id="pgepubid00003">THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN

WHERE AN EMPEROR WAS BORN

In this room Napoleon was born in 1769.

It was a ragged, disgusted, and half-revolting body, this Army of Italy, one that for three years had been conspicuous mainly for inactivity. Without waiting even for shoes, the new commander started it out swiftly on a campaign that for clever strategy, for rapidity of movement, for dash and courage in attack, was unlike anything Europe had ever seen. In less than two months he drove his opponents from Lombardy and had shut up the remnant of their army in Mantua. The Austrians shortly had a new army in the field. It took eight months to defeat it and capture Mantua; but it was accomplished in that period. Austria then called her ablest general, Archduke Charles, and gave him one hundred thousand men with which to avenge her disasters. With half the number Bonaparte advanced to meet the archduke, and drove him step by step to Vienna.

After a year and seven months of campaigning General Bonaparte, now twenty-eight years old, signed his first treaty. By that treaty he formed a new republic in northern Italy and made a new eastern frontier for France. Before the treaty, however, he had filled her empty treasury, had loaded her down with works of art, and had given her a new place in Europe; a place that he had proved he could sustain.

The glory of the Italian campaign thrilled the French people; but it disturbed the politicians in power. Bonaparte saw that if the government could manage it he would have no further opportunities for distinguishing himself. It was this sense that led him to urge that England, the only nation then in arms against France, be attacked by invading Egypt. The government consented promptly. It was a way of disposing of Bonaparte. What the government did not dream, of course, was that Bonaparte with this army hoped to found an oriental kingdom of which he should be the ruler.

But nothing went as he expected. He suffered terrible reverses, which he knew the government at home was using to break his hold on the people; his supplies and information were cut off; his prestige in his own army weakened; his faith in his destiny was shaken. That the effect of this bad fortune was not more than skin deep was clear enough when he accidentally learned that things were in a very bad way in France, that much of what he had gained in Italy had been lost, and that Austria and Russia were preparing an invasion.

BIRTHPLACE OF NAPOLEON

In this house, on the little island of Corsica, the first emperor of France spent his boyhood.

FIRST CONSUL OF FRANCE

Promptly and secretly Bonaparte slipped out of Egypt, and before the powers at home knew of his intention he was in France and the people were welcoming him as their deliverer. He was ready to be just that. It was no great trick for a man of his daring and sagacity, adored by the populace, to overturn a discredited and inefficient government and make himself dictator. It was done in a few weeks, and France had a new form of government, a consulate, of which the head was a first consul, and Bonaparte was the first consul.

The most brilliant and fruitful four years of Napoleon Bonaparte’s life followed; for it was then that he set out to bring order and peace to a country demoralized and exhausted by generations of plundering by privileged classes, followed by a decade of revolution against privileges.