evident even before the French army debouched from the mountains on
to the Lombardy plain. At Mondovi Bonaparte commandeered 8,ooo
rations of fresh meat and 4,000 bottles of wine, and in Acqui he
requisitioned all the boots in town at a knockdown price. But it was in
Milan that his army really cut loose. An orgy of looting took place, with
French generals sending houseloads of art treasures back to Paris in
wagons. Napoleon's apologists claim that he was merely carrying out the
wishes of a corrupt and venal Directory, but this is not the picture that
emerges from his correspondence. On 9 May, before Lodi, Napoleon
wrote to the Directory as follows: 'I repeat my request for a few reputable
artists to take charge of choosing and transporting all the beautiful things
we shall see fit to send to Paris.'
In Milan Napoleon soon lost his initial popularity when he levied two
million livres in hard cash to pay off the accumulated back pay of the
Army. His prestige with the rank and file shot up, since this was the first
time since I793 that the army had been paid in cash: usually, the
perennial arrears of pay were made good in useless assignats. All this
might have been justified as 'living off the land' but Napoleon went
further by extracting a surplus for the Directory's coffers from Milan,
Parma, Modena and the other cities of the Lombardy plain. On 22 May
he informed the Directorate that 8 million francs in gold and silver
awaited their disposal in Genoa, and by July the tally of funds mulcted
for the Directory amounted to sixty million francs. One obvious result
was a change in the balance of power. Napoleon now had the whip
hand and, if the Directory wanted to survive, its five members had to
keep on the right side of their most successful general. The political
commissars, even in their new diluted manifestation as commissaires aux
armees were a busted flush and would be suppressed altogether by the
end of r7g6.
If Napoleon the public figure was now almost in the position of a
victorious legionary commander whose exploits terrified the emperor at
Rome, the private man was suffering grievously. For r27 days, from 8
March until his reunion with her on r3 July, he wrote to Josephine at
least once a day. The letters were fervent, poignant, despairing, tender,
melancholy, sometimes even prolix and incoherent, full of sexual longing
and frustration. On 30 March, before any of his great military successes,
he wrote: 'In the middle of all my business and at the head of my troops,
I think of nothing but my adorable Josephine who is alone in my heart.'
On 23 April, after his ten-day lightning campaign, he wrote: 'Come
quickly! ... You are going to come, aren't you? You're going to be here,
beside me, in my heart, in my arms, kissing my heart.' Another letter
marcin
(Marcin)
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