Thrice do the soldiers of Emperor Francis try to relieve Mantua, which Bonaparte is besieging. Mantua is the key position. Old Wurmser, marching down beside Lake Garda with fresh troops, drives back the opposing forces. If Bonaparte is to make front against him, Mantua must be abandoned for a time. Meanwhile, however, the enemy has blocked the line of retreat upon Milan. A terrible reverse, and the French army is in the utmost danger. Bonaparte, hastening from Milan, rides under the hot July sun across the plain, busily inspecting one division of the army after the other, gathering all his strength, for the fate of the whole campaign is at stake. A period of the utmost activity, and of extreme tension.
“Since I left you,” he writes on one of these evenings, “I have been sad. I can only be happy when I am near you. I spend my whole time thinking of your kisses, your tears, your bewitching jealousy. The charm of the incomparable Josephine is perpetually rekindling the flames of my heart and my senses. When shall I be free, at length, free from cares and duties, free to devote all my time to you, with nothing in the world but to love you.... Since I have known you, I have come to respect you more day by day, which shows how wrong La Bruyère was when he said that love comes suddenly. Everything in nature runs its course, and increases by degrees.... Be less beautiful, less tender, and above all less jealous. Your tears inflame my blood.... Join me quickly, so that, before we die, we may be able to say: ‘We have had so many happy days!’ A million kisses, even for your horrid Fortuné!”
Neither now nor later could the commander-in-chief rid his home of this lap-dog. He tells us that on his wedding night the dog was in bed with Josephine. “I had to choose between sleeping beside the beast or not sleeping with my wife. A terrible dilemma, but I had to take it or leave it. I resigned myself. The dog was less accommodating. I have the marks on my leg to show what he thought about the matter!”
Amid the hurly-burly, the general’s lady arrives at Brescia. Almost immediately she has to be sent back to Milan. She has a narrow escape of being seized by the enemy, together with some recruits and cannon. Now she has an excuse, and, in the future, she will be slower to comply with his invitations.
During these weeks, Bonaparte for the first time loses courage, though it is only for a few hours of one night. Instead of simply issuing orders, he holds a council of war, much to the astonishment of his generals. In this critical situation, he proposes to retreat across the Po, but the mad Augereau thumps the table, shouting: “For the sake of your own fame, I insist that we attack.” He flings from the room. The counsels of the others are divided.
See him before the decision, brooding over his maps. He is alone. Moths are fluttering round the candles, and at last burn themselves to death. The midsummer night is sultry. As he listens to the drums and the shouting without, he thinks: “To-morrow will settle whether we can keep Lombardy. Perhaps it will be the turning point in my fame, my destiny. Shall I stake all on one card? What if Wurmser’s strength is greater than the reports say? Josephine is sleeping now, in the great bed. Or, who knows, she may be laughing softly in the embrace of some puppy who has bewitched her.”
He decides to fight. Next day, he is victorious at Castiglione.
Soon afterwards, he writes: “Three days without a letter from you; I have written daily. This separation is terrible; the nights are long and savourless, the days monotonous.” At this time, Josephine writes to Tallien in Paris: “I am bored to death.” He is busied in battles and victories; she is fêted and honoured. To both of them life seems wearisome: to him, because she is too far away; to her, because he is too near. Three days later: “The enemy has been beaten, my darling. Eighteen thousand prisoners, the others dead or wounded. Wurmser has only Mantua left. This is the biggest success yet: Italy, Friuli, and Tyrol are saved for the republic. In a few days we shall see one another again, that is the reward for labour and pains. A thousand glowing kisses!”
When the commander can draw breath, the statesman must turn every moment to account. In Modena he assembles deputies from all the States as far south as Bologna, and at a formal sitting he gives them a constitution, that they may unite to form henceforward one State, the new republic. Is he happy, now that he is at work State-building? His wife in Milan must be in love with some one, or she would write to him differently!
“Your letters are cold”—this is from Modena on the same day. “Their tone suggests that we must have been married for half a century at least. Friendship and winter, it is odious and spiteful. What more am I to expect of you? That you have ceased to love me? That is an old story. That you should hate me? Well and good. That is what I wish. Everything degrades, save only hatred. But indifference with a heart of marble, lack-lustre eyes, languid gait?... A thousand kisses, tender as my heart.”
Fresh crises call him northward once more. He comes, he fights, he is driven back. The gloomy November weeks, in which his fate again trembles in the balance, are not gladdened by any consolation from her. Far from it, for his most intimate friends, alive to all that goes on in Milan, venture cautious hints that my lady Josephine is having a merry time there. This is the day after the defeat at Caldiero. He sends to Paris a despairing appeal for reinforcements.
