[Sidenote: 1793.]

Buonoparte was for an instant among the most zealous of Paoli's supporters, and, taking up his ever-ready pen, he wrote two impassioned papers whose respective tenors it is not easy to reconcile: one an appeal to the Convention in Paoli's behalf, the other a demand addressed to the municipality of Ajaccio that the people should renew their oath of allegiance to France. The explanation is somewhat recondite, perhaps, but not discreditable. Salicetti, as chairman of a committee of the convention on Corsican affairs, had conferred with Paoli on April thirteenth. The result was so satisfactory that on the sixteenth the latter was urged to attend a second meeting at Bastia in the interest of Corsican reconciliation and internal peace. Meantime Lucien's performance at Marseilles had fired the train which led to the Convention's action against Paoli, and on the seventeenth the order for his arrest reached Salicetti, who was of course charged with its execution. For this he was not prepared, nor was Buonaparte. The essential of Corsican annexation to France was order. The Corsican folk flocked to protect Paoli in Corte, and the local government declared for him. There was inchoate rebellion and within a few days the districts of Calvi and Bastia were squarely arrayed with Salicetti against Bonifacio and Ajaccio, which supported Paoli and Pozzo di Borgo. The Buonapartes were convinced that the decree of the Convention was precipitate, and pleaded for its recall. At the same time they saw no hope for peace in Corsica, except through incorporation with France. But compromise proved impossible. There was a truce when Paoli on April twenty-sixth wrote to the Convention regretting that he could not obey their summons on account of infirmities, and declaring his loyalty to France. In consequence the Convention withdrew its decree and sent a new commission of which Salicetti was not a member. This was in May, on the eve of the Girondin overthrow. The measures of reconciliation proved unavailing, because the Jacobins of Marseilles, learning that Paoli was Girondist in sentiment, stopped the commission, and forbade their proceeding to Corsica.

Meantime Captain Buonaparte's French regiment had already been some five months in active service. If his passion had been only for military glory, that was to be found nowhere so certainly as in its ranks, where he should have been. But his passion for political renown was clearly far stronger. Where could it be so easily gratified as in Corsica under the present conditions? The personality of the young adventurer had for a long time been curiously double: but while he had successfully retained the position of a French officer in France, his identity as a Corsican patriot had been nearly obliterated in Corsica by his constant quarrels and repeated failures. Having become a French radical, he had been forced into a certain antagonism to Paoli and had thereby jeopardized both his fortunes and his career as far as they were dependent on Corsican support. But with Paoli under the ban of the Convention, and suspected of connivance with English schemes, there might be a revulsion of feeling and a chance to make French influence paramount once more in the island under the leadership of the Buonapartes and their friends. For the moment Napoleon preserved the outward semblance of the Corsican patriot, but he seems to have been weary at heart of the thankless role and entirely ready to exchange it for another. Whatever may have been his plan or the principles of his conduct, it appears as if the decisive step now to be taken had no relation to either plan or principles, but that it was forced upon him by a chance development of events which he could not have foreseen, and which he was utterly unable to control.

It is unknown whether Salicetti or he made the first advances in coming to an understanding for mutual support, or when that understanding was reached, but it existed as early as January, 1793, a fact conclusively shown by a letter of the former dated early in that month. It was April fifth when Salicetti reached Corsica; the news of Paoli's denunciation by the Convention arrived, as has been said, on the seventeenth. Seeing how nicely adjusted the scales of local politics were, the deputy was eager to secure favor from Paris, and wrote on the sixteenth an account of how warmly his commission had been received. Next day the blow of Paoli's condemnation fell, and it became plain that compromise was no longer possible. When even the Buonapartes were supporting Paoli, the reconciliation of the island with France was clearly impracticable. Salicetti did not hesitate, but as between Paoli and Corsica with no career on the one side, and the possibilities of a great career under France on the other, quickly chose the latter. The same considerations weighed with Buonaparte; he followed his patron, and as a reward was appointed by the French commission inspector-general of artillery for Corsica.

Salicetti had granted what Paoli would not: Buonaparte was free to strike his blow for Corsican leadership. With swift and decisive measures the last scene in his Corsican adventures was arranged. Several great guns which had been saved from a war-ship wrecked in the harbor were lying on the shore unmounted. The inspector-general hypocritically declared that they were a temptation to insurgents and a menace to the public peace; they should be stored in the citadel. His plan was to seize the moment when the heavy pieces were passing the drawbridge, and at the head of his followers to take possession of the stronghold he had so long coveted, and so often failed to capture. If he could hold it for the Convention, a career in Corsica would be at last assured.

But again he was doomed to disappointment. The former garrison had been composed of French soldiers. On the failure of the Sardinian expedition most of these had been landed at Toulon, where they still were. The men in the citadel of Ajaccio were therefore in the main islanders, although some French infantry and the French gunners were still there; the new commander was a Paolist who refused to be hoodwinked, and would not act without an authorization from his general-in-chief. The value of the seizure depended on its promptness. In order to secure a sufficient number of faithful followers, Buonaparte started on foot for Bastia to consult the commission. Learning that he was already a suspect at Corte and in danger of arrest, he turned on his steps only to be confronted at Bocognano by a band of Peraldi's followers. Two shepherds from his own estate found a place of concealment for him in a house belonging to their friends, and he passed a day in hiding, escaping after nightfall to Ucciani, whence he returned to Ajaccio in safety.[33] Thwarted in one notion, Buonaparte then proposed to the followers he already had two alternatives: to erect a barricade behind which the guns could be mounted and trained on the citadel, or, easier still, to carry one of the pieces to some spot before the main entrance and then batter in the gate. Neither scheme was considered feasible, and it was determined to secure by bribes, if possible, the cooeperation of a portion of the garrison. The attempt failed through the integrity of a single man, and is interesting only as having been Napoleon's first lesson in an art which was thenceforward an unfailing resource. Rumors of these proceedings soon reached the friends of Paoli, and Buonaparte was summoned to report immediately at Corte. Such was the intensity of popular bitterness against him in Ajaccio for his desertion of Paoli that after a series of narrow escapes from arrest he was compelled to flee in disguise and by water to Bastia, which he reached on May tenth, 1793. Thwarted in their efforts to seize Napoleon, the hostile party vented its rage on the rest of the family, hunting the mother and children from their town house, which was pillaged and burned, first to Milleli, then through jungle and over hilltops to the lonely tower of Capitello near the sea.

[Footnote 33: Both these men were generously remembered in the secret codicils of Napoleon's will.]

A desire for revenge on his Corsican persecutors would now give an additional stimulus to Buonaparte, and still another device to secure the passionately desired citadel of Ajaccio was proposed by him to the commissioners of the Convention, and adopted by them. The remnants of a Swiss regiment stationed near by were to be marched into the city, as if for embarkment; several French war vessels from the harbor of St. Florent, including one frigate, with troops, munitions, and artillery on board, were to appear unexpectedly before the city, land their men and guns, and then, with the help of the Switzers and such of the citizens as espoused the French cause, were to overawe the town and seize the citadel. Corsican affairs had now reached a crisis, for this was a virtual declaration of war. Paoli so understood it, and measures of mutual defiance were at once taken by both sides. The French commissioners formally deposed the officials who sympathized with Paoli; they, in turn, took steps to increase the garrison of Ajaccio, and to strengthen the popular sentiment in their favor.

On receipt of the news that he had been summoned to Paris and that hostile commissioners had been sent to take his place, Paoli had immediately forwarded, by the hands of two friendly representatives, the temperate letter in which he had declared his loyalty to France. In it he had offered to resign and leave Corsica. His messengers were seized and temporarily detained, but in the end they reached Paris, and were kindly received. On May twenty-ninth they appeared on the floor of the Convention, and won their cause. On June fifth the former decree was revoked, and two days later a new and friendly commission of two members started for Corsica. But at Marseilles they fell into the hands of the Jacobin mob, and were arrested. Ignorant of these favorable events, and the untoward circumstances by which their effect was thwarted, the disheartened statesman had written and forwarded on May fourteenth a second letter, of the same tenor as the first. This measure likewise had failed of effect, for the messenger had been stopped at Bastia, now the focus of Salicetti's influence, and the letter had never reached its destination.

It was probably in this interval that Paoli finally adopted, as a last desperate resort, the hitherto hazy idea of putting the island under English protection, in order to maintain himself in the mission to which he felt that Providence had called him. The actual departure of Napoleon's expedition from St. Florent gave the final impulse. That event so inflamed the passions of the conservative party in Ajaccio that the Buonaparte family could no longer think of returning within a reasonable time to their home. Some desperate resolution must be taken, though it should involve leaving their small estates to be ravaged, their slender resources to be destroyed, and abandoning their partizans to proscription and imprisonment. They finally found a temporary asylum with a relative in Calvi. The attacking flotilla had been detained nearly a week by a storm, and reached Ajaccio on May twenty-ninth, in the very height of these turmoils. It was too late for any possibility of success. The few French troops on shore were cowed, and dared not show themselves when a party landed from the ships. On the contrary, Napoleon and his volunteers were received with a fire of musketry, and, after spending two anxious days in an outlying tower which they had seized and held, were glad to reembark and sail away. Their leader, after still another narrow escape from seizure, rejoined his family at Calvi. The Jacobin commission held a meeting, and determined to send Salicetti to justify their course at Paris. He carried with him a wordy paper written by Buonaparte in his worst style and spelling, setting forth the military and political situation in Corsica, and containing a bitter tirade against Paoli, which remains to lend some color to the charge that the writer had been, since his leader's return from exile, a spy and an informer, influenced by no high principle of patriotism, but only by a base ambition to supplant the aged president, and then to adopt whichever plan would best further his own interest: ready either to establish a virtual autonomy in his fatherland, or to deliver it entirely into the hands of France.[34]

[Footnote 34: For this paper, see Napoleon inconnu, II, 462. Jung: Bonaparte et son temps, II, 266 and 498. There appear to have been an official portion intended to be filed, and a free, carelessly written running commentary on men and things. The passage quoted is taken from the latter.]

