It was not until the end of August that the Austrian chancellor Thugut sent a senior diplomat, the monstrously fat forty-four-year-old Count Ludvig Cobenzl, to direct the negotiations along with Gallo. They took up residence at Udine while Bonaparte installed himself a short distance away at Passariano, a grand country residence set in beautiful parkland belonging to Ludovico Manin, the last Doge of Venice. They skirmished ferociously but dined together, either at Udine or Passariano.
While Thugut was now eager to proceed so as to secure Venice for Austria as quickly as possible, the Directory felt strong and belligerent. Following the unexpected death of General Hoche on 19 September it appointed Augereau commander of the Army of Germany in his place, which suggested the possibility of a fresh offensive against Austria in that theatre. This was unwelcome news to Bonaparte, as it raised the possibility of Augereau stealing a march on him, or at least dimming his glory with a victory. Equally unwelcome were the despatches which arrived from Paris on 25 September informing him that the Directory was sending someone to conduct the negotiations in his stead.
He responded with one of his tantrums. ‘I am ill and I need rest,’ he wrote to Barras the same day, asking him for a discharge, adding that he wanted to settle outside Paris and enjoy at least a couple of years of peace. He wrote to the Directory in the same vein. ‘No power on earth could make me continue to serve after this horrible mark of ingratitude by the Government, which I had been very far from expecting,’ he complained. ‘My health is considerably impaired, it urgently demands rest and tranquillity. The state of my soul is also such that it needs to reimmerse itself in the mass of my fellow citizens. I have for too long had great power placed in my hands.’ The idea of Bonaparte immersing himself in the mass of his fellow citizens was too frightening for the Directory to contemplate.27
The negotiations continued, Cobenzl trying to intimidate Bonaparte with courtly mundanity, only to be met with bullying and feigned rages. The Austrian diplomat was unused to such tactics, and through Gallo he persuaded Josephine to exert a calming influence (for which she would be rewarded by the emperor). But Bonaparte was not to be controlled as he steered his own course; he was under strict orders from the Directory not to cede any part of Venice to Austria, and while he had no intention of following these, he used them to pressure Cobenzl over other things, as by then Austria was set on having the territory. At the same time, he did not want to push the Austrian too hard, as he feared a possible resumption of hostilities, for which his army was unprepared, and he reserved his belligerence for the peace talks.28
These were eventually concluded, and the treaty was to be signed on 11 October, but at the last moment Bonaparte insisted a guarantee be inserted that France would obtain the left bank of the Rhine. Cobenzl demurred. Bonaparte, who had spent two sleepless nights, was in an agitated state and fortified himself with numerous glasses of punch as he read out his proposed draft of the treaty. When Cobenzl attempted to explain the impossibility of his acceding to the new terms, Bonaparte got up from the table clearly drunk, put on his hat and stormed out of the room, vomiting barrack-room imprecations. By his own account, he smashed Cobenzl’s favourite coffee set before walking out, pursued by a vainly emollient Gallo.29
Bourrienne records that two days later he awoke to see snow on the mountaintops and informed Bonaparte of it as he roused him. With winter on its way, a French threat to Vienna through the passes was dissolving fast, and Bonaparte realised he had to conclude speedily. The treaty was signed on the night of 17–18 October, and named after a place equidistant from the two in which the negotiations had been conducted, the village of Campoformido, mis-spelt by a French secretary as Campo Formio. Bonaparte had gained most of what he wanted. He was in high spirits, and at dinner he entertained the Austrians by telling them his favourite ghost stories.30
‘My services have earned me the approbation of the Government and the nation,’ He wrote to the Directory. ‘I have received many marks of its esteem. It now remains for me only to step back into the crowd, take up the plough of Cincinnatus and set an example of respect for the magistrates and aversion for military rule, which has destroyed so many republics and undermined several States.’31
On 5 November he received his nomination as commander of a projected Army of England and also as plenipotentiary at the congress due to convene at Rastatt to settle questions arising from France’s acquisition of the left bank of the Rhine. On the morning of 17 November he left Milan with Eugène de Beauharnais. Travelling fast and through the night he was at Mantua the next day, where he paused only to review the troops stationed there, hold a ceremony in honour of the deceased Hoche and attend the theatre, before rushing on, to reach Turin at two on the morning of 19 November. He remained there long enough to have a talk with Miot de Melito, in the course of which he again expressed his conviction that ‘those Parisian lawyers who have been put in the Directory understand nothing about government’. ‘As for me, my dear Miot, I tell you that I cannot obey; I have tasted command and I would not be able to give it up. I have made up my mind: if I cannot be master, I will leave France …’32
At three that afternoon he left Turin, and two days later he was in Geneva. People came out to catch sight of him as he passed through, not just to see the victorious hero whose reputation was spreading over the Continent, but to cheer the man who had brought peace after so many years of war. ‘Vive Bonaparte, vive le pacificateur!’ they shouted. According to Bourrienne, Bonaparte was furious when one of their former colleagues from Brienne now living in Switzerland came to see him and addressed him with the familiar ‘tu’.33
He was even angrier when, after rushing on, through Berne, Basel and Huningue and reaching Augereau’s headquarters at Offenburg, he was informed that the commander of the Army of Germany was busy getting dressed and could not see him. He hurried on to Rastatt, which he drove into on 26 November in a magnificent coach drawn like a sovereign’s by eight horses, with an escort of thirty hussars, before installing himself in the Margrave of Baden’s residence.34
He impressed the representatives of the Imperial Diet not just by his grand manner but by his familiarity with the Golden Bull of 1356, the constitution of the Holy Roman Empire and the Treaty of Westphalia. On 29 November he met the prime minister of Baden, and exchanged the ratified copies of the Treaty of Campo Formio. On the same day he received a despatch from the Directory summoning him to Paris.35
14
Bonaparte arrived in Paris at five o’clock on the dark winter evening of 5 December in an ordinary mail coach, dressed in civilian clothes, a broad-brimmed hat hiding his face, accompanied by generals Berthier and Championnet, also out of uniform. He went home to the house on the rue Chantereine, which was empty since he had left Josephine behind in his rapid journey through Rastatt to Paris. Before going to bed he dashed off a note to Madame Campan asking her to send Hortense to come and join him, and made an appointment to meet Talleyrand the following morning.
He arrived at the ministry