Napoleon: The Man Behind the Myth. Adam Zamoyski

that the Directory felt it safe to order him to proceed to Toulon.18

      He went to Saint-Germain with Josephine and Lavalette to visit her niece Émilie, whom Bonaparte had ordered Lavalette to marry, and to take her and Hortense for a picnic in the woods. The following day, 30 April, he attended a session of the Institute and then called on the Directors, who pressed him to leave as soon as possible. Others were still urging him to stay and overthrow the government. ‘Bonaparte must either get away or destroy the Directory or be crushed by it,’ Colonel Morand of the 85th Demi-Brigade wrote to his parents, revealing that even in Civitavecchia where he was stationed the political situation was no secret.19

      Bonaparte left Paris incognito at three o’clock in the morning of 4 May, in a mail coach with a passport made out in a false name, accompanied only by Josephine, Eugène de Beauharnais and Bourrienne. They travelled to Lyon, where they embarked on a boat which took them down the Rhône as far as Aix, and from there went by carriage to Toulon, which they reached in the early hours of 9 May. He took a parade of the 18th, and then the 32nd and 75th Demi-Brigades, all old soldiers of his Army of Italy. ‘We greeted him with enthusiastic cheering lasting more than a quarter of an hour,’ recalled one officer. Bonaparte then walked through the ranks talking to officers and men, and ended with a speech comparing them to the Roman legions which conquered Carthage. He reminded them that only two years before he had found them covered in rags, had led them to glory and provided for their every need. He asked them to trust him now, and assured them that they would return with the money to buy enough land for a farm (six arpents