The Sultan's Daughter (20 page)

Joseph, her eldest son—now aged thirty—had recently returned from being Ambassador in Rome. He had studied law at Pisa and was a virtuous, good-natured, intelligent man. After the family left Corsica and settled in Marseilles as refugees he had married Julie Clary, the daughter of a wealthy merchant there. She made him an excellent wife and was regarded by all as an angel of goodness, owing to her tireless activity in every form of charity. They had a pretty house in the Rue du Rocher, to which Joseph had brought back with him from Rome his wife's sister, Désirée. She was a great, if somewhat insipid, beauty and some years earlier had inspired Bonaparte with a most tender passion. At the moment she was in deep mourning for General Duphot, for she had become engaged to him before his untimely death in Rome the previous December.

Between Napoleon and Lucien, Letiziá's third son, there was a gap of six years. Physically he bore little resemblance to the others, for he was tall, ill-shaped and had a small head
and long thin limbs like those of a spider. In addition, he was so near-sighted that he was always peering at people with his head thrust forward and eyes half-closed. After Napoleon he was the most talented and independent-minded of the family, and its firebrand. As a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, he had been imprisoned as a Robespierrist at the end of the Terror, although he was only nineteen at that time. His brother Napoleon had had some difficulty in securing his release. He then got himself work as a storekeeper in St. Maxim and while there had married Christine Boyer, the daughter of the village innkeeper.

It was in keeping with Lucien's Republican principles to have married a barmaid; but the news drove his brother, then in Italy, into a frenzy of rage, for the young General-in-Chief was already visualising himself as the head of a powerful family and planning for his relatives to marry far above their social status. Christine proved to be a good-looking, but undesigning, sweet-natured girl, and she soon won the love of all her husband's family, with the one exception of the General. She very soon adapted herself to her new circumstances and on coming to Paris was much admired for the elegance with which she displayed on her tall figure the latest creations of the fashionable dressmakers Leroi, Despaux and German. Even so, it was a long time before the disgruntled Napoleon would receive her, although, to enable the couple to support themselves, he procured for Lucien a post as one of the Commissioners with the Army in Germany. From this post they had just returned to Paris and Lucien was about to enter the Assembly as Deputy for Corsica.

Elise, the General's eldest sister, was just twenty-one. She was the least good-looking and least attractive of the sisters. Having been sent at an early age to Madame Campan's Academy for the Daughters of the Nobility as a charity pupil, supported by the late Queen, she always endeavoured to conceal the fact that she owed her excellent education to Marie Antoinette, and gave herself airs far above those to which a member of a poor Corsican family could pretend. Nevertheless, in the previous May she had married Felice Bacciochi, a Corsican landowner of little better birth than herself. This marriage, too, had infuriated her ambitious
brother, as he had by then already established his Court at Montebello, and it had been contracted without his knowledge. However, Madame Letizia had been privy to the match and had sponsored it, from the belief that a solid Corsican with a little land would make Elise a better husband than some sprig of the Italian nobility selected for her by the General. Even so, he provided the Bacciochis with a house in the Grande Rue Verte and enabled them to entertain lavishly; but Elise showed him little gratitude and the ambitious intrigues that she conducted with considerable skill were often a cause of annoyance to him.

Louis, some eighteen months younger, came next. He was a mild, easy-going young man, lacking both the robust health and quick intelligence of his elder brothers. Yet he was the General's favourite, because he had been personally brought up by him. At the time when Napoleon was a near-penniless officer, studying at the Military College in Paris, he had sent for Louis, shared his attic with him, taught him at night by candlelight and made great sacrifices to clothe and feed him. At the age of seventeen Louis accompanied the General to Italy as one of his aides-de-camp and had acquitted himself creditably during the campaign. As he still held this appointment, Roger saw a lot of him.

Pauline was still only seventeen. She was the beauty of the family—gay, amusing and always surrounded by young men. She, too, had married in the previous summer, but a man of her brother's choice: the handsome young General Leclerc. She was Napoleon's favourite sister and, although like the others, ambitious and grasping, she showed him more affection and loyalty than they did. She and her husband were now installed in a house in the Rue de la Ville l'Evêque.

