The Life of Napoleon I (Complete) / Rose, John Holland, 1855-1942

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Title: The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2)

Author: John Holland Rose

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  LONDON: G. BELL & SONS, LIMITED,
  PORTUGAL STREET, KINGSWAY, W.C.
  CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON, BELL & CO.
  NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO.
  BOMBAY: A.H. WHEELER & CO





  THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I

  INCLUDING NEW MATERIALS FROM THE BRITISH OFFICIAL RECORDS



  BY JOHN HOLLAND ROSE, LITT.D.
  LATE SCHOLAR OF CHRIST'S COLLEGE,
  CAMBRIDGE



   "Let my son often read and reflect on history: this is the only
   true philosophy."--_Napoleon's last Instructions for the King of
    Rome_.








  LONDON G. BELL AND SONS, LTD.
  1910

POST 8VO EDITION, ILLUSTRATED
First Published, December 1901.
Second Edition, revised, March 1902.
Third Edition, revised, January 1903.
Fourth Edition, revised, September 1907.
Reprinted, January 1910.


CROWN 8VO EDITION
First Published, September 1904.
Reprinted, October 1907; July 1910.


DEDICATED TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD ACTON,
K.C.V.O., D.C.L., LL.D. REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, IN ADMIRATION OF HIS PROFOUND HISTORICAL
LEARNING, AND IN GRATITUDE FOR ADVICE AND HELP GENEROUSLY GIVEN.






PREFACE


An apology seems to be called for from anyone who gives to the world a
new Life of Napoleon I. My excuse must be that for many years I have
sought to revise the traditional story of his career in the light of
facts gleaned from the British Archives and of the many valuable
materials that have recently been published by continental historians.
To explain my manner of dealing with these sources would require an
elaborate critical Introduction; but, as the limits of my space
absolutely preclude any such attempt, I can only briefly refer to the
most important topics.

To deal with the published sources first, I would name as of chief
importance the works of MM. Aulard, Chuquet, Houssaye, Sorel, and
Vandal in France; of Herren Beer, Delbrueck, Fournier, Lehmann, Oncken,
and Wertheimer in Germany and Austria; and of Baron Lumbroso in Italy.
I have also profited largely by the scholarly monographs or
collections of documents due to the labours of the "Societe d'Histoire
Contemporaine," the General Staff of the French Army, of MM. Bouvier,
Caudrillier, Capitaine "J.G.," Levy, Madelin, Sagnac, Sciout, Zivy,
and others in France; and of Herren Bailleu, Demelitsch, Hansing,
Klinkowstrom, Luckwaldt, Ulmann, and others in Germany. Some of the
recently published French Memoirs dealing with those times are not
devoid of value, though this class of literature is to be used with
caution. The new letters of Napoleon published by M. Leon Lecestre and
M. Leonce de Brotonne have also opened up fresh vistas into the life
of the great man; and the time seems to have come when we may safely
revise our judgments on many of its episodes.

But I should not have ventured on this great undertaking, had I not
been able to contribute something new to Napoleonic literature. During
a study of this period for an earlier work published in the "Cambridge
Historical Series," I ascertained the great value of the British
records for the years 1795-1815. It is surely discreditable to our
historical research that, apart from the fruitful labours of the Navy
Records Society, of Messrs. Oscar Browning and Hereford George, and of
Mr. Bowman of Toronto, scarcely any English work has appeared that is
based on the official records of this period. Yet they are of great
interest and value. Our diplomatic agents then had the knack of
getting at State secrets in most foreign capitals, even when we were
at war with their Governments; and our War Office and Admiralty
Records have also yielded me some interesting "finds." M. Levy, in the
preface to his "Napoleon intime" (1893), has well remarked that "the
documentary history of the wars of the Empire has not yet been
written. To write it accurately, it will be more important thoroughly
to know foreign archives than those of France." Those of Russia,
Austria, and Prussia have now for the most part been examined; and I
think that I may claim to have searched all the important parts of our
Foreign Office Archives for the years in question, as well as for part
of the St. Helena period. I have striven to embody the results of this
search in the present volumes as far as was compatible with limits of
space and with the narrative form at which, in my judgment, history
ought always to aim.

On the whole, British policy comes out the better the more fully it is
known. Though often feeble and vacillating, it finally attained to
firmness and dignity; and Ministers closed the cycle of war with acts
of magnanimity towards the French people which are studiously ignored
by those who bid us shed tears over the martyrdom of St. Helena.
Nevertheless, the splendour of the finale must not blind us to the
flaccid eccentricities that made British statesmanship the laughing
stock of Europe in 1801-3, 1806-7, and 1809. Indeed, it is
questionable whether the renewal of war between England and Napoleon
in 1803 was due more to his innate forcefulness or to the contempt
which he felt for the Addington Cabinet. When one also remembers our
extraordinary blunders in the war of the Third Coalition, it seems a
miracle that the British Empire survived that life and death struggle
against a man of superhuman genius who was determined to effect its
overthrow. I have called special attention to the extent and
pertinacity of Napoleon's schemes for the foundation of a French
Colonial Empire in India, Egypt, South Africa, and Australia; and
there can be no doubt that the events of the years 1803-13 determined,
not only the destinies of Europe and Napoleon, but the general trend
of the world's colonization.

As it has been necessary to condense the story of Napoleon's life in
some parts, I have chosen to treat with special brevity the years
1809-11, which may be called the _constans aetas_ of his career, in
order to have more space for the decisive events that followed; but
even in these less eventful years I have striven to show how his
Continental System was setting at work mighty economic forces that
made for his overthrow, so that after the _debacle_ of 1812 it came to
be a struggle of Napoleon and France _contra mundum_.

While not neglecting the personal details of the great man's life, I
have dwelt mainly on his public career. Apart from his brilliant
conversations, his private life has few features of abiding interest,
perhaps because he early tired of the shallowness of Josephine and the
Corsican angularity of his brothers and sisters. But the cause also
lay in his own disposition. He once said to M. Gallois: "Je n'aime pas
beaucoup les femmes, ni le jeu--enfin rien: _je suis tout a fait un
etre politique_." In dealing with him as a warrior and statesman, and
in sparing my readers details as to his bolting his food, sleeping at
concerts, and indulging in amours where for him there was no glamour
of romance, I am laying stress on what interested him most--in a word,
I am taking him at his best.

I could not have accomplished this task, even in the present
inadequate way, but for the help generously accorded from many
quarters. My heartfelt thanks are due to Lord Acton, Regius Professor
of Modern History in the University of Cambridge, for advice of the
highest importance; to Mr. Hubert Hall of the Public Record Office,
for guidance in my researches there; to Baron Lumbroso of Rome,
editor of the "Bibliografia ragionata dell' Epoca Napoleonica," for
hints on Italian and other affairs; to Dr. Luckwaldt, Privat Docent of
the University of Bonn, and author of "Oesterreich und die Anfaenge des
Befreiungs-Krieges," for his very scholarly revision of the chapters
on German affairs; to Mr. F.H.E. Cunliffe, M.A., Fellow of All Souls'
College, Oxford, for valuable advice on the campaigns of 1800, 1805,
and 1806; to Professor Caudrillier of Grenoble, author of "Pichegru,"
for information respecting the royalist plot; and to Messrs. J.E.
Morris, M.A., and E.L.S. Horsburgh, B.A., for detailed communications
concerning Waterloo, The nieces of the late Professor Westwood of
Oxford most kindly allowed the facsimile of the new Napoleon letter,
printed opposite p. 156 of vol. i., to be made from the original in
their possession; and Miss Lowe courteously placed at my disposal the
papers of her father relating to the years 1813-15, as well as to the
St. Helena period. I wish here to record my grateful obligations for
all these friendly courtesies, which have given value to the book,
besides saving me from many of the pitfalls with which the subject
abounds. That I have escaped them altogether is not to be imagined;
but I can honestly say, in the words of the late Bishop of London,
that "I have tried to write true history."

J.H.R.

[NOTE.--The references to Napoleon's "Correspondence" in the notes are
to the official French edition, published under the auspices of
Napoleon III. The "New Letters of Napoleon" are those edited by Leon
Lecestre, and translated into English by Lady Mary Loyd, except in a
very few cases where M. Leonce de Brotonne's still more recent edition
is cited under his name. By "F.O.," France, No.----, and "F.O.,"
Prussia, No.----, are meant the volumes of _our_ Foreign Office
despatches relating to France and Prussia. For the sake of brevity I
have called Napoleon's Marshals and high officials by their names, not
by their titles: but a list of these is given at the close of vol.
ii.]





PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION


The demand for this work so far exceeded my expectations that I was
unable to make any considerable changes in the second edition, issued
in March, 1902; and circumstances again make it impossible for me to
give the work that thorough recension which I should desire. I have,
however, carefully considered the suggestions offered by critics, and
have adopted them in some cases. Professor Fournier of Vienna has most
kindly furnished me with details which seem to relegate to the domain
of legend the famous ice catastrophe at Austerlitz; and I have added a
note to this effect on p. 50 of vol. ii. On the other hand, I may
justly claim that the publication of Count Balmain's reports relating
to St. Helena has served to corroborate, in all important details, my
account of Napoleon's captivity.

It only remains to add that I much regret the omission of Mr. Oman's
name from II. 12-13 of page viii of the Preface, an omission rendered
all the more conspicuous by the appearance of the first volume of his
"History of the Peninsular War" in the spring of this year.

J.H.R.

_October, 1902._

Notes have been added at the end of ch. v., vol. i.; chs. xxii.,
xxiii., xxviii., xxix., xxxv., vol. ii.; and an Appendix on the Battle
of Waterloo has been added on p. 577, vol. ii.

       *       *       *       *       *




CONTENTS


    CHAPTER


VOL. I


         NOTE ON THE REPUBLICAN CALENDAR

      I. PARENTAGE AND EARLY YEARS

     II. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND CORSICA

    III. TOULON

     IV. VENDEMIAIRE

      V. THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN (1796)

     VI. THE FIGHTS FOR MANTUA

    VII. LEOBEN TO CAMPO FORMIO

   VIII. EGYPT

     IX. SYRIA

      X. BRUMAIRE

     XI. MARENGO: LUNEVILLE

    XII. THE NEW INSTITUTIONS OF FRANCE

   XIII. THE CONSULATE FOR LIFE

    XIV. THE PEACE OF AMIENS

     XV. A FRENCH COLONIAL EMPIRE: ST.
         DOMINGO--LOUISIANA--INDIA--AUSTRALIA

    XVI. NAPOLEON'S INTERVENTIONS

   XVII. THE RENEWAL OF WAR

  XVIII. EUROPE AND THE BONAPARTES

    XIX. THE ROYALIST PLOT

     XX. THE DAWN OF THE EMPIRE

    XXI. THE BOULOGNE FLOTILLA

    APPENDIX: REPORTS HITHERTO UNPUBLISHED
     ON
    (_a_) THE SALE OF LOUISIANA;
    (_b_) THE IRISH DIVISION IN NAPOLEON'S SERVICE

  ILLUSTRATIONS, MAPS, AND PLANS

  THE SIEGE OF TOULON, 1793

  MAP TO ILLUSTRATE THE CAMPAIGNS IN NORTH ITALY

  PLAN TO ILLUSTRATE THE VICTORY OF ARCOLA

  THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF RIVOLI

  FACSIMILE OF A LETTER OF NAPOLEON TO "LA CITOYENNE
  TALLIEN," 1797

  CENTRAL EUROPE, after the Peace of Campo Formio, 1797

  PLAN OF THE SIEGE OF ACRE, from a contemporary sketch

  THE BATTLE OF MARENGO, to illustrate Kellermann's charge

  FRENCH MAP OF THE SOUTH OF AUSTRALIA, 1807


VOL. II


     XXII. ULM AND TRAFALGAR
    XXIII. AUSTERLITZ
     XXIV. PRUSSIA AND THE NEW CHARLEMAGNE
      XXV. THE FALL OF PRUSSIA
     XXVI. THE CONTINENTAL SYSTEM: FRIEDLAND
    XXVII. TILSIT
   XXVIII. THE SPANISH RISING
     XXIX. ERFURT
      XXX. NAPOLEON AND AUSTRIA
     XXXI. THE EMPIRE AT ITS HEIGHT
    XXXII. THE RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN
   XXXIII. THE FIRST SAXON CAMPAIGN
    XXXIV. VITTORIA AND THE ARMISTICE
     XXXV. DRESDEN AND LEIPZIG
    XXXVI. FROM THE RHINE TO THE SEINE
   XXXVII. THE FIRST ABDICATION
  XXXVIII. ELBA AND PARIS
    XXXIX. LIGNY AND QUATRE BRAS
       XL. WATERLOO
      XLI. FROM THE ELYSEE TO ST. HELENA
     XLII. CLOSING YEARS

           APPENDIX I: LIST OF THE CHIEF APPOINTMENTS
             AND DIGNITIES BESTOWED BY NAPOLEON

           APPENDIX II: THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO

           INDEX


MAPS AND PLANS

  BATTLE OF ULM
  BATTLE OF AUSTERLITZ
  BATTLE OF JENA
  BATTLE OF FRIEDLAND
  BATTLE OF WAGRAM
  CENTRAL EUROPE AFTER 1810
  CAMPAIGN IN RUSSIA
  BATTLE OF VITTORIA
  THE CAMPAIGN OF 1813
  BATTLE OF DRESDEN
  BATTLE OF LEIPZIG
  THE CAMPAIGN OF 1814                              _to face_
  PLAN OF THE WATERLOO CAMPAIGN
  BATTLE OF LIGNY
  BATTLE OF WATERLOO, about 11 o'clock a.m.    _to face_
  ST. HELENA











NOTE ON THE REPUBLICAN CALENDAR


The republican calendar consisted of twelve months of thirty days
each, each month being divided into three "decades" of ten days. Five
days (in leap years six) were added at the end of the year to bring it
into coincidence with the solar year.

