‘I believe in the French Republic, and in Bonaparte her son,’ ran a Credo composed by some Italian nationalists; but others cursed him. The depredations of the French, both by officials and by soldiers on the rampage, caused hardship to ordinary people, and all those opposed to the French intrusion, be they fearful upholders of the old regime or Catholics horrified at the godlessness of the invaders, gave vent to their grievances. Riots broke out in various places. Bonaparte reacted with energy and in some cases brutality, most notably at Binasco, where the locals had massacred French soldiers. ‘Having killed a hundred people, we burned down the village, a terrible but efficacious example,’ he wrote to Berthier afterwards. At Pavia, which had risen against the French, he let his troops loose on the town for a couple of hours. He admitted that ‘although necessary, this spectacle was none the less horrible, and I was painfully affected by it’. The measures did prove efficacious, and he was soon able to report that the province was quiet. He enrolled young men coming forward to serve in what they believed to be the cause of Italy into a Lombard armed force which could maintain order.18
The improved supply situation did not stop the looting; it merely refocused it, as officers and men began to think of enriching themselves rather than just helping themselves to what they needed. The example was set by Masséna, who exacted protection money from towns he passed through, and it was widely followed. Bonaparte turned a blind eye, and even encouraged his subordinates to enrich themselves while ostentatiously declining to accept bribes offered him by the authorities of cities such as Lucca and Modena in order to distinguish himself from other generals by his moral stance.19
At the same time, Saliceti was bleeding the country dry in the service of the French Republic, as well as his own. At Lodi he raided the cathedral treasury and the Monte de Pietà, the charity which served as pawnbroker, removing five cases of silver plate and a number of ingots, and requisitioned the city’s cash funds. In Milan he helped himself to the contents of the banks, the city chest and the Monte de Pietà, although this time he returned to poor debtors their paltry treasures. He repeated the pattern in every city. ‘You are creating a hundred times more currency with your bayonets than we can with all our imaginable financial laws,’ one of the Directors acknowledged.20
It was not only cash and disposable valuables that were taken. Seeing the French Republic as the second Rome, its rulers believed the greatest works of art and science, libraries and archives, mechanical and scientific instruments, and any collections that could serve progress should be brought together in Paris. A commission consisting of the mathematician Gaspard Monge, the chemist Claude Berthollet, the botanists André Thouin and La Billardière, as well as a number of artists, was on its way with orders to select the objects worthy of being included in the libraries and museums of the capital. (It is worth noting that a protest against this was signed by the painters David, Hubert Robert, Moreau le Jeune, Girodet, the architects Percier and Fontaine, and many others.21)
Bonaparte had never accepted the secondary role of staging a diversion in Italy while Moreau carried out the main operations in Germany, and was determined to reverse this by striking first. Assuming that Moreau must have crossed the Rhine, he was eager to press on. Beaulieu had fallen back behind the river Mincio, his right wing resting at Peschiera on the southern shore of Lake Garda and his left on Mantua. Moving briskly, Bonaparte pierced his line at Borghetto and then turned north to roll it up. Disorientated Austrian units raced north in order to avoid being cut off, but some were overtaken by the French advance. At Valeggio, where he had just sat down to a light lunch with Masséna and Murat, Bonaparte was surprised by an isolated enemy unit and only had time to pull on one boot before making a dash for safety over a wall. By dawn the following day he was pursuing the Austrians falling back on Peschiera and Verona, which he reached on 3 June. He was overwhelmed by the beauty of the city. ‘I have just seen the amphitheatre,’ he reported to the Directory. ‘These remains left by the people of Rome are truly worthy of it. I could not help feeling a sense of humiliation when I thought of the tawdriness of our Champ de Mars.’22
Beaulieu had made his escape northwards along the eastern side of Lake Garda, pursued by French cavalry, while part of his army took refuge in the fortress of Mantua, where it was bottled up by Sérurier. Bonaparte was now in control of the whole former Austrian province of Lombardy, and he set about securing it. Without consulting with the Directory, he signed an armistice with the kingdom of Naples, which thereby retired from the anti-French coalition, and received a Spanish diplomat sent by the Pope to negotiate peace with the Holy See.
He raced back to Milan expecting to find Josephine waiting for him. Instead he found instructions from the Directory ordering him to march on Rome, which he could not easily disobey. He set off, reaching Bologna on 19 June, where he was met by the Pope’s envoy offering a bribe of five million francs to ward off a French invasion. Bonaparte demanded forty million, as well as the treasure of the shrine of Loretto and a hundred works of art. On 23 June the Pope’s emissaries agreed, and signed an armistice. Bonaparte then crossed the Apennines and made for Livorno to secure the port against a possible landing by the British.
From there he made a trip to San Miniato to visit Canon Filippo Buonaparte, the last surviving member of the Tuscan branch of what might at one stage have been the same family as his own. He then marched on to Florence, where he went to the opera on the evening of 30 June and the following day lunched with the Grand Duke of Tuscany, brother of the Emperor Francis II with whom he was at war. By 4 July he was back at Roverbella, where he had established his headquarters.
He was worn out physically and mentally, and racked by anxiety alternating with jealousy over Josephine, whom he showered with increasingly despairing letters which reveal his changing moods. The brevity and lack of feeling of her infrequent letters inspired reproach and jealousy, followed by fears that she might be ill and self-reproach for having questioned her feelings. He pestered Joseph for news of her. On 18 May from Milan he wrote a letter full of joyful anticipation of what he thought was her imminent arrival, describing the beauties of Italy and the happy times ahead as they listened to divine music while watching her belly grow (he was still under the impression that she was pregnant). Five days later, worried by the lack of news from her, he wrote of how he had left a ball given for him at which he looked in vain among the many beauties for any who came close to her. ‘I could see only you, think only of you, and the thought made everything else unbearable, so, half an hour after arriving I went home to bed full of sadness.’ Thinking she would arrive on 13 June, he prepared her lodgings, but then discovered she had not left Paris yet. ‘I had opened my soul to joy, and it has filled with suffering,’ he wrote. He awaited the couriers with impatience, either to find that there was no letter from her, or if there was that it lacked the passion he craved. He concluded that her feelings for him had only been a ‘mild caprice’ which he had misunderstood, that while he had given himself to her entirely and lived only for her, she had merely toyed with him, and that she wanted a different kind of man. ‘Farewell, Josephine, stay in Paris, do not write to me any more, and at least respect my retreat,’ he wrote despairingly. ‘A thousand daggers are tearing my heart asunder, do not plunge them any deeper. Farewell, my happiness, my life, everything that existed for me on earth!!!’23
Having heard no more from