The careers of Sulla and Julius Caesar were subjects of far the greatest speculation for Bonaparte when he thought about his own destiny. They shared his genius and they also shared the spirit of his time. The ideas which inspired Bonaparte to prepare and execute the coup d’Etat of the eighteenth Brumaire were not yet fully developed. The art of capturing power seemed to him an essentially military art in which the tactics of warfare were applied to a political struggle, and in which military manoeuvres turned into a civilian contest.

The strategy used in the conquest of Rome was not a proof of the political but of the military genius common to Sulla and Julius Caesar. The obstacles they had to overcome in order to capture Rome were exclusively military. They had to fight armies and not political assemblies. The landing at Brindisi and the crossing of the Rubicon did not usher in the coup d’Etat: both were pure strategy and of no political importance. Sulla and Caesar, Hannibal and Belisair, all had the same strategic objective: the capture of a town. Those men were like great captains for whom the art of warfare held no secret. Sulla’s military genius, like that of Caesar, was much greater than his political sense. Whether they landed at Brindisi or crossed the Rubicon, their campaigns were not, of course, entirely limited by a strategic plan, and there was an underlying policy in every movement of their legions. The art of warfare includes a hundred minor policies and far-reaching plans. Turenne, Charles XII, Foch, indeed every captain is the instrument of his country’s policy and his strategy must conform to the political interests of the State. Wars have always been fought for political ends and they are only one aspect of the nation’s politics. History offers no example of a captain who practised the art of war for its own sake and yet there are no amateurs among these captains, great or small, not even among the Italian Condottiere. It was Giovanni Acuto (John Hawkwood), the English Condottiere engaged by the Florentine Republic, who said “One goes to war to live and not to die,” which was neither the wit of a dilettante nor the motto of a mercenary. His saying contains the whole spirit and justification of war. Caesar, Frederick the Great, Nelson, or Bonaparte could well have chosen it for a motto.

When Sulla and Caesar set out to conquer Rome, they naturally had a political end in view, but we must give unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s and unto Sulla his due. Neither ever made a coup d’Etat. The famous campaigns by which these two great captains captured the Republic were further removed from a coup d’Etat than any common seditious conspiracy. It took Sulla a year to fight his way along the road from Brindisi to Rome, or in other words, to crown his revolutionary attempt with final success after its beginnings in Brindisi. That space of time was too lengthy for a coup d’Etat. Everyone knows that the art of warfare has its rules and the exceptions to its rule: the latter only were obeyed by Sulla. As for the rules and exceptions of politics, both Sulla and Caesar only began to follow them, after entering Rome. Even then, they obeyed the exceptions rather than the rules, since that is customary and characteristic of all captains once they begin to make new laws and a new order in the towns they have captured.

In the plains of Lombardy in 1797, a year full of promise for an unscrupulous General who would be bold rather than ambitious, Napoleon must have begun to feel that the examples of Sulla and Caesar might prove disastrous to him. He saw that Hoche’s mistakes in carelessly offering to make the coup d’Etat for the Directorate, when compared with those of Sulla and Caesar, were much less serious. On July 14th, in a proclamation to the Italian soldiers, Bonaparte warned the Clichy Club that he was getting ready to cross the Alps and march on Paris in order to protect the Constitution, liberty, Government, and the Republicans. His words seem to spell his own anxiety lest he should be anticipated by Hoche’s impatience rather than his secret passion to vie with Caesar. The chief point was to keep on friendly terms with the Directorate and not to sympathise too openly with its opponents.

As early as 1797 Napoleon began to see that the proper instrument for capturing the State must be the army. In appearance this instrument must be subject to the laws, and in the use of it legality must not be violated. It is in this attention to legality that we find Bonaparte arriving at a notion of the capture of the State widely different from his antique models—those illustrious but dangerous examples.

Amid the many actors in the affair of Brumaire, Bonaparte is the one who appears least at his ease.

Since his return from Egypt he has been continually pushing himself forward and exciting turn by turn admiration, hatred, ridicule and suspicion. He has compromised himself needlessly. Siéyés and Talleyrand are disturbed at his mistakes. What can he be after? Why does he not let the others do anything? Siéyés and Lucien Bonaparte have their attention steady upon the whole plan, which is fixed down to the minutest details. Siéyés, scrupulous and careful, considers that the State cannot be captured in a single day and that Bonaparte’s impatience is a great danger; and his taste for rhetoric is another, adds Talleyrand. Why drag in Caesar and Cromwell in this manner? It is Bonaparte alone who is in the case. If legal appearances are to be respected, if the State is to be captured not by way of a mere camp revolution or a police plot, but by parliamentary methods with the complicity of the Ancients and of the Five Hundred, and along the lines of delicate and complex procedure, then Bonaparte simply must not persist in certain of his attitudes. A victorious general about to seize the power in the State should not go begging for applause, nor lose his time in intrigues.

