How was the country to suspect this, with reports coming in from Italy of so many conquests and so much glory? In future its life would revolve round the young Chief who had taken its destiny into his hands and for whom many people were beginning to entertain a kind of idolatry.
(above) Isle du Palais and Notre-Dame
1 Early nineteenth-century views of Paris
(below) View from the Pont-Neuf
Two years earlier, when he was in Egypt, an old peasant woman had vowed to give six francs to the poor if he came back safe and sound. Now the blind patients of the Quinze-Vingts 1 were lamenting the fact that they would be unable to see his face. 'Deign at least to let us hear the sound of your voice!' they pleaded. And an honest inventor about to receive an award in an exhibition found a no less vivid way of expressing his admiration: 'If the First Consul, instead of giving me a medal, would beget a child on my wife, I should be much better pleased!'
Each successive review on the Carrousel aroused an outburst of enthusiasm on the part of the Parisians, but this was never so lively as on July 14, 1800, the day of the Fete de la Concorde. When the Government marched from the Tuileries to the Invalides, and from the Invalides to the Champ de Mars to present the colours taken in Italy and Germany, an immense crowd surrounded the procession. Frenzied people — old men, women, children - dashed among the horses' legs to get near the General, to touch the gilding on his saddle and kiss the skirts of his uniform. Tve come forty leagues to see him!' cried one man. And those that had seen him ran along behind him, trying to overtake him and see him a second time.
On the Champ de Mars people went mad again. Every now and then they broke through the barriers and invaded the track prepared for horse racing and chariot races. The spectacle itself, grandiose though it was, interested them less than the man providing it. They could not take their eyes off the tribune where the figure of the First Consul stood out, slender and wiry in his scarlet coat. They stared unceasingly at the litle red patch, the 'magnetic point* that was electrifying a whole population.
The hopes cherished by this population soon appeared to be realized. Having got the better of Austria, France at last obtained the famous 'natural frontiers' which, from having been so ardently desired, had come to seem almost supernatural. A few months later the preliminaries of an equally desirable settlement were signed with England. Between the Treaty of Luneville and that of Amiens, Paris, killing two birds with one stone, set about preparing a great Festival of Peace for the anniversary of the 18th Bramaire.
1 The famous hospital founded by Saint Louis in 1260 as a home for the blind. [Translator.] C
During those three weeks the stage coaches arrived crowded with passengers. There was a general fight for seats to view the show. 'My house is to let at twelve hundred francs for twenty hours', so ran the bills posted by one landlord along the embankments. And a single window, near the Prefecture of Police, was booked for twenty-five louis. People had begun admiring the triumphal arch erected on the Pont-Neuf, the festoons of greenery on the Louvre, the open-air theatre in the Place de la Concorde and the huge colonnade on the roundabout of the Champs-Elysees.
On the great evening itself, while the public monuments were being lighted up, together with hundreds of yew-trees in the Tuileries Gardens, a pantomime of War and Peace, with chariots and horsemen, was being performed on the Place de la Concorde. After which fireworks were let off on the banks of the Seine, dotting the sky with a thousand stars.
Quite as important a part in the nocturnal decor was played by the innumerable fairy lamps lighting the windows of the houses, and the legends on the transparencies hung outside them. All these, of course, extolled the fame of Napoleon and the joys of peace; but competition was intense between the inhabitants of the various quarters. Some chose a lapidary style, like the chemist of the Rue Saint-Honor^, who wrote simply:
Pax vobis!
A riverside dweller on the Quai Malaquais put more feeling into it:
He deprives himself of the repose he gives us.
At the corner of the Rue Saint-Florentin a calligrapher, who must have been the father of Joseph Prudhomme, 1 had hung a transparency bearing these lines in a fine copperplate hand:
*A ridiculous character invented by Henri Monnier (1805-77), much given to the utterance of solemn banalities. [Translator.]
Hail and Glory to the Hero of two Worlds! He is at once citizen and conqueror, soldier and general., avenger and pro-lector; a Lycurgus in the Senate, in the field an Achilles. Let us carve on a trophy the surname of Invincible, and let us never forget that he was our saviour!
Long live the Republic and all its allies!
Signed: D. F., 18th Brumaire, year X.
But the palm must be given to the transparency in the Rue Choiseul, showing an English and a French flag tied together round an olive branch, with the legend:
Forever united!
What would the author of this fine prophecy have thought if he had been told that eighteen months later everything would be upset again? For suddenly the atmosphere was to change. After the short-lived Peace of Amiens both countries realized that their understanding had been based 'on a misunderstanding'. Without any declaration of war the English seized part of our merchant fleet, and Bonaparte, by way of reprisal, flung himself into the great adventure.
His one idea now was to enlarge the squadron of Boulogne and build a flotilla of flat-bottom boats. The Esplanade of the Invalides was soon covered with sheds in which a legion of workers were employed. From La Rapee to the Gros-Caillou the entire left bank of the Seine was nothing but an enormous naval shipyard. A fascinating spectacle for the crowd it attracted daily.
During the whole summer of 1803 the flotilla grew, and one afternoon in Vendemaire the First Consul came to inspect it. Great was the emotion when he was seen to go aboard a barge, upstream from the Pont de la Concorde, direct manoeuvres, examine the new paddle system invented by the engineer Marguerie, wield the oars himself, make a mock landing, and then have himself taken back to Saint-Cloud, along with Mesdames Bonaparte, Leclerc and Caroline Murat, by a company of the Guard who had seated themselves in two longboats.
After this demonstration the public was convinced that the Boulogne game was as good as won. It strained its ears for the cannonade announcing the victory. And sure enough, a few weeks later, salvoes of artillery did resound.
Everybody supposed that we had at last reached the shores of Ireland, Cafe strategists announced that we had landed 50,000 men. Others, the 'exaggerators', went as far as 150,000.... After all, with a fair wind, you know.... People remained under this delusion for two hours; then they heard there had been no landing: the guns had merely announced the return of the Chief Magistrate of the Republic to the Tuileries.
*It is a happy event,' said a Parisian lady who never lacked wit, 'but you know how one feels when one has made up one's mind to a thing. The truth might be a hundred times better than what one had expected, but one is angry and ashamed at having made a mistake. We were very chapfallen. But it's all over now, weVe forgotten all about it/
Some dramas of the past seem to have made far less impression on the people of their day than they do upon ourselves.