  An    I began Sept. 22, 1792.
  "    II  "      "       1793.
  "   III  "      "       1794.
  "    IV (leap year)     1795.

       *       *       *       *       *

  "  VIII began Sept. 22, 1799.
  "    IX   "   Sept. 23, 1800.
  "     X   "      "      1801.

       *       *       *       *       *

  "   XIV   "      "      1805.

The new computation, though reckoned from Sept. 22, 1792, was not
introduced until Nov. 26, 1793 (An II). It ceased after Dec. 31, 1805.

The months are as follows:

    Vendemiaire              Sept. 22 to Oct. 21.
    Brumaire                 Oct. 22  "  Nov. 20.
    Frimaire                 Nov. 21  "  Dec. 20.
    Nivose                   Dec. 21  "  Jan. 19.
    Pluviose                 Jan. 20  "  Feb. 18.
    Ventose                  Feb. 19  "  Mar. 20.
    Germinal                 Mar. 21  "  April 19.
    Floreal                  April 20 "  May 19.
    Prairial                 May 20   "  June 18.
    Messidor                 June 19  "  July 18.
    Thermidor                July 19  "  Aug. 17.
    Fructidor                Aug. 18  "  Sept. 16.

Add five (in leap years six) "Sansculottides" or "Jours
complementaires."

In 1796 (leap year) the numbers in the table of months, so far as
concerns all dates between Feb. 28 and Sept. 22, will have to be
_reduced by one_, owing to the intercalation of Feb. 29, which is not
compensated for until the end of the republican year.

The matter is further complicated by the fact that the republicans
reckoned An VIII as a leap year, though it is not one in the Gregorian
Calendar. Hence that year ended on Sept. 22, and An IX and succeeding
years began on Sept. 23. Consequently in the above table of months the
numbers of all days from Vendemiaire 1, An IX (Sept. 23, 1800), to
Nivose 10, An XIV (Dec. 31, 1805), inclusive, will have to be
_increased by one_, except only in the next leap year between Ventose
9, An XII, and Vendemiaire 1, An XIII (Feb. 28-Sept, 23, 1804), when
the two Revolutionary aberrations happen to neutralize each other.

       *       *       *       *       *





THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I





CHAPTER I

PARENTAGE AND EARLY YEARS


"I was born when my country was perishing. Thirty thousand French
vomited upon our coasts, drowning the throne of Liberty in waves of
blood, such was the sight which struck my eyes." This passionate
utterance, penned by Napoleon Buonaparte at the beginning of the
French Revolution, describes the state of Corsica in his natal year.
The words are instinct with the vehemence of the youth and the
extravagant sentiment of the age: they strike the keynote of his
career. His life was one of strain and stress from his cradle to his
grave.

In his temperament as in the circumstances of his time the young
Buonaparte was destined for an extraordinary career. Into a tottering
civilization he burst with all the masterful force of an Alaric. But
he was an Alaric of the south, uniting the untamed strength of his
island kindred with the mental powers of his Italian ancestry. In his
personality there is a complex blending of force and grace, of animal
passion and mental clearness, of northern common sense with the
promptings of an oriental imagination; and this union in his nature of
seeming opposites explains many of the mysteries of his life.
Fortunately for lovers of romance, genius cannot be wholly analyzed,
even by the most adroit historical philosophizer or the most exacting
champion of heredity. But in so far as the sources of Napoleon's power
can be measured, they may be traced to the unexampled needs of mankind
in the revolutionary epoch and to his own exceptional endowments.
Evidently, then, the characteristics of his family claim some
attention from all who would understand the man and the influence
which he was to wield over modern Europe.

It has been the fortune of his House to be the subject of dispute from
first to last. Some writers have endeavoured to trace its descent back
to the Caesars of Rome, others to the Byzantine Emperors; one
genealogical explorer has tracked the family to Majorca, and, altering
its name to Bonpart, has discovered its progenitor in the Man of the
Iron Mask; while the Duchesse d'Abrantes, voyaging eastwards in quest
of its ancestors, has confidently claimed for the family a Greek
origin. Painstaking research has dispelled these romancings of
historical _trouveurs_, and has connected this enigmatic stock with a
Florentine named "William, who in the year 1261 took the surname of
_Bonaparte_ or _Buonaparte_. The name seems to have been assumed when,
amidst the unceasing strifes between Guelfs and Ghibellines that rent
the civic life of Florence, William's party, the Ghibellines, for a
brief space gained the ascendancy. But perpetuity was not to be found
in Florentine politics; and in a short time he was a fugitive at a
Tuscan village, Sarzana, beyond the reach of the victorious Guelfs.
Here the family seems to have lived for well nigh three centuries,
maintaining its Ghibelline and aristocratic principles with surprising
tenacity. The age was not remarkable for the virtue of constancy, or
any other virtue. Politics and private life were alike demoralized by
unceasing intrigues; and amidst strifes of Pope and Emperor, duchies
and republics, cities and autocrats, there was formed that type of
Italian character which is delineated in the pages of Macchiavelli.
From the depths of debasement of that cynical age the Buonapartes
were saved by their poverty, and by the isolation of their life at
Sarzana. Yet the embassies discharged at intervals by the more
talented members of the family showed that the gifts for intrigue were
only dormant; and they were certainly transmitted in their intensity
to the greatest scion of the race.

In the year 1529 Francis Buonaparte, whether pressed by poverty or
distracted by despair at the misfortunes which then overwhelmed Italy,
migrated to Corsica. There the family was grafted upon a tougher
branch of the Italian race. To the vulpine characteristics developed
under the shadow of the Medici there were now added qualities of a
more virile stamp. Though dominated in turn by the masters of the
Mediterranean, by Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, by the men of Pisa,
and finally by the Genoese Republic, the islanders retained a striking
individuality. The rock-bound coast and mountainous interior helped to
preserve the essential features of primitive life. Foreign Powers
might affect the towns on the sea-board, but they left the clans of
the interior comparatively untouched. Their life centred around the
family. The Government counted for little or nothing; for was it not
the symbol of the detested foreign rule? Its laws were therefore as
naught when they conflicted with the unwritten but omnipotent code of
family honour. A slight inflicted on a neighbour would call forth the
warning words--"Guard thyself: I am on my guard." Forthwith there
began a blood feud, a vendetta, which frequently dragged on its dreary
course through generations of conspiracy and murder, until, the
principals having vanished, the collateral branches of the families
were involved. No Corsican was so loathed as the laggard who shrank
from avenging the family honour, even on a distant relative of the
first offender. The murder of the Duc d'Enghien by Napoleon in 1804
sent a thrill of horror through the Continent. To the Corsicans it
seemed little more than an autocratic version of the _vendetta
traversale_.[1]

The vendetta was the chief law of Corsican society up to comparatively
recent times; and its effects are still visible in the life of the
stern islanders. In his charming romance, "Colomba," M. Prosper
Merimee has depicted the typical Corsican, even of the towns, as
preoccupied, gloomy, suspicious, ever on the alert, hovering about his
dwelling, like a falcon over his nest, seemingly in preparation for
attack or defence. Laughter, the song, the dance, were rarely heard in
the streets; for the women, after acting as the drudges of the
household, were kept jealously at home, while their lords smoked and
watched. If a game at hazard were ventured upon, it ran its course in
silence, which not seldom was broken by the shot or the stab--first
warning that there had been underhand play. The deed always preceded
the word.

In such a life, where commerce and agriculture were despised, where
woman was mainly a drudge and man a conspirator, there grew up the
typical Corsican temperament, moody and exacting, but withal keen,
brave, and constant, which looked on the world as a fencing-school for
the glorification of the family and the clan[2]. Of this type Napoleon
was to be the supreme exemplar; and the fates granted him as an arena
a chaotic France and a distracted Europe.

Amidst that grim Corsican existence the Buonapartes passed their lives
during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Occupied as advocates
and lawyers with such details of the law as were of any practical
importance, they must have been involved in family feuds and the
oft-recurring disputes between Corsica and the suzerain Power, Genoa.
As became dignitaries in the municipality of Ajaccio, several of the
Buonapartes espoused the Genoese side; and the Genoese Senate in a
document of the year 1652 styled one of them, Jerome, "Egregius
Hieronimus di Buonaparte, procurator Nobilium." These distinctions
they seem to have little coveted. Very few families belonged to the
Corsican _noblesse_, and their fiefs were unimportant. In Corsica, as
in the Forest Cantons of Switzerland and the Highlands of Scotland,
class distinctions were by no means so coveted as in lands that had
been thoroughly feudalized; and the Buonapartes, content with their
civic dignities at Ajaccio and the attachment of their partisans on
their country estates, seem rarely to have used the prefix which
implied nobility. Their life was not unlike that of many an old
Scottish laird, who, though possibly _bourgeois_ in origin, yet by
courtesy ranked as chieftain among his tenants, and was ennobled by
the parlance of the countryside, perhaps all the more readily because
he refused to wear the honours that came from over the Border.

But a new influence was now to call forth all the powers of this tough
stock. In the middle of the eighteenth century we find the head of the
family, Charles Marie Buonaparte, aglow with the flame of Corsican
patriotism then being kindled by the noble career of Paoli. This
gifted patriot, the champion of the islanders, first against the
Genoese and later against the French, desired to cement by education
the framework of the Corsican Commonwealth and founded a university.
It was here that the father of the future French Emperor received a
training in law, and a mental stimulus which was to lift his family
above the level of the _caporali_ and attorneys with whom its lot had
for centuries been cast. His ambition is seen in the endeavour,
successfully carried out by his uncle, Lucien, Archdeacon of Ajaccio,
to obtain recognition of kinship with the Buonapartes of Tuscany who
had been ennobled by the Grand Duke. His patriotism is evinced in his
ardent support of Paoli, by whose valour and energy the Genoese were
finally driven from the island. Amidst these patriotic triumphs
Charles confronted his destiny in the person of Letizia Ramolino, a
beautiful girl, descended from an honourable Florentine family which
had for centuries been settled in Corsica. The wedding took place in
1764, the bridegroom being then eighteen, and the bride fifteen years
of age. The union, if rashly undertaken in the midst of civil strifes,
was yet well assorted. Both parties to it were of patrician, if not
definitely noble descent, and came of families which combined the
intellectual gifts of Tuscany with the vigour of their later island
home[3]. From her mother's race, the Pietra Santa family, Letizia
imbibed the habits of the most backward and savage part of Corsica,
where vendettas were rife and education was almost unknown. Left in
ignorance in her early days, she yet was accustomed to hardships, and
often showed the fertility of resource which such a life always
develops. Hence, at the time of her marriage, she possessed a firmness
of will far beyond her years; and her strength and fortitude enabled
her to survive the terrible adversities of her early days, as also to
meet with quiet matronly dignity the extraordinary honours showered on
her as the mother of the French Emperor. She was inured to habits of
frugality, which reappeared in the personal tastes of her son. In
fact, she so far retained her old parsimonious habits, even amidst the
splendours of the French Imperial Court, as to expose herself to the
charge of avarice. But there is a touching side to all this. She seems
ever to have felt that after the splendour there would come again the
old days of adversity, and her instincts were in one sense correct.
She lived on to the advanced age of eighty-six, and died twenty-one
years after the break-up of her son's empire--a striking proof of the
vitality and tenacity of her powers.

A kindly Providence veiled the future from the young couple. Troubles
fell swiftly upon them both in private and in public life. Their first
two children died in infancy. The third, Joseph, was born in 1768,
when the Corsican patriots were making their last successful efforts
against their new French oppressors: the fourth, the famous Napoleon,
saw the light on August 15th, 1769, when the liberties of Corsica were
being finally extinguished. Nine other children were born before the
outbreak of the French Revolution reawakened civil strifes, amidst
which the then fatherless family was tossed to and fro and finally
whirled away to France.

Destiny had already linked the fortunes of the young Napoleon
Buonaparte with those of France. After the downfall of Genoese rule in
Corsica, France had taken over, for empty promises, the claims of the
hard-pressed Italian republic to its troublesome island possession. It
was a cheap and practical way of restoring, at least in the
Mediterranean the shattered prestige of the French Bourbons. They had
previously intervened in Corsican affairs on the side of the Genoese.
Yet in 1764 Paoli appealed to Louis XV. for protection. It was
granted, in the form of troops that proceeded quietly to occupy the
coast towns of the island under cover of friendly assurances. In 1768,
before the expiration of an informal truce, Marbeuf, the French
commander, commenced hostilities against the patriots[4]. In vain did
Rousseau and many other champions of popular liberty protest against
this bartering away of insular freedom: in vain did Paoli rouse his
compatriots to another and more unequal struggle, and seek to hold the
mountainous interior. Poor, badly equipped, rent by family feuds and
clan schisms, his followers were no match for the French troops; and
after the utter break-up of his forces Paoli fled to England, taking
with him three hundred and forty of the most determined patriots. With
these irreconcilables Charles Buonaparte did not cast in his lot, but
accepted the pardon offered to those who should recognize the French
sway. With his wife and their little child Joseph he returned to
Ajaccio; and there, shortly afterwards, Napoleon was born. As the
patriotic historian, Jacobi, has finely said, "The Corsican people,
when exhausted by producing martyrs to the cause of liberty, produced
Napoleon Buonaparte[5]."