In this painful document Buonaparte sets forth in fiery phrase the early enthusiasm of republicans for the return of Paoli, and their disillusionment when he surrounded himself with venal men like Pozzo di Borgo, with relatives like his nephew Leonetti, with his vile creatures in general. The misfortunes of the Sardinian expedition, the disgraceful disorders of the island, the failure of the commissioners to secure Ajaccio, are all alike attributed to Paoli. "Can perfidy like this invade the human heart?... What fatal ambition overmasters a graybeard of sixty-eight?... On his face are goodness and gentleness, in his heart hate and vengeance; he has an oily sensibility in his eyes, and gall in his soul, but neither character nor strength." These were the sentiments proper to a radical of the times, and they found acceptance among the leaders of that class in Paris. More moderate men did what they could to avert the impending breach, but in vain. Corsica was far, communication slow, and the misunderstanding which occurred was consequently unavoidable. It was not until July first that Paoli received news of the pacificatory decrees passed by the Convention more than a month before, and then it was too late; groping in the dark, and unable to get news, he had formed his judgment from what was going on in Corsica, and had therefore committed himself to a change of policy. To him, as to most thinking men, the entire structure of France, social, financial, and political, seemed rotten. Civil war had broken out in Vendee; in Brittany the wildest excesses passed unpunished; the great cities of Marseilles, Toulon, and Lyons were in a state of anarchy; the revolutionary tribunal had been established in Paris; the Committee of Public Safety had usurped the supreme power; the France to which he had intrusted the fortunes of Corsica was no more. Already an agent was in communication with the English diplomats in Italy. On July tenth Salicetti arrived in Paris; on the seventeenth Paoli was declared a traitor and an outlaw, and his friends were indicted for trial. But the English fleet was already in the Mediterranean, and although the British protectorate over Corsica was not established until the following year, in the interval the French and their few remaining sympathizers on the island were able at best to hold only the three towns of Bastia, St. Florent, and Calvi.

After the last fiasco before the citadel of Ajaccio, the situation of the Buonapartes was momentarily desperate. Lucien says in his memoirs that shortly before his brother had spoken longingly of India, of the English empire as destined to spread with every year, and of the career which its expansion opened to good officers of artillery, who were scarce among the British—scarce enough everywhere, he thought. "If I ever choose that career," said he, "I hope you will hear of me. In a few years I shall return thence a rich nabob, and bring fine dowries for our three sisters." But the scheme was deferred and then abandoned. Salicetti had arranged for his own return to Paris, where he would be safe. Napoleon felt that flight was the only resort for him and his. Accordingly, on June eleventh, three days earlier than his patron, he and Joseph, accompanied by Fesch, embarked with their mother and the rest of the family to join Lucien, who had remained at Toulon, where they arrived on the thirteenth. The Jacobins of that city had received Lucien, as a sympathetic Corsican, with honor. Doubtless his family, homeless and destitute for their devotion to the republic, would find encouragement and help until some favorable turn in affairs should restore their country to France, and reinstate them not only in their old possessions, but in such new dignities as would fitly reward their long and painful devotion. Such, at least, appears to have been Napoleon's general idea. He was provided with a legal certificate that his family was one of importance and the richest in the department. The Convention had promised compensation to those who had suffered losses.

As had been hoped, on their arrival the Buonapartes were treated with every mark of distinction, and ample provision was made for their comfort. By act of the Convention, women and old men in such circumstances received seventy-five livres a month, infants forty-five livres. Lads received simply a present of twenty-five livres. With the preliminary payment of one hundred and fifty livres, which they promptly received, the Buonapartes were better off than they had been at home. Lucien had appropriated Napoleon's certificate of birth in order to appear older than he was, and, having now developed into a fluent demagogue, was soon earning a small salary in the commissary department of the army. Fesch also found a comfortable berth in the same department. Joseph calmly displayed Napoleon's commission in the National Guard as his own, and received a higher place with a better salary. The sovereignty of the Convention was everywhere acknowledged, their revolutionary courts were established far and wide, and their legations, clothed with dictatorial power, were acknowledged in every camp of the land as supreme, superior even to the commanders-in-chief. It was not exactly a time for further military irregularities, and Napoleon, armed with a certificate from Salicetti that his presence in Corsica for the past six months had been necessary, betook himself to the army headquarters at Nice, where a detachment of his regiment was now stationed. When he arrived, no awkward questions were asked by the authorities. The town had but recently been captured, men were needed to hold it, and the Corsican refugee was promptly appointed captain of the shore battery. To casual observers he appeared perfectly content in this subordinate position. He still cherished the hope, it seems, that he might find some opportunity to lead a successful expedition against the little citadel of Ajaccio. Such a scheme, at all events, occupied him intermittently for nearly two years, or until it was banished forever by visions of a European control far transcending the limits of his island home.

Not that the outcast Buonaparte was any longer exclusively a Corsican. It is impossible to conceive of a lot more pitiful or a fate more obdurate than his so far had been. There was little hereditary morality in his nature, and none had been inculcated by training; he had nothing of what is called vital piety, nor even sincere superstition. A butt and an outcast at a French school under the old regime, he had imbibed a bitter hatred for the land indelibly associated with such haughty privileges for the rich and such contemptuous disdain for the poor. He had not even the consolation of having received an education. His nature revolted at the religious formalism of priestcraft; his mind turned in disgust from the scholastic husks of its superficial knowledge. What he had learned came from inborn capacity, from desultory reading, and from the untutored imaginings of his garden at Brienne, his cave at Ajaccio, or his barrack chambers. What more plausible than that he should first turn to the land of his birth with some hope of happiness, usefulness, or even glory! What more mortifying than the revelation that in manhood he was too French for Corsica, as in boyhood he had been too Corsican for France!

The story of his sojourns and adventures in Corsica has no fascination; it is neither heroic nor satanic, but belongs to the dull and mediocre realism which makes up so much of commonplace life. It is difficult to find even a thread of continuity in it: there may be one as to purpose; there is none as to either conduct or theory. There is the passionate admiration of a southern nature for a hero as represented by the ideal Paoli. There is the equally southern quality of quick but transient hatred. The love of dramatic effect is shown at every turn, in the perfervid style of his writings, in the mock dignity of an edict issued from the grotto at Milleli, in the empty honors of a lieutenant-colonel without a real command, in the paltry style of an artillery inspector with no artillery but a few dismantled guns.

But the most prominent characteristic of the young man was his shiftiness, in both the good and bad senses of the word. He would perish with mortification rather than fail in devising some expedient to meet every emergency; he felt no hesitation in changing his point of view as experience destroyed an ideal or an unforeseen chance was to be seized and improved. Moreover, repeated failure did not dishearten him. Detesting garrison life, he neglected its duties, and endured punishment, but he secured regular promotion; defeated again and again before the citadel of Ajaccio, each time he returned undismayed to make a fresh trial under new auspices or in a new way.

He was no spendthrift, but he had no scruples about money. He was proud in the headship of his family, and reckless as to how he should support them, or should secure their promotion. Solitary in his boyhood, he had become in his youth a companion and leader; but his true friendships were not with his social equals, whom he despised, but with the lowly, whom he understood. Finally, here was a citizen of the world, a man without a country; his birthright was gone, for Corsica repelled him; France he hated, for she had never adopted him. He was almost without a profession, for he had neglected that of a soldier, and had failed both as an author and as a politician. He was apparently, too, without a single guiding principle; the world had been a harsh stepmother, at whose knee he had neither learned the truth nor experienced kindness. He appears consistent in nothing but in making the best of events as they occurred. So far he was a man neither much better nor much worse than the world into which he was born. He was quite as unscrupulous as those about him, but he was far greater than they in perspicacity, adroitness, adaptability, and persistence. During the period before his expulsion from Corsica these qualities of leadership were scarcely recognizable, but they existed. As yet, to all outward appearance, the little captain of artillery was the same slim, ill-proportioned, and rather insignificant youth; but at twenty-three he had had the experience of a much greater age. Conscious of his powers, he had dreamed many day-dreams, and had acquired a habit of boastful conversation in the family circle; but, fully cognizant of the dangers incident to his place, and the unsettled conditions about him, he was cautious and reserved in the outside world.



CHAPTER XVI.

"The Supper of Beaucaire".

Revolutionary Madness — Uprising of the Girondists — Convention Forces Before Avignon — Bonaparte's First Success in Arms — Its Effect upon His Career — His Political Pamphlet — The Genius it Displays — Accepted and Published by Authority — Seizure of Toulon by the Allies.

[Sidenote: 1793.]

