that the French had lost in the unhappy Italian campaign of 1799:  at all events he had done enough to crown his own name with unrivalled splendour, and to show that the French troops were once more what they had used to be—­when he was in the field to command them.  He had another motive for closing with the propositions of General Melas.  It was of urgent importance to regain Genoa, ere an English army, which he knew was on its voyage to that port, could reach its destination.

On the 17th of June Napoleon 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 ratification of any peace in