Complications thicken; courage wanes; every one turns for help to the chief. He seems to be thinking with thirty heads these days, when the battle of Arcola is impending. It is in a crazy mood of despair that he writes to her in the evening, his pen storming over the paper: “I no longer love you, I hate you. You are hateful, stupid, inept. You do not write to me, do not love your husband. What are you doing all day, Madame? What important business makes it impossible for you to write to the man who loves you?... Who is the fairy prince that claims all your time, so that you cannot write to your husband? Take care, Josephine: some fine night, the door will burst open, and I shall be there! Quite seriously, I am uneasy, my pretty one. Do write me four pages full of sweet words which will warm my heart with joy and happiness. In a few days I hope to clasp you in my arms, and to cover you with a million kisses, hot as the equator.”
How his heart flutters, uncertain whether she is still to be trusted, miserable if she be unworthy of trust. There is a crisis in his own soul as well as out there on the battle-field. Responsibility, uncertainty, storm in the heart of this man, who has perhaps already been dishonoured in his private life, and to-morrow may be dishonoured as a military commander—the man who still hopes to rule the world. During these days, when a suicide occurs among the troops, he issues an order: “The soldier must conquer the pain and the melancholy of the passions.”
Two days after the date of the letter last quoted, he is standing near Arcola on a bridge spanning the Adige. The enemy is bombarding this bridge. The French troops shrink back; there seems no way of forcing a passage across the river. At length, after repeated summonses, the soldiers advance once more, but there are calls from the ranks to Napoleon: “Do not go any farther, General. You will be killed, and then we shall be lost!” Marmont is a little in the van. Turning round to see if his men are following, he notices that the commander is in the arms of Muiron, the adjutant, apparently wounded. Around them a group of motionless figures. Now that the movement of the vanguard is arrested, the troops seek the shelter of the embankment. Bonaparte, who has recovered, stumbles and falls into the ditch at the foot of the dyke. His brother Louis and Marmont drag him out. A horse! Confusion, shots; Muiron covers the general with his own body, is hit, and falls. Bonaparte saves himself on horseback.
That evening in camp, he is greatly depressed. Second day’s fighting, and a vain attempt to storm the enemy’s position. This abominable river. Seems impossible to get across it. For a long time, the fortunes of the third day are no better than those of the first two.
At the eleventh hour, he has recourse to cunning. While the fight on the river rages uncertainly, he sends all the trumpeters and drummers he can get together, with part of the guard, in a wide half-circle to reach a position in the enemy’s rear. There the charge is sounded. The wearied Austrians are panic-stricken, and one of their divisions draws back. The French, encouraged by the rout of part of the foe, assume that all the opposing army is retreating, and act accordingly. Courage and ruse have snatched victory out of a morass of despair. The name of another village becomes famous. Arcola medals are struck in Paris. A picture is painted, showing the commander on the bridge of Arcola, waving imaginary colours.
The danger is over for a time. The enemy supports are withdrawn from Mantua, and soon the town must fall. Bonaparte makes a fresh disposition of his troops, and hastens to Milan. At length he will be able to administer the province from the capital, and have Josephine and hold her fast.
But Josephine is harder to catch than Wurmser. “I reach Milan, rush to your house, having thrown aside everything in order to clasp you in my arms. You are not there! You are gadding about somewhere, running away when I come to seek you. You care nothing about your Napoleon. A whim led you to give me your love, and now fickleness has made you indifferent. Inured to dangers, I know how to meet reverses of fortune.... Don’t put yourself about, amuse yourself, happiness is made for you, all the world is happy to have the chance of pleasing you, your husband alone is most unhappy.”
Next morning. “You have no reason to trouble yourself about the happiness or unhappiness of a man whom you do not love. But it is my fate to love you.... Take no part in the unhappiness of your husband, who lives only for you. It would be unjust if I were to ask you to love me as I love you. Who can expect delicate lace to weigh as heavy as gold.... My fault is that nature has denied me the charms which might bind you to me. What I do deserve is nothing more than this, that Josephine should show me a little consideration, a little respect, for I love her to the verge of madness, her and her alone. Farewell, adorable woman.... If I were certain that she could no longer love me, I would hide my pain, and would content myself with being useful to her whenever I could.... I open the letter once more, to send you a kiss. Ah, Josephine! Josephine!”
What a confession! With ardour and ambition he pushes forward to the goal, but the enemy has escaped, and what is to be done? Resignation must be the first aim after a failure, not raging and cursing. A man must retain his self-respect, and act prudently. A little mockery, embellished with courtesy, will have its due effect. Next day, he has turned things over in his mind. I must have her. How shall I lure her back? To extol my exploits does not move her in the least. What does influence her? Flattery and service. Such is his calculation. A miscalculation: for he, who is masterful with kings, fails to see that the charming Josephine would fear a master, even though she would not worship him; that nothing makes her more secure in her own position than his confessed passion.
Napoleon’s mistake is the outcome of his pride. His pride will lead him to the limits of what is humanly possible, but will in the long run mislead him into the greatest of his blunders. Now, it is pride that prevents his veiling a passion which he does not master because he does not wish to do so. After all his carefully planned phrases to the effect that he wishes to be of use to her, the foolish human heart drives him, with the gesture of a love-sick youth, to tear open his letter that he may “send a kiss.”