แ

hour, with St. Cyr, the masses of cavalry being accumulated against Walther's position, could not help exclaiming, "Why, general, he will be crushed." Yes," said St. Cyr, with an indifference that upset me, "but there is no harm in giving these generals of the army of Naples a lesson." In effect, he was hardly in the plain before Walther was attacked, struck down, and fiercely pursued.'

Thiébault dwells at some length on the 18th Brumaire; but there is little worthy of note in his narrative. He pronounces decidedly against Napoleon, perhaps because he had had a quarrel with Berthier; but this is a subject we need not discuss. He describes fairly enough the state of opinion which prompted the coup d'état and made its success probable :

'It was not that the Directory were wanting in talents, in strength of character, and in patriotism, but five rulers, instead of quadrupling the power of the State, divided and annulled it because of their number. What could the directors, without fortune, without family, without a future, and without permanence do, trick them out and establish them as you please do against military chiefs made illustrious by so many victories? . . As for Bonaparte, all France had faith, not only in the genius, but in the magical influence of the man.'

The pear was now ripe; what must be deemed curious, Napoleon denounced the Directory in unmeasured language in a conversation with Thiébault, not one of his satellites :

'I left peace; I find war. The influence of victory has been succeeded by disgraceful defeat. Italy had been conquered; it is invaded. France is threatened. I left millions behind; penury is everywhere; these men degrade France to the level of their own incapacity.'

Thiébault was an eye-witness of the scenes at St. Cloud, at least before the Five Hundred were broken up, and was struck by Napoleon's imperious attitude :

"There are no orders to be given here but mine," he exclaimed ; "arrest that man (a superior officer) and send him to prison." Four or five soldiers brutally fell on the chef-de-bataillon and dragged him off.'

When the victory had been won, Thiébault saw the First Consul, and submitted a plan for the campaign of 1800, which, he declares, anticipated that of Marengo:

'No doubt this extraordinary man had a magnetic influence on me, such as no other power or being could have had, but I was not put out by the words he addressed to me. He stopped when before me, went a step back, and said, dryly, "You seem to be acquainted with the roads that lead to Italy." It was an opportunity for a compliment. I only replied, "General Consul, I thought it my duty to submit to you

my work, and this has encouraged me to send it." He made no answer, stared at me, took a pinch of snuff, and passed on.'

It was well that Napoleon did not shut Thiébault up, as he had shut up more than one projector of the kind. Unquestionably, as we see from the following, even private soldiers more than once guessed what their great leader intended to do:

'General Bonaparte was carrying out an operation which could not be accomplished without absolute secrecy. He rode to the head of one of the columns and heard a soldier say, "Faith, were I the general-inchief, I know what I should do." "Well," he replied, "what would you do? The soldier unfolded the very plan he had formed. Rascal!" exclaimed the general, "will you hold your tongue?" When the movement had been completed, he had search made for the soldier, a fellow-thinker with himself. The soldier had been slain.'

Thiébault showed independence on the 18th Brumaire ; and this and the ill-will of Berthier, perhaps, too, his republican sympathies, caused him to be an object of Napoleon's dislike. He took part in the siege of Genoa, as military secretary of Masséna. This work is silent on this great passage of arms, for he wrote an account of it, almost at the time, which attracted notice, but has long been forgotten. The siege, however, has been often described; Marbot has lately given us interesting details. This instance of the good heart of a British naval officer is one of those touches that make even enemies kin:

'The young officer boarded us and said that his captain, moved by our situation, and happy to show his admiration for men who had taken part in the heroic defence of Genoa, begged me to accept some food. He gave us two large sacks of biscuit, three hams, two hampers containing a dozen of wine each, and a real mark of delicate attention-a basket full of fresh salad and its accompaniments.'

Napoleon, in his account of the siege, is not just to Masséna's constancy; it is difficult to suppose that Masséna's army could have appeared in the field for some time after the frightful sufferings it had gone through. Masséna, however, was angry with the First Consul:

'He complained that the promises, on the faith of which he had accepted the command of the army of Italy, had not been performed, that he had been deceived, tricked, abandoned, sacrificed; and then, to put an end to Suchet's remarks, he burst out against the First Consul, "I have done enough for that little b."

Masséna's services were above praise; an Austrian general after Marengo nearly said the truth;

'Berthier, to do the amiable, remarked to the enemy's officers, "It must be a consolation to be defeated by a magnificent army and the greatest general in the world." A major-general quickly said, "It was not here, but before Genoa, that the battle of Marengo was lost."

Thiébault ere long obtained a brigade, a grade withheld from him, he tells us, for months by Berthier. He was a good hater, and perhaps cross in the grain; he could not endure Soult, who, according to him, had betrayed Masséna at the siege of Genoa. He was occasionally in Paris during the short peace which followed the treaties of Lunéville and Amiens; and has given us glimpses of the social life of the day. He thus sketches Murat and Caroline Bonaparte :

'She was beautiful as an angel, Murat magnificent in stature, strength, appearance, and head of hair, covered too with laurels gathered in Italy, in Germany, and in Egypt-what was wanting to their happiness, their hopes, their content? My looks fastened on these two beings favoured by nature and fortune; their kindness was admirable. After an excellent breakfast, served in fine porcelain, a very commonplace pot containing boiled grapes was brought in; "It is a dainty of my country," said Murat; "my mother made it and sent it to me.'

