This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project
to make the world's books discoverable online.
It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject
to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books
are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover.
Marks, notations and other maiginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the
publisher to a library and finally to you.
Usage guidelines
Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing tliis resource, we liave taken steps to prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying. We also ask that you:
+ Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for personal, non-commercial purposes.
+ Refrain fivm automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help.
+ Maintain attributionTht GoogXt "watermark" you see on each file is essential for in forming people about this project and helping them find additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it.
+ Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can't offer guidance on whether any specific use of any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liabili^ can be quite severe.
About Google Book Search
Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web
at|http: //books .google .com/I
THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I
The Life of Napoleon I
. INCLUDING NEW MATERIALS FROM THE BRITISH OFFICUL RECORDS
BY
JOHN HOLLAND ROSE, M.A.
LATE SCHOLAR OF CHRIST* 8 COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
" Let my son often read and reflect on history : this is the only V fame philosophy."
—Napoleon'* Uut ImtrucUont/or the King^Romt.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO^ Ltd.
I9OI
AU rights re served
r ^
Copyright, 1901,
bt the magmillan company.
ITotfoooli 9tms
J. 8. Coihlng ft Go. — Berwick h Smith Norwood Maw. U.8.A.
DEDICATED
TO THB
RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD ACTON
K.O.T.O., D.C.L., LL.D.
REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF
CAMBRIDQE
IN ADMIRATION OF HIS PROFOUND
HISTORICAL LEARNING
AND IN
GRATITUDE FOR ADVICE AND HELP
GENEROUSLY GIVEN
111 •
PREFACE
Ak 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 mate- rials 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 impor- tant 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, Delbriick, Foumier, Lehmann, Oncken, and Wertheimer in Germany and Austria ; and of Baron Lumbroso in Italy. I have also profited largely by the scholarly mono- graphs 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, Capi- taine " 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 Le- cestre and M. Leonce de Brotonne have also opened up
vii
yiii FBBFACB
fresh vistas into the life of the great man ; and the time seems to have come when we may safely revise our judg- ments on many of its episodes.
But I should not have ventured on this great undertak- ing, 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 Rec- ords for the years 1795-1816. 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 Govern- ments ; 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 accu- rately, it will be more important thoroughly to know for- eign 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 vacillat-
PREFACE ix
ing, it finally attained to firmness and dignity ; and Min- isters 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 1801-8, 1806-7, and 1809. Indeed, it is questionable whether the renewal of war between England and Napo- leon 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 Napo- leon's life in some parts, I have chosen to treat with special brevity the years 1809-11, which may be called the con- 9tans aeta% 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 dSbdcle of 1812 it came to be a struggle of Napoleon and France corUra tnundum.
While not neglecting the personal details of the great man's life, I have dwelt mainly on his public career.
X PBEFACB
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 Corsi- can angularity of his brothers and sisters. But the cause also lay in his own disposition. He once said to M. Gal- lois: "Je n'aime pas beaucoup les femmes, ni le jeu — enfin rien : je 8uis tout d fait un Stre politique.^^ In deal- ing 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 OflBce, for guidance in my researches! there ; to Baron Lumbroso of Rome, editor of the ^^ Bibliografia ragionata deir Epoca Napoleonica,^' for hints on Italian and other affairs ; to Dr. Luckwaldt, Privat Decent of the University of Bonn, and author of " Oesterreich und die Anfange 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 infor- mation 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
PREFACE xi
p. 143 of vol. i., to be made from the original in their possession ; and Miss Lowe courteously placed at my dis- posal the papers of her father relating to the years 1813- 1815, as well as to the St. Helena period. I wish here to record my grateful obligations for all these friendly cour- tesies, which have given value to the book, besides sav- ing 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, M. R*
[Note. — The references to Napoleon's ** Correspondence " in the notes are to the ofiQcial French edition, published under the auspices of Kai>oleon III. The ** New Letters of Napoleon '* are those edited by L^n Leoestre, and translated into English by Lady Mary Loyd, except in a very few cases where M. L^nce de Brotonne's still more recent edition is cited under his name. By **F. 0.," France, No. — , and *»F. 0.," 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.]
CONTENTS
PASS
I. Parentage and Early Tears 1
11. The French Revolution and Corsica ... 22
m. TotJLON 40
rv. Vendemiairb 52
V. The Italian Campaign (1796) 70
VI. The Fights for Mantua 96
VU. Leoben to Campo Formio 128
Vm. Egypt 159
IX. Syria 184
X. Brumaire 198
XI. Marengo: Lun^ville 221
Xn. The New Institutions op France z^ . . . 245
Xm. The Consulate for Life ^ . . . . . 279
XIV. The Peace of Amiens 306
XV. A French Colonial Empire : St. Domingo —
Louisiana — India — Australia .... 329
XVI. Napoleon's Interventions 357
XVII. The Renewal of War 371
XVm. Europe and the Bonapartes 397
XIX. The Royalist Plot 412
XX. The Dawn of the Empire*^ 429
XXI. The Boulogne Flotilla 445
APPENDIX
Rsports hitherto unpublished on (a) The Sale of Louisiana; (6) The Irish Division in Napoleon's
Service 469
ziU
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Napoleon Bonaparte as First Consul, from the painting by Isabey, in the Museum at Versailles . . . Frontispiece
TO FAOS PAOI
Madame fiuonaparte (Napoleon's Mother), from the original
painting in the Town Hall at Ajaccio 6
The Attack on the Tuileries, August 10th, 1792 .... 33 The Execution of Marie Antoinette, October 16tb, 1793 . . 38 Robespierre, Couthon, and St. Just declared Traitors at the
Hdtel de ViUe, July 28th, 1794 54
Napoleon and Josephine (medallions) 68
The Passage of the Bridge of Lodi, 1796 85
The Entry of the French into Milan, 1796 88
Medals illustrating the Years 1796-8 105
The SpoUation of St. Mark's, Venice, 1797 134
Facsimile of a Letter of Napoleon to " La Citoyenne Tallien,"
1797 143
The Third Convoy of Statues leaving Rome, 1798 . .163
The Battle of the Nile, 1798 . . . . . . .175
Bonaparte at St Cloud, November 10th, 1800 . .207
Medals — (1) Napoleon at the Battle of the Pyramids; (2) The
Three Consuls — Bonaparte, Cambac^rfes, and Lebrun . . 216 The Passage of Mount St. Bernard, May, 1800 . . . .227
The Battle of Marengo 237
The Town and Fortifications of Malta, from an Engraving by
Goupy 315
French Map of the South of Australia . . 352 Pauline Bonaparte .^^ 408
XV
\ >
XVi ILLUSTRATIONS, MAPS, AND PLANS
TO PACT PAGB
The Due d'Enghien 424
General Moreau 436
Napoleon crowning Josephine 443
Raft devised for the Invasion of England 448
Medals to commemorate the Rupture of the Treaty of Amiens
and the Invasion of England 465
MAPS AND PLANS
The Siege of Toulon, 1793 ....