Seeing that Charles Buonaparte had been an ardent adherent of Paoli,
his sudden change of front has exposed him to keen censure. He
certainly had not the grit of which heroes are made. His seems to have
been an ill-balanced nature, soon buoyed up by enthusiasms, and as
speedily depressed by their evaporation; endowed with enough of
learning and culture to be a Voltairean and write second-rate
verses; and with a talent for intrigue which sufficed to embarrass
his never very affluent fortunes. Napoleon certainly derived no
world-compelling qualities from his father: for these he was indebted
to the wilder strain which ran in his mother's blood. The father
doubtless saw in the French connection a chance of worldly advancement
and of liberation from pecuniary difficulties; for the new rulers now
sought to gain over the patrician families of the island. Many of them
had resented the dictatorship of Paoli; and they now gladly accepted
the connection with France, which promised to enrich their country and
to open up a brilliant career in the French army, where commissions
were limited to the scions of nobility.

Much may be said in excuse of Charles Buonaparte's decision, and no
one can deny that Corsica has ultimately gained much by her connection
with France. But his change of front was open to the charge that it
was prompted by self-interest rather than by philosophic foresight. At
any rate, his second son throughout his boyhood nursed a deep
resentment against his father for his desertion of the patriots'
cause. The youth's sympathies were with the peasants, whose allegiance
was not to be bought by baubles, whose constancy and bravery long held
out against the French in a hopeless guerilla warfare. His hot
Corsican blood boiled at the stories of oppression and insult which he
heard from his humbler compatriots. When, at eleven years of age, he
saw in the military college at Brienne the portrait of Choiseul, the
French Minister who had urged on the conquest of Corsica, his passion
burst forth in a torrent of imprecations against the traitor; and,
even after the death of his father in 1785, he exclaimed that he could
never forgive him for not following Paoli into exile.

What trifles seem, at times, to alter the current of human affairs!
Had his father acted thus, the young Napoleon would in all probability
have entered the military or naval service of Great Britain; he might
have shared Paoli's enthusiasm for the land of his adoption, and have
followed the Corsican hero in his enterprises against the French
Revolution, thenceforth figuring in history merely as a greater
Marlborough, crushing the military efforts of democratic France, and
luring England into a career of Continental conquest. Monarchy and
aristocracy would have gone unchallenged, except within the "natural
limits" of France; and the other nations, never shaken to their
inmost depths, would have dragged on their old inert fragmentary
existence.

The decision of Charles Buonaparte altered the destiny of Europe. He
determined that his eldest boy, Joseph, should enter the Church, and
that Napoleon should be a soldier. His perception of the characters of
his boys was correct. An anecdote, for which the elder brother is
responsible, throws a flood of light on their temperaments. The master
of their school arranged a mimic combat for his pupils--Romans against
Carthaginians. Joseph, as the elder was ranged under the banner of
Rome, while Napoleon was told off among the Carthaginians; but, piqued
at being chosen for the losing side, the child fretted, begged, and
stormed until the less bellicose Joseph agreed to change places with
his exacting junior. The incident is prophetic of much in the later
history of the family.

Its imperial future was opened up by the deft complaisance now shown
by Charles Buonaparte. The reward for his speedy submission to France
was soon forthcoming. The French commander in Corsica used his
influence to secure the admission of the young Napoleon to the
military school of Brienne in Champagne; and as the father was able to
satisfy the authorities not only that he was without fortune, but also
that his family had been noble for four generations, Napoleon was
admitted to this school to be educated at the charges of the King of
France (April, 1779). He was now, at the tender age of nine, a
stranger in a strange land, among a people whom he detested as the
oppressors of his countrymen. Worst of all, he had to endure the taunt
of belonging to a subject race. What a position for a proud and
exacting child! Little wonder that the official report represented him
as silent and obstinate; but, strange to say, it added the word
"imperious." It was a tough character which could defy repression
amidst such surroundings. As to his studies, little need be said. In
his French history he read of the glories of the distant past (when
"Germany was part of the French Empire"), the splendours of the reign
of Louis XIV., the disasters of France in the Seven Years' War, and
the "prodigious conquests of the English in India." But his
imagination was kindled from other sources. Boys of pronounced
character have always owed far more to their private reading than to
their set studies; and the young Buonaparte, while grudgingly learning
Latin and French grammar, was feeding his mind on Plutarch's
"Lives"--in a French translation. The artful intermingling of the
actual and the romantic, the historic and the personal, in those vivid
sketches of ancient worthies and heroes, has endeared them to many
minds. Rousseau derived unceasing profit from their perusal; and
Madame Roland found in them "the pasture of great souls." It was so
with the lonely Corsican youth. Holding aloof from his comrades in
gloomy isolation, he caught in the exploits of Greeks and Romans a
distant echo of the tragic romance of his beloved island home. The
librarian of the school asserted that even then the young soldier had
modelled his future career on that of the heroes of antiquity; and we
may well believe that, in reading of the exploits of Leonidas,
Curtius, and Cincinnatus, he saw the figure of his own antique
republican hero, Paoli. To fight side by side with Paoli against the
French was his constant dream. "Paoli will return," he once exclaimed,
"and as soon as I have strength, I will go to help him: and perhaps
together we shall be able to shake the odious yoke from off the neck
of Corsica."

But there was another work which exercised a great influence on his
young mind--the "Gallic War" of Caesar. To the young Italian the
conquest of Gaul by a man of his own race must have been a congenial
topic, and in Caesar himself the future conqueror may dimly have
recognized a kindred spirit. The masterful energy and all-conquering
will of the old Roman, his keen insight into the heart of a problem,
the wide sweep of his mental vision, ranging over the intrigues of the
Roman Senate, the shifting politics of a score of tribes, and the
myriad administrative details of a great army and a mighty
province--these were the qualities that furnished the chief mental
training to the young cadet. Indeed, the career of Caesar was destined
to exert a singular fascination over the Napoleonic dynasty, not only
on its founder, but also on Napoleon III.; and the change in the
character and career of Napoleon the Great may be registered mentally
in the effacement of the portraits of Leonidas and Paoli by those of
Caesar and Alexander. Later on, during his sojourn at Ajaccio in 1790,
when the first shadows were flitting across his hitherto unclouded
love for Paoli, we hear that he spent whole nights poring over Caesar's
history, committing many passages to memory in his passionate
admiration of those wondrous exploits. Eagerly he took Caesar's side as
against Pompey, and no less warmly defended him from the charge of
plotting against the liberties of the commonwealth[6]. It was a
perilous study for a republican youth in whom the military instincts
were as ingrained as the genius for rule.

Concerning the young Buonaparte's life at Brienne there exist few
authentic records and many questionable anecdotes. Of these last, that
which is the most credible and suggestive relates his proposal to his
schoolfellows to construct ramparts of snow during the sharp winter of
1783-4. According to his schoolfellow, Bourrienne, these mimic
fortifications were planned by Buonaparte, who also directed the
methods of attack and defence: or, as others say, he reconstructed
the walls according to the needs of modern war. In either case, the
incident bespeaks for him great power of organization and control. But
there were in general few outlets for his originality and vigour. He
seems to have disliked all his comrades, except Bourrienne, as much as
they detested him for his moody humours and fierce outbreaks of
temper. He is even reported to have vowed that he would do as much
harm as possible to the French people; but the remark smacks of the
story-book. Equally doubtful are the two letters in which he prays to
be removed from the indignities to which he was subjected at
Brienne[7]. In other letters which are undoubtedly genuine, he refers
to his future career with ardour, and writes not a word as to the
bullying to which his Corsican zeal subjected him. Particularly
noteworthy is the letter to his uncle begging him to intervene so as
to prevent Joseph Buonaparte from taking up a military career. Joseph,
writes the younger brother, would make a good garrison officer, as he
was well formed and clever at frivolous compliments--"good therefore
for society, but for a fight--?"

Napoleon's determination had been noticed by his teachers. They had
failed to bend his will, at least on important points. In lesser
details his Italian adroitness seems to have been of service; for the
officer who inspected the school reported of him: "Constitution,
health excellent: character submissive, sweet, honest, grateful:
conduct very regular: has always distinguished himself by his
application to mathematics: knows history and geography passably: very
weak in accomplishments. He will be an excellent seaman: is worthy to
enter the School at Paris." To the military school at Paris he was
accordingly sent in due course, entering there in October, 1784. The
change from the semi-monastic life at Brienne to the splendid edifice
which fronts the Champ de Mars had less effect than might have
been expected in a youth of fifteen years. Not yet did he become
French in sympathy. His love of Corsica and hatred of the French
monarchy steeled him against the luxuries of his new surroundings.
Perhaps it was an added sting that he was educated at the expense of
the monarchy which had conquered his kith and kin. He nevertheless
applied himself with energy to his favourite studies, especially
mathematics. Defective in languages he still was, and ever remained;
for his critical acumen in literature ever fastened on the matter
rather than on style. To the end of his days he could never write
Italian, much less French, with accuracy; and his tutor at Paris not
inaptly described his boyish composition as resembling molten granite.
The same qualities of directness and impetuosity were also fatal to
his efforts at mastering the movements of the dance. In spite of
lessons at Paris and private lessons which he afterwards took at
Valence, he was never a dancer: his bent was obviously for the exact
sciences rather than the arts, for the geometrical rather than the
rhythmical: he thought, as he moved, in straight lines, never in
curves.

The death of his father during the year which the youth spent at Paris
sharpened his sense of responsibility towards his seven younger
brothers and sisters. His own poverty must have inspired him with
disgust at the luxury which he saw around him; but there are good
reasons for doubting the genuineness of the memorial which he is
alleged to have sent from Paris to the second master at Brienne on
this subject. The letters of the scholars at Paris were subject to
strict surveillance; and, if he had taken the trouble to draw up a
list of criticisms on his present training, most assuredly it would
have been destroyed. Undoubtedly, however, he would have sympathized
with the unknown critic in his complaint of the unsuitableness of
sumptuous meals to youths who were destined for the hardships of the
camp. At Brienne he had been dubbed "the Spartan," an instance of that
almost uncanny faculty of schoolboys to dash off in a nickname the
salient features of character. The phrase was correct, almost for
Napoleon's whole life. At any rate, the pomp of Paris served but to
root his youthful affections more tenaciously in the rocks of Corsica.

In September, 1785, that is, at the age of sixteen, Buonaparte was
nominated for a commission as junior lieutenant in La Fere regiment of
artillery quartered at Valence on the Rhone. This was his first close
contact with real life. The rules of the service required him to
spend three months of rigorous drill before he was admitted to his
commission. The work was exacting: the pay was small, viz., 1,120
francs, or less than L45, a year; but all reports agree as to his keen
zest for his profession and the recognition of his transcendent
abilities by his superior officers.[8] There it was that he mastered
the rudiments of war, for lack of which many generals of noble birth
have quickly closed in disaster careers that began with promise:
there, too, he learnt that hardest and best of all lessons, prompt
obedience. "To learn obeying is the fundamental art of governing,"
says Carlyle. It was so with Napoleon: at Valence he served his
apprenticeship in the art of conquering and the art of governing.

This spring-time of his life is of interest and importance in many
ways: it reveals many amiable qualities, which had hitherto been
blighted by the real or fancied scorn of the wealthy cadets. At
Valence, while shrinking from his brother officers, he sought society
more congenial to his simple tastes and restrained demeanour. In a few
of the best bourgeois families of Valence he found happiness. There,
too, blossomed the tenderest, purest idyll of his life. At the country
house of a cultured lady who had befriended him in his solitude, he
saw his first love, Caroline de Colombier. It was a passing fancy;
but to her all the passion of his southern nature welled forth. She
seems to have returned his love; for in the stormy sunset of his life
at St. Helena he recalled some delicious walks at dawn when Caroline
and he had--eaten cherries together. One lingers fondly over these
scenes of his otherwise stern career, for they reveal his capacity for
social joys and for deep and tender affection, had his lot been
otherwise cast. How different might have been his life, had France
never conquered Corsica, and had the Revolution never burst forth! But
Corsica was still his dominant passion. When he was called away from
Valence to repress a riot at Lyons, his feelings, distracted for a
time by Caroline, swerved back towards his island home; and in
September, 1786, he had the joy of revisiting the scenes of his
childhood. Warmly though he greeted his mother, brothers and sisters,
after an absence of nearly eight years, his chief delight was in the
rocky shores, the verdant dales and mountain heights of Corsica. The
odour of the forests, the setting of the sun in the sea "as in the
bosom of the infinite," the quiet proud independence of the
mountaineers themselves, all enchanted him. His delight reveals almost
Wertherian powers of "sensibility." Even the family troubles could not
damp his ardour. His father had embarked on questionable speculations,
which now threatened the Buonapartes with bankruptcy, unless the
French Government proved to be complacent and generous. With the hope
of pressing one of the family claims on the royal exchequer, the
second son procured an extension of furlough and sped to Paris. There
at the close of 1787 he spent several weeks, hopefully endeavouring to
extract money from the bankrupt Government. It was a season of
disillusionment in more senses than one; for there he saw for himself
the seamy side of Parisian life, and drifted for a brief space about
the giddy vortex of the Palais Royal. What a contrast to the limpid
life of Corsica was that turbid frothy existence--already swirling
towards its mighty plunge!

