Ten days before Napoleon had been given command of the Army of Italy at the instigation of Carnot. Barras, in his _Mémoires_, insinuates that his influence led the Directory to this decision. In reality the General had largely won his own case. His pen had not lost its cunning, and further plans which he had brought forward for a decisive campaign by the now moribund Army of Italy had attracted considerable attention, although when sent to Schérer, who had succeeded Kellermann in the command, they met with a rebuff at the hands of that worthy. As a direct consequence he was superseded by the soldier who had dared to interfere. During his exile, when the glamour of his second marriage with the daughter of the Cæsars had passed and the memory of better times was the bitter-sweet consolation of his turbulent mind, Napoleon frequently reflected on his affection for the vivacious woman who shared his first triumphs and his throne. “Josephine was devoted to me,” he tells Montholon, one of the little band of faithful followers who refused to desert him in the hour of failure. “She loved me tenderly; no one ever had a preference over me in her heart. I occupied the first place in it; her children the next; and she was right in thus loving me; for she is the being whom I have most loved, and the remembrance of her is still all-powerful in my mind.” CHAPTER VIII “The Spark of Great Ambition” (1796) “Soldiers! you are ill-fed and almost naked; the Government owes you much, but can do nothing for you. Your patience, your courage, do you honour, but bring you neither advantage nor glory. I am about to lead you into the most fertile plains of the world. Rich provinces, great cities will be in your power. There you will find honour, and fame, and wealth. Soldiers of the Army of Italy, will you be found wanting in courage?” Thus Napoleon addressed the half-starved and dejected legions who had been struggling for two years on the Maritime Alps against the Austrians and Sardinians in an apparently impossible attempt to gain a footing in Northern Italy. The army was little more than a mob of malcontents, lacking even the common necessaries of life. Forty thousand outcasts, if you will, undisciplined, many of them without boots, more of them in tatters, all of them with scarcely a ray of hope; soldiers in name rather than in reality. Brave men and heroes there were, order and subordination there were not. To introduce cohesion and discipline into these unruly forces was the almost superhuman task Napoleon had undertaken.