It was a tempestuous time in Provence when on June thirteenth the Buonapartes arrived at Toulon. Their movements during the first few months cannot be determined; we only know that, after a very short residence there, the family fled to Marseilles.[35] Much, too, is obscure in regard even to Napoleon, soldier as he was. It seems as if this period of their history had been wilfully confused to conceal how intimate were the connections of the entire family with the Jacobins. But the obscurity may also be due to the character of the times. Fleeing before the storms of Corsican revolution, they were caught in the whirlwind of French anarchy. The Girondists, after involving the country in a desperate foreign warfare, had shown themselves incompetent to carry it on. In Paris, therefore, they had to give way before the Jacobins, who, by the exercise of a reckless despotism, were able to display an unparalleled energy in its prosecution. Against their tyranny the moderate republicans and the royalists outside of Paris now made common cause, and civil war broke out in many places, including Vendee, the Rhone valley, and the southeast of France. Montesquieu declares that honor is the distinguishing characteristic of aristocracy: the emigrant aristocrats had been the first in France to throw honor and patriotism to the winds; many of their class who remained went further, displaying in Vendee and elsewhere a satanic vindictiveness. This shameful policy colored the entire civil war, and the bitterness in attack and retaliation that was shown in Marseilles, Lyons, Toulon, and elsewhere would have disgraced savages in a prehistoric age.

[Footnote 35: The memoirs of Joseph and Lucien, supported by Coston and the anonymous local historian of Marseilles, all unite in declaring that the Buonaparte family landed there; on the other hand, Louis, in the Documents historiques sur la Hollande, I, 34, asserts categorically in detail that they took up their abode in La Valette, a suburb of Toulon, where they had landed.]

The westward slopes of the Alps were occupied by a French army under the command of Kellermann, designated by the name of its situation; farther south and east lay the Army of Italy, under Brunet. Both these armies were expected to draw their supplies from the fertile country behind them, and to cooeperate against the troops of Savoy and Austria, which had occupied the passes of lower Piedmont, and blocked the way into Lombardy. By this time the law for compulsory enlistment had been enacted, but the general excitement and topsy-turvy management incident to such rapid changes in government and society, having caused the failure of the Sardinian expedition, had also prevented recruiting or equipment in either of these two divisions of the army. The outbreak of open hostilities in all the lands immediately to the westward momentarily paralyzed their operations; and when, shortly afterward, the Girondists overpowered the Jacobins in Marseilles, the defection of that city made it difficult for the so-called regulars, the soldiers of the Convention, even to obtain subsistence and hold the territory they already occupied.

The next move of the insurgent Girondists of Marseilles was in the direction of Paris, and by the first week of July they had reached Avignon on their way to join forces with their equally successful friends at Lyons. With characteristic zeal, the Convention had created an army to meet them. The new force was put under the command of Carteaux, a civilian, but a man of energy. According to directions received from Paris, he quickly advanced to cut the enemy in two by occupying the strategic point of Valence. This move was successfully made, Lyons was left to fight its own battle, and by the middle of July the general of the Convention was encamped before the walls of Avignon.

Napoleon Buonaparte had hastened to Nice, where five companies of his regiment were stationed, and rejoining the French army, never faltered again in his allegiance to the tricolor. Jean Duteil, brother of the young man's former patron, was in the Savoy capital, high in command. He promptly set the young artillerist at the work of completing the shore batteries. On July third and eighth, respectively, the new captain made written reports to the secretary for war at Paris, and to the director of artillery in the arsenal of Toulon. Both these papers are succinct and well written. Almost immediately Buonaparte was intrusted with a mission, probably confidential, since its exact nature is unknown, and set out for Avignon. He reached his destination almost in the moment when Carteaux began the investment of the city. It was about July sixteenth when he entered the republican camp, having arrived by devious ways, and after narrow escapes from the enemy's hands. This time he was absent from his post on duty. The works and guns at Nice being inadequate and almost worthless, he was probably sent to secure supplies from the stores of Avignon when it should be conquered. Such were the straits of the needy republican general that he immediately appointed his visitor to the command of a strong body of flying artillery. In the first attack on the town Carteaux received a check. But the insurgents were raw volunteers and seem to have felt more and more dismayed by the menacing attitude of the surrounding population: on the twenty-fifth, in the very hour of victory, they began their retreat.[36] The road to Marseilles was thus clear, and the commander unwisely opened his lines to occupy the evacuated towns on his front. Carteaux entered Avignon on the twenty-sixth; on the twenty-seventh he collected his force and departed, reaching Tarascon on the twenty-eighth, and on the twenty-ninth Beaucaire. Buonaparte, whose battery had done excellent service, advanced for some distance with the main army, but was ordered back to protect the rear by reorganizing and reconstructing the artillery park which had been dismantled in the assault on Avignon.

[Footnote 36: These are the most probable reasons for the retreat. Several local chroniclers, Soullier, Audri, and Joudou, writing all three about 1844, declare each and all that Buonaparte with his battery followed the right bank of the Rhone as far as the Rocher de Justice where he mounted his guns and opened fire on the walls of the city. His fire was so accurate that he destroyed one cannon and killed several gunners. The besieged garrison of federalists were thrown into panic and decamped. Neither the contemporary authorities nor Napoleon himself ever mentioned any such remarkable circumstances. In fact, a passage of the "Souper de Beaucaire" attributes the retreat to the inability of any except veteran troops to withstand a siege. Finally, Buonaparte would surely have been promoted for such an exploit. Dommartin, a comrade, was thus rewarded for a much smaller service.]

This first successful feat of arms made a profound impression on Buonaparte's mind, and led to the decision which settled his career. His spirits were still low, for he was suffering from a return of his old malarial trouble. Moreover, his family seems already to have been driven from Toulon by the uprising of the hostile party: in any case they were now dependent on charity; the Corsican revolt against the Convention was virtually successful, and it was said that in the island the name of Buonaparte was considered as little less execrable than that of Buttafuoco. What must he do to get a decisive share in the surging, rolling tumult about him? The visionary boy was transformed into the practical man. Frenchmen were fighting and winning glory everywhere, and among the men who were reaping laurels were some whom he had known and even despised at Brienne—Sergeant Pichegru, for instance. Ideas which he had momentarily entertained,—enlistment in the Russian army,[37] service with England, a career in the Indies, the return of the nabob,—all such visions were set aside forever, and an application was sent for a transfer from the Army of Italy to that of the Rhine. The suppression of the southern revolt would soon be accomplished, and inactivity ensue; but on the frontier of the north there was a warfare worthy of his powers, in which, if he could only attract the attention of the authorities, long service, rapid advancement, and lasting glory might all be secured.

[Footnote 37: The Archive Russe for 1866 states that in 1788 Napoleon Buonaparte applied for an engagement to Zaborowski, Potemkin's lieutenant, who was then with a Russian fleet in the Mediterranean. The statement may be true, and probably is, but there is no corroborative evidence to sustain it.]

But what must be the first step to secure notoriety here and now? How could that end be gained? The old instinct of authorship returned irresistibly, and in the long intervals of easy duty at Avignon, where, as is most probable, he remained to complete the task assigned to him, Buonaparte wrote the "Supper of Beaucaire," his first literary work of real ability. As if by magic his style is utterly changed, being now concise, correct, and lucid. The reader would be tempted to think it had enjoyed a thorough revision from some capable hand. But this is improbable when we note that it is the permanent style of the future. Moreover, the opinions expressed are quite as thoroughly transformed, and display not only a clear political judgment, but an almost startling military insight. The setting of this notable repast is possibly, though by no means certainly, based on an actual experience, and is as follows: Five wayfarers—a native of Nimes, a manufacturer from Montpellier, two merchants of Marseilles, and a soldier from Avignon—find themselves accidentally thrown together as table companions at an inn of Beaucaire, a little city round about which the civil war is raging. The conversation at supper turns on the events occurring in the neighborhood. The soldier explains the circumstances connected with the recent capture of Avignon, attributing the flight of the insurgents to the inability of any except veteran troops to endure the uncertainties of a siege. One of the travelers from Marseilles thinks the success but temporary, and recapitulates the resources of the moderates. The soldier retorts in a long refutation of that opinion. As a politician he shows how the insurgents have placed themselves in a false position by adopting extreme measures and alienating republican sympathy, being cautious and diplomatic in not censuring their persons nor their principles; on the other side there is a marked effort to emphasize the professional attitude; as a military man he explains the strategic weakness of their position, and the futility of their operations, uttering many sententious phrases: "Self-conceit is the worst adviser"; "Good four-and eight-pound cannon are as effective for field work as pieces of larger caliber, and are in many respects preferable to them"; "It is an axiom of military science that the army which remains behind its intrenchments is beaten: experience and theory agree on this point."

The conclusion of the conversation is a triumphant demonstration that the cause of the insurgents is already lost, an argument convicting them of really desiring not moderation, but a counter-revolution in their own interest, and of displaying a willingness to imitate the Vendeans, and call in foreign aid if necessary. In one remarkable passage the soldier grants that the Girondists may have been outlawed, imprisoned, and calumniated by the Mountain in its own selfish interest, but adds that the former "were lost without a civil war by means of which they could lay down the law to their enemies. It was for them your war was really useful. Had they merited their early reputation, they would have thrown down their arms before the constitution and sacrificed their own interests to the public welfare. It is easier to cite Decius than to imitate him. To-day they have shown themselves guilty of the worst possible crimes; have, by their behavior, justified their proscription. The blood they have caused to flow has effaced the true services they had rendered." The Montpellier manufacturer is of opinion that, whether this be true or no, the Convention now represents the nation, and to refuse obedience to it is rebellion and counter-revolution. History knows no plainer statement than this of the "de facto, de jure" principle, the conviction that "might makes right."

