He found matters at home in great confusion. The wars had been mismanaged, Italy was almost lost, and the government, in consequence, was in very bad odor. The revolution of the 18th Brumaire followed (November 9, 1799), when the legislature was forcibly closed, and a provisional executive of three consuls, Sieyes, Roger-Duclos, and Bonaparte, formed to draw up a new constitution. This was promulgated on December 13th; the executive was vested in three consuls, Bonaparte, Cambaceres, and Lebrun, of whom Bonaparte was nominated First Consul for ten years. He was practically paramount, the two remaining 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