Map to illustrate the Campaigns in North Italy
Plan to illustrate the Victory of Areola
The Neighbourhood of Rivoli
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 EeUermann's Charge
pi«i 47 73 115 122 157 187 235
NOTE ON THE REPUBLICAN CALENDAR
The republican calendar consisted of twelve months of thirty days r 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
f into coincidence with the solar year.
^ An I began Sept. 22, 1792.
„ II „ „ 1793.
I „ HI „ ,, 1794.
h „ IV (leap year) 1795.
« « • «
„ VIII began Sept. 22, 1799. „ IX „ Sept. 23, 1800.
i „ 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 :
Vend^miaire .... Sept. 22 to Oct. 21.
Brumaire Oct. 22 „ Nov. 20.
Frimaire Nov. 21 „ Dec. 20.
Nivdse Dec. 21 „ Jan. 19.
Pluviose Jan. 20 „ Feb. 18.
Ventdse Feb. 19 „ Mar. 20.
Germinal Mar. 21 „ April 19.
Flor^al 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 compl^- mentaires."
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 hy one, owing to the intercalation of Feb. 29, which is not compensatf^ for until the end of the republican year.
The matter is further complicates 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 suc- ceeding years began on Sept. 23. Consequently in the above table of months the numbers of all days from Vend^miaire 1, An IX (Sept. 23, 1800), to Nivdse 10, An XIV (Dec. 31, 1805), inclusive, will have to be increased by one, except only in the next leap year between Ventdse 9, An XII, and Vend^miaire 1, An XIII (Feb. 28-Sept. 23, 1804), when the two Revolutionary aberrations happen to neutralize each other,
xvH
THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I
THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I
CHAPTER I
PAREIJTAGE 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 kin- dred 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 imagina- tion ; and this union in his nature of seeming opposites explains many of the mysteries of his life. Fortunatelv 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 endow- ments. Evidently, then, the characteristics of his family
B 1
2 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap.
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 endeav- oured to trace its descent back to the Caesars of Rome, others to the Byzantine Emperors ; one genealogical ex- plorer 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 confi- dently claimed for the family a Greek origin. Painstak- ing 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 wellnigh three centuries, maintaining its Ghibelline and aristocratic principles with surprising te- nacity. The age was not remarkable for the virtue of con- stancy, 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 char- acter 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 iso- lation of their life at Sarzana. Yet the embassies dis- charged 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.
1 FABENTA6S AND BABLT TEABS S
There the famQy was grafted upon a tougher branch of the Italian race. To the vulpine characteristics deyel- oped under the shadow of the Medici there were now added qualities of a more virile stamp. Though domi- nated 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 re- tained a striking individuality. The rock-bound coast and mountainous interior helped to preserve the essen- tial 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 cen- tred around the family. The Government counted for little or nothing; for was it not the symbol of the de- tested 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 mur- der of the Due 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.^
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
1 From a French work, **Mobut8 et CoAtames des Corses" (Paris, 1802), I take the following incident A priest, charged with the duty of avenging a relative for some fourteen years, met his enemy at the gate of Ajaocio and forthwith shot him, under the eyes of an official — who did nothing. A relative of the murdered man, happening to be near, shot the priest. Both victims were quickly buried, the priest being interred under the altar of the church, " because of his sacred character." See loo Miot de Melito, "M^moires," vol. i., ch. xiii., as to the utter collapse of the jury system in 1800-1, because no Corsican would '' deny his party or desert his blood. '*
4 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chaf.
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 prepa- ration 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 tjrpical Corsican tempera- ment, 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.^ Of this type Napoleon was to be the supreme exemplar ; and the fates granted him as an arena a chaotic France and a dis- tracted 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 munici- pality of Ajaccio, several of the Buonapartes espoused the Genoese side ; and the Genoese Senate in a docu- ment of the year 1652 styled one of them, Jerome, "Egregius Hieronimus di Buonaparte, procurator Nobi- lium." These distinctions they seem to have little
^ As to the tenacity of Corsican devotion, I may cite a curious proof from the unpublished portion of the ** Memoirs of Sir Hudson Lowe/' He was colonel in command of the Royal Corsican Rangers, enrolled dur- ing the British occupation of Corsica, and gained the affections of his men during several years of fighting in Egypt and elsewhere. When stationed at Capri in 1808 he relied on his Corsican levies to defend that island against Murat^s attacks; and he did not rely in vain. Though confronted by a French Corsican regiment, they remained true to their salt, even during a truce, when they could recognize their compatriots. The partisan instinct was proof against the promises of Murat^s envoys and the shouts even of kith and kin.
I PARENTAGE AND EARLY TEARS 6
coveted. Very few families belonged to the Corsican noblesscj and their fiefs were unimportant. In Corsica, as in the Forest Cantons of Switzerland and the High- lands of Scotland, class distinctions were by no means so coveted as in lands that had been thoroughly feudal- ized; and the Buonapartes, content .with their civic dignities at Ajaccio and the attachment of their par- tisans 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 cen- tury we find the head of the family, Charles Marie Buona- parte, 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 Common- wealth 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 cen- turies 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 civU strifes, was yet well assorted. Both
6 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap.
parties to it were of patrician, if not definitely noble de- scent, and came of families which combined the intellec- tual gifts of Tuscany with the vigour of their later island horae.^ From her mother's race, the Pietra Santa family, Letizia imbibed the habits of the most backward and sav- age part of Corsica, where vendettas were rife and educa- tion 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 pos- sessed 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 in- fancy. 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 extin- guished. Nine other children were bom before the out- break of the French Revolution reawakened civil strifes,
^ The facts as to the family of Napoleon^s mother are given in full detail by M. Masson in his ** Napoleon Inconnu/* ch. i. They correct the statement often made as to her *Mowly,*^ ** peasant *^ origin. Masson also proves that the house at Ajaccio, which is shown as Napoleon's birthplace, is of later construction, though on the same site.
MADAME BUONAPARTE (NAPOI.EON'S MOTHKK). From Ihe picture in (he Town Hall, Ajacciii.
I PARENTAGE AND EARLY TEARS 7
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 assur- ances. In 1768, before the expiration of an informal truce, Marbeuf, the French commander, commenced hos- tilities against the patriots.^ 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 fol- lowers 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 par- don 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, Napo- leon 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."*
1 See Jacobi, ** Hist, de la Cone/^ vol. ii., ch. viii. The whole story is told with prudent brevity by French historians, even by Masson and Chnquet. The few words in which Thiers dismisses this subject are altogether misleading.
^ Much has been written to prove that Napoleon was bom in 1708, and was really the eldest surviving son. The reasons, stated briefly, are: (I) that the first baptismal name of Joseph Buonaparte was merely Nabulione (Italian for Napoleon), and that Joseph was a later addition
8 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap.
