A General Takes Over

It would have seemed astonishing in 1795 that the twenty-six-year-old son of a noble family from the island of Corsica off the Italian coast would within four years become the supreme ruler of France and one of the greatest military leaders in world history. That year, Bonaparte was a penniless artillery officer, only recently released from prison as a presumed Robespierrist. Thanks to some early military successes and links to Parisian politicians, however, he was named commander of the French army in Italy in 1796.

Bonaparte’s astounding success in the Italian campaigns of 1796–1797 launched his meteoric career. With an army of fewer than fifty thousand men, he defeated the Piedmontese and the Austrians. In quick order, he established client republics dependent on his own authority, negotiated with the Austrians himself, and molded the army into his personal force by paying the soldiers in cash taken as tribute from the newly conquered territories. He pleased the Directory government by sending home wagonloads of Italian masterpieces of art, which were added to Parisian museum collections (most are still there) after being paraded in victory festivals.

In 1798, the Directory set aside its plans to invade England, gave Bonaparte command of the army raised for that purpose, and sent him across the Mediterranean Sea to Egypt. The Directory government hoped that French occupation of Egypt would strike a blow at British trade by cutting the route to India. Although the French defeated a much larger Egyptian army, the British admiral Lord Horatio Nelson destroyed the French fleet while it was anchored in Aboukir Bay, cutting the French off from home. Bonaparte insisted that he aimed to liberate the Egyptians from the Ottoman Turks, but though he proclaimed his respect for Islam, he also forced through Enlightenment-inspired legal reforms such as equality before the law and religious toleration. In the face of determined resistance and an outbreak of the bubonic plague, the French armies retreated from a further expedition in Syria.

Even the failures of the Egyptian campaign did not dull Bonaparte’s luster. Bonaparte had taken France’s leading scientists with him on the expedition, and his soldiers had discovered a slab of black basalt dating from 196 B.C.E. written in both hieroglyphic and Greek. Called the Rosetta stone after a nearby town, it enabled scholars to finally decipher the hieroglyphs used by the ancient Egyptians.

With his army pinned down by Nelson’s victory at sea, Bonaparte slipped out of Egypt and made his way secretly to southern France in October 1799. He arrived home at just the right moment: the war in Europe was going badly. The territories of the former Austrian Netherlands had revolted against French conscription laws, and deserters swelled the ranks of rebels in western France. Disillusioned members of the government saw in Bonaparte’s return an occasion to overturn the constitution of 1795. They got their wish on November 9, 1799, when troops guarding the legislature ejected those who opposed Bonaparte and left the remaining ones to vote to abolish the Directory and establish a new three-man executive called the consulate.

Bonaparte became First Consul, a title revived from the ancient Roman republic. A new constitution—with no declaration of rights—was submitted to the voters. Millions abstained from voting, and the government falsified the results to give an appearance of even greater support to the new regime.