After the monarchy of France was in effect re-established in him and his dynasty, by the decrees of the 2nd and 4th of August, 1802, this spirit of dissatisfaction showed itself much more openly; and ere long it was generally believed that the republican party in the army looked up to Moreau as their head, and awaited only some favourable opportunity for rising in arms against Napoleon's tyranny.

Moreau was known to have treated both the Concordat and the Legion of Honour with undisguised contempt; and Buonaparte's strictures on his conduct of the campaign of 1801 were not likely to have nourished feelings of personal goodwill in the bosom of him whom all considered as second only to the Chief Consul himself in military genius.

It has already been intimated that the army of the Rhine had been all along suspected of regarding Napoleon with little favour.

He had never been their general; neither they nor their chiefs had partaken in the plunder of Italy, or in the glory of the battles by which it was won.

It was from their ranks that the unhappy expedition under Leclerc had been chiefly furnished, and they considered their employment in that unwholesome climate as dictated, more by the Consul's doubts of their fidelity to himself, than his high appreciation of their discipline and gallantry.