Napoleon: A Biography

(Marcin) #1

Napoleon entered Milan in triumph on 15 May. Marmont remem­
bered him saying: 'Well, Marmont, what do you think they'll say in
Paris? Will this be enough for them? They've seen nothing yet. In our
time nobody has had a grander conception than mine, and it's my
example that must point the way.' But what the Directory said in Paris,
albeit in private, was that Napoleon, after seven victories, had grown too
powerful. They informed him that the Italian command would be split:
Kellermann would command in Lombardy while he (Bonaparte) was to
march south to secure Genoa, Leghorn, Rome and Naples. Napoleon
replied with a thinly veiled threat of resignation, employing some
masterly irony: 'Kellermann will command the army as well as I, for no
one is more convinced than I am that the victories are due to the courage
and audacity of the men; but I believe that to unite Kellermann and
myself in Italy is to lose all. I cannot serve willingly with a man who
believes himself to be the first general in Europe; and, besides, I believe
that one bad general is better than two good ones. War, like government,
is a matter of tact.' The Directory backed down and informed him there
was no longer any question of dividing the command. But, they added, he
should not think of moving north into the Tyrol in the foreseeable future;
first he had to put the Pope in his place - he had to 'cause the tiara of the
self-styled head of the Universal Church to totter'.
The week Napoleon spent in Milan was notable for the Janus face he
displayed. On the one hand, he held himself out as an apostle of Italian
unification; on the other, he presided over the most barefaced and
systematic looting seen in Lombardy since the sixteenth century. He
began by replacing the old aristocratic government with a new regime of
bourgeois liberals. The Dukes of Parma and Modena immediately sued
for peace, which Napoleon granted on payment of a hefty tax. On 17
May, influenced by the enthusiastic reception he had received in Milan,
he wrote to the Directory to urge the creation of a northern Italian
republic, and followed this with a declaration to the people of Milan that
he would give them liberty. In later utterances Napoleon argued that Italy
had to go through the crucible of war before becoming a united nation.
'As those skilful founders, who have to transform several guns of small
calibre into one 48-pounder, first throw them into the furnace, in order to
decompose them, and to reduce them to a state of fusion; so the small
states had been united to Austria or France in order to reduce them to an
elementary state, to get rid of their recollections and pretensions, that
they might be prepared for the moment of casting.'
Yet this apparent idealism was belied by Napoleon's ruthless financial
exactions and expropriations. The terrible shape of things to come was

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