During the winter of 1797-98 it was the custom of Bonaparte, as the constructive commander-in-chief of the French forces, to share in the deliberations of the various civil authorities; sometimes they seemed uneasy under his influence, but a threat of retirement generally brought them to terms. They yielded because every faction believed that the unrelenting attitude of the Directory toward royalists, emigrants, and ecclesiastics would revive in the country the hatred of Jacobinism and give its enemies a victory in the spring elections of 1798. Animosity was all the more fierce since the press had been virtually throttled by closing during the winter the offices of some sixteen papers, in addition to many already silenced. Should the chambers be hostile to the executive, they would certainly attempt a civil revolution, and Bonaparte with his troops would be the arbitrator. The royalists, therefore, made approaches to him once more, this time through Mme. Bonaparte, who diplomatically procrastinated, and kept the suitors in expectancy. But while all was movement and plot under the surface, the Parisian populace only occasionally had evidence of aught but perfect harmony in all parts of the government. They were fond of contrasting the brilliant results of Campo Formio with the unostentatious demeanor of the great general who had humbled Austria, and, as he himself had said in his festival speech, had brought two centers of light, "the finest parts of Europe,"--Italy and the Netherlands,--under the brighter rays of French illumination. In later years the unexampled capability of Bonaparte for scheming and machination unfolded itself to such unheard-of limits that it is customary in our day to attribute every detail of European history in those times to his manipulation. This is the more natural because the events of that winter, beyond the boundaries of France, contributed in the highest degree to that political conflagration which preceded the ascendancy of Napoleon and the complete rebuilding of the European state system. And yet the most acute historians often overlook the evident causes in their search for hidden ones; in this case the former are sufficient to account for the results. With the Italian campaign republican armies ceased to fight either for the integrity of France, for her "natural" frontiers, or for the revolutionary system. They were often self-deceived, and thought themselves to be propagating liberal ideas; but glory and plunder were thenceforward the mainsprings of action in the majority of both officers and men. [Sidenote: 1797--98]