g consuls being ciphers, and the other institutions being so
organized as to concentrate power in the executive. Sieyes became
president of the Senate. The governmental crisis being settled,
energetic steps were taken with regard to the civil war in the west. A
proclamation was issued promising religious toleration at the same
time that decided military action was taken, and these measures were
so successful that all was quiet at home by the end of February, 1800.
Then Napoleon turned his attention abroad. He made overtures for peace
to England and Austria, now the only belligerents, as he wished to
lull suspicion by posing as the friend of peace, not as a military
ruler; but he inwardly rejoiced when they rejected his overtures.

The situation of the belligerents on the Continent was this: the Army
of the Rhine under Moreau, more than one hundred thousand strong, was
distributed along the Rhine from the Lake of Constance to Alsace,
opposed to Kray, whose head-quarters were at Donaueschingen in Baden;
while Massena, with the Army of Italy, was on the Riviera and at
Genoa, opposed to an Austrian army under Melas. Napoleon intended to
gain himself the chief glory of the campaign; so, giving Moreau orders
to cross the Rhine, but not to advance beyond a certain limit, and
leaving Massena to make head as best he could against Melas, with the
result that he was besieged in Genoa and reduced to the last
extremity, he prepared secretly an army of reserve near the Swiss
frontier, to the command of which Berthier was ostensibly appointed.
Outside, and even inside France, this army of reserve was looked upon
as a chimera. Moreau crossed the Rhine on April 24th, and drove Kray
to Ulm, but was there checked by Napoleon's instructions, according to
which he also sent a division to co-operate with the army of reserve.
Napoleon himself went to Geneva on May 9th, and assuming command of
this army crossed the St. Bernard, and reached the plains of Italy
before Melas had convinced himself of the existence even of the army
of reserve, and while his troops were scattered from Genoa to the Var.
Napoleon's obvious course would now have been to move straight on
Genoa, relieve Massena, and beat in detail as many of Melas's troops
as he could encounter. But this would not have been a sufficiently
brilliant triumph, as the bulk of the Austrian army might have
escaped; and trusting in his star, he resolved to stake the existence
of his army on a g