At last, then, the leader had shown himself in seizing the salient elements of a complicated situation, and the man of affairs had found a style in which to express his clear-cut ideas. When the tide turns it rises without interruption. Buonaparte's pamphlet was scarcely written before its value was discerned; for at that moment arrived one of those legations now representing the sovereignty of the Convention in every field of operations. This one was a most influential committee of three—Escudier, Ricord, and the younger brother of Robespierre. Accompanying them was a commission charged to renew the commissary stores in Corsica for the few troops still holding out in that island. Salicetti was at its head; the other member was Gasparin. Buonaparte, we may infer, found easy access to the favor of his compatriot Salicetti, and "The Supper of Beaucaire" was heard by the plenipotentiaries with attention. Its merit was immediately recognized, as is said, both by Gasparin and by the younger Robespierre; in a few days the pamphlet was published at the expense of the state.[38] Of Buonaparte's life between July twenty-ninth and September twelfth, 1793, there are the most conflicting accounts. Some say he was at Marseilles, others deny it. His brother Joseph thought he was occupied in collecting munitions and supplies for the Army of Italy. His earliest biographer declares that he traveled by way of Lyons and Auxonne to Paris, returning by the same route to Avignon, and thence journeying to Ollioules near Toulon. From the army headquarters before that city Salicetti wrote on September twenty-sixth that while Buonaparte was passing on his way to rejoin the Army of Italy, the authorities in charge of the siege changed his destination and put him in command of the heavy artillery to replace Dommartin, incapacitated for service by a wound. It has been hinted by both the suspicious and the credulous writers on the period that the young man was employed on some secret mission. This might be expected from those who attribute demonic qualities to the child of destiny from earliest infancy, but there is no slightest evidence to sustain the claim. Quite possibly the lad relapsed into the queer restless ways of earlier life. It is evident he was thwarted in his hope of transfer to the Army of the Rhine. Unwilling as he was to serve in Italy, he finally turned his lagging footsteps thither. Perhaps, as high authorities declare, it was at Marseilles that his compatriot Cervoni persuaded him to go as far at least as Toulon, though Salicetti and Buonaparte himself declared later that they met and arranged the matter at Nice.

[Footnote 38: The very first impression appears to have been a reprint from the Courier d'Avignon: it was a cheap pamphlet of sixteen pages in the same type and on the paper as that used by the journal. The second impression was in twenty pages, printed by the public printer as a tract for the times, to be distributed throughout the near and remote neighborhood.]

In this interval, while Buonaparte remained, according to the best authority, within reach of Avignon, securing artillery supplies and writing a political pamphlet in support of the Jacobins, Carteaux had, on August twenty-fifth, 1793, taken Marseilles. The capture was celebrated by one of the bloodiest orgies of that horrible year. The Girondists of Toulon saw in the fate of those at Marseilles the lot apportioned to themselves. If the high contracting powers now banded against France had shown a sincere desire to quell Jacobin bestiality, they could on the first formation of the coalition easily have seized Paris. Instead, Austria and Prussia had shown the most selfish apathy in that respect, bargaining with each other and with Russia for their respective shares of Poland, the booty they were about to seize. The intensity of the Jacobin movement did not rouse them until the majority of the French people, vaguely grasping the elements of permanent value in the Revolution, and stung by foreign interference, rallied around the only standard which was firmly upheld,—that of the Convention,—and enabled that body within an incredibly short space of time to put forth tremendous energy. Then England, terrified into panic, drove Pitt to take effective measures, and displayed her resources in raising subsidies for her Continental allies, in goading the German powers to activity, in scouring every sea with her fleets. One of these was cruising off the French coast in the Mediterranean, and it was easy for the Girondists of Toulon to induce its commander to seize not only their splendid arsenals, but the fleet in their harbor as well—the only effective one, in fact, which at that time the French possessed. Without delay or hesitation, Hood, the English admiral, grasped the easy prize, and before long war-ships of the Spaniards, Neapolitans, and Sardinians were gathered to share in the defense of the town against the Convention forces. Soon the Girondist fugitives from Marseilles arrived, and were received with kindness. The place was provisioned, the gates were shut, and every preparation for desperate resistance was completed. The fate of the republic was at stake. The crisis was acute. No wonder that in view of his wonderful career, Napoleon long after, and his friends in accord, declared that in the hour appeared the man. There, said the inspired memorialist of St. Helena, history found him, never to leave him; there began his immortality. Though this language is truer ideally than in sober reality, yet the Emperor had a certain justification for his claim.



CHAPTER XVII.

Toulon.

The Jacobin Power Threatened — Buonaparte's Fate — His Appointment at Toulon — His Ability as an Artillerist — His Name Mentioned with Distinction — His Plan of Operations — The Fall of Toulon — Buonaparte a General of Brigade — Behavior of the Jacobin Victors — A Corsican Plot — Horrors of the French Revolution — Influence of Toulon on Buonaparte's Career.[39]

[Footnote 39: The authorities for this important epoch are, primarily, Jung: Bonaparte et son temps; Masson: Napoleon inconnu; but above all, Chuquet: La jeunesse de Napoleon, Vol. III, Toulon. The Memoires of Barras are utterly worthless, the references in Las Cases, Marmont, and elsewhere have value, but must be controlled. The archives of the war department have been thoroughly examined by several investigators, the author among the number. The results have been printed in many volumes to which the above-mentioned authors refer, and many of the original papers are printed in whole or in part by them.]

[Sidenote: 1793.]

Coupled as it was with other discouraging circumstances, the "treason of Toulon" struck a staggering blow at the Convention. The siege of Lyons was still in progress; the Piedmontese were entering Savoy, or the department of Mont Blanc, as it had been designated after its recent capture by France; the great city of Bordeaux was ominously silent and inactive; the royalists of Vendee were temporarily victorious; there was unrest in Normandy, and further violence in Brittany; the towns of Mainz, Valenciennes, and Conde had been evacuated, and Dunkirk was besieged by the Duke of York. The loss of Toulon would put a climax to such disasters, destroy the credit of the republic abroad and at home, perhaps bring back the Bourbons. Carnot had in the meantime come to the assistance of the Committee of Safety. Great as a military organizer and influential as a politician, he had already awakened the whole land to a still higher fervor, and had consolidated public sentiment in favor of his plans. In Dubois de Crance he had an able lieutenant. Fourteen armies were soon to move and fight, directed by a single mind; discipline was about to be effectively strengthened because it was to be the discipline of the people by itself; the envoys of the Convention were to go to and fro, successfully laboring for common action and common enthusiasm in the executive, in both the fighting services, and in the nation. But as yet none of these miracles had been wrought, and, with Toulon lost, they might be forever impossible.

Such was the setting of the stage in the great national theater of France when Napoleon Buonaparte entered on the scene. The records of his boyhood and youth by his own hand afford the proof of what he was at twenty-four. It has required no searching analysis to discern the man, nor trace the influences of his education. Except for short and unimportant periods, the story is complete and accurate. It is, moreover, absolutely unsophisticated. What does it show? A well-born Corsican child, of a family with some fortune, glad to use every resource of a disordered time for securing education and money, patriotic at heart but willing to profit from France, or indeed from Russia, England, the Orient; wherever material advantage was to be found. This boy was both idealist and realist, each in the high degree corresponding to his great abilities. He shone neither as a scholar nor as an officer, being obdurate to all training,—but by independent exertions and desultory reading of a high class he formed an ideal of society in which there prevailed equality of station and purse, purity of life and manners, religion without clericalism, free speech and honorable administration of just laws. His native land untrammeled by French control would realize this ideal, he had fondly hoped: but the Revolution emancipated it completely, entirely; and what occurred? A reversion to every vicious practice of medievalism, he himself being sucked into the vortex and degraded into a common adventurer. Disenchanted and bitter, he then turned to France. Abandoning his double role, his interest in Corsica was thenceforth sentimental; his fine faculties when focused on the realities of a great world suddenly exhibit themselves in keen observation, fair conclusions, a more than academic interest, and a skill in the conduct of life hitherto obscured by unfavorable conditions. Already he had found play for all his powers both with gun and pen. He was not only eager but ready to deploy them in a higher service.