After a furlough of twenty-one months he rejoined his regiment, now at
Auxonne. There his health suffered considerably, not only from the
miasma of the marshes of the river Saone, but also from family
anxieties and arduous literary toils. To these last it is now needful
to refer. Indeed, the external events of his early life are of value
only as they reveal the many-sidedness of his nature and the growth of
his mental powers.

How came he to outgrow the insular patriotism of his early years? The
foregoing recital of facts must have already suggested one obvious
explanation. Nature had dowered him so prodigally with diverse gifts,
mainly of an imperious order, that he could scarcely have limited his
sphere of action to Corsica. Profoundly as he loved his island, it
offered no sphere commensurate with his varied powers and masterful
will. It was no empty vaunt which his father had uttered on his
deathbed that his Napoleon would one day overthrow the old monarchies
and conquer Europe.[9] Neither did the great commander himself
overstate the peculiarity of his temperament, when he confessed that
his instincts had ever prompted him that his will must prevail, and
that what pleased him must of necessity belong to him. Most spoilt
children harbour the same illusion, for a brief space. But all the
buffetings of fortune failed to drive it from the young Buonaparte;
and when despair as to his future might have impaired the vigour of
his domineering instincts, his mind and will acquired a fresh rigidity
by coming under the spell of that philosophizing doctrinaire,
Rousseau.

There was every reason why he should early be attracted by this
fantastic thinker. In that notable work, "Le Contrat Social" (1762),
Rousseau called attention to the antique energy shown by the Corsicans
in defence of their liberties, and in a startlingly prophetic phrase
he exclaimed that the little island would one day astonish Europe. The
source of this predilection of Rousseau for Corsica is patent. Born
and reared at Geneva, he felt a Switzer's love for a people which was<
"neither rich nor poor but self-sufficing "; and in the simple life
and fierce love of liberty of the hardy islanders he saw traces of
that social contract which he postulated as the basis of society.
According to him, the beginnings of all social and political
institutions are to be found in some agreement or contract between
men. Thus arise the clan, the tribe, the nation. The nation may
delegate many of its powers to a ruler; but if he abuse such powers,
the contract between him and his people is at an end, and they may
return to the primitive state, which is founded on an agreement of
equals with equals. Herein lay the attractiveness of Rousseau for all
who were discontented with their surroundings. He seemed infallibly
to demonstrate the absurdity of tyranny and the need of returning to
the primitive bliss of the social contract. It mattered not that the
said contract was utterly unhistorical and that his argument teemed
with fallacies. He inspired a whole generation with detestation of the
present and with longings for the golden age. Poets had sung of it,
but Rousseau seemed to bring it within the grasp of long-suffering
mortals.

The first extant manuscript of Napoleon, written at Valence in April,
1786, shows that he sought in Rousseau's armoury the logical weapons
for demonstrating the "right" of the Corsicans to rebel against the
French. The young hero-worshipper begins by noting that it is the
birthday of Paoli. He plunges into a panegyric on the Corsican
patriots, when he is arrested by the thought that many censure them
for rebelling at all. "The divine laws forbid revolt. But what have
divine laws to do with a purely human affair? Just think of the
absurdity--divine laws universally forbidding the casting off of a
usurping yoke! ... As for human laws, there cannot be any after the
prince violates them." He then postulates two origins for government
as alone possible. Either the people has established laws and
submitted itself to the prince, or the prince has established laws. In
the first case, the prince is engaged by the very nature of his office
to execute the covenants. In the second case, the laws tend, or do not
tend, to the welfare of the people, which is the aim of all
government: if they do not, the contract with the prince dissolves of
itself, for the people then enters again into its primitive state.
Having thus proved the sovereignty of the people, Buonaparte uses his
doctrine to justify Corsican revolt against France, and thus concludes
his curious medley: "The Corsicans, following all the laws of justice,
have been able to shake off the yoke of the Genoese, and may do the
same with that of the French. Amen."

Five days later he again gives the reins to his melancholy. "Always
alone, though in the midst of men," he faces the thought of suicide.
With an innate power of summarizing and balancing thoughts and
sensations, he draws up arguments for and against this act. He is in
the dawn of his days and in four months' time he will see "la patrie,"
which he has not seen since childhood. What joy! And yet--how men have
fallen away from nature: how cringing are his compatriots to their
conquerors: they are no longer the enemies of tyrants, of luxury, of
vile courtiers: the French have corrupted their morals, and when "la
patrie" no longer survives, a good patriot ought to die. Life among
the French is odious: their modes of life differ from his as much as
the light of the moon differs from that of the sun.--A strange
effusion this for a youth of seventeen living amidst the full glories
of the spring in Dauphine. It was only a few weeks before the ripening
of cherries. Did that cherry-idyll with Mdlle. de Colombier lure him
back to life? Or did the hope of striking a blow for Corsica stay his
suicidal hand? Probably the latter; for we find him shortly afterwards
tilting against a Protestant minister of Geneva who had ventured to
criticise one of the dogmas of Rousseau's evangel.

The Genevan philosopher had asserted that Christianity, by enthroning
in the hearts of Christians the idea of a Kingdom not of this world,
broke the unity of civil society, because it detached the hearts of
its converts from the State, as from all earthly things. To this the
Genevan minister had successfully replied by quoting Christian
teachings on the subject at issue. But Buonaparte fiercely accuses
the pastor of neither having understood, nor even read, "Le Contrat
Social": he hurls at his opponent texts of Scripture which enjoin
obedience to the laws: he accuses Christianity of rendering men slaves
to an anti-social tyranny, because its priests set up an authority in
opposition to civil laws; and as for Protestantism, it propagated
discords between its followers, and thereby violated civic unity.
Christianity, he argues, is a foe to civil government, for it aims at
making men happy in this life by inspiring them with hope of a future
life; while the aim of civil government is "to lend assistance to the
feeble against the strong, and by this means to allow everyone to
enjoy a sweet tranquillity, the road of happiness." He therefore
concludes that Christianity and civil government are diametrically
opposed.

In this tirade we see the youth's spirit of revolt flinging him not
only against French law, but against the religion which sanctions it.
He sees none of the beauty of the Gospels which Rousseau had
admitted. His views are more rigid than those of his teacher.
Scarcely can he conceive of two influences, the spiritual and the
governmental, working on parallel lines, on different parts of man's
nature. His conception of human society is that of an indivisible,
indistinguishable whole, wherein materialism, tinged now and again by
religious sentiment and personal honour, is the sole noteworthy
influence. He finds no worth in a religion which seeks to work from
within to without, which aims at transforming character, and thus
transforming the world. In its headlong quest of tangible results his
eager spirit scorns so tardy a method: he will "compel men to be
happy," and for this result there is but one practicable means, the
Social Contract, the State. Everything which mars the unity of the
Social Contract shall be shattered, so that the State may have a clear
field for the exercise of its beneficent despotism. Such is
Buonaparte's political and religious creed at the age of seventeen,
and such it remained (with many reservations suggested by maturer
thought and self-interest) to the end of his days. It reappears in his
policy anent the Concordat of 1802, by which religion was reduced to
the level of handmaid to the State, as also in his frequent assertions
that he would never have quite the same power as the Czar and the
Sultan, because he had not undivided sway over the consciences of his
people.[10] In this boyish essay we may perhaps discern the
fundamental reason of his later failures. He never completely
understood religion, or the enthusiasm which it can evoke; neither did
he ever fully realize the complexity of human nature, the
many-sidedness of social life, and the limitations that beset the
action even of the most intelligent law-maker.[11]

His reading of Rousseau having equipped him for the study of human
society and government, he now, during his first sojourn at Auxonne
(June, 1788--September, 1789), proceeds to ransack the records of the
ancient and modern world. Despite ill-health, family troubles, and the
outbreak of the French Revolution, he grapples with this portentous
task. The history, geography, religion, and social customs of the
ancient Persians, Scythians, Thracians, Athenians, Spartans,
Egyptians, and Carthaginians--all furnished materials for his
encyclopaedic note-books. Nothing came amiss to his summarizing genius.
Here it was that he gained that knowledge of the past which was to
astonish his contemporaries. Side by side with suggestions on
regimental discipline and improvements in artillery, we find notes on
the opening episodes of Plato's "Republic," and a systematic summary
of English history from the earliest times down to the Revolution of
1688. This last event inspired him with special interest, because the
Whigs and their philosophic champion, Locke, maintained that James II.
had violated the original contract between prince and people.
Everywhere in his notes Napoleon emphasizes the incidents which led to
conflicts between dynasties or between rival principles. In fact,
through all these voracious studies there appear signs of his
determination to write a history of Corsica; and, while inspiriting
his kinsmen by recalling the glorious past, he sought to weaken the
French monarchy by inditing a "Dissertation sur l'Autorite Royale."
His first sketch of this work runs as follows:

     "23 October, 1788. Auxonne.

     "This work will begin with general ideas as to the origin and the
     enhanced prestige of the name of king. Military rule is favourable
     to it: this work will afterwards enter into the details of the
     usurped authority enjoyed by the Kings of the twelve Kingdoms of
     Europe.

     "There are very few Kings who have not deserved dethronement[12]."

This curt pronouncement is all that remains of the projected work. It
sufficiently indicates, however, the aim of Napoleon's studies. One
and all they were designed to equip him for the great task of
re-awakening the spirit of the Corsicans and of sapping the base of
the French monarchy.

But these reams of manuscript notes and crude literary efforts have an
even wider source of interest. They show how narrow was his outlook on
life. It all turned on the regeneration of Corsica by methods which he
himself prescribed. We are therefore able to understand why, when his
own methods of salvation for Corsica were rejected, he tore himself
away and threw his undivided energies into the Revolution.

Yet the records of his early life show that in his character there was
a strain of true sentiment and affection. In him Nature carved out a
character of rock-like firmness, but she adorned it with flowers of
human sympathy and tendrils of family love. At his first parting from
his brother Joseph at Autun, when the elder brother was weeping
passionately, the little Napoleon dropped a tear: but that, said the
tutor, meant as much as the flood of tears from Joseph. Love of his
relatives was a potent factor of his policy in later life; and slander
has never been able wholly to blacken the character of a man who loved
and honoured his mother, who asserted that her advice had often been
of the highest service to him, and that her justice and firmness of
spirit marked her out as a natural ruler of men. But when these
admissions are freely granted, it still remains true that his
character was naturally hard; that his sense of personal superiority
made him, even as a child, exacting and domineering; and the sequel
was to show that even the strongest passion of his youth, his
determination to free Corsica from France, could be abjured if
occasion demanded, all the force of his nature being thenceforth
concentrated on vaster adventures.

       *      *      *      *      *




CHAPTER II

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND CORSICA


"They seek to destroy the Revolution by attacking my person: I will
defend it, for I am the Revolution." Such were the words uttered by
Buonaparte after the failure of the royalist plot of 1804. They are a
daring transcript of Louis XIV.'s "L'etat, c'est moi." That was a bold
claim, even for an age attuned to the whims of autocrats: but this of
the young Corsican is even more daring, for he thereby equated himself
with a movement which claimed to be wide as humanity and infinite as
truth. And yet when he spoke these words, they were not scouted as
presumptuous folly: to most Frenchmen they seemed sober truth and
practical good sense. How came it, one asks in wonder, that after the
short space of fifteen years a world-wide movement depended on a
single life, that the infinitudes of 1789 lived on only in the form,
and by the pleasure, of the First Consul? Here surely is a political
incarnation unparalleled in the whole course of human history. The
riddle cannot be solved by history alone. It belongs in part to the
domain of psychology, when that science shall undertake the study, not
merely of man as a unit, but of the aspirations, moods, and whims of
communities and nations. Meanwhile it will be our far humbler task to
strive to point out the relation of Buonaparte to the Revolution, and
to show how the mighty force of his will dragged it to earth.

The first questions that confront us are obviously these. Were the
lofty aims and aspirations of the Revolution attainable? And, if so,
did the men of 1789 follow them by practical methods? To the former of
these questions the present chapter will, in part at least, serve as
an answer. On the latter part of the problem the events described in
later chapters will throw some light: in them we shall see that the
great popular upheaval let loose mighty forces that bore Buonaparte on
to fortune.

Here we may notice that the Revolution was not a simple and therefore
solid movement. It was complex and contained the seeds of discord
which lurk in many-sided and militant creeds. The theories of its
intellectual champions were as diverse as the motives which spurred on
their followers to the attack on the outworn abuses of the age.