Caroline, aged fifteen, and Jerome, aged thirteen, were still completing their education. These two were as yet too young to have joined the family feud; but the rest, however much they might quarrel about other matters, were united in one thing—their hatred of Josephine. The puritanical Madame Letizia considered her daughter-in-law little better than a whore, while the others were riddled with jealousy and intensely resented Josephine's failure to reprove
flatterers who insinuated that as she was better born than Napoleon she had done him a favour by marrying him.

Since Josephine, between her two marriages, had sunk to the status of a titled
demi-mondaine
, dependent for money on such presents as her men friends gave her, and had been no longer received by ladies of good reputation, Roger appreciated the point of view of the Bonaparte family. But Josephine had always shown him such unfailing kindness that, without going so far as to champion her against her detractors, he endeavoured, whenever the opportunity arose, to make them think better of her.

In all the salons Roger attended the talk, when not concerned with the latest scandals, was of events in Italy and Switzerland. In the latter country the declaration by the Directory at the end of December that France would give her protection to the Republicans of the Vaudois had led to a general war. The mobs in Zürich, Basle and Geneva had taken up the agitation for equality. General Schaumberg was ordered to march a Division of the French Army of the Rhine into Switzerland, and General Brune another Division from the Army of Italy. The Bernese aristocracy had, meanwhile, told their people in the cantons that the French were bandits and atheists who would rob them and deprive them of their religion, upon which twenty thousand stalwart mountaineers banded together in defence of their property and beliefs.

Numerous bloody engagements followed and, unfortunately, the Swiss, having on two occasions been compelled to retreat, believed that they had been betrayed by their officers. So they murdered many of the best among them, including the Bernese General, Erlach. Compelled to give way before the disciplined assaults of the French, the Swiss patriots had fallen back on Berne. Women, old men and young boys heroically threw themselves on the bayonets of the enemy in an endeavour to defend the city, but to no avail. On March 5th, after a most bloody massacre, General Brune entered it as a conqueror.

Soon afterwards, having arbitrarily annexed the city of Geneva, the French renamed the Swiss Confederation, calling it the Helvetic Republic, and installed a Government on
similar lines to that in France. They then set about realising the intention which had inspired their unscrupulous decision to bring murder, misery and ruin to this peaceful people—namely, the systematic looting of the country from end to end.

While hundreds of priests were being dragged from their hiding places and shot, and bands of Christians who still resisted were being hunted through the mountains until they could be cornered and massacred, the French Commissioners were sending back to France millions of gold francs looted indiscriminately from the treasuries of the cities and the private savings of individuals.

These doings caused Bonaparte considerable anxiety, as France's unprovoked attack on the Swiss cantons had alarmed many of the German Princes. With good reason they felt apprehensive that they might become the next victims of the rapacious Republic and that their best means of protecting their territories lay in combining their forces under the leadership of Austria and urging the Emperor to renew the war against France. A fresh outbreak of hostilities on the Continent would have led to many of the best regiments, which Bonaparte had earmarked for his Egyptian expedition, being sent to the Rhine. That was the very last thing he wanted; so he was doing his utmost to restrain the republican belligerency of the Directors and manoeuvre them into taking steps calculated to reassure the Germans.

Nevertheless, no man was more guilty of this bloody plundering of a nation than Bonaparte. When in Italy he had already been dreaming of himself as the Conqueror of the East and, without disclosing their object, making certain preparations which would facilitate his great design. One had been to send a million francs to the authorities at Toulon, to enable them to repair certain warships and thus strengthen the Fleet he would need to escort his transports. On learning of this the Directors had promptly seized the million for their own use. Angry as he was, Bonaparte had not at that time felt himself strong enough to join issue with them; so the warships remained unfit to put to sea.

Then, on his return from Italy via Switzerland, he had seen the wealth of the latter country and decided that she should
pay for fitting out his armada. It was he who had conferred in Berne with the Swiss agitator Peter Ochs, encouraging him to create disturbances at the head of mobs calling for ‘Liberty', and promising him the protection of France. He well knew that intervention would automatically be followed by conquest and a stream of Swiss gold flowing to Paris.

