later be a byword for double-dealing, quickly sized up the political
situation on his return and saw that Napoleon was the key. Another
newly returned exile, Madame Germaine de Stad (ostracised for marital
infidelity), was part of this circle and worked earnestly for a Barras
Bonaparte alliance, even sending to Italy gushing letters of admiration for
the Commander of the Army there, which succeeded only in alienating
Napoleon by their 'impertinence'.
Officially Napoleon encouraged the alliance with his onetime benefac
tor. He acquiesced when Josephine wrote to her ex-lover to stress that her
husband was of one mind with him. Barras responded by appointing
Joseph Bonaparte, engaged in Paris in some lucrative real-estate
speculations, as the Directory's envoy in Madrid. Yet, despite these
emollient superficial contacts, Napoleon was in no hurry to do Barras's
dirty work for him. If he acted too quickly to extirpate Barras's enemies,
he might find the moderate Directors too well entrenched on his return
to Paris, and that did not square with his own already vaulting political
ambitions. The truth was that he despised Barras, Reubell and
Larevelliere only slightly less than Carnot and Barthelemy and referred to
the Five as 'five little city courts, placed side by side and disturbed by the
passions of the women, the children and the servants'. Napoleon's table
talk often focused on the alleged mindlessness of the Directors, and a
favourite example was their attempt to reform weights and measures and
introduce decimalization. Napoleon liked to tell his bemused comrades
that, as a mathematician, he knew better: complex numbers were better
attuned to the deep structure of the human imagination, as witness the
fact that the number ten had only two factors, five and two, whereas the
'complex' number twelve had four - two, three, four and six.
In conversations with Miot de Melito at Mombello that summer
Napoleon made his contempt for all five Directors explicit: 'Do you
believe that I triumph in Italy for the Carnots, Barras, etc ... I wish to
undermine the Republican party, but only for my own profit and not that
of the ancient dynasty... As for me, my dear Miot, I have tasted
authority and I will not give it up. I have decided that if I cannot be the
master I will leave France. But it's too early now, the fruit is not yet ripe
... Peace would not be in my interest right now ... I would have to give
up this power. If I leave the signing of peace treaties to another man, he
would be placed higher in public opinion than I am by my victories.'
Napoleon's third, and most obvious weapon against the rightists was
his victorious Army of Italy. He now had his soldiers' intense loyalty,
partly because he had paid them half their wages in cash and allowed
them to loot, partly because he was head of an 'ever-victorious army' and
marcin
(Marcin)
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