, had
his headquarters at Augsburg, and was in condition either to reinforce
the French in Italy, or to march into the heart of the Austrian states,
when the success of Buonaparte's own expedition rendered either movement
unnecessary.

The Chief Consul had resolved upon conducting, in person, one of the
most adventurous enterprises recorded in the history of war. The
formation of the army of reserve at Dijon was a mere deceit. A numerous
staff, indeed, assembled in that town; and the preparation of the
munitions of war proceeded there as elsewhere with the utmost energy:
but the troops collected at Dijon were few; and--it being universally
circulated and believed, that they were the force meant to re-establish
the once glorious army of Italy, by marching to the headquarters of
Massena at Genoa,--the Austrians received the accounts of their numbers
and appearance, not only with indifference but with derision.
Buonaparte, meanwhile, had spent three months in recruiting his armies
throughout the interior of France; and the troops, by means of which it
was his purpose to change the face of affairs beyond the Alps, were
already marching by different routes, each detachment in total ignorance
of the other's destination, upon the territory of Switzerland. To that
quarter Buonaparte had already sent forward Berthier, the most
confidential of his military friends, and other officers of the highest
skill, with orders to reconnoitre the various passes in the great Alpine
chain, and make every other preparation for the movement, of which they
alone were, as yet, in the secret.

The statesmen who ventured, even after Brumaire, to oppose the
investiture of Buonaparte with the whole power of the state, had, at
first (as we have seen) attempted to confine him to the military
department; or so arrange it that his orders, as to civil affairs,
should, at least, not be absolute. Failing in this, they then proposed
that the Chief Consul should be incapable of heading an army in the
field, without abdicating previously his magistracy; and to their
surprise, Napoleon at once acceded to a proposition which, it had been
expected, would rouse his indignation. It now turned out how much the
saving clause in question was worth. The Chief Consul could not, indeed,
be general-in-chief of an army; but he could appoint whom he pleased to
that post; and there was no law against his being present, in his own
person, as a spectator of the campaign. It