son, was also there. As the only possible means of giving him an education Napoleon had, after a leave in Corsica as a young Lieutenant, taken him back to France. He had shared with Louis his modest lodging, kept him on his meagre pay and tutored him at nights; so he looked on Louis as a son rather than as a brother. Louis was now nineteen; he had served through the Italian campaign on Napoleon's staff and worshipped him.

Jerome, the youngest boy, as yet only thirteen, was at school under Joseph's care in Rome, and Caroline, the youngest girl, aged sixteen, was with Hortense de Beauharnais, Josephine's only daughter, at Madam Campan's, a smart finishing school for young ladies outside Paris.

Josephine's son Eugene was also doing his step-​father credit. He was short, sturdy and had a waddling walk, but was full of fun, generous and, although still in his teens, had proved his courage in several battles as Napoleon's youngest A.D.C.

Lastly, this semi-​royal family circle was completed by Joseph Fesch, Laetitia's half-​brother: a mild-​mannered little priest. He had inherited nothing of her forceful, narrow, but clear-​cut views and iron will to maintain her old principles, yet he was already being fawned upon by the Bishops and Cardinals who came to pay court to his pale, young, dynamic, and terribly explosive nephew.

After supper on Roger's first evening at Montebello, Josephine beckoned him to her and told Napoleon how she had rescued this old friend of theirs in Venice. Close to, Roger found him little changed either physically or in manner. He was as thin as ever, an undersized wisp of a man; yet his feats of endurance, and his having played a bold part in the hand-​to-​hand fighting on several critical occasions during the campaign, testified to his actual fitness, and the strength that lay concealed in his slender body. His skin seemed a little less yellow but it was stretched as tightly as ever over his high cheekbones, and his prominent nose stood out sharply from them. The greater part of his broad forehead was hidden under a fringe and long lank locks of hair fell down to his collar on either side of his immensely strong jaw. He seemed a little listless and disinterested as Josephine spoke to him of Roger, but his fine eyes had already shown friendly recognition and, when she had done, his mobile mouth breaking into a sudden smile, he said quickly:

'I am pleased that Madame, my wife, should have arrived so opportunely to save you. Sometime you must tell me what you have been up to for all these months. When I have a moment I will send for you.'

For the next two days, Roger mingled with the Court, renewing some acquaintances and making many new ones. Joachin Murat he already knew. It was this handsome, dashing Gascon who, in the pouring rain on the night of 12th Vendemiaire, had fetched the guns from Les Sablons and so enabled Buonaparte to give the Paris mob 'a whiff of grape shot' on the morning of the 13th. Since, starting with a brilliant charge at Borghetto, he had established himself as Boneparte's finest cavalry leader, and now decked himself out in uniforms of his own invention of which the cloth could hardly be seen for gold. Marmont, a young gunner who was Boneparte's special protégé, he had also met, and Alexander Berthier, the Chief-​of-​Staff, as ugly as Murat was handsome and rivalling him only in the splendour of his uniforms.

Among his new acquaintances were stolid old Serurier, tail stern, gloomy, with a big scar on his lip; Joubert, a young "General who had greatly distinguished himself and in a very short time become one of the most trusted leaders of the army; Andre Massena, tall, dark, thin, Jewish-​looking, who seemed a dull man socially, but was said to be a living flame of inspiration on a battlefield. It was he who, in the final advance across the Alps, had stormed the Col de Terwis, and at Rivoli he had led his division in a way which had already earned him immortal glory. Desaix was also there. From discontent at the lack of initiative shown by the Army of the Rhine, he had left it and come down to Italy to offer his homage to Boneparte, His request for employment had been accepted and soon this brilliant soldier was being looked on by the General-​in-​Chief as one of the ablest of his lieutenants. Lannes was another; as yet only a Brigadier, and still suffering from terrible wounds received in the campaign, but he had been the first man to cross the river Adda and was already regarded as the most audacious leader of infantry assaults.

It was on the third morning that Roger was sent for, and he found the General-​in-​Chief in one of his tempers. He had been reading some news-​sheets financed by the extreme Right which had articles in them deliberately belittling his achievements, because he was regarded as a die-​hard republican.

