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Carnot increased the number because he had no men who had proved their fitness for the direction of very large forces. He meant that his armies should be everywhere sufficient, but in Belgium they were to be overwhelming. That was the point of danger, and there a great body of Austrians, Dutch, English, and Hanoverians had been collected.
But the motives which, before Fructidor, animated Carnot and Barthelemy, the motives which, after Fructidor, animated Colchen and Maret, do not animate the Fructidoreans. France is of but little consequence to them; they are concerned only for their faction, for power, and for their own persons.
Possessing the full confidence of Carnot and almost certainly of the entire Directory, the easily won diplomat revealed to his lean, long-haired, ill-clad, penetrating, and facile inquisitor the precious contents of the governmental mind.
M. Hippolyte Carnot was a man of high character, who during a long life had filled many public offices. He was also a man of letters, and wrote a Life of Barère, a book that will be best remembered by having come under the lash of Macaulay. Every cut inflicted upon Barère tells, and we delight in its severity.
Russia saw her own advantage in the weakening either of Turkey or of the central European powers, and became the silent ally of Austria in this policy. The great armies of the French republic had been created by Carnot, with the aid of his able lieutenant, Dubois de Crancé; they were organized and directed by the unassisted genius of the former.
In October of the same year, Bonaparte, as a mark of his satisfaction, sent him to present to the Directory the numerous colours which the army of Italy had conquered; from whom he received in return a pair of pistols, with a fraternal hug from Carnot. On his return to Italy he was, for the first time, employed by his chief in a political capacity.
In winter the band played in the Place Carnot, but on this soft day of early spring the concert was announced for the gardens beloved by the people of Sidi-bel-Abbés. They were beautiful, but to Max it seemed the beauty of sadness; and even there, outside the wall which dead Legionnaires had built, everything spoke of the Legion.
Grouchy was at Wavre, fighting the Prussian corps of Thielmann, which he seems to have mistaken for the entire Prussian army. ABDICATION OF NAPOLEON: ST. HELENA. On the 22nd of June Napoleon again abdicated in favor of his son. Carnot was for a dictatorship. The French Assembly, with La Fayette at its head, insisted on the abdication. On July 7 Bluecher and Wellington entered Paris.
The eminently informed Herault de Sechelles was the patron and confidant of the exterminating reforms of Carrier; and Carnot, when the mode of reforming by noyades and fusillades was debated at the Committee, pleaded the cause of Carrier, whom he describes as a good, nay, an excellent patriot.
Bonaparte's answer to this proposition of the Directory was, that if the power were to be divided, he could only refuse the half of this division, and would retire entirely from command. He wrote to Carnot: "It is a matter of indifference to me whether I carry on the war here or elsewhere. To serve my country, and deserve from posterity one page of history, is all my ambition!
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