Napoleon PBS Documentary 2 Of 4

5th 1796 Bonaparte led his victorious armies into Milan. He was greeted by the Milanese as a heroic liberator, the general who freed them from their Austrian rulers. We come to break your chains, Bonaparte proclaimed. Our only quarrel is with the tyrants who have enslaved you. He was more than a general now. He had made himself the head of a provisional Italian government. With an exalted sense of his own destiny, he was determined to follow his star to the heights of power. Great men become great because they have been able to master luck, Bonaparte said. What the vulgar call luck is a characteristic of genius. I shall be frantic if I do not have a letter from you tonight, Bonaparte wrote Josephine. Bonaparte desperately wanted his wife to join him in Italy, but Josephine refused to leave Paris. She was spending her time with a dapper young army lieutenant. She's cheating on Napoleon with a young officer, infinitely more seductive than Napoleon. She's not in love with Napoleon. She's afraid she'll be bored in Italy, because in Paris it's a life of parties, a life of luxury. Finally, after weeks of Bonaparte's pleading letters, Josephine left Paris for Italy. She wept, wrote one witness, as though she were going to a torture chamber. She arrived at Milan's Cerbolone Palace to find that her husband had filled it with flowers in her honor. There they spent the third night of their married life together. After 48 hours, Bonaparte went back to doing what he did best, making war. The Austrian army with fresh reinforcements was still a threat. Now, Bonaparte dealt them a series of crushing blows, finishing them off in January 1797 in a three-day battle at Rivoli, 60 miles west of Venice. His victories in Italy began the legend of his invincibility, immortalized in a series of romantic paintings. Bonaparte was not only a warrior, he was also a shrewd propagandist. From his first triumphs, Bonaparte understood that it's not enough to win victories. He uses images to make sure that his victories in Italy are widely publicized in France. He understood that art is also a means of propaganda. He orders a painting after a victory. He dictates the theme, the layout of the characters. He even orders the dimensions of the frame. From the very beginning, Napoleon gave himself an image. He created his own history. He created his own newspapers, France and the Army of Italy and the Newspaper of the Army of Italy, which exalt his victories. Bonaparte himself actually wrote some articles. He himself wrote, Bonaparte flies like lightning and strikes like a thunderbolt. While Bonaparte's fame grew in France, he was wearing out his welcome in Italy. When he met armed resistance, he ordered towns sacked, villages burned, rebels shot. Many Italians now began doubting the general, who said he fought in the name of liberty, but was sending convoys of gold and silver back to his government in France, along with some of the great treasures of Italian art. Works by Michelangelo, Titian, Raphael, the four ancient bronze horses from St. Mark's Basilica in Venice, all would soon find a home in a new museum in Paris that would one day be called the Louvre. While he ruled in Italy, Bonaparte never stopped chasing Austrians. Just two months after his victory at Rivoli, he had driven them from northern Italy, crossed the Alps into Austria itself, and by April 7th, 1797, was within 75 miles of Vienna. Stunned by the advancing French armies, the Austrian emperor sued for peace. Bonaparte himself negotiated with the Austrian diplomats. He wanted Belgium, the left bank of the Rhine, and a new republic to be allied with France carved out of northern Italy. When the Austrians objected to his demands, he turned on them in a rage. He flung to the ground a treasured porcelain tea service. This is what will happen to your empire, he shouted. Your empire is nothing but an old maidservant, accustomed to being raped by everyone. Bonaparte, the Austrian delegation reported to Vienna, had behaved like a madman. There are a lot of legends about this. Napoleon was hot-tempered, sometimes with violent physical reactions. And when the negotiations dragged on too long, Napoleon became agitated, started pacing back and forth. Smacked into a small table and overturned a tea service. Whether by rage, insult, or shrewd diplomacy, Bonaparte got what he wanted. And he had dictated the terms of the treaty himself, without instructions from the government in Paris. He saw that his intelligence, his abilities, were more than just military. He had become not only a great general, but also possibly a future statesman. And everybody realizes it. Not only in Italy, but in France. At the end of 1797, 28-year-old Napoleon Bonaparte returned to Paris and handed the government a treaty which brought a fragile peace to the continent of Europe. Now, only Great Britain remained at war with France. In just one and a half years, he had taken his dispirited, tattered soldiers, marched them hundreds of miles, and defeated the army of the Empire