Now that he was in Paris he knew that the Directors would think twice before they dared to countermand any measures he took, and he was complacently reaping the fruits of his infamy. Roger had seen a letter from him that was to be despatched to Lannes, who had been sent to serve under Brune in Switzerland. In this letter Bonaparte instructed the Brigadier to have three millions of the stolen gold sent at once to Toulon.

Meanwhile in Rome things had been going far from well. Berthier's entry into the city on February 13th had been the signal for the Republican leaders there to raise the mobs against the nobility and the Vatican. Berthier, installed in the Castle of St. Angelo, overawed the Papal troops and so ensured the rabble a free hand. Two days later, amid scenes of great excitement, the Pope was deprived of his temporal powers by public acclamation and Rome was proclaimed a Republic.

Bonaparte, although in Paris, was still technically General-in-Chief of the Army of Italy, and it was he who had sent Berthier his orders. On receiving them, the ugly little Chief-of-Staff had replied, ‘In sending me to Rome you appoint me treasurer to the Army of England'. And he set about this welcome task in no uncertain manner.

The treasures that Bonaparte had blackmailed the Pope into yielding up the preceding year as the price of saving his city from occupation were a bagatelle when compared to the new plundering that Berthier and the French Commissioners undertook. They stripped the Vatican bare of its valuables and treated in a similar manner the scores of palaces of the Roman nobility, except in such cases where their owners could raise huge sums to bribe those who ordered the looting to refrain. Inside a month the French ‘bringers of Liberty' had made off with no fewer than sixty million francs in gold and, in addition, works of art that in value equalled that sum.

Moreover, they had treated the eighty-year-old Pope Pius VI with revolting barbarity. He had consistently offered a passive resistance to their threats and extortions and refused to leave Rome. Thereupon the French Commissioner Haller had snatched his pastoral staff, torn his ring from his finger, bundled him forcibly into a carriage and sent him under guard to Siena, without baggage or attendants.

This violent act, and the sack of Rome, soon produced serious repercussions. Christians everywhere were horrified at the brutality shown to the aged Pontiff and in many countries the feeling strengthened that the French Republic was a menace to civilisation and must be fought and overcome.

Another result which the French had not foreseen arose from the distribution of the looted millions. No doubt a great part of them reached the Directory; but Berthier, his Generals and the Commissioners retained great fortunes for themselves, whereas the junior officers and troops were given little or nothing. Resentment at having done the work while their superiors strutted about smothered in stolen jewels led to serious unrest in the Army.

Berthier, sensing trouble from the petitions presented by his ill-paid, half-starved troops, promptly retired to the Cisalpine, leaving General Masséna in command in Rome. No sooner had Berthier departed than a mutiny broke out. During the Italian campaign Masséna had shown himself to be one of Bonaparte's most able Generals, but his courage in the face of troops refusing to obey orders did not equal that he had displayed on the battlefield. He, too, promptly left Rome, handing over his Command to an unfortunate junior General named Dallemagne. Upon this the workers of Rome, by then disillusioned about the benefits of ‘Liberty' as brought to them by the French, rose in revolt and attempted to drive the French Army from the city.

In northern Italy the indignation at the behaviour of the French in Rome was intense, and the Councils of the Cisalpine Republic refused to ratify a treaty that their envoy had been bullied into signing in Paris. By this treaty they would have had to support twenty-five thousand French troops, make a big contribution to the French war loan and virtually bind themselves to France as a satellite. All classes
were now regretting bitterly that they had thrown off the light yoke of Austria to replace it with a tyranny that respected neither God, honour, property nor morals, and the people were ripe for an attempt to drive out the French. On March 20th Berthier's troops purged the Councils, forced their rump to sign the treaty and overawed the populace with their cannon. Thus the Cisalpine Republic was robbed of the independence guaranteed it by the Treaty of Campo Formio; but it remained a cauldron seething with unrest.