The city of Toulon was now formally and nominally invested—that is, according to the then accepted general rules for such operations, but with no regard to those peculiarities of its site which only master minds could mark and use to the best advantage. The large double bay is protected from the southwest by a broad peninsula joined to the mainland by a very narrow isthmus, and thus opens southeastward to the Mediterranean. The great fortified city, then regarded as one of the strongest places in the world, lies far within on the eastern shore of the inner harbor. Excellent authorities considered it impregnable. It is protected on the landward side by an amphitheater of high hills, which leave to the right and left a narrow strip of rolling country between their lower slopes and the sea. On the east Lapoype commanded the left wing of the besieging revolutionary force. The westward pass is commanded by Ollioules, which Carteaux had selected for his headquarters. On August twenty-ninth his vanguard seized the place, but they were almost immediately attacked and driven out by the allied armies, chiefly English troops brought in from Gibraltar. On September seventh the place was retaken. The two wings were in touch and to landward the communications of the town were completely cut off. In the assault only a single French officer fell seriously wounded, but that one was a captain of artillery. Salicetti and his colleagues had received from the minister of war a charge to look out for the citizen Buonaparte who wanted service on the Rhine. This and their own attachment determined them in the pregnant step they now took. The still unattached captain of artillery, Napoleon Buonaparte, was appointed to the vacant place. As far as history is concerned, this is a very important fact; it is really a matter of slight import whether Cervoni or Salicetti gave the impulse. At the same time his mother received a grant of money, and while favors were going, there were enough needy Buonapartes to receive them. Salicetti and Gasparin, being the legates of the Convention, were all-powerful. The latter took a great fancy to Salicetti's friend and there was no opposition when the former exercised his power. Fesch and Lucien were both provided with places, being made storekeepers in the commissary department. Barras, who was the recruiting-officer of the Convention at Toulon, claims to have been the first to recognize Buonaparte's ability. He declares that the young Corsican was daily at his table, and that it was he himself who irregularly but efficiently secured the appointment of his new friend to active duty. But he also asserts what we know to be untrue, that Buonaparte was still lieutenant when they first met, and that he created him captain. It is likely, in view of their subsequent intimacy at Paris, that they were also intimate at Toulon; the rest of Barras's story is a fabrication.

But although the investment of Toulon was complete, it was weak. On September eighteenth the total force of the assailants was ten thousand men. From time to time reinforcements came in and the various seasoned battalions exhibited on occasion great gallantry and courage. But the munitions and arms were never sufficient, and under civilian officers both regulars and recruits were impatient of severe discipline. The artillery in particular was scarcely more than nominal. There were a few field-pieces, two large and efficient guns only, and two mortars. By a mistake of the war department the general officer detailed to organize the artillery did not receive his orders in time and remained on his station in the eastern Pyrenees until after the place fell. Manifestly some one was required to grasp the situation and supply a crying deficiency. It was with no trembling hand that Buonaparte laid hold of his task. For an efficient artillery service artillery officers were essential, and there were almost none. In the ebb and flow of popular enthusiasm many republicans who had fallen back before the storms of factional excesses were now willing to come forward, and Napoleon, not publicly committed to the Jacobins, was able to win many capable assistants from among men of his class. His nervous restlessness found an outlet in erecting buttresses, mounting guns, and invigorating the whole service until a zealous activity of the most promising kind was displayed by officers and men alike. By September twenty-ninth fourteen guns were mounted and four mortars, the essential material was gathered, and by sheer self-assertion Buonaparte was in complete charge. The only check was in the ignorant meddling of Carteaux, who, though energetic and zealous, though born and bred in camp, being the son of a soldier, was, after all, not a soldier, but a very fair artist (painter). For his battle-pieces and portraits of military celebrities he had received large prices, and was as vain of his artistic as of his military talent, though both were mediocre. Strange characters rose to the top in those troublous times: the painter's opponent at Avignon, the leader of the insurgents, had been a tailor; his successor was one Lapoype, a physician. Buonaparte's ready pen stood him again in good stead, and he sent up a memorial to the ministry, explaining the situation, and asking for the appointment of an artillery general with full powers. The commissioners transmitted the paper to Paris, and appointed the memorialist to the higher rank of acting commander.



Though the commanding general could not well yield to his subordinate, he did, most ungraciously, to the Convention legates. Between the seventeenth and twentieth of September effective batteries under Buonaparte's command forced the enemy's frigates to withdraw from the neighborhood of La Seyne on the inner bay. The shot were red hot, the fire concentrated, and the guns served with cool efficiency. Next day the village was occupied and with only four hundred men General Delaborde marched to seize the Eguillette, the key to the siege, as Buonaparte reiterated and reiterated. He was ingloriously routed; the British landed reinforcements and erected strong fortifications over night. They styled the place Fort Mulgrave. It was speedily flanked by three redoubts. To Buonaparte this contemptuous defiance was insufferable: he spoke and Salicetti wrote of the siege as destitute both of brains and means. Thereupon the Paris legates began to represent Carteaux as an incapable and demand his recall. Buonaparte ransacked the surrounding towns and countryside for cannon and secured a number; he established forges at Ollioules to keep his apparatus in order, and entirely reorganized his personnel. With fair efficiency and substantial quantity of guns and shot, he found himself without sufficient powder and wrote imperiously to his superiors, enforcing successfully his demand. Meantime he made himself conspicuous by personal daring and exposure. The days and nights were arduous because of the enemy's activity. In successive sorties on October first, eighth, and fourteenth the British garrison of Fort Mulgrave gained both ground and prestige by successive victories. It was hard for the French to repress their impatience, but they were not ready yet for a general move: not a single arm of the service was sufficiently strong and the army was becoming demoralized by inactivity. The feud between general and legates grew bitter and the demands of the latter for material were disregarded alike at Paris and by Doppet, who had just captured Lyons, but would part with none of his guns or ammunition or men for use at Toulon. Lapoype and Carteaux quarreled bitterly, and there was such confusion that Buonaparte ended by squarely disobeying his superior and taking many minor movements into his own hand; he was so cocksure that artillery alone would end the siege that the general dubbed him Captain Cannon. Finally the wrangling of all concerned cried to heaven, and on October twenty-third Carteaux was transferred to the Army of Italy with headquarters at Nice. He left for his new post on November seventh, and five days later his successor appeared. In the interim the nominal commander was Lapoype, really Salicetti prompted by Buonaparte.

Thus at length the artist was removed from command, and a physician was appointed in his stead. The doctor was an ardent patriot who had distinguished himself at the siege of Lyons, which had fallen on October ninth. But on arriving at Toulon the citizen soldier was awed by the magnitude of his new work. On November fifteenth the French pickets saw a Spaniard maltreating a French prisoner on the outworks of Fort Mulgrave. There was an impulsive and spontaneous rush of the besiegers to avenge the insult. General O'Hara landed from the Victory with reinforcements for the garrison. Doppet was panic-stricken by the fire and ordered a retreat. Captain Buonaparte with an oath expressed his displeasure. The soldiers cried in angry spite: "Are we always to be commanded by painters and doctors?" Indeed, the newcomer had hardly taken command, leaving matters at loose ends as they were: in a short time he was transferred at his own suggestion to an easier station in the Pyrenees, it being understood that Dugommier, a professional soldier, would be finally appointed commander-in-chief, and that Duteil, the brother of Buonaparte's old friend and commander, was to be made general of artillery. He was a man advanced in years, unable even to mount a horse: but he was devoted to the young captain, trusted his powers, and left him in virtual command. Abundant supplies arrived at the same time from Lyons. On November twentieth the new officers took charge, two days later a general reconnaissance was made, and within a short time the investment was completed. On the thirtieth there was a formidable sally from the town directed against Buonaparte's batteries. In the force were two thousand three hundred and fifty men: about four hundred British, three hundred Sardinians, two hundred and fifty French, and seven hundred each of Neapolitans and Spanish. They were commanded by General Dundas. Their earliest movements were successful and the commander-in-chief of the besieged came out to see the victory. But the tide turned, the French revolutionists rallied, and the sortie was repulsed. The event was made doubly important by the chance capture of General O'Hara, the English commandant. Such a capture is rare,—Buonaparte was profoundly impressed by the fact. He obtained permission to visit the English general in captivity, but was coldly received. To the question: "What do you require?" came the curt reply: "To be left alone and owe nothing to pity." This striking though uncourtly reply delighted Buonaparte. The success was duly reported to Paris. In the "Moniteur" of December seventh the name of Buona Parte is mentioned for the first time, and as among the most distinguished in the action.

The councils of war before Dugommier's arrival had been numerous and turbulent, although the solitary plan of operations suggested by the commander and his aides would have been adequate only for capturing an inland town, and probably not even for that. From the beginning and with fierce iteration Buonaparte had explained to his colleagues the special features of their task, but all in vain. He reasoned that Toulon depended for its resisting power on the Allies and their fleets, and must be reduced from the side next the sea. The English themselves understood this when they seized and fortified the redoubt of Fort Mulgrave, known also by the French as Little Gibraltar, on the tongue of land separating, to the westward, the inner from the outer bay. That post on the promontory styled the Eguillette by the natives must be taken. From the very moment of his arrival this simple but clever conception had been urged on the council of war by Buonaparte. But Carteaux could not and would not see its importance: it was not until a skilled commander took charge that Buonaparte's insight was justified and his plan adopted. At the same time it was determined that operations should also be directed against two other strong outposts, one to the north, the other to the northeast, of the town. There was to be a genuine effort to capture Mt. Faron on the north and a demonstration merely against the third point. But the concentration of force was to be against the Eguillette.