of Austria without ever losing a battle. The French were hungry for a hero. Someone who could put an end to the political chaos into which the revolution had descended. One government after another had come and gone. Now, they lived under a new one, the Directory. The Directory was an unstable, fragile parliamentary government that commanded no confidence. All of France turned toward Bonaparte, wondering what he would do next. What I have done up to now is nothing, he said privately. I am only at the beginning of the course I must run. I can no longer obey. I have tasted command, and I cannot give it up. While Bonaparte waited for the right moment to seize power, he set his sights on new glories in the exotic East. He eluded a British fleet, and on July 1st, 1798, landed with 35,000 soldiers in Egypt. France was still at war with Great Britain, and Bonaparte hoped to disrupt British trade routes to India. In 1798, Egypt was still a source of wonder to most Europeans. The Souks crowded with Turks and Jews, Syrians and Greeks. The minarets sounding the call of an alien religion. The Sphinx, with its broken nose, buried in the sand up to its neck. Bonaparte finds himself in a country of legends, myths, and a great history. But it was really madness on his part, because all of the military calculations at the time held that it was impossible for a European army to conquer the East. Bonaparte quickly captured Alexandria, and then on July 3rd, led his soldiers across the desert toward Cairo, and a looming battle. For centuries, the Egyptians had been part of the Turkish empire, ruled by the fiercest warriors in the Middle East, the Mamelukes. Remarkable for their courage, pride, and cruelty, the Mamelukes waited fearlessly for the French armies. One Mameluke prince called them donkey boys. The Mamelukes charged a cannon with their sabers and their horses, with arms from the Middle Ages. It was a meeting between the Europe of the future and the Egypt of the past. Napoleon just organized his army into five gigantic squares. These are men kneeling and standing and firing, so you've got a continual rolling fire. The Mamelukes rode around the squares and were shot at by that square and by this square. The French lost 30 men. The Mamelukes lost probably five or six thousand. The battle of the pyramids was over in an hour. Three days later, Bonaparte led his army into Cairo. I was full of dreams, he said. I saw myself founding a new religion, marching into Asia riding an elephant, a turban on my head, and in my hand the new Koran. But Bonaparte's dreams of empire were quickly shattered. The British Admiral Horatio Nelson caught the French fleet anchored off the Egyptian coast and blew it to pieces. Bonaparte and 35,000 soldiers were trapped in Egypt. The only link that he had with France were his ships, his fleet of warships. You can imagine what a disaster this was. He was forced to stay in Egypt and live with the Egyptians, to find his bread and water in Egypt, and even find ammunition for his weapons in Egypt, to live in Egypt. While Bonaparte was marooned in Egypt, his wife was buying a new home, a manor house six miles from Paris called Malmaison. There, Josephine enjoyed over 300 acres of gardens, woods, and fields, and the companionship of her lover. When an aide dared to tell Bonaparte the truth, the general was crushed. The veil is torn, he wrote his brother. I am tired of grandeur. All my feelings have dried up. I no longer care about my glory. At 29, I have exhausted everything. Furious, he took the wife of one of his officers for a mistress. His friends called her the general's Cleopatra. Cut off from France, Bonaparte remained undaunted. Installed in a palace in Cairo, he imagined himself an Eastern potentate, following in the footsteps of Alexander the Great. He came to Egypt as the head of an army, and suddenly he found himself at the head of a nation. And it's not just any nation. It's Egypt. Egypt was an enigma to Europeans. Bonaparte saw a chance to be the first to unravel its mysteries. Along with his army, he had brought with him a remarkable group of mathematicians, artists, mapmakers, and engineers. They set about producing a monumental document, a description of Egypt, 24 volumes of text and pictures. They studied the crocodile and the ibis, music and mummies, surveyed temples and tombs, and measured the dimensions of the sphinx. One scientist found a new species of blue water lily, another an unknown Nile fish. The most dramatic discovery of all was a big black stone with some puzzling inscriptions. The Rosetta Stone would prove to be the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphics. The monumental volumes that were published by the scientists that went along with Napoleon to Egypt laid the foundation for this study of Egyptology today. The true conquests Bonaparte wrote, the only ones that leave no regret are those that have been wrested from ignorance. In February 1799, Bonaparte took 13,000 soldiers into Syria. The Sultan of Turkey had declared war on the French