[Footnote 32: The morning after the constitution was announced, the streets of Paris were placarded with the following pasquil:--
------------------------------------------------ | POLITICAL SUBTRACTION. | | From 5 Directors | | Take 2 | | --- | | There remain 3 Consuls | | From them take 2 | | --- | | And there remains 1 BUONAPARTE. | ------------------------------------------------
This sufficiently expresses what was considered to be the essence of the new constitution.]
The Chief Consul writes to the King of England--Lord Grenville's Answer--Napoleon passes the Great St. Bernard--The taking of St. Bard--The Siege of Genoa--The Battle of Montebello--The Battle of Marengo--Napoleon returns to Paris--The Infernal Machine--The Battle of Hohenlinden--The Treaty of Luneville.
Much had been already done towards the internal tranquillisation of France: but it was obvious that the result could not be perfect until the war, which had so long raged on two frontiers of the country, should have found a termination. The fortune of the last two years had been far different from that of the glorious campaigns which ended in the treaty--or armistice, as it might more truly be named--of Campo-Formio. The Austrians had recovered the north of Italy, and already menaced the Savoy frontier, designing to march into Provence, and there support a new insurrection of the royalists. The force opposed to them in that quarter was much inferior in numbers, and composed of the relics of armies beaten over and over again by Suwarrow. The Austrians and French were more nearly balanced on the Rhine frontier; but even there, there was ample room for anxiety. On the whole, the grand attitude in which Buonaparte had left the Republic when he embarked for Egypt, was exchanged for one of a far humbler description; and, in fact, as has been intimated, the general disheartening of the nation, by reason of those reverses, had been of signal service to Napoleon's ambition. If a strong hand was wanted at home, the necessity of having a general who could bring back victory to the tricolor banners in the field had been not less deeply felt. And hence the decisive revolution of Brumaire.
Of the allies of Austria, meanwhile, one had virtually abandoned her. The Emperor Paul, of Russia, resenting the style in which his army under Suwarrow had been supported, withdrew it altogether from the field of its victories; and that hare-brained autocrat, happening to take up an enthusiastic personal admiration for Buonaparte, was not likely for the present to be brought back into the Antigallican league. England appeared steadfast to the cause; but it remained to be proved whether the failure of her expedition to Holland under the Duke of York, or the signal success of her naval arms in the Mediterranean under Lord Nelson, had had the greater influence on the feelings of the government of St. James's. In the former case Napoleon might expect to find his advances towards a negotiation, in his new character of Chief Consul, received with better disposition than his predecessors of the Directory had extended to the last overtures of the English cabinet tendered by Lord Malmesbury. He resolved to have the credit of making the experiment at least, ere the campaign with the Austrians should open; and, discarding, as he had on a former occasion,[33] the usual etiquettes of diplomatic intercourse, addressed a letter to King George III., in person, almost immediately after the new consulate was established in the Tuileries, in these terms (Dec. 25, 1799).