The History of France Volume 3 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1837 Excerpt: ...determined to root out even the semblance of civil war. He summoned the Vendean and Chouan chiefs to Paris with fair promise of accommodation. They had hopes, such as many entertained, of his acting Monk, and restoring 1800. CAMPAIGN IN ITALY. 195 the Bourbons, --an idea far from his intentions. Most of them submitted. The fiercest, Georges Cadoudal, Bonaparte sought to awe or win in a personal interview. But the Breton, true to the stubbornness of his provincial character, only conceived a more deadly enmity towards the new dictator. " A new dynasty," say the French orators of the day, " must be baptised in blood." Bonaparte felt so. He had need of a crowning victory, not only for his country's but his own sake, and he was determined that it should be full and glorious, opened by a gigantic march which was calculated as much to strike imaginations at home as to distress the Austrian. The first consul had despatched Moreau to the Rhine. For his own purposes, an army, called that of reserve, was collected at Dijon, and organised by Berthier. His object was to recover Italy, which the Austrians now occupied to the foot of the Alps, with the exception of Genoa, where Massena still held out, though pressed hard by famine, by the Austrians on land, and by an English fleet. Melas, commander of the imperial armies, had his quarters at Alexandria; his troops and views all directed towards the Savoy Alps in pursuit of Suchet, who was retreating over those mountains. Of meeting with the French general in any other direction he did not dream, and the name properly given to the army assembled at Dijon, that of reserve, indicated no bolder intention than that of defending the course of the Rhine. The real views of Bonaparte were indeed too bold to hav...