Though Napoleon was accompanied, as the others had been, by the commissioners of the Convention in his campaign in Italy, they were men of an ordinary type, and he knew how to get the better of them. Moreover, he was extremely astute in his dealings with his possible accusers, and played a definite political rôle. He became, then, the favourite of Barras, the most influential of the Directorate, and finally, thanks to Barras and Carnot, obtained command of the Italian Army, which was the height of his ambition. Here he was able to give the measure of his military genius. His ardour and audacity were equal to every situation, and his popularity rose to such heights with the masses dazzled by his victories, and he inspired such confidence amongst the Convention itself, that he conquered his independence of action. Under the former tyrannous rule of the Convention the strategist was a mere puppet in the hands of the Government; Napoleon was not long in restoring all the old power to the General and giving to strategy its full amplitude, for he was able, as he rose to be Consul Life Consul, and finally Emperor—all in four years—to control the political destinies of France, and thus add to the military arm the civil power, and make the former serve the ends of his foreign and internal policy. It is well to remember that Napoleon owed much of his advancement—his promotion at the age of twenty-seven to the rank of Commander-in-Chief—to his clever utilisation of the social disorder which followed the Revolution, and he obtained that liberty of which he had need to beat the enemy, as Colonel Dupuis points out, by his adroit relations with the Government. His personal prestige soon placed him above those who had given him the power. Finally, strong in his immense successes he threw off the remaining shackles and conquered the right to act as he thought best. He himself became the Executive. He was in the enviable situation of a man who gives orders to himself.