Discontent and faith were the ultimate motive powers of the
Revolution. Faith prepared the Revolution and discontent accomplished
it. Idealists who, in varied planes of thought, preached the doctrine
of human perfectibility, succeeded in slowly permeating the dull
toiling masses of France with hope. Omitting here any notice of
philosophic speculation as such, we may briefly notice the teachings
of three writers whose influence on revolutionary politics was to be
definite and practical. These were Montesquieu, Voltaire, and
Rousseau. The first was by no means a revolutionist, for he decided in
favour of a mixed form of government, like that of England, which
guaranteed the State against the dangers of autocracy, oligarchy, and
mob-rule. Only by a ricochet did he assail the French monarchy. But he
re-awakened critical inquiry; and any inquiry was certain to sap the
base of the _ancien regime_ in France. Montesquieu's teaching inspired
the group of moderate reformers who in 1789 desired to re-fashion the
institutions of France on the model of those of England. But popular
sentiment speedily swept past these Anglophils towards the more
attractive aims set forth by Voltaire.

This keen thinker subjected the privileged classes, especially the
titled clergy, to a searching fire of philosophic bombs and barbed
witticisms. Never was there a more dazzling succession of literary
triumphs over a tottering system. The satirized classes winced and
laughed, and the intellect of France was conquered, for the
Revolution. Thenceforth it was impossible that peasants who were
nominally free should toil to satisfy the exacting needs of the
State, and to support the brilliant bevy of nobles who flitted gaily
round the monarch at Versailles. The young King Louis XVI., it is
true, carried through several reforms, but he had not enough strength
of will to abolish the absurd immunities from taxation which freed the
nobles and titled clergy from the burdens of the State. Thus, down to
1789, the middle classes and peasants bore nearly all the weight of
taxation, while the peasants were also encumbered by feudal dues and
tolls. These were the crying grievances which united in a solid
phalanx both thinkers and practical men, and thereby gave an immense
impetus to the levelling doctrines of Rousseau.

Two only of his political teachings concern us here, namely, social
equality and the unquestioned supremacy of the State; for to these
dogmas, when they seemed doomed to political bankruptcy, Napoleon
Buonaparte was to act as residuary legatee. According to Rousseau,
society and government originated in a social contract, whereby all
members of the community have equal rights. It matters not that the
spirit of the contract may have evaporated amidst the miasma of
luxury. That is a violation of civil society; and members are
justified in reverting at once to the primitive ideal. If the
existence of the body politic be endangered, force may be used:
"Whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be constrained to do
so by the whole body; which means nothing else than that he shall be
forced to be free." Equally plausible and dangerous was his teaching
as to the indivisibility of the general will. Deriving every public
power from his social contract, he finds it easy to prove that the
sovereign power, vested in all the citizens, must be incorruptible,
inalienable, unrepresentable, indivisible, and indestructible.
Englishmen may now find it difficult to understand the enthusiasm
called forth by this quintessence of negations; but to Frenchman
recently escaped from the age of privilege and warring against the
coalition of kings, the cry of the Republic one and indivisible was a
trumpet call to death or victory. Any shifts, even that of a
dictatorship, were to be borne, provided that social equality could be
saved. As republican Rome had saved her early liberties by intrusting
unlimited powers to a temporary dictator, so, claimed Rousseau, a
young commonwealth must by a similar device consult Nature's first law
of self-preservation. The dictator saves liberty by temporarily
abrogating it: by momentary gagging of the legislative power he
renders it truly vocal.

The events of the French Revolution form a tragic commentary on these
theories. In the first stage of that great movement we see the
followers of Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau marching in an
undivided host against the ramparts of privilege. The walls of the
Bastille fall down even at the blast of their trumpets. Odious feudal
privileges disappear in a single sitting of the National Assembly; and
the _Parlements_, or supreme law courts of the provinces, are swept
away. The old provinces themselves are abolished, and at the beginning
of 1790 France gains social and political unity by her new system of
Departments, which grants full freedom of action in local affairs,
though in all national concerns it binds France closely to the new
popular government at Paris. But discords soon begin to divide the
reformers: hatred of clerical privilege and the desire to fill the
empty coffers of the State dictate the first acts of spoliation.
Tithes are abolished: the lands of the Church are confiscated to the
service of the State; monastic orders are suppressed; and the
Government undertakes to pay the stipends of bishops and priests.
Furthermore, their subjection to the State is definitely secured by
the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (July, 1790) which invalidates
their allegiance to the Pope. Most of the clergy refuse: these are
termed non-jurors or orthodox priests, while their more complaisant
colleagues are known as constitutional priests. Hence arises a serious
schism in the Church, which distracts the religious life of the land,
and separates the friends of liberty from the champions of the
rigorous equality preached by Rousseau.

The new constitution of 1791 was also a source of discord. In its
jealousy of the royal authority, the National Assembly seized very
many of the executive functions of government. The results were
disastrous. Laws remained without force, taxes went uncollected, the
army was distracted by mutinies, and the monarchy sank slowly into the
gulf of bankruptcy and anarchy. Thus, in the course of three years,
the revolutionists goaded the clergy to desperation, they were about
to overthrow the monarchy, every month was proving their local
self-government to be unworkable, and they themselves split into
factions that plunged France into war and drenched her soil by
organized massacres.

       *       *       *       *       *

We know very little about the impression made on the young Buonaparte
by the first events of the Revolution. His note-book seems even to
show that he regarded them as an inconvenient interference with his
plans for Corsica. But gradually the Revolution excites his interest.
In September, 1789, we find him on furlough in Corsica sharing the
hopes of the islanders that their representatives in the French
National Assembly will obtain the boon of independence. He exhorts
his compatriots to favour the democratic cause, which promises a
speedy deliverance from official abuses. He urges them to don the new
tricolour cockade, symbol of Parisian triumph over the old monarchy;
to form a club; above all, to organize a National Guard. The young
officer knew that military power was passing from the royal army, now
honeycombed with discontent, to the National Guard. Here surely was
Corsica's means of salvation. But the French governor of Corsica
intervenes. The club is closed, and the National Guard is dispersed.
Thereupon Buonaparte launches a vigorous protest against the tyranny
of the governor and appeals to the National Assembly of France for
some guarantee of civil liberty. His name is at the head of this
petition, a sufficiently daring step for a junior lieutenant on
furlough. But his patriotism and audacity carry him still further. He
journeys to Bastia, the official capital of his island, and is
concerned in an affray between the populace and the royal troops
(November 5th, 1789). The French authorities, fortunately for him, are
nearly powerless: he is merely requested to return to Ajaccio; and
there he organizes anew the civic force, and sets the dissident
islanders an example of good discipline by mounting guard outside the
house of a personal opponent.

Other events now transpired which began to assuage his opposition to
France. Thanks to the eloquent efforts of Mirabeau, the Corsican
patriots who had remained in exile since 1768 were allowed to return
and enjoy the full rights of citizenship. Little could the friends of
liberty at Paris, or even the statesman himself, have foreseen all the
consequences of this action: it softened the feelings of many
Corsicans towards their conquerors; above all, it caused the heart of
Napoleon Buonaparte for the first time to throb in accord with that of
the French nation. His feelings towards Paoli also began to cool. The
conduct of this illustrious exile exposed him to the charge of
ingratitude towards France. The decree of the French National
Assembly, which restored him to Corsican citizenship, was graced by
acts of courtesy such as the generous French nature can so winningly
dispense. Louis XVI. and the National Assembly warmly greeted him, and
recognized him as head of the National Guard of the island. Yet,
amidst all the congratulations, Paoli saw the approach of anarchy, and
behaved with some reserve. Outwardly, however, concord seemed to be
assured, when on July 14th, 1790, he landed in Corsica; but the hatred
long nursed by the mountaineers and fisherfolk against France was not
to be exorcised by a few demonstrations. In truth, the island was
deeply agitated. The priests were rousing the people against the newly
decreed Civil Constitution of the Clergy; and one of these
disturbances endangered the life of Napoleon himself. He and his
brother Joseph chanced to pass by when one of the processions of
priests and devotees was exciting the pity and indignation of the
townsfolk. The two brothers, who were now well known as partisans of
the Revolution, were threatened with violence, and were saved only by
their own firm demeanour and the intervention of peacemakers.

Then again, the concession of local self-government to the island, as
one of the Departments of France, revealed unexpected difficulties.
Bastia and Ajaccio struggled hard for the honour of being the official
capital. Paoli favoured the claims of Bastia, thereby annoying the
champions of Ajaccio, among whom the Buonapartes were prominent. The
schism was widened by the dictatorial tone of Paoli, a demeanour which
ill became the chief of a civic force. In fact, it soon became
apparent that Corsica was too small a sphere for natures so able and
masterful as those of Paoli and Napoleon Buonaparte.

The first meeting of these two men must have been a scene of deep
interest. It was on the fatal field of Ponte Nuovo. Napoleon doubtless
came there in the spirit of true hero-worship. But hero-worship which
can stand the strain of actual converse is rare indeed, especially
when the expectant devotee is endowed with keen insight and habits of
trenchant expression. One phrase has come down to us as a result of
the interview; but this phrase contains a volume of meaning. After
Paoli had explained the disposition of his troops against the French
at Ponte Nuovo, Buonaparte drily remarked to his brother Joseph, "The
result of these dispositions was what was inevitable." [13]

For the present, Buonaparte and other Corsican democrats were closely
concerned with the delinquencies of the Comte de Buttafuoco, the
deputy for the twelve nobles of the island to the National Assembly of
France. In a letter written on January 23rd, 1791, Buonaparte
overwhelms this man with a torrent of invective.--He it was who had
betrayed his country to France in 1768. Self-interest and that alone
prompted his action then, and always. French rule was a cloak for his
design of subjecting Corsica to "the absurd feudal _regime_" of the
barons. In his selfish royalism he had protested against the new
French constitution as being unsuited to Corsica, "though it was
exactly the same as that which brought us so much good and was wrested
from us only amidst streams of blood."--The letter is remarkable for
the southern intensity of its passion, and for a certain hardening of
tone towards Paoli. Buonaparte writes of Paoli as having been ever
"surrounded by enthusiasts, and as failing to understand in a man any
other passion than fanaticism for liberty and independence," and as
duped by Buttafuoco in 1768.[14] The phrase has an obvious reference
to the Paoli of 1791, surrounded by men who had shared his long exile
and regarded the English constitution as their model. Buonaparte, on
the contrary, is the accredited champion of French democracy, his
furious epistle being printed by the Jacobin Club of Ajaccio.

After firing off this tirade Buonaparte returned to his regiment at
Auxonne (February, 1791). It was high time; for his furlough, though
prolonged on the plea of ill-health, had expired in the preceding
October, and he was therefore liable to six months' imprisonment. But
the young officer rightly gauged the weakness of the moribund
monarchy; and the officers of his almost mutinous regiment were glad
to get him back on any terms. Everywhere in his journey through
Provence and Dauphine, Buonaparte saw the triumph of revolutionary
principles. He notes that the peasants are to a man for the
Revolution; so are the rank and file of the regiment. The officers
are aristocrats, along with three-fourths of those who belong to "good
society": so are all the women, for "Liberty is fairer than they, and
eclipses them." The Revolution was evidently gaining completer hold
over his mind and was somewhat blurring his insular sentiments, when a
rebuff from Paoli further weakened his ties to Corsica. Buonaparte had
dedicated to him his work on Corsica, and had sent him the manuscript
for his approval. After keeping it an unconscionable time, the old man
now coldly replied that he did not desire the honour of Buonaparte's
panegyric, though he thanked him heartily for it; that the
consciousness of having done his duty sufficed for him in his old age;
and, for the rest, history should not be written in youth. A further
request from Joseph Buonaparte for the return of the slighted
manuscript brought the answer that he, Paoli, had no time to search
his papers. After this, how could hero-worship subsist?

The four months spent by Buonaparte at Auxonne were, indeed, a time of
disappointment and hardship. Out of his slender funds he paid for the
education of his younger brother, Louis, who shared his otherwise
desolate lodging. A room almost bare but for a curtainless bed, a
table heaped with books and papers, and two chairs--such were the
surroundings of the lieutenant in the spring of 1791. He lived on
bread that he might rear his brother for the army, and that he might
buy books, overjoyed when his savings mounted to the price of some
coveted volume.

