HKB
May 3rd.---Enters Paris.
May 4th.---Napoleon reaches Elba.
May 29th.--Death of Josephine, aged 51.
May 30th.--Peace of Paris.
FOOTNOTES
[40] Averaged from early historians of the campaigns. Marbot gives the numbers 155,400 French and 175,000 Allies. Allowing for the secession of the Austrian and Prussian contingents and for 30,000 prisoners, he gives the actual French death-roll by February 1813 at 65,000. This is a minimum estimate.
NOTES
THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGNS, 1796-97
SERIES A
(The numbers correspond to the numbers of the Letters.)
No. 1.
Bonaparte made Commander-in-Chief of the Army of Italy.--Marmont's account of how this came to pass is probably substantially correct, as he has less interest in distorting the facts than any other writer as well fitted for the task. The winter had rolled by in the midst of pleasures--soirées at the Luxembourg, dinners of Madame Tallien, "nor," he adds, "were we hard to please." "The Directory often conversed with General Bonaparte about the army of Italy, whose general--Schérer--was always representing the position as difficult, and never ceasing to ask for help in men, victuals, and money. General Bonaparte showed, in many concise observations, that all that was superfluous. He strongly blamed the little advantage taken from the victory at Loano, and asserted that, even yet, all that could be put right. Thus a sort of controversy was maintained between Schérer and the Directory, counselled and inspired by Bonaparte." At last when Bonaparte drew up plans--afterwards followed--for the invasion of Piedmont, Schérer replied roughly that he who had drawn up the plan of campaign had better come and execute it. They took him at his word, and Bonaparte was named General-in-Chief of the army of Italy (vol. i. 93).
"7 A.M."--Probably written early in March. Leaving Paris on March 11th, Napoleon writes Letourneur, President of the Directory, of his marriage with the "citoyenne Tascher Beauharnais," and tells him that he has already asked Barras to inform them of the fact. "The confidence which the Directory has shown me under all circumstances makes it my duty to keep it advised of all my actions. It is a new link which binds me to the fatherland; it is one more proof of my fixed determination to find safety only in the Republic."[41]
No. 2.
"Our good Ossian."--The Italian translation of Ossian by Cesarotti was a masterpiece; better, in fact, than the original. He was a friend of Macpherson, and had learnt English in order to translate his work. Cesarotti lived till an advanced age, and was sought out in his retirement in order to receive honours and pensions from the Emperor Napoleon.
"Our good Ossian" speaks, like Homer, of the joy of grief.
No. 4.
"Chauvet is dead."--Chauvet is first mentioned in Napoleon's correspondence in a letter to his brother Joseph, August 9, 1795. Mdme. Junot, Memoirs, i. 138, tells us that Bonaparte was very fond of him, and that he was a man of gentle manners and very ordinary conversation. She declares that Bonaparte had been a suitor for the hand of her mother shortly before his marriage with Josephine, and that because the former rejected him, the general had refused a favour to her son; this had caused a quarrel which Chauvet had in vain tried to settle. On March 27th Bonaparte had written Chauvet from Nice that every day that he delayed joining him, "takes away from my operations one chance of probability for their success."
No. 5.