Siéyés had foreseen all possible difficulties and taken advance measures against them, even learning to ride a horse for the purposes of triumph or of disaster as the case might be. Meanwhile Lucien Bonaparte having been elected President of the Council of the Five Hundred proposed the names of four of his own intimates for the post of Inspectors of the Assembly House. For in a parliamentary revolution even such attendants may be of importance. The attendants of the Assembly House of the Ancients meanwhile had been got hold of by Siéyés. A pretext was now needed for convoking both Houses for a meeting outside Paris at St. Cloud—some plot, some Jacobin conspiracy, some public danger. Siéyés set the police on producing such a pretext: the result was the “terrible Jacobin conspiracy” by which the Republic was officially declared to be endangered. So the Assemblies would quietly meet at St. Cloud, the plan would be realised in all its details.

Bonaparte fell in with the views of his friends. His manner henceforth was more reserved, his intrigues more prudently conducted and his self-confidence more restrained. He had gradually come to the conclusion that he was the deus ex machina of the scene, and was thus convinced that all would happen precisely as he desired. None the less it was the others who led him through the complexities of the moment; Siéyés held his hand and showed him the way. For after all Bonaparte was nothing but a soldier as yet; his political genius was to be revealed only after the eighteenth Brumaire. All the great captains Sulla, Caesar and Bonaparte no less than them, were no more than soldiers during the preparation of executing the coup d’Etat. They may make great efforts to retain forms of legality and to show a loyal respect for the State: but that is only one sign the more of the illegality of their proceedings and of their contempt for the State. They dismount from horseback to take part in the political struggle, but they forget to remove their spurs. Lucien Bonaparte meanwhile was watching his brother with a close attention for every gesture, nay for the most secret of his thoughts. And he smiled, with a touch of bitterness already, feeling more certain of his brother than of himself. All was now ready. What more could happen to change the course of events and to frustrate the coup d’Etat?

Bonaparte’s plan had one fundamental error, the respect for legality. From the beginning Siéyés had objected to the notion that the plot could be kept within the limits of the law. In his view much allowance must be made for unforeseen eventualities, which are always the occasion for the finest displays of revolutionary violence. It is always dangerous to be forced down a narrow passage. Besides, to this philosopher of law the notion of a legal coup d’Etat seemed absurd. But Bonaparte was not to be shaken. He would take risks sooner than infringe legal forms. In the night of Brumaire the seventeenth and eighteenth Si¢yés warned him there was trouble in the suburbs and that he would be well advised to arrest a couple of dozen Deputies; Bonaparte refused to countenance the illegal act. His plan was for a parliamentary rebellion. He would capture the Civil power without breaking the law or using violence, and when Fouché offered him his services he answered that he had no need for the police; his prestige, the glory of his name would suffice. So in all simplicity he believed.

In fact however the impetuous General, the rhetorical warrior had no notion how to carry on within the bounds of strict legality. As soon as he appeared on the morning of the eighteenth Brumaire before the Council of the Ancients he quite forgot that his part was to offer his victorious sword for the service of the representatives of the people. He quite forgot that he must present himself to the Ancients not as a second Caesar but as a defender of the Constitution against Jacobin plotters. He must be no more than a General charged by the Council of the Ancients with ensuring the peaceful transfer of the Assembly to St. Cloud, and he must patiently play this minor part in a parliamentary comedy in which the Assembly instead would be the principal actor. But the speech he made to the Assembly of spectacled middle-class citizens, as he stood among his officers gay with gold and silver braid seemed to have been put in his mouth by some unfriendly deity.

He could speak nothing but mock heroic sentiment derived from his own hasty studies of the enterprises of Alexander and Caesar: “What we want is a republic founded upon true liberty, civil liberty, representation of the people—and I swear we shall have it.” The officers around him echoed the oath. The Ancients meanwhile looked on in silent astonishment. There was nothing to prevent any member of this tame assembly, no matter how insignificant, from rising to attack Bonaparte in the name of Liberty, the Republic, the Constitution, those grand words, so empty, by that time, of meaning, but still so dangerous for the purposes of rhetoric. Siéyés had foreseen this danger also. During the night the attendants of the Assembly had destroyed the summons to the meeting addressed to Deputies of doubtful views. But still Bonaparte was in peril from insignificant individuals who had escaped Siéyés’ notice. In fact Deputy Garat arose to speak. “None of these soldiers,” he declared, “has taken the oath to the Constitution.” Bonaparte turned pale beneath the reproof. But the President intervened in time and the meeting was suspended amid shouts of “Long live the Republic.”

Bonaparte revealed himself yet more fully in the course of reviewing his troops in the Park of Tuileries. In a high-pitched voice he had spoken frankly to Bottot as he left the Assembly of the Ancients, and now his speech to his troops was defiant and menacing. He felt sure of himself. When however Fouché insisted that the most turbulent Deputies must be arrested, Bonaparte refused to give the order, saying it needless now that everything was going so well. A few more formalities, and the capture of the State would be completed. Believing this, Bonaparte was obviously out of his depth amid the dangerous currents of the moment. On the next day the nineteenth Brumaire at St. Cloud Siéyés himself began to be aware of all the mistakes that had been made, and to show alarm for the future, but Bonaparte continued to show such confidence in his prestige and in the prospects of the plan and such contempt for the lawyers of the Assembly, as he called them, that Talleyrand wondered whether to call him simple or stupid.

