In the spring of 1799 the Republic was still in existence, the Government consisting of an executive Directory of five members, and two Chambers called 'Conseil des Anciens' and 'Conseil des Cinq Cents.' My father was intimate with many conspicuous people; I met at his house such men as Bernadotte, Joseph and Lucien Bonaparte, Napper Tandy (the leader of the Irish refugees), General Joubert, Cambacérès. In my mother's company I often saw Madame Bonaparte, Madame de Condorcet, and occasionally Madame de Staël.

A month after I came to Paris a general election took place. My father, tired of the incessant worries of political life, and not liking to be debarred from a share in the great deeds of our armies, declined to stand again, and expressed his wish to reenter active service. The course of events suited his purpose well. With the new Chambers came a change of Ministry. Bernadotte became War Minister, and promised my father a post with the Army of the Rhine. As he was about to start for Mainz, the news came of the defeat of the Army of Italy under General Seherer; and Joubert, then in command of the 17th division at Paris, was sent by the Directory to replace him. The vacant command, one of political importance, and requiring a capable and strong man, was offered to my father. As his chief reason for resigning his seat in the Chamber had been his desire for active service, he at first declined; but on Bernadotte showing him his appointment already signed, with the remark that as a friend he begged him, and as a Minister ordered him, to accept it, my father yielded. On the following day he established himself at the headquarters of the Paris division. The house has now been pulled down, and several houses stand on its site. It was on the Quai Voltaire, at the corner of the Rue des Saints-Pères.

My father had appointed as chief of the staff his old friend Colonel Menard. I was delighted with all the military bustle which surrounded him: the head-quarters always full of officers of all ranks; a squadron of cavalry, a battalion of infantry, and six guns permanently stationed in front of the door; orderlies coming and going. I thought it much more amusing than the themes and versions of Sorèze.

At that time there was much excitement in France, and particularly in Paris: we were on the eve of a catastrophe. The Russians, under the celebrated Souvaroff, had entered Italy, and had severely defeated our army at Novi. Joubert, t he commander-in-chief, had been killed; Souvaroff was marching on our army of Switzerland, where Massena was in command. We had few troops on the Rhine. The peace conference which had been begun at Rastadt had been dissolved and our plenipotentiaries assassinated. 1 The whole of Germany was arming anew against us; the Directory had fallen into discredit, and, having neither troops nor money to levy them, in order to procure funds, had just decreed a forced loan, which had completed the measure of its unpopularity . Our last hopes were in Masséna; he alone could stop the Russians and prevent the invasion of France. The Directory sent despatch after despatch ordering him to give battle; but, like a modern Fabius, not wishing to risk the safety of his country, he waited till some false move on the part of the enemy should offer a chance of beating him.

Here I may relate an anecdote which shows on how small a matter the destiny of a state and the reputation of commanders sometimes turn. The Directory, irritated at seeing that Massena did not obey their repeated order to give battle, resolved to recall him. They feared, however, that the commander-in-chief would take no notice of their recall, and would simply put the despatch in his pocket, if they forwarded it by an ordinary messenger, and accordingly instructed the War Minister to send to Switzerland a staff officer commissioned to hand the order of recall to Massena in public, and to give to Chérin, his chief of the staff, a commission conferring on him the command of the army. Bernadotte imparted these arrangements in confidence to my father, who expressed disapproval of them, explaining how dangerous it was, on the eve of a decisive affair, to deprive the Army of Switzerland of a general in whom it had confidence, in order to replace him by one who had more experience in secretary's work than in manœuvring troops. Besides this the position of the armies might change. It would therefore be necessary to entrust with this mission a man capable of judging the state of affairs, and who was not likely to hand the order of recall to Massena immediately before or during a battle. He persuaded the Minister to entrust the duty to M. Gault, his aide-de-camp, who should go to Switzerland under the ostensible pretext of ascertaining if the contractors had delivered the stipulated number of horses, and should be authorised to withhold or to hand over the order of recall to Massena and the commission to General Chérin according as he should see fit under the circumstances. It was a good deal to confide to the judgment of a mere captain; but M. Gault did not disappoint the good opinion formed of him. He reached the head- quarters of the army five days before the battle of Zurich, and found the troops so full of confidence in Massena, and Massena himself so calm and so firm, that he felt no doubt of his success. He maintained, therefore, the most profound silence with regard to his secret powers, and after being present at the battle of Zurich he returned to Paris without any suspicion on Massena's part that this modest captain had had in his hands the power of depriving him of the glory of winning one of the finest victories of the age.