infidels, and Bonaparte went on the offensive. After a quick victory at Jaffa, he assaulted Accra, where he was forced to lay siege to the well-fortified city. Attack after attack failed, claiming the lives of hundreds of French soldiers. Hundreds more were struck down by the bubonic plague. Bonaparte abandoned the siege and retreated to Cairo with a dispirited army of sick and wounded men. But Bonaparte refused to admit the extent of the disaster. I am returning to Cairo with many prisoners and flags, he proclaimed. I raised the ramparts of Accra. There is not a stone left standing. On August 23, 1799, Bonaparte secretly set sail for home, abandoning more than 30,000 soldiers with little more than an apologetic message. Extraordinary circumstances alone have persuaded me to pass through enemy lines and return to Europe. France was once again at war with Austria, Britain, and Russia. Civil war continued to tear the country apart. The government in Paris was in disarray. Already there were rumors of an impending coup. Bonaparte dreamed of rescuing France, but feared he had not moved fast enough. All great events hang by a hair, he told an aide. I believe in luck, but the wise man neglects nothing which helps his destiny. On October 9, 1799, he landed in France and found himself greeted by cheering crowds. The campaign in Egypt, a military disaster, had been a propaganda triumph. In the theatres, what's being shown? The expedition to Egypt, the victory of the pyramids. When he arrived, he's considered the man of the hour. His genius was to come to France and say, you need a savior, here I am. The French people believed that Napoleon was destined to do great things. In all the engravings of the period, you see the two frigates which brought Napoleon from Egypt. And above the first frigate, a star. By October 16, Bonaparte was in Paris. First, he would settle with Josephine. With his steady rise to fame and power, the dynamic between the inexperienced soldier and the sophisticated society woman had shifted. Bonaparte was determined to divorce his wife. He returned home, locked himself in his room, and refused even to see her. I will never forgive her, he said. Never. Promising that she will never do it again, but just open the door. By the time the sun rose, Bonaparte had weakened. The next morning found husband and wife in each other's arms. Josephine would never take a lover again. And while Bonaparte would always insist that he loved her best, he would do as he pleased with other women. Back in France, less than a week, Bonaparte saw that the time had come to act. Solemnly deliberating in the Luxembourg Palace, the directory was about to be swept aside. The debt from eight long years of war was mounting. Draft evasion rampant. Bandits roamed the highways in the countryside. The government seemed powerless. Already, there were schemes to overthrow it. As the crisis ripened, Bonaparte determined to find a way to seize power for himself. His moment, he knew, had arrived. He allied himself with one of the plotters, a member of the directory, Emmanuel Sieyès, who needed the support of the popular young general. This coup that Sieyès plans is a parliamentary coup, a political coup. Sieyès is in charge and force will only be used if something goes wrong. General Bonaparte is only supposed to have a supporting role in this coup. On November 9th, 1799, Bonaparte and Sieyès set their plot in motion. It's really a very simple premise, that the parliament will put itself out of business. They will vote in a provisional government that will, in effect, start over again, draft a new constitution. They expect that the bayonets will never be unsheathed and a shot will never be fired. For the coup to have an air of legitimacy, Bonaparte and Sieyès wanted the legislators to vote them into power. They didn't want to seize it. Bonaparte counted on the help of his brother Lucien, who had been elected president of the lower house of the legislature as a result of his brother's popularity. But Lucien was powerless to persuade the council to dissolve the government. They run into real opposition. The opposition insists that every deputy renew his oath of allegiance to the existing constitution, which they do. It takes over two hours to do this. Meanwhile, the key plotters, waiting outside in the wings, as it were, are getting very agitated. And particularly, General Bonaparte, who eventually just loses patience and decides that he must intervene to speed things up. He enters the legislative house. This is strictly against the law. The legislature is barred to any outside military figure. And what he encounters there is genuine rage. The members of the assembly, they see these bayonets and their bearskin hats marching down the main aisle with Bonaparte in between them. And they begin to shout and scream, outlaw him, outlaw him. He's trying to take over the government. And his brother, Lucien, said, wait a minute, my brother's not trying to take over the government. Calm down. And they said, we want him outlawed. We want