It was a day when France gathered in the spoils of the Continent; French generals reckoned beforehand what they would gain in the field :

:

"When I receive," said General Poinset, "my orders for an active campaign, I buy land in the country, and my commission is destined to pay for it. As soon as conquests have been made, I obtain a command, and when everything is settled I send for my wife. I put together the sum required to discharge the debt incurred on the chances of war; Madame Poinset sets off to make payment, to clear my new possession and sometimes to increase it."'

Society under the Consulate was not the Carnival of Thermidor. The prevailing feature was military pomp; the Court had not reappeared at the Tuileries; signs of Republican fashions were yet to be seen. But, as Canning said, 'Bonaparte wore the " shadow of a kingly crown; he encouraged ceremonial and ordered etiquette; the fêtes, the banquets, the pleasures of the time, began to resemble the glories of Versailles, if their splendour was somewhat tawdry and raw. The First Consul, as everyone knows, promoted luxury and gorgeous display-this, indeed, was part of a settled policy; he was angry with the author for appearing in a Republican uniform at a State ball. Thiébault tells us many anecdotes of these days, overflowing with scandal and nasty gossip, which might well have been left in oblivion.

Thiébault had served in the short campaign in Spain immediately before the Peace of Amiens; he thus describes Leclerc, the first husband of Pauline Bonaparte :

'He bore himself and walked like his illustrious brother-in-law, put his hands behind his back, and spoke in short jerky sentences, and was so supremely silly as to try to imitate Napoleon's looks, smiles, and movements of the lips. He could not understand that he could only substitute grimaces for an expression, almost beyond conception, for the play of a face to which nothing else was like-language silent, yet terrible, which confounded or delighted, and often, so to speak, decided the existence of its object before a word had been spoken.'

The Concordat, as is well known, and the ceremony at Notre-Dame, were distasteful to the heads of the army; Napoleon was obliged to compel their presence. Thiébault describes a scene not to be found in any history, we believe :

'Places had been arranged at Notre-Dame for all the world except the generals, so that nearly sixty of these were huddled together in the passage made in the centre of the nave, and they did not know where to go or what to do. A bevy of priests sat comfortably, looking, almost with sneers on their faces, at these men, the honour, the glory, and the safeguards of their country. We can imagine the murmurs that arose and the imprecations that were thrown in. A master of the ceremonies came up, and, impertinent in his embarrassment, lisped out, "he did not know what was to be done, there was no room anywhere.' "Go and be -!" answered Masséna; he seized and shook the chair of the next priest, shoved him off, and took his place. This example was at once followed."

The First Consul's government was not yet secure. The officers of the old armies of the Rhine notoriously were disaffected and plotted against him. Moreau spoke out his mind in this strange language, addressed to Thiébault, a mere acquaintance:

'Here, then, is the end of all these efforts and toils, of so much hope and so much glory; for this thousands of brave men and whole armies have been sacrificed. Power is not enough for his insatiable ambition. The purple and hereditary titles will be required to transmit the gains of usurpation. And it is we who have furthered these fatal invasions of liberty, we who have been cowards enough to let them be accomplished.'

We quote this good criticism on Moreau and Masséna; setting Napoleon apart, they were the first soldiers of France, with the possible exceptions of Hoche and Desaix :—

Moreau is the first of our military men, Masséna the first of our warriors, in other words, Moreau is the first leader of our armies,

Masséna our first commander in battle. From this I infer that, up to a certain point, Moreau, a man of thought and calculation, may grow old and lose nothing; Masséna, a man of inspiration and resolve, will not be in that case.'

Thiébault agrees with Marbot that, in the Peninsula, Masséna was not equal to his former self. Yet Masséna showed all his power at Wagram, and Wellington thought him superior to any of Napoleon's marshals.

If a malcontent, and not a friend of Napoleon, Thiébault, in common with all impartial enquirers, has little but praise for the First Consul's government :

'No country, I think, has been governed more ably and wisely than France was at this epoch. The minds of all people became accustomed to security. They had confidence in an order of things in which national losses were repaired, national wounds were being cicatrised, and prosperity came in the place of ruin.'

Thiébault married, in 1804, for the second time, and lived thenceforward, we hope, cleanly. He dilates at length on the charms of his wife, with an unction Englishmen would think odious; but he seems to have had a grande passion. Since his return from Spain he had held several commands at Tours, Chartres, Versailles, and other places. Some of these experiences are not without interest. He has thus sketched Toussaint, the greatest of the black race: '

The lower part of his hideous countenance, projecting like the mouth of an ape, was thick with the white patches of an old beard; his thick and heavy-lipped mouth, in the middle of heavy black chops, contained stumps of ugly teeth, and stood out beyond a completely flattened nose; above this shone a pair of eyes brilliant as carbuncles.'

When Napoleon, after the rupture of the Peace of Amiens, ordered the detention of English subjects in France, Thiébault had the good sense to try to make an exception in the cases of Lord Elgin and Count O'Connell, an uncle of the Irish 'Liberator' of 1829. Count O'Connell, known as 'the last 'Colonel of the Irish Brigade'—a memoir of him has been lately published--was a very distinguished soldier of his day. True to the proud device of his corps, he remained 'ever and 'everywhere' faithful to the Bourbon lilies, and he refused to take office under Napoleon. Thiébault tells the following story :

"The First Consul was desirous of attaching him to his government, and made the most honourable overtures to him. O'Connell replied, "I am too old to abandon a cause which I have served all my life."