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considers that the State cannot be captured in a single day and that Bonaparte s
impatience is a great danger; and his taste for rhetoric is another, adds
Talleyrand. Why drag in Caesar and Cromwell in this manner? I t is Bonaparte
alone who is in the case. If legal appearances are to be respected, if the State is to
be captured not by way of a mere camp revolution or a police plot, but by
parliamentary methods with the complicity of the Ancients and of the Five
Hundred, and along the lines of delicate and complex procedure, then Bonaparte
simply must not persist in certain of his attitudes. A victorious general about to
seize the power in the State should not go begging for applause, nor lose his time
in intrigues.
Siéyès had foreseen all possible difficulties and taken advance measures
against them, even learning to ride a horse for the purposes of triumph or of
disaster as the cast e might be. elected President of the Council of the Five
Hundred proposed the names of four of his own intimates for the post of
Inspector s of the Assembly House. For in a parliamentary revolution even such
attendants may be of importance. The attendants of the Assembly House of the
Ancients meanwhile had been got hold of by Siéyès. A pretext was now needed
for convoking both Houses for a meeting outside Paris at St. Cloud - some plot,
some Jacobin conspiracy, some public danger. Siéyès set the police on producing
such a pretext: the result was the  terrible Jacobin conspiracy by which the
Republic was officially declared to be endangered. So the Assemblies would
quietly meet at St. Cloud, the plan would be realized in all its details.
Bonaparte fell in with the views of his friends. His manner henceforth was
more reserved, his intrigues more prudently conducted and his self-confidence
more restrained. He had gradually come to the conclusion that he was the deus et
machina of the scene, and was thus convinced that all would happen precisely as
he desired. Nonetheless it was the others who led him through the complexities
of the moment; Séyès held his hand and showed him the way. For after all
Bonaparte was nothing but a soldier as yet; his political genius was to be
revealed only after the eighteenth Brumaire. All the great captains Sulla, Caesar ;
and Bonaparte no less than them, were no more than soldiers during the
preparation of executing the coup d'Etat. They may make great efforts to retain
forms of legality and to show a loya1 respect for the State: but that is only on e
sign the more of the illegality of their proceed lings a1 id of their contempt for
the State. They dismouted from horseback to take part in the political struggle,
but they forget to remove their spurs. Lucien Bonaparte meanwhile was
watching his brother with a close attention for every gesture , nay for the most
secret of his thoughts. And he smiled, with a touch of bitterness already, feeling
more certain of his brother than of himself. All was now ready. What more could
happen to change the course of events and to frustrate the coup d'Etat?
Bonaparte's plan had one fundamental error, the respect for legality. From
the beginning Siéyès had objected to the notion that the plot could he kept within
the limits of the law. In his view much allowance must he made for unforeseen
eventualities, which are always the occasion for the finest displays of
revolutionary violence. It is always dangerous to be forced down a narrow
passage. Besides, to this philosopher of law the notion of a legal coup a!'Etat
seemed absurd. But Bonaparte was not to be shaken. He would take risks sooner
than infringe legal forms. In the night of Brumaire, the seventeenth and
eighteenth, Siéyès warned him there was trouble in the suburbs and that he
would be well advised to arrest a couple of dozen Deputies; Bonaparte refused to
countenance the illegal act. His plan was for a parliamentary rebellion. He would
capture the Civil power without breaking the law or using violence, and when
Fouch6 offered him his services he answered that he had no need for the police;
his prestige, the glory of his name would suffice. So in all simplicity he believed.
In fact however the impetuous General, the rhetorical warrior had no
notion how to carry on within the bounds of strict legality. As soon as he
appeared on the morning of the eighteenth Brumaire before the Council of the
Ancients he quite forgot that his part was to offer his victorious sword for the
service of the representatives of the people. He quite forgot that he must present
himself to the Ancients not as a second Caesar but as a defender of the
Constitution against Jacobin plotters. He must be no more than a General
charged by the Council of the Ancients with ensuring the peaceful transfer of the
Assembly to St. Cloud, and he must patiently play this minor part in a
parliamentary comedy in which the Assembly instead would be the principal
actor. But the speech he made to the Assembly of spectacled middle-class
citizens, as he stood among his officers gay with gold and silver braid seemed to
have been put in his mouth by some unfriendly deity.
He could speak nothing but mock heroic sentiment derived from his own
hasty studies of the enterprises of Alexander and Caesar:  What we want is a
republic founded upon true liberty, civil liberty, representation of the people-and
I swear we shall have it. The officers around him echoed the oath. The Ancients
meanwhile looked on in silent astonishment. There was nothing to prevent any
member of this tame assembly, no matter how insignificant, from rising to attack
Bonaparte in the name of Liberty, the Republic, the Constitution, those grand
words, so empty, by that time, of meaning, but still so dangerous for the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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