ABSTRACT
The Directory was not inclined to peace, not because it wished to extend French rule beyond the Rhine and the Alps but because it believed war useful for the propagation of the republican system. General Bonaparte was certainly less serious and less sincere than the Directory in the love of republican ideas, but he was much more shrewd in estimating a situation. There was no money to transport an army to Egypt, and it was particularly reprehensible of Bonaparte to arouse the Directory to invade Switzerland in order to seize the treasury of Berne, which two hundred years of prudence and economy had accumulated. The most potent magic that Bonaparte used to establish his power was the terror the mere name of Jacobinism inspired, though anyone capable of reflection knew perfectly well that this scourge could not reappear in France. General Bonaparte decreed a constitution in which there were no safeguards.