As Roger was shown in, he threw the papers on the ground, trampled on them and cried in his harsh French, with its atrocious Italian accent, 'Lies! Lies! Lies! How dare they say that all my plans are made for me by Berthier, and that old Carnot sends me day-​to-​day orders from his Cabinet in the Luxemburg.'

Pausing for a moment, he stared at Roger, then went on angrily, 'But you know the truth, Monsieur Breuc; you know the truth. When we had that long talk together in my1 room at the Rue des Capucines, I told you my intentions, did I not?'

'Indeed you did, mon General,' Roger replied enthusiastically, 'and you have carried them out most brilliantly.'

'All but; all but. We should be in Vienna now, had my colleagues accomplished a tenth of what I have done. Four times the Austrians have put armies in the field much greater than mine, and four times I have defeated them.

'And what with, I ask you? What with? When I came to it the army was no more than a rabble. I spoke to the men. I said: "Soldiers, you are naked, badly fed. The Government owes you much; it can give you nothing. Your long suffering, the courage you show among these crags, are splendid, but they bring you no glory; not a ray is reflected upon you. I wish to lead you into the most fertile plains in the world. Rich provinces, great towns, will be in your power; there you will find honour, glory, riches. Soldiers of the Army of Italy, can you be found lacking in honour, courage and constancy?

As Roger listened, he realised what such a declaration must have meant. Up till them, France had been fighting against a Monarchist coalition to save the Revolution-​to defend herself from invasion and having a King put back on her throne by force of arms-​and, where her legions had carried the war into other countries, Belgium, Holland and Piedmont, it had been with the proclaimed ideal of liberating these peoples from the tyranny of autocratic rulers. But Boneparte had thrown all that overboard. He had altered the whole policy of the war to one of open aggression, declaring it upon peaceful states that in no way threatened France, and inciting his troops to follow him by promises of a free hand to loot and pillage them.

Roger's face remained impassive, but he realised now that the small thin man, dressed so quietly in white breeches, tricolour sash and green coat, who ranted at him, was another Attila who, for his own glory, would stop at nothing and prove a terrible scourge to mankind. Meanwhile the tirade went on:

'I marched them and fought them until they could no longer stand. In eleven days, I forced the Piedmontese out of the war. In a campaign of fourteen days I conquered the Milanese. In fifteen days I forced the Pope to sue for peace. Within thirty-​six days of leaving Mantua I was only seventy miles from Vienna. Had I consulted my own interest, and the comfort of the army, I should have remained in Italy. But I threw myself into Germany to extricate the armies of the Rhine. I crossed the Julien and Nordic Alps in three feet of snow. I brought my artillery by roads where not even a cart had ever been and everyone said it was impossible. Had Moreau crossed the Rhine to meet me, we should be in a position to dictate the conditions of peace as masters. As it is, I am left to bluster and intrigue to hold the half of what I have won. Meanwhile, these gentlemen in Paris have the insolence to criticise my treatment of the Milanese and the Venetians. But I shall show them. Yes, I shall show them. I have sent Augereau to Paris and he will know how to deal with such traitors.'

Suddenly he broke off, gave Roger a long stare and snapped, 'And you? What have you been doing?'

Roger told him that knowing that one of his greatest ambitions was to conquer England, he had in the spring of '96 had himself smuggled over to renew his contacts there and to be the better able to report on the chances of a successful invasion.

At first he seemed to be only half listening and thinking of something else; but when Roger went on to say that a chance had arisen for him to go to India, Boneparte's large luminous eyes suddenly lit up.

'India!' he exclaimed. 'The East has always fascinated me. You must tell me about it. Every detail. But not now. Tell them to lay a cover for you at my table. Over dinner I shall have time to please myself in listening to you.'

Among Roger's greatest assets was the ability both to write and talk well; so at dinner he was able to hold his audience enthralled by accounts of the wealth of Calcutta, fairy palaces, tiger shoots, temples, bazaars, and native Princes dripping with jewels. But Boneparte never took long over his meals; so afterwards he carried Roger off to a big room, the walls of which wore covered with maps.