Finally, on December seventeenth, after careful preparation, a concerted attack was made at all three points. Officers and men were daring and efficient everywhere. Buonaparte, assuming responsibility for the batteries, was ubiquitous and reckless. The movement on which he had set his heart was successful in every portion; the enemy was not only driven within the interior works, but by the fall of Little Gibraltar his communication with the sea was endangered. The whole peninsula, the fort itself, the point and the neighboring heights were captured. Victor, Muiron, Buonaparte, and Dugommier led the storming columns. The Allies were utterly demoralized by the fierce and bloody struggle. Since, therefore, the supporting fleets could no longer remain in a situation so precarious, the besieged at once made ready for departure, embarking with precipitate haste the troops and many of the inhabitants. The Spaniards fired two frigates loaded with powder and the explosion of the magazines shook the city and its suburbs like an earthquake. In that moment the young Sidney Smith landed from the British ships and laid the trains which kindled an awful conflagration. The captured French fleet lying at anchor, the magazines and shops of the arsenal, all its enclosures burst into flames, and one explosion followed another in an awe-inspiring volcanic eruption. The besiegers were stupefied as they gazed, and stopped their ears. In a few hours the city was completely evacuated, and the foreign war vessels sailed away from the offing. The news of this decisive victory was despatched without a moment's delay to the Convention. The names of Salicetti, Robespierre, Ricord, Freron, and Barras are mentioned in Dugommier's letters as those of men who had won distinction in various posts; that of Buonaparte does not occur.

There was either jealousy of his merits, which are declared by his enemies to have been unduly vaunted, or else his share had been more insignificant than is generally supposed. He related at St. Helena that during the operations before Toulon he had had three horses killed under him, and showed Las Cases a great scar on his thigh which he said had been received in a bayonet charge at Toulon. "Men wondered at the fortune which kept me invulnerable; I always concealed my dangers in mystery." The hypothesis of his insignificance appears unlikely when we examine the memoirs written by his contemporaries, and consider the precise traditions of a later generation; it becomes untenable in view of what happened on the next day, when the commissioners nominated him for the office of general of brigade, a rank which in the exchange of prisoners with the English was reckoned as equal to that of lieutenant-general. In a report written on the nineteenth to the minister of war, Duteil speaks in the highest terms of Buonaparte. "A great deal of science, as much intelligence, and too much bravery; such is a faint sketch of the virtues of this rare officer. It rests with you, minister, to retain them for the glory of the republic."

On December twenty-fourth the Convention received the news of victory. It was really their reprieve, for news of disaster would have cut short their career. Jubilant over a prompt success, their joy was savage and infernal. With the eagerness of vampires they at once sent two commissioners to wipe the name of Toulon from the map, and its inhabitants from the earth. Fouche, later chief of police and Duke of Otranto under Napoleon, went down from Lyons to see the sport, and wrote to his friend the arch-murderer Collot d'Herbois that they were celebrating the victory in but one way. "This night we send two hundred and thirteen rebels into hell-fire." The fact is, no one ever knew how many hundreds or thousands of the Toulon Girondists were swept together and destroyed by the fire of cannon and musketry. Freron, one of the commissioners, desired to leave not a single rebel alive. Dugommier would listen to no such proposition for a holocaust. Marmont declares that Buonaparte and his artillerymen pleaded for mercy, but in vain.

Running like a thread through all these events was a little counterplot. The Corsicans at Toulon were persons of importance, and had shown their mettle. Salicetti, Buonaparte, Arena, and Cervoni were now men of mark; the two latter had, like Buonaparte, been promoted, though to much lower rank. As Salicetti declared in a letter written on December twenty-eighth, they were scheming to secure vessels and arm them for an expedition to Corsica. But for the time their efforts came to naught; and thenceforward Salicetti seemed to lose all interest in Corsican affairs, becoming more and more involved in the ever madder rush of events in France.

This was not strange, for even a common politician could not remain insensible to the course or the consequences of the malignant anarchy now raging throughout France. The massacres at Lyons, Marseilles, and Toulon were the reply to the horrors of like or worse nature perpetrated in Vendee by the royalists. Danton having used the Paris sections to overawe the Girondist majority of the Convention, Marat gathered his riotous band of sansculottes, and hounded the discredited remnant of the party to death, flight, or arrest. His bloody career was ended only by Charlotte Corday's dagger. Passions were thus inflamed until even Danton's conduct appeared calm, moderate, and inefficient when compared with the reckless bloodthirstiness of Hebert, now leader of the Exageres. The latter prevailed, the Vendeans were defeated, and Citizen Carrier of Nantes in three months took fifteen thousand human lives by his fiendishly ingenious systems of drowning and shooting. In short, France was chaos, and the Salicettis of the time might hope for anything, or fear everything, in the throes of her disorder. Not so a man like Buonaparte. His instinct led him to stand in readiness at the parting of the ways. Others might choose and press forward; he gave no sign of being moved by current events, but stood with his eye still fixed, though now in a backward gaze, on Corsica, ready, if interest or self-preservation required it, for another effort to seize and hold it as his own. It was self-esteem, not Corsican patriotism, his French interest perhaps, which now prompted him. Determined and revengeful, he was again, through the confusion of affairs at Paris, to secure means for his enterprise, and this time on a scale proportionate to the difficulty. The influence of Toulon upon Buonaparte's fortunes was incalculable. Throughout life he spoke of the town, of the siege and his share therein, of the subsequent events and of the men whose acquaintance he made there, with lively and emphatic interest. To all associated with the capture he was in after years generous to a fault, except a few enemies like Auna whom he treated with harshness. In particular it must not be forgotten that among many men of minor importance he there began his relations with some of his greatest generals and marshals: Desaix, Marmont, Junot, Muiron, and Chauvet. The experience launched him on his grand career; the intimacies he formed proved a strong support when he forced himself to the front. Moreover, his respect for England was heightened. It was not in violation of a pledge to hold the place for the Bourbon pretender, but by right of sheer ability that they took precedence of the Allies in command. They were haughty and dictatorial because their associates were uncertain and divided. When the Comte de Provence was suggested as a colleague they refused to admit him because he was detested by the best men of his own party. In the garrison of nearly fifteen thousand not a third were British. Buonaparte and others charged them with perfidy in a desire to hold the great fort for themselves, but the charge was untrue and he did not disdain them, but rather admired and imitated their policy.



CHAPTER XVIII.

A Jacobin General.

Transformation in Buonaparte's Character — Confirmed as a French General — Conduct of His Brothers — Napoleon's Caution — His Report on Marseilles — The New French Army — Buonaparte the Jacobin Leader — Hostilities with Austria and Sardinia — Enthusiasm of the French Troops — Buonaparte in Society — His Plan for an Italian Campaign.

[Sidenote: 1793-94.]

Hitherto prudence had not been characteristic of Buonaparte: his escapades and disobedience had savored rather of recklessness. Like scores of others in his class, he had fully exploited the looseness of royal and early republican administration; his madcap and hotspur versatility distinguished him from his comrades not in the kind but in the degree of his bold effrontery. The whole outlook having changed since his final flight to France, his conduct now began to reveal a definite plan—to be marked by punctilious obedience, sometimes even by an almost puerile caution. His family was homeless and penniless; their only hope for a livelihood was in cooeperation with the Jacobins, who appeared to be growing more influential every hour. Through the powerful friends that Napoleon had made among the representatives of the Convention, men like the younger Robespierre, Freron, and Barras, much had already been gained. If his nomination to the office of general of brigade were confirmed, as it was almost certain to be, the rest would follow, since, with his innate capacity for adapting himself to circumstances, he had during the last few weeks successfully cultivated his power of pleasing, captivating the hearts of Marmont, Junot, and many others.

With such strong chances in his favor, it appeared to Buonaparte that no stumbling-block of technicality should be thrown in the path of his promotion. Accordingly, in the record of his life sent up to Paris, he puts his entrance into the service over a year earlier than it actually occurred, omits as unessential details some of the places in which he had lived and some of the companies in which he had served, declares that he had commanded a battalion at the capture of Magdalena, and, finally, denies categorically that he was ever noble. To this paper, which minimizes nearly to the vanishing-point all mention of Corsica, and emphasizes his services as a Frenchman by its insidious omissions, the over-driven officials in Paris took no exception; and on February sixth, 1794, he was confirmed, receiving an assignment for service in the new and regenerated Army of Italy, which had replaced as if by magic the ragged, shoeless, ill-equipped, and half-starved remnants of troops in and about Nice that in the previous year had been dignified by the same title. This gambler had not drawn the first prize in the lottery, but what he had secured was enough to justify his course, and confirm his confidence in fate. Eight years and three months nominally in the service, out of which in reality he had been absent four years and ten months either on furlough or without one, and already a general! Neither blind luck, nor the revolutionary epoch, nor the superlative ability of the man, but a compound of all these, had brought this marvel to pass. It did not intoxicate, but still further sobered, the beneficiary. This effect was partly due to an experience which demonstrated that strong as are the chains of habit, they are more easily broken than those which his associates forge about a man.

In the interval between nomination and confirmation the young aspirant, through the fault of his friends, was involved in a most serious risk. Salicetti, and the Buonaparte brothers, Joseph, Lucien, and Louis, went wild with exultation over the fall of Toulon, and began by reckless assumptions and untruthful representations to reap an abundant harvest of spoils. Joseph, by the use of his brother's Corsican commission, had posed as a lieutenant-colonel; he was now made a commissary-general of the first class. Louis, without regard to his extreme youth, was promoted to be adjutant-major of artillery—a dignity which was short-lived, for he was soon after ordered to the school at Chalons as a cadet, but which served, like the greater success of Joseph, to tide over a crisis. Lucien retained his post as keeper of the commissary stores in St. Maximin, where he was the leading Jacobin, styling himself Lucius Brutus, and rejoicing in the sobriquet of "the little Robespierre."