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 sufiBced to embarrass his never very affluent for- tunes. 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 sym- pathies 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
to his name on the baptismal register of January 7th, 1768, at Corte ; (2) certain statements that Joseph was born at Ajaocio ; (3) Napoleon^s own statement at his marriage that he was born in 1768. To this it may be replied that : (a) other letters and statements, still more decisive, prove that Joseph was born at Corte in 1768 and Napoleon at Ajaccio in 1769; (6) Napoleon^s entry in the marriage register was obviously designed to lessen the disparity of years of his bride, who, on her side, subtractwl four years from her age. See Chuquet, * '• La Jeunesse de Napoleon , ^ * p. 05.
I PARENTAGE AND EARLY YEARS 9
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 impreca- tions 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 mili- tary 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 tempera- ments. 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 Cartha- ginians ; but, piqued at being chosen for the losing side, the child fretted, begged, and stormed until the less bel- licose 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 complai- sance now shown by Charles Buonaparte. The reward for his speedy submission to France was soon forthcom- ing. The French commander in Corsica used his influ- ence to secure the admission of the young Napoleon to
10 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap.
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 "Ger- many 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 mod- elled 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
I PARENTAGE AND EARLY YEARS 11
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 in- fluence 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 Csesar 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 tliose of Caesar and Alexander. Later on, during his sojourn at Ajaccio in 1790, when the first shadows were flitting across his hith- "ft*felinclouded 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 common- wealth.^ 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 anec- dotes. Of these last, that which is the most credible and suggestive relates his proposal to his schoolfellows to con- struct ramparts of snow during the sharp winter of 1783-4. According to his schoolfellow, Botirrienne, these mimic fortifications were planned by Buonaparte, who also directed the methods of attack and defence: or, as others
1 Nasica, " M^moires,'* p. 192.
12 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap.
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 Bourri- enne, 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.^ In other letters which are un- doubtedly 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 ofiScer, 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 adroit- ness 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 syna-
i0
1 Both letters are accepted as authentic by Jung, *' Bonaparte et son Temps," vol. i., pp. 84, 92; but Maason, ** Napoleon Inconnu,'' vol. i., p. 56, tracking them to their source, discredits them, as also from internal evidence.
I PARENTAGE AND EARLY YEARS 18
patfay. 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 con- quered his kith and kin. He nevertheless applied himself with energy to his favourite studies, especially mathe- matics. Defective in languages he still was, and ever remained ; for his critical acumen in literature ever fas- tened 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 sym- pathized 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, Buona-
14 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap.
parte 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* 9 l^l^O francs, or less than £45, 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.^ 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 obedi- ence. '^ To learn obeying is the fundamental art of gov- erning," says Carlyle. It was so with Napoleon : at Valence he served his apprenticeship in the art of conquering and the art of governing.
This springtime 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 be- friended 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 afifection, 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
^ Chaptskl, ** Me8 Soavenirs but Napoltoo/' p. 177.
I PARENTAGE AND EARLY YEARS 16
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 sis- ters, 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 mountain- eers 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 Royale. 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 Sadne, 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
Id THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap.
which his father had uttered on his deathbed that his Napoleon would one day overthrow the old monarchies and conquer Europe.^ 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 youn^ Buonaparte ; and when despair as to his future might nave 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 Con- trat Social " (1762), Rousseau called attention to the an- tique 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. Ac- cording 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 primi- tive 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 con- tract was utterly unhistorical and that his argument teemed with fallacies. He inspired a whole generation with detes-
^ Joseph Buonaparte, ** Menus., ^* vol. L, p. 29. So too Miot de Melito, '^Mema.,'* vol. i., ch. x.
I PARENTAGE AND EARLY TEARS 17
tation 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 for- bid 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 aiter 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 Corsi- can revolt aeainst 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 melan- choly. *' 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 I 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.
18 THE LIFE OF NATOLEON I chap.
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 Rous- seau'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 lifft by JTiRpipngr tTipn^ ^fh hnpft of a future life : whilft
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 happi- ness." He therefore concludes that Christianity and civil government are diametrically opposed.
In this tirade we see the youth's spirit of revolt flingfing 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 govern-
I PARENTAGE AND EARLY TEARS 19
mental, working on parallel lines, on different parts of man's nature. His conception of hi^irian ann.mty \r f^^\^ ^f an indivisible, indistinguishable whole, wherein material- isM, tingea now and again oy religious sentiment and personal honour, is the sole noteworthy influence. Hg^ finds no worth in a religion which seeks to work from withinto without, which aims at transforming character, ana tnus 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 Con- tract, 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 despot- ism. 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-in- terest) to the end of his days. It reappears in his policy anent the Concordat of 1802, by which religion was re- * duced 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.^ In this boyish essay we may perhaps discern the funda- mental 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 limita- tions that beset the action even of the most intelligent law-maker.*
1 Chaptal, ** Souvenirs sur Napoleon," p. 237. See too MasaoL, " Na- polton Inconnu,** vol. i., p. 158, note.
*In an after-dinner conversation on January lltb, 1803, with Roe- derer, Buonaparte exalted Voltaire at the expense of Rousseau in these significant words : *^The more I read Voltaire, the more I like him: he is always reasonable, never a charlatan, never a fanatic : he is made for mature minds. Up to sixteen years of age I would have fought for Rous- seau against all the friends of Voltaire. Now it is the contrary. I have been especially disgusted with Bousseau since I have seen the East. Savage man is a dog.^^ (" CEuvres de Roederer," vol. iii., p. 461.)
In 1804 he even denied his indebtedness to Rousseau. During a family discussion, wherein he also belittled Corsica, he called Rousseau ** a bab- bler, or, if you prefer it, an eloquent enough idialogue. I never liked him, nor indeed well understood him : truly I had not the courage to read
:^
20 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap.
His reading of Rousseau haying equipped him for the study of human society and government, he now, dar- ing 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, Thra- cians, 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 sugges- tions on regimental discipline and improvements in artil- lery, 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, main* tained 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 TAutorite Royale." His first sketch of
this work runs as follows:
" 23 October, 1788. Auxonne.
" This work will hemn with general ideas as to the origin and the enhanced prestige of the name of king. Military rule is favourable to
him all, because I thought him for the most part tedious.*' (Lucien Buonaparte, "Mtooires," vol. ii., ch. xi.)
His later views on Rousseau are strikingly set forth by Stanislas Girardin, who, in his ^* Memoirs,'' relates that Buonaparte, on his visit to Uie tomb of Rousseau, said : ^* * It would have been better for the repose of France that this man had never been born.' * Why, First Consul ? ' said I. * He prepared the French Revolution.' ' I thought it was not for you to complain of the Revolution.' * Well,' he replied, *the future will show whether it would not have been better for the repose of the world that neither I nor Rousseau had existed.' " M^neval confirms this re- markable statement.