At a large desk in it a man was working who had been pointed out to Roger as Fauvelet de Bourrienne. He had known Boneparte from the age of eight and been his only intimate friend while they were cadets together in the Military Academy at Brienne. Later he had held a diplomatic post in Germany and, as he was an aristocrat, had wisely refused to leave it when recalled to Paris during the Terror. In consequence, had been listed as an émigré and only after considerable pressure by Boneparte been granted permission to come to his headquarters. He had arrived on the day that the peace preliminaries at Leoben had been signed, and Boneparte knowing his great abilities, had at once made him his Chef de Cabinet.

The maps on the wall were all of Italy or Germany, but Bourrienne produced one of India and, knowing his master's habits, spread it out on the floor. Boneparte flopped down in his favourite position at full length on his stomach and Roger knelt beside him.

It was not until Roger began to trace his homeward journey that Boneparte realised that he had returned by way of the Red Sea and Egypt and, at this, his mood changed from that of interested listener to eager questioner.

'If I ever go to India, that is the road I shall take.' he declared after a while. 'The Revolution played the very devil with our fleet, and sailors cannot be made like soldiers in a few months of hard campaigning. It will take years yet before the new officers of our Navy become expert at their business and discipline among the seamen is fully restored. Meanwhile, at sea the British will continue to have the advantage of us. It would be suicide to try to transport an army round the Cape. Besides, there are no lands on which we could live on the way.'

As Roger talked on about Cairo, the Pyramids and the Nile it emerged that the young conqueror's mind had already been, moving in that direction, for he said, 'The Austrians thought themselves clever when in June they anticipated one of the proposals for a peace, by occupying the Venetian territories on the Dalmatian coast: but that gave me just the excuse I needed for seizing Corfu and the Ionian Isles. We took them by clever stratagem, too. I sent General Gentilli to tell the Venetians in the forts that, as the friend and protector of Venice, I was sending French troops to strengthen their garrisons. The fools believed him and admitted our men. We collected most of the Venetian Navy, five hundred cannon and immense stores. But I'd meant to have the Islands anyhow, because they are the first stepping-​stone should we decide to go East.'

'Now that you have become of such importance to France, surely the Directory would not agree to your leaving Europe?" Roger hazarded, to draw him out.

'What, those fellows!' He gave a quick laugh. They would give an eye apiece to see me go. And they have often toyed with schemes for getting back our lost foothold in India. It must be that next or the conquest of England, and if the English make peace we will go to Egypt. I'll not see my soldiers disbanded or starving. I owe it to them to find them fresh employment.'

After a moment he went on, 'And whichever it is, you must come with us. Your antecedents, and the knowledge you have acquired of places, will prove most useful. Bourrienne- Bourrienne; do you hear me?'

The Chef de Cabinet had all this time been writing letter after letter at incredible speed. Now he looked up and asked, 'What is it mon General!'

Boneparte got to his feet, dusted his bony knees, and said, 'Breuc, here, is half an Englishman and can pass as one anywhere. If we had invaded the island in '96,1 should have taken him with me. I shall do so if fate assigns that to us as our next task. But I find now that he has spent the past year in the East, and has added Persian and Arabic to the several European tongues he speaks; so he could prove equally valuable to us on the Nile. Besides, he was with me at Toulon, and on 13th Vendemiaire, and I like to have about me faces I know. I shall make him an extra A.D.C., but at one time he was a journalist; so while we have no fighting to do, he could help you.'

Bourrienne stood up, bowed and said, as he and Roger cordially shook hands, 'I have work enough here for ten, and most of the staff are more able at handling a sword than a pen; so I shall be delighted to have Monsieur Breuc's assistance.'

Thus it transpired that, without any striving on Roger's part, the long chain of his previous activities opened wide to him all Boneparte's secrets.

The Corsican's reference to the possibility of England making peace led Roger to take an early opportunity next day of questioning Bourrienne on the subject. He then learnt that despite their humiliation in December, the British Government had again opened negotiations. Of their last attempt, owing to the severe winter weather, Lord Malmesbury's progress to Paris had been so exceptionally slow that Edmund Burke had caustically remarked that 'he must have gone all the way on his knees'. This malicious jibe had been printed in all the Whig news-​sheets and so reached France, where it had caused much delighted laughter. Nevertheless, in spite, so French intelligence reported, of strong opposition from King George and a threat by the Foreign Secretary, Lord Grenville, to resign, Mr. Pitt had decided to eat humble-​pie and try again.