The ill-judged recall of Massena would probably have involved the defeat of General Chérin, the invasion of France by the Russians, and by the Germans after them, and ultimately, perhaps, a European overturn. Chérin was killed in the battle without ever suspecting the intentions of the Government with regard to himself. The victory of Zurich, while preventing an invasion, gave the Directory only a momentary credit. The Government was breaking down on all sides; no one had any confidence in it. The finances had collapsed, Vendee and Brittany were in complete insurrection, there were no troops in the country, the South was in a blaze, the Chambers were quarrelling with each other and with the Executive--in short, the state was on the brink of ruin.

Every politician was aware that great changes were necessary and inevitable, but opinions differed as to the remedies to be employed. The old Republicans, who stood by the Constitution of the year 3, which was still in force, held that to save the country it was enough to change some members of the Directory. Two of them were accordingly dismissed and replaced by Gohier and Moulins; but this was but a feeble palliative for the calamities under which the country was on the point of sinking, and the anarchical agitations continued. Therefore several of the Directors, among them the celebrated Sieyès, together with many of the Deputies and the vast majority of the public, held that in order to save France the reins of government should be put into the hands of some strong man who had already rendered illustrious services to the state. It was obvious also that such a chief could only be a soldier with a great influence in the army, who should be able to rekindle the enthusiasm of the nation, and so to restore victory to our flag, and to hold off the foreigners who were ready to cross our frontier.

The one man who satisfied these conditions was General Bonaparte; but at this moment he was in Egypt, and the need was pressing. Joubert had just been killed in Italy. Massena was illustrious for his many victories, an excellent general at the head of an army in the field, but in no sense a statesman. Bernadotte appeared to have neither the talents nor the character required to heal the ills of France. The reformers, therefore, turned their thoughts towards Moreau, though his character was weak and his undecided conduct on the 18th of Fructidor 2 inspired some fear as to his aptitude for governing. It is certain, however, that, failing a better man, it was proposed to him to put himself at the head of the party which wished to overthrow the Directory, and the chief post in the state was offered to him, with the title of President or Consul. Moreau, though a good soldier and brave enough, lacked political courage, and possibly distrusted his own ability to manage affairs so disordered as those of France then were. Being, moreover, selfish and indolent, he cared very little for the future of his country, and preferred the tranquillity of private life to the worry of politics. At any rate, he refused the offer, and retired to his estate of Grosbois to amuse himself with his favourite field sports.

Those who wished to change the form of government had, therefore, no alternative but to seek the co-operation of General Bonaparte. Sieyès, who was the chief mover in the scheme, was President of the Directory; and his calculation was that if he could get Bonaparte into power, the general, while nominally the head of the Government, would confine his attention to military organisation, leaving to himself the real direction of affairs. As the sequel showed, he mistook his man; but this was his thought when, acting through the Corsican Deputy, Salicetti, he sent a trusty secret agent to Bonaparte to inform him of the unsatisfactory state of affairs, and invite him to return and put himself at the head of the Government. Of his colleagues in the Directory, he found little difficulty in persuading Roger-Ducos that in the circumstances it was to their own interest no less than to that of the public to bring about the formation of a strong Government, in which their places would be less precarious; but the other three, Barras, Gohier, and Moulins, were unwilling to part with their power. Sieyès and those of his party resolved, therefore, to act without them, and to sacrifice them if affairs turned out as they planned.