X PARENTAGE AND EARLY YEARS 21
«
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." ^
This curt pronouncement is all that remains of the pro- jected 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 pre- scribed. 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 char- acter there was a strain of true sentiment and affection. In him Nature carved out a character of rock-like firm- ness, 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 ad- vice 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 natu- rally 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 adven- tures.
1 llasson, <<Napol^n Inconnu/* vol. ii., p. 63.
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 pre- sumptuous 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 infini- tudes 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 com- munities and nations. Meanwhile it will be our far hum- bler 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
22
CHAP. II THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND CORSICA 28
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 sim- ple 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 cham- pions 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 per- fectibility, 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 revolution- ary 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 ne re-awakened critical in- quiry ; and any inquiry was certain to sap the base of the anden rSgime 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, es- pecially 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 re-
24 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I objlp.
forms, 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 viola> tion of civil society ; and members are justified in revert- ing at once to the primitive ideal. If the existence of the body politic be endangered, force may be used : " Who- ever 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 plaus- ible 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 sov- ereign power, vested in all the citizens, must be in- corruptible, inalienable, unrepresentable, indivisible, and indestructible. Englishmen may now find it difiScult to understand the enthusiasm called forth by this quintes- sence of negations ; but to Frenchmen recently escaped from the age of privilege and warring against the coali- tion 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
n THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND CORSICA 26
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 Bas- tille fall down even at the blast of their trumpets. Odi- ous 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 prov- inces 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 re- formers : 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 ; mo- nastic orders are suppressed ; and the Government un- dertakes 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 col- leagues are known as constitutional priests. Hence arises a serious schism in the Church, which distracts the reli- gious 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
26 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I orap.
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 them- selves 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 representa- tives 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 tyr- anny of the governor and appeals to the National Assem- bly 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 patri- otism 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 (No- vember 6th, 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 per- sonal opponent.
Other events now transpired which began to assuage his opposition to France. Thanks to the eloquent efforts of
II THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND CORSICA 27
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 conse- quences 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 iUustrious exile exposed him to the charge of ingrati- tude 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 vio- lence, 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 Cor-
28 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap.
sica was too small a sphere for natures so able and master- ful 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 Cas 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 inevit- able." ^
For the present, Buonaparte and other Corsican demo- crats were closely concerned with the delinquencies of the Comte de Buttaf uoco, 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 rSgime " of the barons. In his selfish royalism he had protested against the new French consti- tution 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. Buona- parte 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 indepen- dence," and as duped by Buttafuoco in 1768.^ The phrase
1 Joseph Buonaifttrte, " Mdmoires," vol. i., p. 44.
* M. Chuquet, in his work "La Jeunesse de NapoWon" (Paris, 1898), gives a different opinion : but I think this passage shows a veiled hostility to Paoli. Probably we may refer to this time an incident stated by Na- poleon at St. Helena to Lady Malcolm (** Diary," p. 88), namely, that Paoli urged on him the acceptance of a commission in the British army : ** But I preferred the French, because I spoke the language, was of their
n THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND CORSICA 29
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 retiu*ned 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 regi- ment were glad to get him back on any terms. Every- where 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 Revolu- tion ; 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 mmd 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 Buona- parte'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 Buona- parte 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 ?
religion, imderstood and liked their manners, and I thought the Revolu- tion a fine time for an enterprising young man. Paoli was angry — we did not speak afterwards.'* It is hard to reconcile all these statements.
Luolen Buonaparte states, that his brother seriously thought for a time of taking a commission in the forces of the British East India Company ; hut I am assured by our officials that no record of any application now eziflts.
30 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I ch^p.
• •
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 Aux- onne may account for the acrid tone of an essay which he there wrote in competition for a prize o£Fered by the Academy of Lyons on the subject — "What truths and sentiments ought to be inculcated to men for their happi- ness." It was unsuccessful; and modem 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 sermbilitS of some of his earlier effusions, we feel here the icy breath of material- ism. 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 Hannibars career, he con- tinues : " What is Alexander doing when he rushes from Thebes into Persia and thence into India? He is ever
II THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND CORSICA 31
restless, he loses his wits, he believes himself God. What is the end of Cromwell? He governs England. But is he not tormented by aU 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 aU survived; and the diatribe against ambition itself supplies the feather wherewith history may wing her shaft at the towering flight of the imperial eagle.^
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 fol- lowing. 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 noth- ing 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 inter- est, carried off from his friends and detained at the Buona- partes' house in Ajaccio — his first coup.^ Stranger events were to follow. At Easter, when the people were excited by the persecuting edicts against the clergy and the clos- ing of a monastery, there was sharp fighting between the
1 The whole essay is evidently influenced by the works of the democrat Baynal, to whom Buonaparte dedicated his *' Lettres sur la Corse." To the " Discours de Lyons " he prefixed as motto the words, *^ Morality will exist when goTemments are free/' which he modelled on a similar phrase of Raynal. The following sentences are also noteworthy : '* Notre organi- sation animale a des besoins indispensables : manger, dormir, engendrer. Une nourriture, une cabane, des vStements, une femme, sont done une Btricte n^essit^ pour le bonbeur. Notre organisation intellectuelle a des vpp€tita non moins imp<$rieux et dont la satisfaction est beaucoup plus pr^euse. C'est dans leur entier d^yeloppement que consiste vralment le bonbeur. Sentir et raisonner, yoil& proprement le fait de Thomme."
< Nasica ; Chuquet, p. 248.
32 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap.
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 overthrow- ing his enemies. His plans even extended to the seizure of the citadel, where he tried to seduce the French regi- ment from its duty to officers whom he dubbed aristocrats. The attempt was a failure. The whole truth can, per- haps, scarcely be discerned amidst the tissue of lies which speedily enveloped the aiBfair ; 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 volun- teers 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 Depart- ment. 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, 9ie 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 out- rages, and he exclaimed : " Why don't they sweep off four
5 i
2 a
II THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND CORSICA 33
or five hundred of that canaille with cannon? The rest would then run away fast enough." The remark is sig- nificant. 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 grdce 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 Buona- parte 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 beati- tudes. The lesson was stored up for future use at a some- what 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 dis- cipline at Ajaccio. The revolutionary motto, " La carriere ouverte aux talents," was never more conspicuously illus- trated 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 oncers. Their monarchist colleagues were streaming over the
S4 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chjlp.