The Directors, fearing that, if Malmesbury came to Paris, now that the Right had become so strong it might be strengthened by him to overthrow them, had decreed that the negotiations should be conducted in Lille, Malmesbury had arrived there in July and the key man among those sent to treat with him was Hugues Bernard Maret, a gifted diplomat who was anxious to agree a peace, as also were the French Constitutionalists, who now formed the great bulk of the Deputies, Owing to the wretched conditions that prevailed in the interior of France, they would have even met Britain half-​way. Carnot and Barthelemy were also strongly of the opinion that now that France could negotiate from strength, owing to her victories in Italy, she should seize the opportunity to get good terms and bring an end to the war. But they were outvoted by their three die-​hard Republican colleagues. These insisted that Britain should not be left even a rag to cover the shame of her surrender.

Now that the Austrians were negotiating separately, Mr. Pitt was no longer under any obligation to insist on the return to them of their Belgian territories. He was even willing to give up all the West Indian islands that Britain had taken from the French, and to assist them in suppressing the negro revolt in the richest of all their old colonies San Domingo. But the Jacobin Directors were now sticking out for the return of colonies lost to their allies. They demanded back Trinidad for Spain and the Cape for Holland, knowing that if these were conceded they could make them their own. Realising this, Mr. Pitt had dug his toes in about the Cape, since without it the British route to India would no longer be secure. There the matter rested.

As a by- product of this discussion, Roger learned that Talleyrand had returned from exile in America and, owing to the influence of that brilliant intriguer, his old friend Madame de Stael, the French wife of the Swedish Ambassador, been given the Foreign Office. At that Roger was delighted, for he knew Talleyrand always to have favoured an alliance with England against the growing power of Prussia. Moreover, although Talleyrand was one of the only two Frenchmen who knew that Roger was the son of an English Admiral, he owed to him both his life and the preservation of his house from confiscation during the Terror, and he was not the man to betray a friend who had rendered him such services.

The other, who knew Roger for a true Englishman, was Joseph Fouche, a most dangerous and vindictive Terrorist who, to save his own skin, had assisted in bringing about Robespierre's downfall. But the reaction had caught up with him and, by tactful enquiry, Roger learnt that for a long time past nothing had been heard of him; so, presumably, he had submerged himself in the masses from fear that he might yet be called to account for his many crimes.

Very soon, too, Roger was able to get a firm grasp of the situation in Paris. The Royalists there had practically come out into the open. They were few, but very active, and well supplied with money. All their resources were applied to rousing the Constitutionalists, who had not only a majority in both Chambers, but now represented the greater part of the French people, to action. General Pichegru was the man upon whom they relied to lead them; but although already secretly sold, as Roger knew, to the Royalist cause, he was too cautious to risk an attempt to overthrow the Directory until he could be certain of strong military backing.

Despairing of him, the Clichyans, as the Royalists were termed from having a Club where they brewed these plots up in Clichy, had turned to Carnot. But he and his respectable colleague, the diplomat Barthelemy, would have no truck with any movement for a restoration, although they were for peace and a new era of justice and toleration, which the moderates wanted.

Opposed to them stood the remnant of the Terrorists who still controlled the executive power: Rewbell, the German born apostle of equality through the murder of the whole of the upper class; Larevelliere-​Lepeaux, who would have liked to see every priest crucified; and Barras, brave, dissolute and utterly corrupt, who cared only for women and gold; together with all the minor Jacobins who had succeeded in keeping their heads after the fall of Robespierre and feared that they still might lose them should the reaction triumph.

Each week, motions were now being passed by large majorities in the Chamber of the Five Hundred that favoured such measures as the resumption of ringing of church bells, that the relatives of émigrés should no longer be debarred from holding Government appointments, and that certain categories of émigrés should be allowed to return. Above all, they agitated for the re-​establishment of the Paris National Guard; and on this hinged everything. By far the greater part of the National Guard was drawn from the bourgeois, who were heart and soul with the moderates. It was their attempt to assert themselves that Barras, with the aid of Boneparte, had crushed on13th Vendemiaire and after it the National Guard had been disbanded. Under the Constitution no troops, other than the 1,500 guards of the two Chambers, were allowed within twelve leagues of Paris; therefore, if the National Guard was recreated and armed, it would have Paris at its mercy, and could be used to overthrow the Directory. It was for that Pichegru was waiting.

