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 civilization 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 Massena in command in Rome. No sooner had Berthier departed than a mutiny broke out. During the Italian campaign Massena 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' 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 Camp Formio; but it remained a cauldron seething with unrest.
In April there came trouble in Vienna. At Rastatt Austria had agreed to cede to France the left bank of the Rhine, but the uncouth brigands sent to the Conference by the Directory as its representatives were behaving in such an aggressive and highhanded manner that, angered by their gratuitous insults, the German plenipotentiaries had come near to refusing to continue the negotiations.
The Directory then poured fuel on the fire by sending as its Ambassador to Vienna General Bernadotte. No choice could have been worse, as he was an unscrupulous, fierce tempered Garcon and a red-hot revolutionary. His Division had been sent from the Rhine to reinforce Bonaparte's Army in Italy, and several score of his officers and N.C.O.s had fought duels with their compatriots rather than submit to Bonaparte's innovation that the term ' Citoyen' should be dropped and the old form of address, ' Monsieur' be revived.
Now, to flaunt his revolutionary principles in the face of the Viennese, Bernadotte, on the eve of a patriotic festival, displayed an enormous tricolour flag over the gate of the Embassy. The Viennese were so furious that they tore the flag down and threatened to burn the mansion about his ears. He declared that the French Republic had been insulted, demanded his passports and returned to Paris, thus bringing the two countries once again to the brink of war.
In was only on April 12th—three days before the incident in Vienna—that Bonaparte had at last succeeded in getting from the Directory a definitive directive for his expedition. In brief, it was that he should take possession of Egypt, chase the English from all their possessions in the East that he could reach, establish bases in the Red Sea, have the Isthmus of Suez cut through and, as far as he could, maintain good relations with the Sultan of Turkey.
His fury, therefore, can be imagined when news arrived of Bernadotte's provocation of the Austrians, with the renewed threat that another outbreak of war in Europe might, at the eleventh hour, prevent his carrying out his cherished design. For a few hours his future hung in the balance; but by a combination of tact, sound reasoning and browbeating he succeeded in persuading the Directors to swallow the insult to the French flag, thus preventing a resumption of hostilities.
Although the object of the expedition continued to be a closely guarded secret, the fact that a great force was assembling in the Mediterranean ports, under French control, could no longer be concealed. From Marseilles right round to Civitavecchia every ship was being examined for seaworthiness, repaired when necessary and listed with the number of troops she could carry. Picked regiments from all quarters were also on the march, converging on the ports, and vast quantities of supplies were being sent to them.
Bonaparte worked tirelessly, often for more than eighteen hours a day, dictating hundreds of letters and personally supervising the ordering of the smallest details. Berthier, whom he had recalled from Italy, worked even longer hours. People might laugh behind Berthier's back at his vanity and his assumption that brilliant uniforms could disguise his ugliness, but he had a capacity for work which no other Staff officer could rival. He could carry on at a time of crisis for three or four days without any sleep at all, and his memory for facts and figures concerning the Army was prodigious.