hands
of the Duke of Modena for such a sum." But similar propositions were
made by the commander-in-chief to his subordinates, and they with less
prudence fell into the trap, taking all they could lay hands upon and
thus becoming the bond-slaves of their virtuous leader. There were
stories at the time that some of the generals, not daring to send
their ill-gotten money to France, and having no opportunity for
investing it elsewhere, actually carried hundreds of thousands of
francs in their baggage. This prostitution of his subordinates was
part of a system. Twenty million francs was approximately the sum
total of all contributions announced to the Directory, and in their
destitution it seemed enormous. They also accepted with pleasure a
hundred of the finest horses in Lombardy to replace, as Bonaparte
wrote on sending his present, the ordinary ones which drew their
carriages. Was this paltry four million dollars the whole of what was
derived from the sequestrations of princely domains and the
secularization of ecclesiastical estates? By no means. The army chest,
of which none knew the contents but Bonaparte, was as inexhaustible as
the widow's cruse. At the opening of the campaign in Piedmont, empty
wagons had been ostentatiously displayed as representing the military
funds at the commander's disposal: these same vehicles now groaned
under a weight of treasure, and were kept in a safe obscurity. Well
might he say, as he did in June to Miot, that the commissioners of the
Directory would soon leave and not be replaced, since they counted for
nothing in his policy.

With the entry into Milan, therefore, begins a new epoch in the
remarkable development we are seeking to outline. The military genius
of him who had been the Corsican patriot and the Jacobin republican
had finally asserted dominion over all his other qualities. In the
inconsistency of human nature, those former characters now and then
showed themselves as still existent, but they were henceforth
subordinate. The conquered Milanese was by a magical touch provided
with a provisional government, ready, after the tardy assent of the
Directory, to be changed into the Transpadane Republic and put under
French protection. Every detail of administration, every official and
his functions, came under Bonaparte's direction. He knew the land and
its resources, the people and their capacities, the mutual relations
of the surrounding states, and the idiosyncrasies of their