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 strengrth of AntSBUs, 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.^
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 regi- mental 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 declin- ing, and Paoli was preparing to sever the union with
1 His recantation of Jacobinism was so complete that some persons have doubted whether he ever sincerely held it. The doubt argues a singular naivete ; it is laid to rest by Buonaparte's own writings, by his eagerness to disown or dest|^>y them, by the testimony of everyone who knew his early career, and by his own confession : *' There have been good J&cobins. At one time every man of spirit was bound to be one. I was one myself.** (Thibaudeau, *^ M^moires sur le Consulat,*' p. 69.)
u THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND CORSICA 85
Fiance. For this he has been bitterly assailed as a trai- tor. 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 ^Hraitor" 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, reli- gious, 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 Fra- ternity, 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 monar- chical 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 ob- jective of Buonaparte's first essay in regular warfare. After some delays the little force set sail under the com- mand of Cesari-Colonna, the nephew of Paoli. Accord- ing 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 ves- sels. It has also been stated that this retreat was the out- come of a secret understanding between Paoli and Cesari- Colonna that the expedition should miscarry. This seems
36 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap.
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 8rd, 1793), Buona- parte 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 Jbrench authorities at Toulon; and three commis- sioners 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.* ■
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 impos- sible ; but with his friends he quietly prepares for resist- ance 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 capitol. At once a cry of indignation goes up from all parts of Cor- sica ; and Buonaparte draws up a declaration, vindicatingr Paoli's conduct and begging the French Convention to
^ I use the term commissioner as equivalent to the French reprlaentatu en miesion, whose powers were almost limitless.
n THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND CORSICA 87
revoke its decree.^ 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 resent- ment 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, how- ever, 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 Sfrotto of a friend's ganfen; Ld froJi the grounds of another famUy connec- tion 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 com- missioners agree, and the expedition sails — only to meet with utter failure. Ajaccio, as one man, repels the par- tisans of France ; and, a gale of wind springing up, Buon- aparte 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 ex- traordinary 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 re- gaining Corsica for the Republic, but now only by the aid of French troops. For the islanders, stung by the demand
^ See this curious document in Jung, ** Bonaparte et son Temps/' vol. ii., p. 240. Masson ignores it, but admits that the Paolists and partisans of France were only seeking to dupe one another.
88 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap.
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 dis- plays all the qualities which, when the omens were favour- able, impelled him to the domination of a Continent. He fights every inch of ground tenaciously; at each emer- gency he evinces a truly Italian fertility of resource, gliding round obstacles or striving to shatter them by sheer au- dacity, seeing through men, cajoling them by his insinua- tions 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 com- pact 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 contradic- tions, 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 nnally 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
8 g
II THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND CORSICA 39
towards the Jacobinical Republic, which banished ortho- dox 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 Rous- seau, 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 senti- ments 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 con- trast between the brilliance of his gifts and the utter fail- ure of all his enterprises. His French partisanship had, as it seemed, been the ruin of his own and his family's fortunes. At the affe of twenty-four he was known only as the un- lucky 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 promis- ing ; 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 cUmax of revolu- tionary fury, that of June 2nd, 1798, 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 levSe en masse of able-bodied patriots to defend the sacred soil of the Republic, and the " organizer of victory," Camot, 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.
40
OBAP. in TOULON 41
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 him- self— 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 MarseiUais of the great services which their city has ren- dered to the cause of liberty. Let Marseilles never disgrace herself by calling in the Spanish fleet as a pro- . tection 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 Jaco- binical Republic. Every crime might be condoned, pro- vided 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 French- men, and it saved France.
As an ea^osS of keen policy and all-dominating oppor- tunism, ^^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 Mar- seiUais 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
42 THE LIFE OP NAPOLEON I chap.
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."^
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 lon^ 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 Olli- oules, to the north-west of Toulon. He found them in disorder : their commander, Carteaux, had left the easel to
^ Buonaparte, when First Consul, was dunned for payment by the widow of the Avignon bookseller who published the '* Souper de Beau- caire." He paid her well for Jiaving all the remaining copies destroyed. Tet Panckoucke in 1818 procured one copy, which preserved the memory of Buonaparte's early Jacobinism.
m TOULON 43
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, thread- bare figure took command of the artillery.
The republicans menaced the town on two sides. Car- teaux with some 8,000 men held the hills between Toulon and OUioules, 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 com- pleted 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 NeapolittuLS and Piedmontese, was insufficient to defend the many positions around the city on which its safety depended. Indeed, General Grey wrote to Pitt that 60,000 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 nopes of the arrival of an Austrian corps and a few hundred British.^
Before Buonaparte's arrival the Jacobins had no artil- lery : 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
^ I have chiefly followed the careful account of the siege given by Cottin in his '' Toulon et les Anglais en 1793 *' (Paris, 1808).
The following official figures show the wei^ess of the British army. In December, 1702, the parliamentary vote was for 17,344 men as ** guards and garrisons, * * besides a few at Gibraltar and Sydney. In February, 1793, 9,945 additional men were voted and 100 *^ independent companies" : Han- overians were also embodied. In February, 1794, the number of British regulars was raised to 60,244. For the navy the figures were : December, 1702, 20,000 sailors and 5,000 marines ; February, 1793, 20,000 additional seamen ; for 1794, 73,000 seamen and 12,000 marines. (** Ann. Reg.")
44 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chxf.
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 Provengaux, and in a few days he ha^ 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 de- spatched," he wrote to the Minister of War, " an intelli- gent officer to Lyons, Briangon, 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 OUioules an arsenal with 80 workers. I have requi- sitioned horses from Nice right to Valence and Mont- pellier. ... 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 un- " failing resource, his bulldog bravery, and that indefinable quality which separates genius from talent speedily con- quered 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 Sail-
m TOULON 45
cetti described it as within a pistol-shot of the English guns. Gould it be worked, its effect would be decisive. But who could work it? The first day saw all its gun- ners killed or wounded, and even the reckless Jacobins flinched from facing the iron hail. ^^ Call it the battery of the fearle%%^^^ 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 Buonaparte 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.^ The historian M. Jung likewise relegates Buonaparte to a quite subordinate position.^ 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 ordi- nary means, when we have a surer means to reduce it, that is, by burning the enemy's fleet. . . . We are only wait- ing 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 let-
^ Barras' ** Memoires '^ are not by any means wholly his. They are a compUation by Rousselin de Saint* Albin from the Barras papers. * Jong, ** Bonaparte et son Temps/ ^ vol. ii.
46 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap, hi
ter disproves the Buonapartist claim. It was written on j September 13th. Thus, three days before Buonaparte'a ll arrival^ the Commissioners had fully decided on attacking 1 the Little Gibraltar ; and the claim that Buonaparte originated the plan can only be sustained by antedating his arrival at Toulon.^ 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-wor- ship.
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 sol- diery 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 87,000 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 ;
^ M. G. Duniy^s elaborate plea (Barras, ** Mems.,'* Introduction, pp. 69-79) rests on the supposition that his hero arrived at Toulon on September 7th. But M. Chuquet has shown Q^ Cosmopolis,*^ January, 1897^ that he arrived there not earlier than September 16th. So too Cottfn, ch. xi.