him outlawed. Bonaparte never gets to utter a word to the deputies. And he is, in effect, hustled out by the grenadiers who had come in with him and is quite badly shaken by this. Bonaparte had bungled. The coup seemed lost. His chance for power finished. When some of his own soldiers began to doubt their general's intentions, his brother, Lucien, took control of the chaotic situation. Lucien sees that Napoleon is going to miss the moment. He has the drums beat. He draws his sword. He walks over to Napoleon. He presses the point of the sword, Napoleon's chest. And he said, believe me, soldiers of France, if Napoleon aspired to take over the government, be dictator, I'd run him through. The soldiers stormed the assembly hall. The cowed legislators fled, some jumping unceremoniously out the windows. At two o'clock that morning, a small rump of the council in league with the plotters reassembled and voted into law a new provisional government with three provisional councils at its head. Bonaparte was one of them. This triumvirate is only a facade. The parliamentary coup had become a military coup. And the strongman is no longer Sieyès. Now it is Bonaparte. Within weeks, Bonaparte outmaneuvered the other councils, rewrote the constitution, and made himself head of state under the title First Consul. As the year 1800 began, Napoleon Bonaparte, 30 years old, was the most powerful man in France. The revolution, Bonaparte said, is over. And then he added, I am the revolution. War had catapulted Bonaparte into power. Now war would help him secure it. France was still fighting Great Britain and Austria. Bonaparte conceived a daring plan to catch the Austrians by surprise. In the spring of 1800, he took his soldiers over the Alps. 40,000 men, field artillery, trekking across treacherous layers of snow and ice through the great Saint Bernard Pass. Not since the Carthaginian General Hannibal had an army attempted such an outlandish offensive. It's 10,500 feet high. They dragged their guns in pine trees. They hauled it out like canoes. And they took off across the mountains. May 20th, Bonaparte made the crossing himself. Jacques-Louis David memorialized the adventure in his heroic portrait of Napoleon mounted on a gleaming stallion. In fact, Bonaparte crossed the Alps riding a sure-footed mule. It took the general and his army just six days. On the morning of June 14th, he faced the Austrians at Marengo, 45 miles from Milan. By the end of the day, there were 6,000 French casualties. But nearly twice as many Austrians had been killed or wounded. The French had won. My power depends on my glory, Bonaparte said. And my glory on my victories. Next year, the emperor of Austria ordered a halt to the fighting and signed a treaty with France. Great Britain followed the year after. For the first time in 10 years, all of Europe was at peace. Bonaparte had been in power just six months. And the people of France had seen other political regimes which had lasted only a year. They said, well, Bonaparte might not last either. After Marengo, things changed. Ordinary people, as well as people in the ruling class, now thought Bonaparte would last. Now Bonaparte moved to consolidate his rule. At his urging, the French constitution was again amended. And at 33, Bonaparte became first consul for life with near dictatorial powers. A king in all but name. The more power that Bonaparte gets, the more he wants. And it escalates step by step. Never too much at once, always step by step gradually. And always with Napoleon looking back and saying, remember, I am going to protect the gains of the revolution. They're safe with me. As the 19th century began, Bonaparte set out to prove that he could govern as well as he could fight. A newborn government, he told his secretary, must dazzle and astonish. He built new parks, bridges and caves along the Seine, canals, reservoirs, and roads. Paris, he said, the loveliest city that ever was or ever could be. In France, the greatest country on earth. Launching a series of sweeping political, economic and legal reforms, he laid the foundation for a new France. All of French society came under his gaze. He set in place a strong centralized government with a tightly structured, far-reaching bureaucracy. Organized a new system of state secondary schools, the lycée. Established a central bank, the Bank of France. Slowly, the economy revived and with it prosperity. All of Europe was in awe. The great artists and thinkers of the day, Goethe, Hegel, Byron, Beethoven, saw in Bonaparte the embodiment of the ideals and hopes of the revolution. He oversaw the codification of a new system of laws which abolished feudal privileges and established the equality of every man before the law. Bonaparte's civil code remains the basis of French law to this day. In 1801, Bonaparte signed an agreement with the Pope, the Concordat, making Catholicism the dominant but not exclusive religion of France. He had no personal use for religion, but he understood its political value. If I governed a nation of Jews, he said, I should restore the Temple of Solomon. Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet. Bonaparte ruled with the carrot and the stick. To reward men of accomplishment, he created a special mark of esteem, the Legion of Honor. My motto has always been, he said, a career open to all talents without distinctions of birth. He believed in equality. A man should have the chance to rise on the basis of his ability, just as he had done. But he had no patience with those who demanded liberty. He ruled with an iron hand, crushing anyone who dared speak out against him, making a sham of parliament and free elections. I had been nourished by reflecting on liberty, Bonaparte said, but I thrust it aside when it obstructed my path. While Bonaparte ruled France, Josephine gracefully assumed the role of first lady. But she preferred the quiet seclusion of Malmaison to France's magnificent palaces. In deference to his wife, Bonaparte made Malmaison his countryside seat of government. He worked seven days a week, often 18 hours a day, month after month. But if it could be said that he ever relaxed, it was at Malmaison with Josephine. In 1803, France was still at peace, and Bonaparte was her absolute master. When he looked across his borders, the only country he had to fear was Great Britain. Britain, with the greatest navy in the world. Britain, immensely rich. France and Great Britain had signed a treaty of peace, but no one expected it to last. Even before the treaty was signed, one observer said, peace in a week, war in a month. England, England, always England. There is always a profound antagonism between the sea and the land, between the strength of the continent, represented by Napoleon, and the strength of the sea and international trade, represented by England. It was inevitable that war between France and England would resume. The treaty is a misnomer. It's really a truce. You still have two great powers at odds with each other, fighting for influence, fighting for supremacy, and they've basically fought to a draw at this point. On May 18th, 1803, when Great Britain declared war on France, few were surprised. The two armies peered at each other across the English Channel, neither willing to risk battle. France held at bay by the British Navy, Britain afraid to send soldiers to fight on the continent. But as Bonaparte waited and readied his troops, his confidence in himself and his star remained unshaken. His victories had already made France larger than it had ever been. He was the most feared man in Europe, and his authority at home remained unchallenged. Thirty-four years old, he was as powerful as any of the Bourbon kings who had come before him. All he lacked was a crown. Now he decided he wanted one. He wished to be a king. His idea is that, given what France has achieved in the world, it ought to be considered as a kind of empire, with Napoleon Bonaparte as the emperor. This would put him on an equal footing with the monarchs of Europe. He would no longer be an upstart. He would be one of the club. On December 2nd, 1804, the imperial procession made its way through Paris. A Senate proclamation and a vote of the people, both carefully arranged by Bonaparte himself, had given him what he wanted. He was about to become an emperor. As soon as a man becomes a king, he is set apart from all other men, Bonaparte said. I always felt that Alexander the Great's idea of pretending to be descended from a god was inspired by a sure instinct for real politics. In spite of the cold, a half million cheering spectators lined the streets. Bonaparte himself had meticulously planned every detail. The great cathedral, hung with pennants and tapestries and decorated like a Roman temple, seemed more like a theater than a church. But Bonaparte wanted his elevation to glow with the aura of religion. The pope had been brought from Italy to sanctify the occasion. He has the genius of making the pope come to Paris, which gives everything a sacred air. It is God who confirms that the changes that took place during the revolution are forever established. Slowly, Bonaparte and Josephine walked toward the two thrones that awaited them. His mantle, adorned with gold and precious jewels and weighing 80 pounds, was supported by his brothers. He looked, one spectator said, like a Caesar on a Roman coin. A little more than 10 years before, the French had beheaded a king. Now, they were crowning an emperor. Born upon the great tide of the French Revolution and the wars that followed in its wake, Bonaparte had turned his genius as a general and a statesman to the domination of France. Soon, he would turn toward the conquest of Europe. Already, he was planning an invasion of Great Britain to make him master of the island nation that dared defy him. Confidently, Bonaparte lifted the imperial crown. And brought it to rest on his own head. Then, he moved toward Josephine and crowned her his empress. I am the instrument of providence, Napoleon said. She will use me as long as I accomplish her designs. Then, she will break me like a glass.