The Directory had behaved far from well to Boneparte. Jealous of the name he was making for himself they had, until almost the end of his campaign, starved him of reinforcements, and it was largely their withholding funds from General Moreau which had rendered him unable to set his army in motion across the Rhine to make a junction with that of Italy.

Boneparte, on the other hand, had ignored their instructions in so flagrant a manner that it would have cost any less successful General his command. To start with, he had been told to turn Piedmont into a Republic; instead he had, on his own authority, signed a peace with the old King Victor Amadeus. Then he had been ordered to march his army south through Central Italy so that it might, in turn, crush the Kingdom of Naples; instead, he had risked it in the north against an Austrian Army of far greater numbers.

His policy had been right. The Austrians were the only major land-​power in arms against France. If they could be defeated, all the lesser enemies must collapse like a house of cards. By making a quick peace with Piedmont, he had freed his army so that it might be turned swiftly against the Austrians before they could become still stronger. Their defeats had led in turn to the fall of Parma, Modena, Milan, Mantua, the disintegration of the Supreme Republic, and Naples abandoning the Coalition to become neutral.

Again, the Directory had urged him to have no mercy on Rome and to abolish the Papacy. He had thrown that order away, too, and dealt with the matter in a way about which they could not complain but also enormously to his own personal advantage. He had deprived the Pope of the greater part of his territories, exacted from him a huge indemnity and robbed him of many great works of art; but he had left Rome free and not interfered in any way with His Holiness's spiritual authority. Such restraint by the representative of a Government of anarchists and atheists had been so unexpected that the Pope had written to him as 'my dear son', the Cardinals had blessed him while handing over their gold plate, and he had enormously enhanced his own popularity in France, where there were millions of Catholics still practising their religion in secret, who now began to look on him as a possible champion of their faith.

The Directory had, too, given him a Political Commissar one General Clarke without whose sanction he was not supposed to enter into any negotiations with the enemies of the Republic, let alone agree terms of peace. But this Franco-​Irish diplomat-​soldier proved no match for the wily Corsican. On plausible pretexts Clarke was always got out of the way to handle small matters in distant cities, to find on his return that Boneparte had already settled some big one according to his own fancy. When the Directors protested, he pretended surprise, wrote that he was tired and ill, and offered to resign his Command. They fumed with rage but dared not recall him because of his obvious ability and ever-​increasing popularity.

Nevertheless, his own interests demanded that he should support them against the Clichyans, and early in the summer he had sent his personal Adjutant, the ci-​devant Count de Lavalette, off to Paris to keep him secretly informed of the situation. Lavalette had reported that unless some drastic step was taken, the Directory was almost certain to be overthrown; but he had advised against Boneparte himself coming to Paris if it could possibly be avoided, because the moderates formed such a high proportion of the population that if he took any direct action against them his own popularity was bound to suffer.

With his usual cunning, he had got round that by making Augereau his cat's-​paw. The Army of Italy was rabidly republican and on July 14th it had celebrated the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille with tremendous enthusiasm. Boneparte had issued a stirring proclamation calling on it to demonstrate its adherence to the principles of the Revolution by loyal addresses to the Government. Each Division had done so in no uncertain manner. Augereau's men, the reddest of the reds, had, in referring to the new measures for moderation being advocated in the two Chambers, even gone to the length of including a passage which read:

Tremble, O conspirators! From the Adige and the Rhine to the Seine is but a step. Tremble! Your iniquities are numbered and the price of them is at the point of our bayonets!', These were open threats against the legally elected Legislature that should it go too far the troops would march on

Paris and bring about a renewal of the Terror. On the pretext of sending a number of captured enemy flags to Paris, Boneparte had then sent Augereau there with instructions to see to it that the loyal addresses from the Army of Italy were published. He was now sitting back, quietly confident that the fierce swashbuckling General would take any steps necessary to pull his chestnuts out of the fire for him.

Roger gained all this inside information while assisting Bourrienne, mainly in translating documents and writing précis of confidential reports. He would have given a great deal to be able to send a report himself to Mr. Pitt, but for the time being he had no means of doing so. He could only wait until an opportunity arose for him to return to Venice and hope to get one through by one of the secret couriers who must, he knew, be keeping Mr. Watson in touch with London.

