-bottle, and set about organising France for a normal
and progressive national life. But Europe had by her fatuous
interference with the internal affairs of France sown dragons' teeth
indeed and a nation of armed men had sprung forth, nursing hatred of
monarchy and habituated to victory. "_Eh, bien, mes enfants_," cried a
French general before an engagement when provisions were wanting to
afford a meal for his troops, "we will breakfast after the victory."
But militarism invariably ends in autocracy. The author of those
whiffs of grape-shot was appointed in 1796 Commander-in-Chief of the
army of Italy, and a new and sinister complexion was given to the
policy of the Republic. "Soldiers," cries Napoleon, "you are
half-starved and almost naked; the Government owes you much but can do
nothing for you. Your patience, your courage do you honour, but win
for you neither glory nor profit. I am about to lead you into the most
fertile plains of the world; you will find there great cities and rich
provinces; there you will reap honour, glory and riches. Soldiers of
Italy, will you lack courage?" This frank appeal to the baser motives
that sway men's minds, this open avowal of a personal ambition, was
the beginning of the end of Jacobinism in France. Soon the wealth of
Italy streamed into the bare coffers of the Directory at
Paris:--20,000,000 of francs from Lombardy, 12,000,000 from Parma and
Modena, 35,000,000 from the Papal States, an equally large sum from
Tuscany; one hundred finest horses of Lombardy to the five Directors,
"to replace the sorry nags that now draw your carriages"; convoys of
priceless manuscripts and sculpture and pictures to adorn Parisian
galleries. So persistent were these raids on the collections of art in
Italy that Napoleon is known there to this day as _il gran ladrone_
and the chief duty of the new French officials in Italy, said Lucien
Bonaparte, was to supervise the packing of pictures and statues for
Paris. No less than 5233 of these works of art were confiscated by the
Allies in 1815, and returned to their former owners.

In less than a decade the rusty old stage properties and the baubles
of monarchy were furbished anew, sacred oil from the little phial of
Rheims anointed the brow of a new dynast, and a Roman Pontiff blessed
the diadem with which a once poor, pensioned, disaffected Corsican
patriot crowned himself lord of France in Notre Dame. The old
pomposities of a court came strutting back to