Perhaps the depressing conditions of his life at Auxonne may account
for the acrid tone of an essay which he there wrote in competition for
a prize offered by the Academy of Lyons on the subject--"What truths
and sentiments ought to be inculcated to men for their happiness." It
was unsuccessful; and modern readers will agree with the verdict of
one of the judges that it was incongruous in arrangement and of a bad
and ragged style. The thoughts are set forth in jerky, vehement
clauses; and, in place of the _sensibilite_ of some of his earlier
effusions, we feel here the icy breath of materialism. He regards an
ideal human society as a geometrical structure based on certain
well-defined postulates. All men ought to be able to satisfy certain
elementary needs of their nature; but all that is beyond is
questionable or harmful. The ideal legislator will curtail wealth so
as to restore the wealthy to their true nature--and so forth. Of any
generous outlook on the wider possibilities of human life there is
scarcely a trace. His essay is the apotheosis of social mediocrity. By
Procrustean methods he would have forced mankind back to the dull
levels of Sparta: the opalescent glow of Athenian life was beyond his
ken. But perhaps the most curious passage is that in which he preaches
against the sin and folly of ambition. He pictures Ambition as a
figure with pallid cheeks, wild eyes, hasty step, jerky movements and
sardonic smile, for whom crimes are a sport, while lies and calumnies
are merely arguments and figures of speech. Then, in words that recall
Juvenal's satire on Hannibal's career, he continues: "What is
Alexander doing when he rushes from Thebes into Persia and thence into
India? He is ever restless, he loses his wits, he believes himself
God. What is the end of Cromwell? He governs England. But is he not
tormented by all the daggers of the furies?"--The words ring false,
even for this period of Buonaparte's life; and one can readily
understand his keen wish in later years to burn every copy of these
youthful essays. But they have nearly all survived; and the diatribe
against ambition itself supplies the feather wherewith history may
wing her shaft at the towering flight of the imperial eagle.[15]

At midsummer he is transferred, as first lieutenant, to another
regiment which happened to be quartered at Valence; but his second
sojourn there is remarkable only for signs of increasing devotion to
the revolutionary cause. In the autumn of 1791 he is again in Corsica
on furlough, and remains there until the month of May following. He
finds the island rent by strifes which it would be tedious to
describe. Suffice it to say that the breach between Paoli and the
Buonapartes gradually widened owing to the dictator's suspicion of all
who favoured the French Revolution. The young officer certainly did
nothing to close the breach. Determined to secure his own election as
lieutenant-colonel in the new Corsican National Guard, he spent much
time in gaining recruits who would vote for him. He further assured
his success by having one of the commissioners, who was acting in
Paoli's interest, carried off from his friends and detained at the
Buonapartes' house in Ajaccio--his first _coup_[16] Stranger events
were to follow. At Easter, when the people were excited by the
persecuting edicts against the clergy and the closing of a monastery,
there was sharp fighting between the populace and Buonaparte's
companies of National Guards. Originating in a petty quarrel, which
was taken up by eager partisans, it embroiled the whole of the town
and gave the ardent young Jacobin the chance of overthrowing his
enemies. His plans even extended to the seizure of the citadel, where
he tried to seduce the French regiment from its duty to officers
whom he dubbed aristocrats. The attempt was a failure. The whole
truth can, perhaps, scarcely be discerned amidst the tissue of
lies which speedily enveloped the affair; but there can be no
doubt that on the second day of strife Buonaparte's National
Guards began the fight and subsequently menaced the regular troops in
the citadel. The conflict was finally stopped by commissioners sent by
Paoli; and the volunteers were sent away from the town.

Buonaparte's position now seemed desperate. His conduct exposed him to
the hatred of most of his fellow-citizens and to the rebukes of the
French War Department. In fact, he had doubly sinned: he had actually
exceeded his furlough by four months: he was technically guilty, first
of desertion, and secondly of treason. In ordinary times he would have
been shot, but the times were extraordinary, and he rightly judged
that when a Continental war was brewing, the most daring course was
also the most prudent, namely, to go to Paris. Thither Paoli allowed
him to proceed, doubtless on the principle of giving the young madcap
a rope wherewith to hang himself.

On his arrival at Marseilles, he hears that war has been declared by
France against Austria; for the republican Ministry, which Louis XVI.
had recently been compelled to accept, believed that war against an
absolute monarch would intensify revolutionary fervour in France and
hasten the advent of the Republic. Their surmises were correct.
Buonaparte, on his arrival at Paris, witnessed the closing scenes of
the reign of Louis XVI. On June 20th he saw the crowd burst into the
Tuileries, when for some hours it insulted the king and queen. Warmly
though he had espoused the principles of the Revolution, his patrician
blood boiled at the sight of these vulgar outrages, and he exclaimed:
"Why don't they sweep off four or five hundred of that _canaille_ with
cannon? The rest would then run away fast enough." The remark is
significant. If his brain approved the Jacobin creed, his instincts
were always with monarchy. His career was to reconcile his reason with
his instincts, and to impose on weary France the curious compromise of
a revolutionary Imperialism.

On August 10th, from the window of a shop near the Tuileries, he
looked down on the strange events which dealt the _coup de grace_ to
the dying monarchy. Again the chieftain within him sided against the
vulture rabble and with the well-meaning monarch who kept his troops
to a tame defensive. "If Louis XVI." (so wrote Buonaparte to his
brother Joseph) "had mounted his horse, the victory would have been
his--so I judge from the spirit which prevailed in the morning."
When all was over, when Louis sheathed his sword and went for
shelter to the National Assembly, when the fierce Marseillais were
slaughtering the Swiss Guards and bodyguards of the king, Buonaparte
dashed forward to save one of these unfortunates from a southern
sabre. "Southern comrade, let us save this poor wretch.--Are you
of the south?--Yes.--Well, we will save him."

Altogether, what a time of disillusionment this was to the young
officer. What depths of cruelty and obscenity it revealed in the
Parisian rabble. What folly to treat them with the Christian
forbearance shown by Louis XVI. How much more suitable was grapeshot
than the beatitudes. The lesson was stored up for future use at a
somewhat similar crisis on this very spot.

During the few days when victorious Paris left Louis with the sham
title of king, Buonaparte received his captain's commission, which was
signed for the king by Servan, the War Minister. Thus did the
revolutionary Government pass over his double breach of military
discipline at Ajaccio. The revolutionary motto, "La carriere ouverte
aux talents," was never more conspicuously illustrated than in the
facile condoning of his offences and in this rapid promotion. It was
indeed a time fraught with vast possibilities for all republican or
Jacobinical officers. Their monarchist colleagues were streaming over
the frontiers to join the Austrian and Prussian invaders. But National
Guards were enrolling by tens of thousands to drive out the Prussian
and Austrian invaders; and when Europe looked to see France fall for
ever, it saw with wonder her strength renewed as by enchantment. Later
on it learnt that that strength was the strength of Antaeus, of a
peasantry that stood firmly rooted in their native soil. Organization
and good leadership alone were needed to transform these ardent masses
into the most formidable soldiery; and the brilliant military
prospects now opened up certainly knit Buonaparte's feelings more
closely with the cause of France. Thus, on September 21st, when the
new National Assembly, known as the Convention, proclaimed the
Republic, we may well believe that sincere convictions no less than
astute calculations moved him to do and dare all things for the sake
of the new democratic commonwealth.[17]

For the present, however, a family duty urges him to return to
Corsica. He obtains permission to escort home his sister Elise, and
for the third time we find him on furlough in Corsica. This laxity of
military discipline at such a crisis is explicable only on the
supposition that the revolutionary chiefs knew of his devotion to
their cause and believed that his influence in the island would render
his informal services there more valuable than his regimental duties
in the army then invading Savoy. For the word Republic, which fired
his imagination, was an offence to Paoli and to most of the
islanders; and the phrase "Republic one and indivisible," ever on the
lips of the French, seemed to promise that the island must become a
petty replica of France--France that was now dominated by the authors
of the vile September massacres. The French party in the island was
therefore rapidly declining, and Paoli was preparing to sever the
union with France. For this he has been bitterly assailed as a
traitor. But, from Paoli's point of view, the acquisition of the
island by France was a piece of rank treachery; and his allegiance to
France was technically at an end when the king was forcibly dethroned
and the Republic was proclaimed. The use of the appellation "traitor"
in such a case is merely a piece of childish abuse. It can be
justified neither by reference to law, equity, nor to the popular
sentiment of the time. Facts were soon to show that the islanders were
bitterly opposed to the party then dominant in France. This hostility
of a clannish, religious, and conservative populace against the
bloodthirsty and atheistical innovators who then lorded it over France
was not diminished by the action of some six thousand French
volunteers, the off-scourings of the southern ports, who were landed
at Ajaccio for an expedition against Sardinia. In their zeal for
Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, these _bonnets rouges_ came to
blows with the men of Ajaccio, three of whom they hanged. So fierce
was the resentment caused by this outrage that the plan of a joint
expedition for the liberation of Sardinia from monarchical tyranny had
to be modified; and Buonaparte, who was again in command of a
battalion of Corsican guards, proposed that the islanders alone should
proceed to attack the Madalena Isles.

These islands, situated between Corsica and Sardinia, have a double
interest to the historical student. One of them, Caprera, was destined
to shelter another Italian hero at the close of his career, the noble
self-denying Garibaldi: the chief island of the group was the
objective of Buonaparte's first essay in regular warfare. After some
delays the little force set sail under the command of Cesari-Colonna,
the nephew of Paoli. According to Buonaparte's own official statement
at the close of the affair, he had successfully landed his men near
the town to be assailed, and had thrown the Sardinian defences into
confusion, when a treacherous order from his chief bade him to cease
firing and return to the vessels. It has also been stated that this
retreat was the outcome of a secret understanding between Paoli and
Cesari-Colonna that the expedition should miscarry. This seems highly
probable. A mutiny on board the chief ship of the flotilla was
assigned by Cesari-Colonna as the cause of his order for a retreat;
but there are mutinies and mutinies, and this one may have been a
trick of the Paolists for thwarting Buonaparte's plan and leaving him
a prisoner. In any case, the young officer only saved himself and his
men by a hasty retreat to the boats, tumbling into the sea a mortar
and four cannon. Such was the ending to the great captain's first
military enterprise.

On his return to Ajaccio (March 3rd, 1793), Buonaparte found affairs
in utter confusion. News had recently arrived of the declaration of
war by the French Republic against England and Holland. Moreover,
Napoleon's young brother, Lucien, had secretly denounced Paoli to the
French authorities at Toulon; and three commissioners were now sent
from Paris charged with orders to disband the Corsican National
Guards, and to place the Corsican dictator under the orders of the
French general commanding the army of Italy.[18]

A game of truly Macchiavellian skill is now played. The French
commissioners, among whom the Corsican deputy, Salicetti, is by far
the most able, invite Paoli to repair to Toulon, there to concert
measures for the defence of Corsica. Paoli, seeing through the ruse
and discerning a guillotine, pleads that his age makes the journey
impossible; but with his friends he quietly prepares for resistance
and holds the citadel of Ajaccio. Meanwhile the commissioners make
friendly overtures to the old chief; in these Napoleon participates,
being ignorant of Lucien's action at Toulon. The sincerity of these
overtures may well be called in question, though Buonaparte still used
the language of affection to his former idol. However this may be, all
hope of compromise is dashed by the zealots who are in power at Paris.
On April 2nd they order the French commissioners to secure Paoli's
person, by whatever means, and bring him to the French capital. At
once a cry of indignation goes up from all parts of Corsica; and
Buonaparte draws up a declaration, vindicating Paoli's conduct and
begging the French Convention to revoke its decree.[19] Again, one
cannot but suspect that this declaration was intended mainly, if not
solely, for local consumption. In any case, it failed to cool the
resentment of the populace; and the partisans of France soon came to
blows with the Paolists.

Salicetti and Buonaparte now plan by various artifices to gain the
citadel of Ajaccio from the Paolists, but guile is three times foiled
by guile equally astute. Failing here, the young captain seeks to
communicate with the French commissioners at Bastia. He sets out
secretly, with a trusty shepherd as companion, to cross the island:
but at the village of Bocognano he is recognized and imprisoned by the
partisans of Paoli. Some of the villagers, however, retain their old
affection to the Buonaparte family, which here has an ancestral
estate, and secretly set him free. He returns to Ajaccio, only to find
an order for his arrest issued by the Corsican patriots. This time he
escapes by timely concealment in the grotto of a friend's garden; and
from the grounds of another family connection he finally glides away
in a vessel to a point of safety, whence he reaches Bastia.

Still, though a fugitive, he persists in believing that Ajaccio is
French at heart, and urges the sending of a liberating force. The
French commissioners agree, and the expedition sails--only to meet
with utter failure. Ajaccio, as one man, repels the partisans of
France; and, a gale of wind springing up, Buonaparte and his men
regain their boats with the utmost difficulty. At a place hard by, he
finds his mother, uncle, brothers and sisters. Madame Buonaparte, with
the extraordinary tenacity of will that characterized her famous son,
had wished to defend her house at Ajaccio against the hostile
populace; but, yielding to the urgent warnings of friends, finally
fled to the nearest place of safety, and left the house to the fury of
the populace, by whom it was nearly wrecked.

For a brief space Buonaparte clung to the hope of regaining Corsica
for the Republic, but now only by the aid of French troops. For the
islanders, stung by the demand of the French Convention that Paoli
should go to Paris, had rallied to the dictator's side; and the aged
chief made overtures to England for alliance. The partisans of France,
now menaced by England's naval power, were in an utterly untenable
position. Even the steel-like will of Buonaparte was bent. His career
in Corsica was at an end for the present; and with his kith and kin he
set sail for France.

The interest of the events above described lies, not in their
intrinsic importance, but in the signal proof which they afford of
Buonaparte's wondrous endowments of mind and will. In a losing cause
and in a petty sphere he displays all the qualities which, when the
omens were favourable, impelled him to the domination of a Continent.
He fights every inch of ground tenaciously; at each emergency he
evinces a truly Italian fertility of resource, gliding round obstacles
or striving to shatter them by sheer audacity, seeing through men,
cajoling them by his insinuations or overawing them by his mental
superiority, ever determined to try the fickle jade Fortune to the
very utmost, and retreating only before the inevitable. The sole
weakness discoverable in this nature, otherwise compact of strength,
is an excess of will-power over all the faculties that make for
prudence. His vivid imagination only serves to fire him with the full
assurance that he must prevail over all obstacles.