Siéyés had conceived the whole plan in terms of legal forms and the rules of parliamentary procedure; yet he had left out of account certain practical details. Why was the Assembly convoked at St. Cloud on the nineteenth Brumaire and not on the eighteenth? Why were these twenty-four hours left to the opponents to study the situation and to organize resistance? And why if the St. Cloud meeting was to be delayed to the nineteenth were the two houses convoked for so late an hour as two o’clock instead of midday? The Deputies had two hours in which to exchange their impressions, their views and their projects and to agree upon joint action against attempted fraud or violence. The Five Hundred determined to put up a fight. They were exasperated at the sight of the soldiers massed all round them. They rushed up and down the passages and courtyards asking one another why they had agreed to leave Paris, and demanding names and details of the alleged Jacobin conspiracy. Siéyés had forgotten to forge proofs of the plot. He perceived some of the Deputies smiling, some of them pale with excitement. He saw that the situation was far from clear, that all might turn upon a single word or gesture. If he had only listened to Fouché—but now it was too late, they must trust to chance, for there was nothing else to trust. These were novel tactics for bringing off a revolution.

At two o’clock the Council of the Ancients assembled. Siéyés’ plans were checked at the very outset. The respectable citizens were in a frenzy; fortunately the tumult was such that there could be no speeches. At the Orangery the Five Hundred received their President, Lucien Bonaparte, with a storm of oaths, accusations and menaces. All was lost, thought Siéyés, and with a pale face made for the door to escape the tumult. He had arranged for a carriage to await him at the edge of the Park in case he should need to escape. A carriage was more comfortable and safer than a horse. The prudent Siéyés was not likely to neglect such a detail in drawing up his plans for capturing the State. Nor was he the only uncomfortable person during those minutes while Bonaparte and his friends, in the apartment on the first floor, impatiently awaited the votes of the Assemblies. If the Ancients rejected the decree of dissolution, if they nominated three temporary Consuls and determined to reform the Constitution, what was to become of the revolutionary plan so minutely designed by Siéyés in all its details? Siéyés for that eventuality had planned nothing more than escape in a carriage.

Up to that moment Bonaparte concerned above all to keep to the form of legality and to act within the limits of parliamentary procedure had behaved like a modern Liberal. And in this he has been the originator of a tradition. All the soldiers who subsequently have sought to capture civil power have been faithful to this rule up to the last moment, that is to say, up to the moment when violence becomes necessary. The Liberalism of military men is always dangerous, today more than ever.

As soon as he saw that Siéyés’ plans were checked beyond hope by the opposition of the Ancients and the Five Hundred, Bonaparte determined to put Parliament to the test by appearing in person. This was still, in a manner, a Liberal method of procedure, though reinforced by violence—Liberalism as interpreted by a soldier. At the sight of Bonaparte the Ancients calmed down. But the disciple of Caesar and Cromwell was once more betrayed by his eloquence. His speech, listened to at first in respectful silence, was punctuated later by murmurs of disapproval. When he pronounced the words, “If I am a traitor you may each of you play the part of Brutus,” there was laughter in the recesses of the Hall. The orator was put out, hesitated, muttered and then resumed in a loud voice, “Remember that I am backed by the God War, the God of Fortune.” The Deputies arose and surrounded the platform: they were laughing. “General, you don’t know what you’re saying,” murmured the faithful Bourienni and seized him by the arm. Bonaparte allowed himself to be led away from the Hall.

A few moments later he crossed the threshold of the Orangery escorted by four grenadiers and several officers. The Five Hundred received him with yells: “Outlaw, tyrant, down with him.” They stormed him with insults and even blows. The four grenadiers closed round him to protect him while the officers made a way for him through the tumult. It was Gardanne who succeeded in carrying him out of the Hall. The only thing now, thought Siéyés, was flight: the only hope now, said Bonaparte to his friends, was force. In the Hall of the Five Hundred a decree of outlawry was put to the vote. In a few minutes the successor of Caesar and Cromwell would be outlawed and done for.

Bonaparte mounted his horse and confronted his troops. “To arms,” he shouted. The soldiers replied with cheers but no more. This was the most typical scene of the famous two days. Distraught and trembling with rage Bonaparte looked around him. The hero of Arcole had not succeeded in carrying with him a single battalion. Had Lucien not arrived at that moment all would have been lost. It was Lucien who got the soldiers moving and saved the situation, while Murat unsheathing his sword led the Grenadiers to the assault of the Five Hundred.

Later, recalling the pallor of the successor of Caesar and Cromwell at that moment Montron was to protest that the General had misplayed his part. Montron (“A Talleyrand on horseback,” he was called by Roedeor) was all his life convinced that the hero of the pages of Plutarch had at St. Cloud for a moment trembled with fear, and that any little obscure citizen, any one of the lawyers of the Parliament, might without danger to himself during those two famous days have frustrated the destiny of Bonaparte and saved the Republic.