Not without a purpose did Napoleon so word his proclamation. There had been an understanding between himself and the Directory that his army must be self-sustaining; he must forage on the enemy as did Wallenstein in the Thirty Years’ War. The government had exerted itself to the utmost for Napoleon, and had supplied him with a small sum of specie and good bills; but, this done, he understood that the Directors could do no more. As rapidly as possible he put his army in marching order, and then marched. From the defensive attitude in which Schérer had left it, he passed at once to the offensive. The plan of campaign which Napoleon, the year before, had drawn up for the revolutionary committee, and which, when forwarded to the army, Kellermann had pronounced “the dream of a madman,” was about to be inaugurated by the lunatic himself. The generals of division in the Army of Italy were older men, older officers than Napoleon, and they resented his appointment. Masséna, Augereau, Sérurier, Laharpe, Kilmaine, Cervoni, but especially the two first, murmured discontentedly, calling Napoleon, “one of Barras’s favorites,” a “mere street general,” a “dreamer” who had “never been in action.” Napoleon, aware of this feeling, adopted the wisest course. He drew around himself the line of ceremony, repelled with steady look all inclination toward familiarity, abruptly cut short those who ventured to give advice, adopted a stern, imperative, distant manner, took the earliest opportunity of showing his absolute self-confidence and his superiority, indulged in no levity or dissipation, and issued his orders in a tone so laconic and authoritative that, after his first formal interview with his division commanders at Albenga, his power over them was established. On leaving the tent of the new chief, Augereau remarked to Masséna, “That little ---- of a general frightened me,” and Masséna confessed to the same experience. The military plans of the Directory, emanating from such men as Carnot and Bonaparte, were bold and practical. Austria, which had invaded France from the Rhine, was to be held in check there by Moreau and Jourdan at the same time that she was assailed by way of Italy. The three armies of the republic, operating far apart, were to coöperate in general design, and were finally to converge upon Vienna. Incidentally to this plan of campaign, Genoa was to be brought to terms for violations of neutrality; the Pope was to be punished for his constant encouragement to La Vendée and the royalists generally; and also because he had screened the assassins of the French ambassador, Basseville. Sardinia (whose king was father-in-law to the Counts of Provence and Artois, afterward respectively Louis XVIII. and Charles X.) was to be humbled for its alliance with Austria against France.