Even with Bonaparte at hand it would be a difficult and dangerous business to overthrow the Directory without the support of the army, and more especially of the Paris division. Sieyès tried accordingly to win over Bernadotte and my father, first sounding them through the help of various Deputies who were at once their friends and his partisans. Later on I learnt that my father answered the half-advances of the astute Sieyès to the effect that, while he was well aware that the state of the country required prompt remedies, he had sworn to maintain the Constitution of the year 3, and he was not going to use his authority or the troops of his division to bring about the overthrow of that Constitution; after which he waited on Sieyès, resigned his command of the Paris division, and requested to have a division on active service. Sieyès was glad enough to get a man of my father's character out of the way before he could spoil the plot by strict adherence to his duty, and hastened to accede to his request. Bernadotte resigned at the same time, and was replaced by Dubois-Crancé.

There was some little delay before a man could be found to take my father's place; ultimately Sieyès gave the command to General Lefebvre, who was in Paris on leave, having been wounded with the Army of the Rhine. Lefebvre had been a sergeant in the Gardes Françaises; he was a brave soldier, and, as a general, good at executing distinct orders; but he had no judgment or knowledge of politics, so that a dexterous application of words like 'glory,' 'country,' ' victory' was sure to make him a willing tool. He was just the man that Sieyès wanted for commandant in Paris; and so sure was he that when the time came Lefebvre would not resist the influence of Bonaparte and his own cajoleries, that he did not even take the trouble to let him know what was expected of him. The 18th of Brumaire showed that he judged right. Lefebvre put his troops at the disposal of Bonaparte when he overthrew the Directory and established the Consulate; and earned thereby, in later days, the high favour of the Emperor, the title of Marshal Duke of Dantzig, and heaps of wealth. I have sketched these events to explain what took my father to Italy: a move which had important results both to him and to me.]

After handing over his command to General Lefebvre my father returned to the house in the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, and attended only to the preparations for his departure to Italy.

Very trifling causes often influence human destiny. My father and mother were very intimate with M. Barairon, Registrar-General. One day they were going to breakfast with him, and took me with them. The conversation turned on my father's departure, and on the good conduct of my two younger brothers; finally, M. Barairon inquired, 'What is Marcellin to be?' 'A sailor,' answered my father; 'Captain Sibille has undertaken him, and is going to carry him off to Toulon.' Whereupon good Mme. Barairon (I have always been most grateful to her for it) remarked to my father that the French navy was utterly disorganised, that the finances were in too bad a state to allow of its being quickly reformed, and that, moreover, its inferiority to the English fleet would keep it for some time shut up in the ports. She wondered that he, a general officer of the land forces, should put his son in the navy instead of in a regiment where his father's name and services would be sure to make him welcome. She ended by saying, 'It would be better for you to take him to Italy than send him to be bored to death on board a vessel blockaded in Toulon harbour.' My father had been for the moment captivated by Captain Sibille's proposal, but was too clear-sighted to fail to see the force of Mme. Barairon s arguments. He turned to me saying, 'Well, will you come to Italy with me and serve in the army?' I threw my arms round his neck and accepted with joy. My mother was equally glad, for she had been opposed to my father's first plan.

There was then no 'Ecole militaire,' and the only way to enter the army was in the ranks. My father took me straight to the office of the first arrondissement in the Place Beauvau and enlisted me in the 1st Regiment of Hussars (the old 'Bercheny'), which formed part of the division which he was about to command in Italy. This was September 3, 1799. He next took me to the tailor who supplied the Ministry of War with patterns and ordered for me a complete uniform and equipment. So I was actually a hussar; I was beside myself with joy. My joy was, however, alloyed by the thought that it would increase the vexation of my brother Adolphe, who was two years older than I and was still stuck at the college like a child. I decided that I would tell him of my enlistment and at the same moment inform him that I was going to spend in his company the month which would pass before my departure. I therefore begged my father to allow me to settle myself near Adolphe at Sainte-Barbe until the day when we should have to set out for Italy. He understood the motive of my request and approved it. The next day he took me himself. You may imagine my entry into the college! It was recreation time, but all games ceased on the spot, and the pupils, old and young, crowded round me, contending for the honour of touching my accoutrements. The hussar had a complete success. When the day of my departure came I took leave of my mother and my three brothers with grief, tempered though it was by my delight at entering on the career of arms.