S ll
If!
1 tl
Ml
iJil
48 LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chaf.
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 6,000 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 de- fence : 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 oflicer, 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 war- ships that could not be carried oflF. Then was seen a weird sight. The galley slaves, now freed from their chains and clustering in angry groups, menaced the in- truders. 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.
m TOULON 49
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 thir- teen vessels blazing in the roads were like so many dis- plays 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." ^ The sight struck horror to the hearts of the royalists of Tou- lon, 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 feai*s were only too well founded ; for a fortnight later Freron, the Commissioner of the Con- vention, boasted that two hundred royalists perished daily.
It remains briefly to consider a question of special inter- est 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 strong- hold. These writers aver that Hood, after entering Tou- lon 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
^ Ab the burning of the French ships and stores has been said to be solely due to the English, we may note that, ds early as October Srdy the Spanish Foreign Minister, the Dae d^Alcuida, suggested it to our ambas- sador, Lord St. Helens : ^^ If it becomes necessary to abandon the har- boor, these vessels ^sUl be sunk or set on fire in order that the enemy may not make use of them ; for which purpose preparations shall be made beforehand."
60 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap.
the two surviving brothers of Louis XVI., was entitled to act on behalf of Louis XVIL^ The facts in the main are correct, but the interpretation put upon them may well be questioned. Hood certainly acted with much arro- gance towards the Spaniards. But when the more cour- teous O'Hara arrived to take command of the British, Neapolitan, and Sardinian troops, 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.^ But after the occupation of Tou- lon, 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 proceed- ing to Toulon, and privately ordered our officers there, in the last resort, to refuse him permission to land. The in- structions of October 18th to the royal commissioners at Toulon show that George III. and his Ministers believed they would be compromising the royaUst cause by recog-
1 Thiers, ch. xxx. ; Cottin, "L'Angleterre et les Princes." ^ See Lord Grenville^s despatch of August 9th, 1793, to Lord St. Helens ("F. 0. Records, Spain," No. 28), printed by M. Cottin, p. 428. He does not print the more important despatch of October 22nd, where Grenville asserts that the admission of the French princes would tend to invalidate the constitution of 1791, for which the allies were working.
Ill TOULON 61
nizing a regency ; and certainly any effort by the allies to prejudice the future settlement would at once have shat- tered any hopes of a general raUy to the royalist side.^
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 Pied- montese ? Why did she accept the armed help of 1,600 French royalists? Why did she urgently plead with Aus- tria 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 ref- erences 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 Dugom- mier'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.
1 A letter of Lord Mulgrave to Mr. Trevor, at Turin (" F. 0. Records, Sardinia,'* No. 13), states that he had the greatest difficulty in getting on with the French royalists : ^* You must not send us one imigri of any sort — they would be a nuisance : they are all so various and so violent, whether for despotism, constitution, or republic, that we should be dis- tracted with their quarrels ; and they are so assuming, forward, dictatorial, and full of complaints, that no business could go on with them. Lord Hood is averse to receiving any of them.*'
CHAPTER IV
VENBlilMIAIBE
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 de- stroyed 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 Buona- parte'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 April, 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 pene- trating 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
62
OHAP. IT VENDIiMIAIRE 68
name in many a contest, nntil his glory paled before the greater genius of Wellington.
Much of the credit of organizing this previously unsuc- cessful 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 rela- tions to Buonaparte were those of intimacy ; but whether they extended to complete sympathy on political matters may be doubted. The younger Robespierre held the revo- lutionary 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 sug&^ests that he was a man of action rather than of ideas, anf probably it was this practical quality which bound Buonaparte in friendship to him. Yet it is difficult to fathom Buona- parte'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 repub- lican : I will even say that he took the side of the Moun- tain : 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." ^ Equally noteworthy is the later declaration of Napoleon that Robespierre was the " scapegoat of the Revolution."* 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 poli- tic. His admiration of the rigour of Lycurgus, and his dislike of all superfluous luxury, alike favour this suppo-
1 Jang, *' Bonaparte et son Temps/' vol. ii., p. 430. 3 ** Memorial/' ch. ii., November, 1815. See also Thibaudean, **M^ moires sur le Consolat,*' vol. i., p. 69.
64 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I okat.
sition ; 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 inti- macy 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 terror- ists. 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 sure- ties, 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, there- fore, 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 curi- ously complex. The Robespierres had in the meantime been guillotined at Paris (July 24th, or Thermidor 10th) ; and this " Thermidorian " reaction alone would have suf- ficed to endanger Buonaparte's head. But his position was further imperilled by his recent strategic suggestions,
I
2 1
= ^
{
:-i
IV
YEND^IMIAIBE 66
which had served to reduce to a secondary rSle 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 formu- lated 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 Re- public, a reference to the knowledge of the Italian coast- line which he had gained during the mission to Genoa.
For a space bis 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 conlmanding the artillery. With him were two friends, Junot and Mar- mont, who had clung to him through his recent troubles ; the former was to be helped to wealth and fame by Buona- parte's friendship, the Latter by his own brilliant gifts. ^ In this expedition their talent was of no avail. The French were worsted in an engagement with the British fleet, and fell back in confusion to the coast of France. Once again Buonaparte's Corsican enterprises were frus- trated by the ubiquitous lords of the sea : against them he now stored up a double portion of hate, for in the meantime his inspectorship of coast artillery had been given to his fellow-countryman, Casabianca.
1 MannoDt (1774-1852) became sub-lieutenant in 1789, served with Buonaparte in Italy, Egypt, etc., received the title Due de Ragusa in 1808, Marshal in 1809 ; was defeated by Wellington at Salamanca in 1812, deserted to the allies in 1814. Junot (1771-1813) entered the army in 1791 ; was famed as a cavalry general in the wars 1796-1807 ; conquered Portugal in 1808, and received Uie title Due d'Abrant^s ; died mad.
66 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I CHiLP.
The fortuneB of these Gorsican exiles drifted hither and thither in many perplexing currents, as Buonaparte was once more to discover. It was a prevalent complaint that there were too many of them seeking employment in the army of the south ; and a note respecting the career of the young officer made by General Scherer, who now commanded the French Army of Italy, shows that Buona- parte had aroused at least as much suspicion as admira- tion. It runs : " This officer is general of artillery, and in this arm has sound knowledge, but has somewhat too much ambition and intriguing habits for his advancement." All things considered, it was deemed advisable to transfer him to the army which was engaged in crushing the Ven- dean revolt, a service which he loathed and was deter- mined, if possible, to evade. Accompanied by his faithful friends, Marmont and Junot, as also by his young brother Louis, he set out for Paris (May, 1795).