Meanwhile, as one of the personal entourage, he saw Napoleon and Josephine every day and sometimes was invited to spend the evening with them. The former never tired of hearing more about Egypt and India, and the latter found him an asset to the family's amusements. She loved amateur theatricals, charades and childish games, and in private the great man was by no means averse to looking on or joining in the games, provided always that he was allowed to be the winner.

It was some ten days after Roger's arrival at the Chateau Montebello that chance revealed to him that childish games were by no means the only ones played there by the General-​in-​Chief. Having woken early one morning, he went down from his attic in a chamber robe and soft slippers to Bourrienne’s office to collect some papers with the intention of reading them in bed. As he walked noiselessly along a corridor on the first floor, he passed a door that was not quite closed, and heard someone on the other side of it say:

'You saw the General come out of her room. Do not deny it.'

He recognised the voice as that of Constant, the General's valet, and, halting in his tracks, he listened intently to catch the rest of the conversation. From it he learned that Boneparte was having an affaire with one of Josephine's ladies-​in-​waiting and going to her room by stealth at night. On this occasion they had fallen asleep so Constant had gone to her door and tapped on it to wake him. Some minutes later, he had hurried back to his own apartments and had caught sight of a housemaid watching him from a window that overlooked the corridor. Believing her to be a spy placed there by his wife, he had sent Constant to warn her that if she breathed a word she would be instantly dismissed.

Roger had soon discovered that the immorality rampant in the Paris of the Directory had arrived with the dozens of beautiful and fashionable women who now graced the General-​in-​Chief's court at Montebello, and that nearly all of them had become the mistress of one, if not more, of the gallant blades who trailed their sabres in its splendid salons. Several of them had, in fact, made him quite open overtures; but he still wore the rope of Clarissa's golden hair round his neck, and had taken a vow not to kiss another woman until he had revenged her. Yet, in this gilded brothel, Napoleon and Josephine appeared to be a couple apart, and a model of connubial bliss; so he was both surprised and intrigued to find that this was not so.

During the day he made tactful enquiries of several men with whom he had become fairly intimate and soon learned what he would have learned much earlier had his mind not been too occupied with other matters.

The intensity of Boneparte's first passion for Josephine could not be doubted and only the glamour of at last having an army to command had caused him to tear himself away from her within a few days of their marriage. That marriage, to her, had so far been only an episode into which she had been persuaded to secure a promising future for her children; so on his departure she had swiftly slid back into her old way of life.

She was a voluptuous, lazy creature and without being in the least vicious quite naturally accepted the immoral way of life led by her friends. Boneparte had written again and again, covering reams of paper with passionate pleas for her to join him, but she had lingered on for many months in Paris before at last doing so, and he had had ample grounds for believing that during them she was being unfaithful to him.

His love for her had not cooled, but his physical passion could at times be as demanding as his craving for glory; so quite early in their separation he had spent occasional nights with other women.

When she had eventually arrived at Mantua the violence of his passion had again frightened her, and to such a degree that she had become cold towards him. Feeling certain that she had given herself freely to other lovers, this had driven him into a frenzy of fury, and a climax had been reached when he intercepted a letter to her from Lazare Hoche whom he knew to have paid her marked attention in Paris. As that brilliant young General was his only serious rival to fame, and the letter was decidedly more than affectionate, his rage had known no bounds. He kicked a pug-​dog that Hoche had given her to death before her eyes, and the fact that he had later had a memorial erected to it in the garden was small consolation in view of her passionate love of animals.

From that point the urgency of his physical desire for her appeared to have cooled somewhat, but she still inspired in him a strong affection, and he showed great kindness and thoughtfulness towards her. It was this which caused him to exercise caution in his amours, as both of them continued to be jealous where the other was concerned, and he went to great lengths to spare her knowledge of his infidelities.

All this gave Roger much food for thought, and that night a plan evolved in his mind by which he might both serve his country well and bring Malderini to book in a highly suitable manner. He had to bide his time for a further day and a half until chance left him alone with Boneparte in the map-​room and the General was not engaged on any matter of importance. Then he said, casually:

'Mon General. In view of the great interest you take in all things connected with the East, I have been wondering if it would amuse you to dine, tete-​a-​tete, one night with a very beautiful Indian Princess?