returned in triumph to Milan, where he
formally re-established the Cisalpine Republic, and was present at a
festival of high state and magnificence. He then gave the command of the
army of Italy to Massena; and appointed Jourdan French minister in
Piedmont--in other words, governor of that dominion; and set out on his
journey to Paris. He halted at Lyons to lay the first stone of the new
_Place de Bellecour_, erected on the ruins of a great square destroyed
by the Jacobins during the revolutionary madness; and reached the
Tuileries on the 2nd of July. He had set out for Switzerland on the 6th
of May. Two months had not elapsed, and in that brief space what wonders
had been accomplished! The enthusiasm of the Parisians exceeded all that
has been recorded of any triumphal entry. Night after night every house
was illuminated; and day following day the people stood in crowds around
the palace, contented if they could but catch one glimpse of the
preserver of France.

The effusion of joy was the greater--because the tale of victory came on
a people prepared for other tidings. About noontide on the 14th of June,
when the French had been driven out of Marengo, and were apparently in
full and disastrous retreat, a commercial traveller left the field, and
arriving, after a rapid journey, in Paris, announced that Buonaparte had
been utterly defeated by Melas. It is said that the ill-wishers of the
First Consul immediately set on foot an intrigue for removing him from
the government, and investing Carnot with the chief authority. It is
not doubtful that many schemes of hostility had been agitated during
Napoleon's absence; or that, amidst all the clamour and splendour of his
triumphant reception in Paris, he wore a gloomy brow; nor has any one
disputed that, from this time, he regarded the person of Carnot with
jealousy and aversion.

The tidings of the great battle, meanwhile, kindled the emulation of the
Rhenish army; and they burned with the earnest desire to do something
worthy of being recorded in the same page with Marengo. But the Chief
Consul, when he granted the armistice to Melas, had extended it to the
armies on the German frontier likewise; and Moreau, consequently, could
not at once avail himself of the eagerness of his troops. The
negotiations which ensued, however, were unsuccessful. The emperor,
subsidised as he had been, must have found it very difficult to resist
the remonstrances of England against the ratific