And yet, if he had now stopped to weigh well the lessons of the past,
hitherto fertile only in failures and contradictions, he must have
seen the powerlessness of his own will when in conflict with the
forces of the age; for he had now severed his connection with the
Corsican patriots, of whose cause he had only two years before been
the most passionate champion. It is evident that the schism which
finally separated Buonaparte and Paoli originated in their divergence
of views regarding the French Revolution. Paoli accepted revolutionary
principles only in so far as they promised to base freedom on a due
balance of class interests. He was a follower of Montesquieu. He
longed to see in Corsica a constitution similar to that of England or
to that of 1791 in France. That hope vanished alike for France and
Corsica after the fall of the monarchy; and towards the Jacobinical
Republic, which banished orthodox priests and guillotined the amiable
Louis, Paoli thenceforth felt naught but loathing: "We have been the
enemies of kings," he said to Joseph Buonaparte; "let us never be
their executioners." Thenceforth he drifted inevitably into alliance
with England.

Buonaparte, on the other hand, was a follower of Rousseau, whose ideas
leaped to power at the downfall of the monarchy. Despite the excesses
which he ever deplored, this second Revolution appeared to him to be
the dawn of a new and intelligent age. The clear-cut definitions of
the new political creed dovetailed in with his own rigid views of
life. Mankind was to be saved by law, society being levelled down and
levelled up until the ideals of Lycurgus were attained. Consequently
he regarded the Republic as a mighty agency for the social
regeneration not only of France, but of all peoples. His insular
sentiments were gradually merged in these vaster schemes.
Self-interest and the differentiating effects of party strifes
undoubtedly assisted the mental transformation; but it is clear that
the study of the "Social Contract" was the touchstone of his early
intellectual growth. He had gone to Rousseau's work to deepen his
Corsican patriotism: he there imbibed doctrines which drew him
irresistibly into the vortex of the French Revolution, and of its wars
of propaganda and conquest.

       *       *       *       *       *




CHAPTER III

TOULON


When Buonaparte left Corsica for the coast of Provence, his career had
been remarkable only for the strange contrast between the brilliance
of his gifts and the utter failure of all his enterprises. His French
partisanship had, as it seemed, been the ruin of his own and his
family's fortunes. At the age of twenty-four he was known only as the
unlucky leader of forlorn hopes and an outcast from the island around
which his fondest longings had been entwined. His land-fall on the
French coast seemed no more promising; for at that time Provence was
on the verge of revolt against the revolutionary Government. Even
towns like Marseilles and Toulon, which a year earlier had been noted
for their republican fervour, were now disgusted with the course of
events at Paris. In the third climax of revolutionary fury, that of
June 2nd, 1793, the more enlightened of the two republican factions,
the Girondins, had been overthrown by their opponents, the men of the
Mountain, who, aided by the Parisian rabble, seized on power. Most of
the Departments of France resented this violence and took up arms. But
the men of the Mountain acted with extraordinary energy: they
proclaimed the Girondins to be in league with the invaders, and
blasted their opponents with the charge of conspiring to divide France
into federal republics. The Committee of Public Safety, now installed
in power at Paris, decreed a _levee en masse_ of able-bodied patriots
to defend the sacred soil of the Republic, and the "organizer of
victory," Carnot, soon drilled into a terrible efficiency the hosts
that sprang from the soil. On their side the Girondins had no
organization whatever, and were embarrassed by the adhesion of very
many royalists. Consequently their wavering groups speedily gave way
before the impact of the new, solid, central power.

A movement so wanting in definiteness as that of the Girondins was
destined to slide into absolute opposition to the men of the Mountain:
it was doomed to become royalist. Certainly it did not command the
adhesion of Napoleon. His inclinations are seen in his pamphlet, "Le
Souper de Beaucaire," which he published in August, 1793. He wrote it
in the intervals of some regimental work which had come to hand: and
his passage through the little town of Beaucaire seems to have
suggested the scenic setting of this little dialogue. It purports to
record a discussion between an officer--Buonaparte himself--two
merchants of Marseilles, and citizens of Nimes and Montpellier. It
urges the need of united action under the lead of the Jacobins. The
officer reminds the Marseillais of the great services which their city
has rendered to the cause of liberty. Let Marseilles never disgrace
herself by calling in the Spanish fleet as a protection against
Frenchmen. Let her remember that this civil strife was part of a fight
to the death between French patriots and the despots of Europe. That
was, indeed, the practical point at issue; the stern logic of facts
ranged on the Jacobin side all clear-sighted men who were determined
that the Revolution should not be stamped out by the foreign invaders.
On the ground of mere expediency, men must rally to the cause of the
Jacobinical Republic. Every crime might be condoned, provided that the
men now in power at Paris saved the country. Better their tyranny than
the vengeance of the emigrant _noblesse_. Such was the instinct of
most Frenchmen, and it saved France.

As an _expose_ of keen policy and all-dominating opportunism, "Le
Souper de Beaucaire" is admirable. In a national crisis anything that
saves the State is justifiable--that is its argument. The men of the
Mountain are abler and stronger than the Girondins: therefore the
Marseillais are foolish not to bow to the men of the Mountain. The
author feels no sympathy with the generous young Girondins, who, under
the inspiration of Madame Roland, sought to establish a republic of
the virtues even while they converted monarchical Europe by the sword.
Few men can now peruse with undimmed eyes the tragic story of their
fall. But the scenes of 1793 had transformed the Corsican youth into a
dry-eyed opportunist who rejects the Girondins as he would have thrown
aside a defective tool: nay, he blames them as "guilty of the greatest
of crimes."[20]

Nevertheless Buonaparte was alive to the miseries of the situation. He
was weary of civil strifes, in which it seemed that no glory could be
won. He must hew his way to fortune, if only in order to support his
family, which was now drifting about from village to village of
Provence and subsisting on the slender sums doled out by the Republic
to Corsican exiles.

He therefore applied, though without success, for a regimental
exchange to the army of the Rhine. But while toiling through his
administrative drudgery in Provence, his duties brought him near to
Toulon, where the Republic was face to face with triumphant royalism.
The hour had struck: the man now appeared.

In July, 1793, Toulon joined other towns of the south in declaring
against Jacobin tyranny; and the royalists of the town, despairing of
making headway against the troops of the Convention, admitted English
and Spanish squadrons to the harbour to hold the town for Louis XVII,
(August 28th). This event shot an electric thrill through France. It
was the climax of a long series of disasters. Lyons had hoisted the
white flag of the Bourbons, and was making a desperate defence against
the forces of the Convention: the royalist peasants of La Vendee had
several times scattered the National Guards in utter rout: the
Spaniards were crossing the Eastern Pyrenees: the Piedmontese were
before the gates of Grenoble; and in the north and on the Rhine a
doubtful contest was raging.

Such was the condition of France when Buonaparte drew near to the
republican forces encamped near Ollioules, to the north-west of
Toulon. He found them in disorder: their commander, Carteaux, had left
the easel to learn the art of war, and was ignorant of the range of
his few cannon; Dommartin, their artillery commander, had been
disabled by a wound; and the Commissioners of the Convention, who were
charged to put new vigour into the operations, were at their wits' end
for lack of men and munitions. One of them was Salicetti, who hailed
his coming as a godsend, and urged him to take Dommartin's place.
Thus, on September 16th, the thin, sallow, threadbare figure took
command of the artillery.

The republicans menaced the town on two sides. Carteaux with some
8,000 men held the hills between Toulon and Ollioules, while a corps
3,000 strong, under Lapoype, observed the fortress on the side of La
Valette. Badly led though they were, they wrested the valley north of
Mount Faron from the allied outposts, and nearly completed the
besiegers' lines (September 18th). In fact, the garrison, which
comprised only 2,000 British troops, 4,000 Spaniards, 1,500 French
royalists, together with some Neapolitans and Piedmontese, was
insufficient to defend the many positions around the city on which its
safety depended. Indeed, General Grey wrote to Pitt that 50,000 men
were needed to garrison the place; but, as that was double the
strength of the British regular army then, the English Minister could
only hold out hopes of the arrival of an Austrian corps and a few
hundred British.[21]

Before Buonaparte's arrival the Jacobins had no artillery: true, they
had a few field-pieces, four heavier guns and two mortars, which a
sergeant helplessly surveyed; but they had no munitions, no tools,
above all no method and no discipline. Here then was the opportunity
for which he had been pining. At once he assumes the tone of a master.
"You mind your business, and let me look after mine," he exclaims to
officious infantrymen; "it is artillery that takes fortresses:
infantry gives its help." The drudgery of the last weeks now yields
fruitful results: his methodical mind, brooding over the chaos before
him, flashes back to this or that detail in some coast fort or
magazine: his energy hustles on the leisurely Provencaux, and in a few
days he has a respectable park of artillery--fourteen cannon, four
mortars, and the necessary stores. In a brief space the Commissioners
show their approval of his services by promoting him to the rank of
_chef de bataillon_.

By this time the tide was beginning to turn in favour of the Republic.
On October 9th Lyons fell before the Jacobins. The news lends a new
zest to the Jacobins, whose left wing had (October 1st) been severely
handled by the allies on Mount Faron. Above all, Buonaparte's
artillery can be still further strengthened. "I have despatched," he
wrote to the Minister of War, "an intelligent officer to Lyons,
Briancon, and Grenoble, to procure what might be useful to us. I have
requested the Army of Italy to furnish us with the cannon now useless
for the defence of Antibes and Monaco.... I have established at
Ollioules an arsenal with 80 workers. I have requisitioned horses from
Nice right to Valence and Montpellier.... I am having 5,000 gabions
made every day at Marseilles." But he was more than a mere organizer.
He was ever with his men, animating them by his own ardour: "I always
found him at his post," wrote Doppet, who now succeeded Carteaux;
"when he needed rest he lay on the ground wrapped in his cloak: he
never left the batteries." There, amidst the autumn rains, he
contracted the febrile symptoms which for several years deepened the
pallor of his cheeks and furrowed the rings under his eyes, giving him
that uncanny, almost spectral, look which struck a chill to all who
saw him first and knew not the fiery energy that burnt within. There,
too, his zeal, his unfailing resource, his bulldog bravery, and that
indefinable quality which separates genius from talent speedily
conquered the hearts of the French soldiery. One example of this
magnetic power must here suffice. He had ordered a battery to be made
so near to Fort Mulgrave that Salicetti described it as within a
pistol-shot of the English guns. Could it be worked, its effect would
be decisive. But who could work it? The first day saw all its gunners
killed or wounded, and even the reckless Jacobins flinched from facing
the iron hail. "Call it _the battery of the fearless_," ordered the
young captain. The generous French nature was touched at its tenderest
point, personal and national honour, and the battery thereafter never
lacked its full complement of gunners, living and dead.

The position at Fort Mulgrave, or the Little Gibraltar, was, indeed,
all important; for if the republicans seized that commanding position,
the allied squadrons could be overpowered, or at least compelled to
sail away; and with their departure Toulon must fall.

Here we come on to ground that has been fiercely fought over in wordy
war. Did Bonaparte originate the plan of attack? Or did he throw his
weight and influence into a scheme that others beside him had
designed? Or did he merely carry out orders as a subordinate?
According to the Commissioner Barras, the last was the case. But
Barras was with the eastern wing of the besiegers, that is, some miles
away from the side of La Seyne and L'Eguillette, where Buonaparte
fought. Besides, Barras' "Memoires" are so untruthful where Buonaparte
is concerned, as to be unworthy of serious attention, at least on
these points.[22] The historian M. Jung likewise relegates Buonaparte
to a quite subordinate position.[23] But his narrative omits some of
the official documents which show that Buonaparte played a very
important part in the siege. Other writers claim that Buonaparte's
influence on the whole conduct of operations was paramount and
decisive. Thus, M. Duruy quotes the letter of the Commissioners to the
Convention: "We shall take care not to lay siege to Toulon by ordinary
means, when we have a surer means to reduce it, that is, by burning
the enemy's fleet.... We are only waiting for the siege-guns before
taking up a position whence we may reach the ships with red-hot balls;
and we shall see if we are not masters of Toulon." But this very
letter disproves the Buonapartist claim. It was written on September
13th. Thus, _three days before Buonaparte's arrival_, the
Commissioners had fully decided on attacking the Little Gibraltar; and
the claim that Buonaparte originated the plan can only be sustained by
antedating his arrival at Toulon.[24] In fact, every experienced
officer among besiegers and besieged saw the weak point of the
defence: early in September Hood and Mulgrave began the fortification
of the heights behind L'Eguillette. In face of these facts, the
assertion that Buonaparte was the first to design the movements which
secured the surrender of Toulon must be relegated to the domain of
hero-worship. (See note on p. 56.)

[Illustration: THE SIEGE OF TOULON, 1793, from "L'Histoire de France
depuis la Revolution de 1789," by Emmanuel Toulougeon. Paris, An. XII.
[1803]. A. Fort Mulgrave. A'. Promontory of L'Eguillette. 1 and 2.
Batteries. 3. Battery "Hommes sans Peur." The black and shaded
rectangles are the Republican and Allied positions respectively.]