The positions of Lucien and Louis were fantastic even for revolutionary times. Napoleon was fully aware of the danger, and was correspondingly circumspect. It was possibly at his own suggestion that he was appointed, on December twenty-sixth, 1793, inspector of the shore fortifications, and ordered to proceed immediately on an inspection of the Mediterranean coast as far as Mentone. The expedition removed him from all temptation to an unfortunate display of exultation or anxiety, and gave him a new chance to display his powers. He performed his task with the thoroughness of an expert; but in so doing, his zeal played him a sorry trick, eclipsing the caution of the revolutionist by the eagerness of the sagacious general. In his report to the minister of war he comprehensively discussed both the fortification of the coast and the strengthening of the navy, which were alike indispensable to the wonderful scheme of operations in Italy which he appears to have been already revolving in his mind. The Army of Italy, and in fact all southeastern France, depended at the moment for sustenance on the commerce of Genoa, professedly a neutral state and friendly to the French republic. This essential trade could be protected only by making interference from the English and the Spaniards impossible, or at least difficult.

Arrived at Marseilles, and with these ideas occupying his whole mind, Buonaparte regarded the situation as serious. The British and Spanish fleets swept the seas, and were virtually blockading all the Mediterranean ports of France. At Toulon, as has been told, they actually entered, and departed only after losing control of the promontory which forms the harbor. There is a similar conformation of the ground at the entrance to the port of Marseilles, but Buonaparte found that the fortress which occupied the commanding promontory had been dismantled. With the instinct of a strategist and with no other thought than that of his duties as inspector, he sat down, and on January fourth, 1794, wrote a most impolitic recommendation that the fortification should be restored in such a way as to "command the town." These words almost certainly referred both to the possible renewal by the conquered French royalists and other malcontents of their efforts to secure Marseilles, and to a conceivable effort on the part of the Allies to seize the harbor. Now it happened that the liberals of the town had regarded this very stronghold as their Bastille, and it had been dismantled by them in emulation of their brethren of Paris. The language and motive of the report were therefore capable of misinterpretation. A storm at once arose among the Marseilles Jacobins against both Buonaparte and his superior, General Lapoype; they were both denounced to the Convention, and in due time, about the end of February, were both summoned before the bar of that body. In the mean time Buonaparte's nomination as general of brigade had been confirmed, his commission arriving at Marseilles on February sixteenth. It availed nothing toward restoring him to popularity; on the contrary, the masses grew more suspicious and more menacing. He therefore returned to the protection of Salicetti and Robespierre, then at Toulon, whence by their advice he despatched to Paris by special messenger a poor-spirited exculpatory letter, admitting that the only use of restoring the fort would be to "command the town," that is, control it by military power in case of revolution. Having by this language pusillanimously acknowledged a fault which he had not committed, the writer, by the advice of Salicetti and Robespierre, refused to obey the formal summons of the Convention when it came. Those powerful protectors made vigorous representations to their friends in Paris, and Buonaparte was saved. Both they and he might well rely on the distinguished service rendered by the culprit at Toulon; his military achievement might well outweigh a slight political delinquency. On April first, 1794, he assumed the duties of his new command, reporting himself at Nice. Lapoype went to Paris, appeared at the bar of the Convention, and was triumphantly acquitted. Naturally, therefore, no indictment could lie against the inferior, and Buonaparte's name was not even mentioned.

A single circumstance changed the French Revolution from a sectarian dogma into a national movement. By the exertions and plans of Carnot the effective force of the French army had been raised in less than two years from one hundred and twelve thousand to the astonishing figure of over seven hundred and thirty thousand. The discipline was now rigid, and the machine was perfectly adapted to the workman's hand, although for lack of money the equipment was still sadly defective. In the Army of Italy were nearly sixty-seven thousand men, a number which included all the garrisons and reserves of the coast towns and of Corsica. Its organization, like that of the other portions of the military power, had been simplified, and so strengthened. There were a commander-in-chief, a chief of staff, three generals of division, of whom Massena was one, and thirteen generals of brigade, of whom one, Buonaparte, was the commander and inspector of artillery. The former was now thirty-four years old. His sire was a wine-dealer of a very humble sort, probably of Jewish blood, and the boy, Italian in origin and feeling, had almost no education. Throughout his wonderful career he was coarse, sullen, and greedy; nevertheless, as a soldier he was an inspired genius, ranked by many as the peer of Napoleon. Having served France for several years as an Italian mercenary, he resigned in 1789, settled in his native town of Nice, and married; but the stir of arms was irresistible and three years later he volunteered under the tricolor. His comrades at once elected him an officer, and in about a year he was head of a battalion, or colonel in our style. In the reorganization he was promoted to be a division general because of sheer merit. For sixteen years he had an unbroken record of success and won from Napoleon the caressing title: "Dear Child of Victory."

The younger Robespierre, with Ricord and Salicetti, were the "representatives of the people." The first of these was, to outward appearance, the leading spirit of the whole organism, and to his support Buonaparte was now thoroughly committed. The young artillery commander was considered by all at Nice to be a pronounced "Montagnard," that is, an extreme Jacobin. Augustin Robespierre had quickly learned to see and hear with the eyes and ears of his Corsican friend, whose fidelity seemed assured by hatred of Paoli and by a desire to recover the family estates in his native island. Many are pleased to discuss the question of Buonaparte's attitude toward the Jacobin terrorists. The dilemma they propose is that he was either a convinced and sincere terrorist or that he fawned on the terrorists from interested motives. This last appears to have been the opinion of Augustin Robespierre, the former that of his sister Marie, for the time an intimate friend of the Buonaparte sisters. Both at least have left these opinions on record in letters and memoirs. There is no need to impale ourselves on either horn, if we consider the youth as he was, feeling no responsibility whatever for the conditions into which he was thrown, taking the world as he found it and using its opportunities while they lasted. For the time and in that place there were terrorists: he made no confession of faith, avoided all snares, and served his adopted country as she was in fact with little reference to political shibboleths. He so served her then and henceforth that until he lost both his poise and his indispensable power, she laid herself at his feet and adored him. Whatever the ties which bound them at first, the ascendancy of Buonaparte over the young Robespierre was thorough in the end. His were the suggestions and the enterprises, the political conceptions, the military plans, the devices to obtain ways and means. It was probably his advice which was determinative in the scheme of operations finally adopted. With an astute and fertile brain, with a feverish energy and an unbounded ambition, Buonaparte must attack every problem or be wretched. Here was a most interesting one, complicated by geographical, political, naval, and military elements. That he seized it, considered it, and found some solution is inherently probable. The conclusion too has all the marks of his genius. Yet the glory of success was justly Massena's. A select third of the troops were chosen and divided into three divisions to assume the offensive, under Massena's direction, against the almost impregnable posts of the Austrians and Sardinians in the upper Apennines. The rest were held in garrison partly as a reserve, partly to overawe the newly annexed department of which Nice was the capital.

Genoa now stood in a peculiar relation to France. Her oligarchy, though called a republic, was in spirit the antipodes of French democracy. Her trade was essential to France, but English influence predominated in her councils and English force worked its will in her domains. In October, 1793, a French supply-ship had been seized by an English squadron in the very harbor. Soon afterward, by way of rejoinder to this act of violence, the French minister at Genoa was officially informed from Paris that as it appeared no longer possible for a French army to reach Lombardy by the direct route through the Apennines, it might be necessary to advance along the coast through Genoese territory. This announcement was no threat, but serious earnest; the plan had been carefully considered and was before long to be put into execution. It was merely as a feint that in April, 1794, hostilities were formally opened against Sardinia and Austria. Massena seized Ventimiglia on the sixth. Advancing by Oneglia and Ormea, in the valley of the Stura, he turned the position of the allied Austrians and Sardinians, thus compelling them to evacuate their strongholds one by one, until on May seventh the pass of Tenda, leading direct into Lombardy, was abandoned by them.

The result of this movement was to infuse new enthusiasm into the army, while at the same time it set free, for offensive warfare, large numbers of the garrison troops in places now no longer in danger. Massena wrote in terms of exultation of the devotion and endurance which his troops had shown in the sacred name of liberty. "They know how to conquer and never complain. Marching barefoot, and often without rations, they abuse no one, but sing the loved notes of 'Ca ira'—'T will go, 't will go! We'll make the creatures that surround the despot at Turin dance the Carmagnole!" Victor Amadeus, King of Sardinia, was an excellent specimen of the benevolent despot; it was he whom they meant. Augustin Robespierre wrote to his brother Maximilien, in Paris, that they had found the country before them deserted: forty thousand souls had fled from the single valley of Oneglia, having been terrified by the accounts of French savagery to women and children, and of their impiety in devastating the churches and religious establishments.