In reality Fortune never favoured him more than when she removed him from the coteries of intriguing Corsicans on the coast of Provence and brought him to the centre of all influence. An able schemer at Paris could decide the fate of parties and governments. At the frontiers men could only accept the decrees of the om- nipotent capital. Moreover, the Revolution, after passing through the molten stage, was now beginning to solidify, an important opportunity for the political craftsman. The spring of the year 1795 witnessed a strange blending of the new fanaticism with the old customs. Society, dammed up for a time by the Spartan rigour of Robespierre, was now flowing back into its wonted channels. Gay equi- pages were seen in the streets ; theatres, prosperous even during the Terror, were now filled to overflowing ; gam- bling, whether in money or in stocks and assignatSj was now permeating all grades of society ; and men who had grown rich by amassing the confiscated State lands now vied with bankers, stock-jobbers, and forestallers of grain in vulgar ostentation. As for the poor, they were meet- ing their match in the gilded youth of Paris, who with clubbed sticks asserted the right of the rich to be merry. If the sansculottes attempted to restore the days of the Terror, the National Guards of Paris were ready to
re
VEND^MIAIRE 67
sweep them back into the slums. Such was their fate on May 20th, shortly after Buonaparte's arrival at Paris. Any dreams which he may have harboured of restoring the Jacobins to power were dissipated, for Paris now plunged into the gaieties of the ancien rSgime, The Terror was remembered only as a horrible nightmare, which served to add zest to the pleasures of the present. In some circles no one was received who had not lost a relative by the guillotine. With a ghastly merriment characteristic of the time, " victim balls " were given, to which those alone were admitted who could produce the death warrant of some family connection : these secured the pleasure of dancing in costumes which recalled those of the scaffold, and of beckoning ever and anon to their partners with nods that simulated the fall of the severed head. It was for this, then, that the amiable Louis, the majestic Marie Antoinette, the Minervarlike Madame Roland, the Girondins vowed to the utter quest of liberty, the tyrant-quelling Dantori, the incorruptible Robespierre himself, had felt the fatal axe ; in order that the mimicry of their death agonies might tickle jaded appetites, and help to weave anew the old Circean spells. So it seemed to the few who cared to think of the frightful sacrifices of the past, and to measure them against the seemingly hope- less degradation of the present.
Some such thoughts seem to have flitted across the mind of Buonaparte in those months of forced inactivity. It was a time of disillusionment. Rarely do we find thence- forth in his correspondence any gleams of faith respecting the higher possibilities of the human race. The golden visions of youth now vanish along with the honriet rouge and the jargon of the Terror. His bent had ever been for the material and practical : and now that faith in the Jacobinical creed was vanishing, it was more than ever desirable to grapple that errant balloon to substantial facts. Evidently, the Revolution must now trust to the clinging of the peasant proprietors to the recently confiscated lands of the Church and of the emigrant nobles. If all else was vain and transitory, here surely was a solid basis of mate- rial interests to which the best part of the manhood of France would tenaciously adhere, defying alike the plots
68 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I ohap.
of reactionaries and the forces of monarchical Europe. Of these interests Buonaparte was to be the determined guarantor. Amidst much that was visionary in his later policy he never wavered in his championship of the new peasant proprietors. He was ever the peasants' General, the peasants' Consul, the peasants' Emperor.
The transition of the Revolution to an ordinary form of polity was also being furthered by its unparalleled series of military triumphs. When Buonaparte's name was as yet unknown, except in Corsica and Provence, France prac- tically gained her ^^ natural boundaries," the Rhine and the Alps. In the campaigns of 1793-4, the soldiers of Pichegru, Kleber,* Hoche, and Moreau overran the whole of the Low Countries and chased the Germans beyond the Rhine ; the Piedmontese were thrust behind the Alps ; the Spaniards behind the Pyrenees. In quick succession State after State sued for peace : Tuscany in February, 1795 ; Prussia in April ; Hanover, Westphalia, and Saxony in May ; Spain and Hesse-Cassel in July ; Switzerland and Denmark in August.
Such was the state of France when Buonaparte came to seek his fortunes in the Sphinx-like capital. His artillery command had been commuted to a corresponding rank in the infantry — a step that deeply incensed him. He at- tributed it to malevolent intriguers ; but all his efforts to obtain redress were in vain. Lacking money and pat- ronage, known only as an able officer and facile intriguer of the bankrupt Jacobinical party, he might well have despaired. He was now almost alone. Marmont had gone off to the Army of the Rhine ; but Junot was still with him, allured perhaps by Madame Pennon's daughter, whom he subsequently married. At the house of this amiable hostess, an old friend of his family, Buonaparte found occasional relief from the gloom of his existence. The future Madame Junot has described him as at this time untidy, unkempt, sickly, remarkable for his extreme thinness and the almost yellow tint of his visage, which was, however, lit up by " two eyes sparkling with keen- ness and will-power " — evidently a Corsican falcon, pining for action, and fretting its soaring spirit in that vapid town life. Action Buonaparte might have had, but only of a
lY VENDllMIAIRE 69
kind that he loathed. He might have commanded the troops destined to crush the brave royalist peasants of La Vendee. But, whether from scorn of such vulture- work, or from an instinct that a nobler quarry might be started at Paris, he refused to proceed to the Army of the West, and on the plea of ill-health remained in the capital. There he spent his time deeply pondering on politics and strategy. He designed a history of the last two years, and drafted a plan of campaign for the Army of Italy, which, later on, was to bear him to fortune. Probably the geographical insight which it displayed may have led to his appointment (August 21st, 1795) to the topographi- cal bureau of the Committee of Public Safety. His first thought on hearing of this important advancement was that it opened up an opportunity for proceeding to Turkey to organize the artillery of the Sultan ; and in a few days he sent in a formal request to that effect — the first tangi- ble proof of that yearning after the Orient which haunted him all through life. But, while straining his gaze east- wards, he experienced a sharp rebuff. The Committee was on the point of granting his request, when an exami- nation of his recent conduct proved him guilty of a breach of discipline in not proceeding to his Vendean command. On the very day when one department of the Committee empowered him to proceed to Constantinople, the Central Committee erased his name from the list of general officers (September 15th),
This time the blow seemed fatal. But Fortune appeared to compass his falls only in order that he might the more brilliantly tower aloft. Within three weeks he was hailed as the saviour of the new republican constitution. The cause of this almost magical change in his prospects is to be sought in the political unrest of France, to which we must now briefly advert.