Carteaux having been superseded by Doppet, more energy was thrown
into the operations. Yet for him Buonaparte had scarcely more respect.
On November 15th an affair of outposts near Fort Mulgrave showed his
weakness. The soldiers on both sides eagerly took up the affray; line
after line of the French rushed up towards that frowning redoubt:
O'Hara, the leader of the allied troops, encouraged the British in a
sortie that drove back the blue-coats; whereupon Buonaparte headed the
rallying rush to the gorge of the redoubt, when Doppet sounded the
retreat. Half blinded by rage and by the blood trickling from a slight
wound in his forehead, the young Corsican rushed back to Doppet and
abused him in the language of the camp: "Our blow at Toulon has
missed, because a---- has beaten the retreat." The soldiery applauded
this revolutionary licence, and bespattered their chief with similar
terms.

A few days later the tall soldierly Dugommier took the command:
reinforcements began to pour in, finally raising the strength of the
besiegers to 37,000 men. Above all, the new commander gave Buonaparte
_carte blanche_ for the direction of the artillery. New batteries
accordingly began to ring the Little Gibraltar on the landward side;
O'Hara, while gallantly heading a sortie, fell into the republicans'
hands, and the defenders began to lose heart. The worst disappointment
was the refusal of the Austrian Court to fulfil its promise, solemnly
given in September, to send 5,000 regular troops for the defence of
Toulon.

The final conflict took place on the night of December 16-17, when
torrents of rain, a raging wind, and flashes of lightning added new
horrors to the strife. Scarcely had the assailants left the sheltering
walls of La Seyne, than Buonaparte's horse fell under him, shot dead:
whole companies went astray in the darkness: yet the first column of
2,000 men led by Victor rush at the palisades of Fort Mulgrave, tear
them down, and sweep into the redoubt, only to fall in heaps before a
second line of defence: supported by the second column, they rally,
only to yield once more before the murderous fire. In despair,
Dugommier hurries on the column of reserve, with which Buonaparte
awaits the crisis of the night. Led by the gallant young Muiron, the
reserve sweeps into the gorge of death; Muiron, Buonaparte, and
Dugommier hack their way through the same embrasure: their men swarm
in on the overmatched red-coats and Spaniards, cut them down at their
guns, and the redoubt is won.

This event was decisive. The Neapolitans, who were charged to hold the
neighbouring forts, flung themselves into the sea; and the ships
themselves began to weigh anchor; for Buonaparte's guns soon poured
their shot on the fleet and into the city itself. But even in that
desperate strait the allies turned fiercely to bay. On the evening of
December 17th a young officer, who was destined once more to thwart
Buonaparte's designs, led a small body of picked men into the dockyard
to snatch from the rescuing clutch of the Jacobins the French warships
that could not be carried off. Then was seen a weird sight. The galley
slaves, now freed from their chains and clustering in angry groups,
menaced the intruders. Yet the British seamen spread the combustibles
and let loose the demon of destruction. Forthwith the flames shot up
the masts, and licked up the stores of hemp, tar, and timber: and the
explosion of two powder-ships by the Spaniards shook the earth for
many miles around. Napoleon ever retained a vivid mental picture of
the scene, which amid the hated calm of St. Helena he thus described:
"The whirlwind of flames and smoke from the arsenal resembled the
eruption of a volcano, and the thirteen vessels blazing in the roads
were like so many displays of fireworks: the masts and forms of the
vessels were distinctly traced out by the flames, which lasted many
hours and formed an unparalleled spectacle." [25] The sight struck
horror to the hearts of the royalists of Toulon, who saw in it the
signal of desertion by the allies; and through the lurid night crowds
of panic-stricken wretches thronged the quays crying aloud to be taken
away from the doomed city. The glare of the flames, the crash of the
enemy's bombs, the explosion of the two powder-ships, frenzied many a
soul; and scores of those who could find no place in the boats flung
themselves into the sea rather than face the pikes and guillotines of
the Jacobins. Their fears were only too well founded; for a fortnight
later Freron, the Commissioner of the Convention, boasted that two
hundred royalists perished daily.

It remains briefly to consider a question of special interest to
English readers. Did the Pitt Ministry intend to betray the confidence
of the French royalists and keep Toulon for England? The charge has
been brought by certain French writers that the British, after
entering Toulon with promise that they would hold it in pledge for
Louis XVII., nevertheless lorded it over the other allies and revealed
their intention of keeping that stronghold. These writers aver that
Hood, after entering Toulon as an equal with the Spanish admiral,
Langara, laid claim to entire command of the land forces; that English
commissioners were sent for the administration of the town; and that
the English Government refused to allow the coming of the Comte de
Provence, who, as the elder of the two surviving brothers of Louis
XVI., was entitled to act on behalf of Louis XVII.[26] The facts in
the main are correct, but the interpretation put upon them may well be
questioned. Hood certainly acted with much arrogance towards the
Spaniards. But when the more courteous O'Hara arrived to take command
of the British, Neapolitan, and Sardinian troop, the new commander
agreed to lay aside the question of supreme command. It was not till
November 30th that the British Government sent off any despatch on the
question, which meanwhile had been settled at Toulon by the exercise
of that tact in which Hood seems signally to have been lacking. The
whole question was personal, not national.

Still less was the conduct of the British Government towards the Comte
de Provence a proof of its design to keep Toulon. The records of our
Foreign Office show that, before the occupation of that stronghold for
Louis XVII., we had declined to acknowledge the claims of his uncle to
the Regency. He and his brother, the Comte d'Artois, were notoriously
unpopular in France, except with royalists of the old school; and
their presence at Toulon would certainly have raised awkward questions
about the future government. The conduct of Spain had hitherto been
similar.[27] But after the occupation of Toulon, the Court of Madrid
judged the presence of the Comte de Provence in that fortress to be
advisable; whereas the Pitt Ministry adhered to its former belief,
insisted on the difficulty of conducting the defence if the Prince
were present as Regent, instructed Mr. Drake, our Minister at Genoa,
to use every argument to deter him from proceeding to Toulon, and
privately ordered our officers there, in the last resort, to refuse
him permission to land. The instructions of October 18th to the royal
commissioners at Toulon show that George III. and his Ministers
believed they would be compromising the royalist cause by recognizing
a regency; and certainly any effort by the allies to prejudice the
future settlement would at once have shattered any hopes of a general
rally to the royalist side.[28]

Besides, if England meant to keep Toulon, why did she send only 2,200
soldiers? Why did she admit, not only 6,900 Spaniards, but also 4,900
Neapolitans and 1,600 Piedmontese? Why did she accept the armed help
of 1,600 French royalists? Why did she urgently plead with Austria to
send 5,000 white-coats from Milan? Why, finally, is there no word in
the British official despatches as to the eventual keeping of Toulon;
while there are several references to _indemnities_ which George III.
would require for the expenses of the war--such as Corsica or some of
the French West Indies? Those despatches show conclusively that
England did not wish to keep a fortress that required a permanent
garrison equal to half of the British army on its peace footing; but
that she did regard it as a good base of operations for the overthrow
of the Jacobin rule and the restoration of monarchy; whereupon her
services must be requited with some suitable indemnity, either one of
the French West Indies or Corsica. These plans were shattered by
Buonaparte's skill and the valour of Dugommier's soldiery; but no
record has yet leaped to light to convict the Pitt Ministry of the
perfidy which Buonaparte, in common with nearly all Frenchmen, charged
to their account.

       *       *       *       *       *




CHAPTER IV

VENDEMIAIRE


The next period of Buonaparte's life presents few features of
interest. He was called upon to supervise the guns and stores for the
Army of Italy, and also to inspect the fortifications and artillery of
the coast. At Marseilles his zeal outstripped his discretion. He
ordered the reconstruction of the fortress which had been destroyed
during the Revolution; but when the townsfolk heard the news, they
protested so vehemently that the work was stopped and an order was
issued for Buonaparte's arrest. From this difficulty the friendship of
the younger Robespierre and of Salicetti, the Commissioners of the
Convention, availed to rescue him; but the incident proves that his
services at Toulon were not so brilliant as to have raised him above
the general level of meritorious officers, who were applauded while
they prospered, but might be sent to the guillotine for any serious
offence.

In February, 1794, he was appointed at Nice general in command of the
artillery of the Army of Italy, which drove the Sardinian troops from
several positions between Ventimiglia and Oneglia. Thence, swinging
round by passes of the Maritime Alps, they outflanked the positions of
the Austro-Sardinian forces at the Col di Tenda, which had defied all
attack in front. Buonaparte's share in this turning operation seems to
have been restricted to the effective handling of artillery, and the
chief credit here rested with Massena, who won the first of his
laurels in the country of his birth. He was of humble parentage;
yet his erect bearing, proud animated glance, curt penetrating speech,
and keen repartees, proclaimed a nature at once active and wary, an
intellect both calculating and confident. Such was the man who was to
immortalize his name in many a contest, until his glory paled before
the greater genius of Wellington.

Much of the credit of organizing this previously unsuccessful army
belongs to the younger Robespierre, who, as Commissioner of the
Convention, infused his energy into all departments of the service.
For some months his relations to Buonaparte were those of intimacy;
but whether they extended to complete sympathy on political matters
may be doubted. The younger Robespierre held the revolutionary creed
with sufficient ardour, though one of his letters dated from Oneglia
suggests that the fame of the Terror was hurtful to the prospects of
the campaign. It states that the whole of the neighbouring inhabitants
had fled before the French soldiers, in the belief that they were
destroyers of religion and eaters of babies: this was inconvenient, as
it prevented the supply of provisions and the success of forced loans.
The letter suggests that he was a man of action rather than of ideas,
and probably it was this practical quality which bound Buonaparte in
friendship to him. Yet it is difficult to fathom Buonaparte's ideas
about the revolutionary despotism which was then deluging Paris with
blood. Outwardly he appeared to sympathize with it. Such at least is
the testimony of Marie Robespierre, with whom Buonaparte's sisters
were then intimate. "Buonaparte," she said, "was a republican: I will
even say that he took the side of the Mountain: at least, that was the
impression left on my mind by his opinions when I was at Nice.... His
admiration for my elder brother, his friendship for my younger
brother, and perhaps also the interest inspired by my misfortunes,
gained for me, under the Consulate, a pension of 3,600 francs."[29]
Equally noteworthy is the later declaration of Napoleon that
Robespierre was the "scapegoat of the Revolution." [30] It appears
probable, then, that he shared the Jacobinical belief that the Terror
was a necessary though painful stage in the purification of the body
politic. His admiration of the rigour of Lycurgus, and his dislike of
all superfluous luxury, alike favour this supposition; and as he
always had the courage of his convictions, it is impossible to
conceive him clinging to the skirts of the terrorists merely from a
mean hope of prospective favours. That is the alternative explanation
of his intimacy with young Robespierre. Some of his injudicious
admirers, in trying to disprove his complicity with the terrorists,
impale themselves on this horn of the dilemma. In seeking to clear
him from the charge of Terrorism, they stain him with the charge of
truckling to the terrorists. They degrade him from the level of St.
Just to that of Barrere.

A sentence in one of young Robespierre's letters shows that he never
felt completely sure about the young officer. After enumerating to his
brother Buonaparte's merits, he adds: "He is a Corsican, and offers
only the guarantee of a man of that nation who has resisted the
caresses of Paoli and whose property has been ravaged by that
traitor." Evidently, then, Robespierre regarded Buonaparte with some
suspicion as an insular Proteus, lacking those sureties, mental and
pecuniary, which reduced a man to dog-like fidelity.

Yet, however warily Buonaparte picked his steps along the slopes of
the revolutionary volcano, he was destined to feel the scorch of the
central fires. He had recently been intrusted with a mission to the
Genoese Republic, which was in a most difficult position. It was
subject to pressure from three sides; from English men-of-war that had
swooped down on a French frigate, the "Modeste," in Genoese waters;
and from actual invasion by the French on the west and by the
Austrians on the north. Despite the great difficulties of his task, the
young envoy bent the distracted Doge and Senate to his will. He
might, therefore, have expected gratitude from his adopted country;
but shortly after he returned to Nice he was placed under arrest, and
was imprisoned in a fort near Antibes.

The causes of this swift reverse of fortune were curiously complex.
The Robespierres had in the meantime been guillotined at Paris (July
28th, or Thermidor 10th); and this "Thermidorian" reaction alone would
have sufficed to endanger Buonaparte's head. But his position was
further imperilled by his recent strategic suggestions, which had
served to reduce to a secondary _role_ the French Army of the Alps.
The operations of that force had of late been strangely thwarted; and
its leaders, searching for the paralyzing influence, discovered it in
the advice of Buonaparte. Their suspicions against him were formulated
in a secret letter to the Committee of Public Safety, which stated
that the Army of the Alps had been kept inactive by the intrigues of
the younger Robespierre and of Ricord. Many a head had fallen for
reasons less serious than these. But Buonaparte had one infallible
safeguard: he could not well be spared. After a careful examination of
his papers, the Commissioners, Salicetti and Albitte, provisionally
restored him to liberty, but not, for some weeks, to his rank of
general (August 20th, 1794). The chief reason assigned for his
liberation was the service which his knowledge and talents might
render to the Republic, a reference to the knowledge of the Italian
coast-line which he had gained during the mission to Genoa.

For a space his daring spirit was doomed to chafe in comparative
inactivity, in supervising the coast artillery. But his faults were
forgotten in the need which was soon felt for his warlike prowess. An
expedition was prepared to free Corsica from "the tyranny of the
English"; and in this Buonaparte sailed, as general commanding the
artiller