Whether the phenomenal success of this short campaign, which lasted but a month, was expected or not, nothing was done to improve it, and the advancing battalions suddenly stopped, as if to make the impression that they could go farther only by way of Genoese territory. Buonaparte would certainly have shared in the campaign had it been a serious attack; but, except to bring captured stores from Oneglia, he did nothing, devoting the months of May and June to the completion of his shore defenses, and living at Nice with his mother and her family. That famous and coquettish town was now the center of a gay republican society in which Napoleon and his pretty sisters were important persons. They were the constant companions of young Robespierre and Ricord. The former, amazed by the activity of his friend's brain, the scope of his plans, and the terrible energy which marked his preparations, wrote of Napoleon that he was a man of "transcendent merit." Marmont, speaking of Napoleon's charm at this time, says: "There was so much future in his mind.... He had acquired an ascendancy over the representatives which it is impossible to describe." He also declares, and Salicetti, too, repeatedly asseverated, that Buonaparte was the "man, the plan-maker" of the Robespierres.

The impression which Salicetti and Marmont expressed was doubtless due to the conclusions of a council of war held on May twentieth by the leaders of the two armies—of the Alps and of Italy—to concert a plan of cooeperation. Naturally each group of generals desired the foremost place for the army it represented. Buonaparte overrode all objections, and compelled the acceptance of a scheme entirely his own, which with some additions and by careful elaboration ultimately developed into the famous plan of campaign in Italy. These circumstances are noteworthy. Again and again it has been charged that this grand scheme was bodily stolen from the papers of his great predecessors, one in particular, of whom more must be said in the sequel. Napoleon was a student and an omnivorous reader, he knew what others had done and written; but the achievement which launched him on his career was due to the use of his own senses, to his own assimilation and adaptation of other men's experiences and theories, which had everything to commend them except that perfection of detail and energy of command which led to actual victory. But affairs in Genoa were becoming so menacing that for the moment they demanded the exclusive attention of the French authorities. Austrian troops had disregarded her neutrality and trespassed on her territory; the land was full of French deserters, and England, recalling her successes in the same line during the American Revolution, had established a press in the city for printing counterfeit French money, which was sent by secret mercantile communications to Marseilles, and there was put into circulation. It was consequently soon determined to amplify greatly the plan of campaign, and likewise to send a mission to Genoa. Buonaparte was himself appointed the envoy, and thus became the pivot of both movements—that against Piedmont and that against Genoa.



CHAPTER XIX.

Vicissitudes in War and Diplomacy.

Signs of Maturity — The Mission to Genoa — Course of the French Republic — The "Terror" — Thermidor — Buonaparte a Scapegoat — His Prescience — Adventures of His Brothers — Napoleon's Defense of His French Patriotism — Bloodshedding for Amusement — New Expedition Against Corsica — Buonaparte's Advice for Its Conduct.

[Sidenote: 1794.]

Buonaparte's plan for combining operations against both Genoa and Sardinia was at first hazy. In his earliest efforts to expand and clarify it, he wrote a rambling document, still in existence, which draws a contrast between the opposite policies to be adopted with reference to Italy and Spain. In it he also calls attention to the scarcity of officers suitable for concerted action in a great enterprise, and a remark concerning the course to be pursued in this particular case contains the germ of his whole military system. "Combine your forces in a war, as in a siege, on one point. The breach once made, equilibrium is destroyed, everything else is useless, and the place is taken. Do not conceal, but concentrate, your attack." In the matter of politics he sees Germany as the main prop of opposition to democracy; Spain is to be dealt with on the defensive, Italy on the offensive. But, contrary to what he actually did in the following year, he advises against proceeding too far into Piedmont, lest the adversary should gain the advantage of position. This paper Robespierre the younger had in his pocket when he left for Paris, summoned to aid his brother in difficulties which were now pressing fast upon him.

Ricord was left behind to direct, at least nominally, the movements both of the armies and of the embassy to Genoa. Buonaparte continued to be the real power. Military operations having been suspended to await the result of diplomacy, his instructions from Ricord were drawn so as to be loose and merely formal. On July eleventh he started from Nice, reaching his destination three days later. During the week of his stay—for he left again on the twenty-first—the envoy made his representations, and laid down his ultimatum that the republic of Genoa should preserve absolute neutrality, neither permitting troops to pass over its territories, nor lending aid in the construction of military roads, as she was charged with doing secretly. His success in overawing the oligarchy was complete, and a written promise of compliance to these demands was made by the Doge. Buonaparte arrived again in Nice on the twenty-eighth. We may imagine that as he traveled the romantic road between the mountains and the sea, the rising general and diplomat indulged in many rosy dreams, probably feeling already on his shoulders the insignia of a commander-in-chief. But he was returning to disgrace, if not to destruction. A week after his arrival came the stupefying news that the hour-glass had once again been reversed, that on the very day of his own exultant return to Nice, Robespierre's head had fallen, that the Mountain was shattered, and that the land was again staggering to gain its balance after another political earthquake.

The shock had been awful, but it was directly traceable to the accumulated disorders of Jacobin rule. A rude and vigorous but eerie order of things had been inaugurated on November twenty-fourth, 1793, by the so-called republic. There was first the new calendar, in which the year I began on September twenty-second, 1792, the day on which the republic had been proclaimed. In it were the twelve thirty-day months, with their names of vintage, fog, and frost; of snow, rain, and wind; of bud, flower, and meadow; of seed, heat, and harvest: the whole terminated most unpoetically by the five or six supplementary days named sansculot-tides,—sansculottes meaning without knee-breeches, a garment confined to the upper classes; that is, with long trousers like the common people,—and these days were so named because they were to be a holiday for the long-trousered populace which was to use the new reckoning. There was next the new, strange, and unhallowed spectacle, seen in history for the first time, the realization of a nightmare—a whole people finally turned into an army, and at war with nearly all the world. The reforming Girondists had created the situation, and the Jacobins, with grim humor, were unflinchingly facing the logical consequences of such audacity. Carnot had given the watchword of attack in mass and with superior numbers; the times gave the frenzied courage of sentimental exaltation. Before the end of 1793 the foreign enemies of France, though not conquered, had been checked on the frontier; the outbreak of civil war in Vendee had been temporarily suppressed; both Lyons and Toulon had been retaken.

Robespierre, St. Just, Couthon, and Billaud-Varennes were theorists after the manner of Rousseau. Their new gospel of social regeneration embraced democracy, civic virtue, moral institutions, and public festivals. These were their shibboleths and catch-words. Incidentally they extolled paternalism in government, general conscription, compulsory military service, and, on the very eve of the greatest industrial revival known to history, a return to agricultural society! The sanction of all this was not moral suasion: essential to the system was Spartan simplicity and severity, compulsion was the means to their utopia.[40] The Jacobins were nothing if not thorough; and here was another new and awful thing—the "Terror"—which had broken loose with its foul furies of party against party through all the land. It seemed at last as if it were exhausting itself, though for a time it had grown in intensity as it spread in extent. It had created three factions in the Mountain. Early in 1794 there remained but a little handful of avowed and still eager terrorists in the Convention—Hebert and his friends. These were the atheists who had abolished religion and the past, bowing down before the fetish which they dubbed Reason. They were seized and put to death on March twenty-fourth. There then remained the cliques of Danton and Robespierre; the former claiming the name of moderates, and telling men to be calm, the latter with no principle but devotion to a person who claimed to be the regenerator of society. These hero-worshipers were for a time victorious. Danton, like Hebert, was foully murdered, and Robespierre remained alone, virtually dictator. But his theatrical conduct in decreeing by law the existence of a Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul, and in organizing tawdry festivals to supply the place of worship, utterly embittered against him both atheists and pious people. In disappointed rage at his failure, he laid aside the characters of prophet and mild saint to give vent to his natural wickedness and to become a devil.

[Footnote 40: In Buchez et Roux, Histoire Parlementaire, XXXI, pp. 268-290, 415-427; XXXII, pp. 335-381 et seq., and in OEuvres de St. Just, pp. 360-420, will be found a few examples of their views in their own words.]

During the long days of June and July there raged again a carnival of blood, known to history as the "Great Terror." In less than seven weeks upward of twelve hundred victims were immolated. The unbridled license of the guillotine broadened as it ran. First the aristocrats had fallen, then royalty, then their sympathizers, then the hated rich, then the merely well-to-do, and lastly anybody not cringing to existing power. The reaction against Robespierre was one of universal fear. Its inception was the work of Tallien, Fouche, Barras, Carrier, Freron, and the like, men of vile character, who knew that if Robespierre could maintain his pose of the "Incorruptible" their doom was sealed. In this sense Robespierre was what Napoleon called him at St. Helena, "the scapegoat of the Revolution." The uprising of these accomplices was, however, the opportunity long desired by the better elements in Parisian society, and the two antipodal classes made common cause. Dictator as Robespierre wished to be, he was formed of other stuff, for when the reckoning came his brutal violence was cowed. On July twenty-seventh (the ninth of Thermidor), the Convention turned on him in rebellion, extreme radicals and moderate conservatives combining for the effort. Terrible scenes were enacted. The sections of Paris were divided, some for the Convention, some for Robespierre. The artillerymen who were ordered by the latter to batter down the part of the Tuileries where his enemies were sitting hesitated and disobeyed; at once all resistance to the decrees of the Convention died out. The dictator would have been his own executioner, but his faltering terrors stopped him midway in his half-committed suicide. He and his brother, with their friends, were seized, and beheaded on the morrow. With the downfall of Robespierre went the last vestige of social or political authority; for the Convention was no longer trusted by the nation—the only organized power with popular support which was left was the army.