All through this summer of 1795 there were conflicts between Jacobins and royalists. In the south the latter party had signally avenged itself for the agonies of the preceding years, and the ardour of the French tempera- ment seemed about to drive that hapless people from the ** Red Terror " to a veritable " White Terror," when two disasters checked the course of the reaction. An attempt
eo THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap.
of a large force of emigrant French nobles, backed up by British money and ships, to rouse Brittany against the Con- vention was utterly crushed by the able young Hoche ; and nearly seven hundred prisoners were afterwards shot down in cold blood (July). Shortly before this blow, the little prince styled Louis XVII. succumbed to the brutal treat- ment of his gaolers at the Temple in Paris ; and the hopes of the royalists now rested on the unpopular Comte de Provence. Nevertheless, the political outlook in the sum- mer of 1795 was not reassuring to the republicans ; and the Commission of Eleven, empowered by the Convention to draft new organic laws, drew up an instrument of gov- ernment, which, though republican in form, seemed to offer all the stability of the most firmly rooted oligarchy. Some such compromise was perhaps necessary ; for the common- wealth was confronted by three dangers : anarchy resulting from the pressure of the mob, an excessive centralization of power in the hands of two committees, and the possi- bility of a coup (TStat by some pretender or adventurer. Indeed, the student of French history cannot fail to see that this is the problem which is ever before the people of France. It has presented itself in acute though diverse phases m 1797, 1799, 1814, 1830, 1848, 1851, and in 1871. Who can say that the problem has yet found its complete solution ?
In some respects the constitution which the Convention voted in August, 1795, was skilfully adapted to meet the needs of the time. Though democratic in spirit, it granted a vote only to those citizens who had resided for a year in some dwelling and had paid taxes, thus excluding the rabble who haS proved to be dangerous to any settled gov- ernment. It also checked the hasty legislation which had brought ridicule on successive National Assemblies. In order to moderate the zeal for the manufacture of decrees, which had often exceeded one hundred a month, a second or revising chamber was now to be formed on the basis of age ; for it had been found that the younger the deputies the faster came forth the fluttering flocks of decrees, that often came home to roost in the guise of curses. A sena- torial guillotine, it was now proposed, should thin out the fledglings before they flew abroad at all. Of the seven
IV
VENDilMIAIRE 61
hondred and fifty deputies of France, the two hundred and fifty oldest men were to form the Council of Ancients, hav- ing powers to amend or reject the proposals emanating from the Council of Five Hundred. In this Council were the younger deputies, and with them rested the sole initiation of laws. Thus the young deputies were to make the laws, but the older deputies were to amend or reject them ; and this nice adjustment of the characteristics of youth and age, a due blending of enthusiasm with caution, promised to invigorate the body politic and yet guard its vital inter- ests. Lastly, in order that the two Councils should con- tinuously represent the feelings of France, one third of their members must retire for a re-election every year, a device which promised to prevent any violent change in their composition, such as might occur if, at the end of their three years' membership, all were called upon to re- sign at once.
But the real crux of constitution builders had hitherto been in the relations of the Legislature to the Executive. How should the brain of the body politic, that is, the Legislature, be connected with the hand, that is, the Executive ? Obviously, so argued all French political thinkers, the two functions were distinct and must be kept separate. The results of this theory of the separa- tion of powers were clearly traceable in the course oi the Revolution. When the hand had been left almost power- less, as in 1791-2, owing to democratic jealousy of the royal Ministry, the result had been anarchy. The su- preme needs of the State in the agonies of 1793 had rendered the hand omnipotent : the Convention, that is, the brain, was for some time powerless before its own instrument, the two secret committees. Experience now showed that the brain must exercise a general control over the hand, without unduly hampering its actions. Evidently, then, the deputies of France must intrust the details of administration to responsible Ministers, though some directing agency seemed needed as a spur to energy and a check against royalist plots. In brief, the Commit- tee of Public Safety, purged of its more dangerous powers, was to furnish the model for a new body of five members, termed the Directory. This organism, which was to give
62 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap.
its name to the whole period 1795-1799, was not the Min- istry. There was no Ministry as we now use the term. There were Ministers who were responsible individually for their departments of State : but they never met for deliberation, or communicated with the Legislature ; they were only heads of departments, who were responsible individually to the Directors. These five men formed a powerful committee, deliberating in private on the whole policy of the State and on all the work of the Ministers. The Directory had not, it is true, the right of initiating laws and of arbitrary arrest which the two committees had freely exercised during the Terror. Its dependence * on the Legislature seemed also to be guaranteed by the Di- rectors being appointed by the two legislative Councils ; while one of the five was to vacate his oflBce for re-election every year. But in other respects the directorial powers were almost as extensive as those wielded by the two secret committees, or as those which Buonaparte was to inherit from the Directory in 1799. They comprised the general control of policy in peace and war, the right to negotiate treaties (subject to ratification by the legislative councils), to promulgate laws voted by the Councils and watch over their execution, and to appoint or dismiss the Ministers of State.
Such was the constitution which was proclaimed on September 22nd, 1795, or 1st Vendemiaire, Year IV., of the revolutionary calendar. An important postscript to the original constitution now excited fierce commotions which enabled the young oflScer to repair his own shat- tered fortunes. The Convention, terrified at the thought of a general election, which might send up a malcontent or royalist majority, decided to impose itself on France for at least two years longer. With an effrontery unparalleled in parliamentary annals, it decreed that the law of the new constitution, requiring the re-election of one-third of the deputies every year, should now be applied to itself ; and that the rest of its members should sit in the forthcoming Councils. At once a cry of disgust and rage arose from all who were weary of the Convention and all its works. " Down with the two-thirds I " was the cry that resounded through the streets of Paris. The movement was not so
IV
vend£:miaire es
much definitely royalist as vaguely malcontent. The many were enraged by the existing dearth and by the failure of the Revolution to secure even cheap bread. Doubtless the royalists strove to drive on the discontent to the desired goal, and in many parts they tinged the movement with an unmistakably Bourbon tint. But it is fairly certain that in Paris they could not alone have fomented a discontent so general as that of Vendemiaire. That they would have profited by the defeat of the Convention is, however, equally certain. The history of the Revolution proves that those who at first merely opposed the excesses of the Jacobins gradually drifted over to the royalists. The Con- vention now found itself attacked in the very city which had been the chosen abode of Liberty and Equality. Some thirty thousand of the Parisian National Guards were de- termined to give short shrift to this Assembly that clung so indecently to life ; and as the armies were far away, the Parisian malcontents seamed masters of the situation. Without doubt they would have been but for their own precipitation and the energy of Buonaparte.
But how came he to receive the military authority which was so potently to influence the course of events? We left him in Fructidor disgraced : we find him in the middle of Vendemiaire leading part of the forces of the Conven- tion. This bewildering change was due to the pressing needs of the Republic, to his own signal abilities, and to the discerning eye of Barras, whose career claims a brief notice.
Paul Barras came of a Provencal family, and had an adventurous life both on land and in maritime expeditions. Gifted with a robust frame, consummate self-assurance, and a ready tongue, he was well equipped for intrigues, both amorous and political, when the outbreak of the Revolu- tion gave his thoughts a more serious turn. Espousing the ultra-democratic side, he yet contrived to emerge un- scathed from the schisms which were fatal to less dextrous trimmers. He was present at the siege of Toulon, and has striven in his " Memoires " to disparage Buonaparte's services and exalt his own. At the crisis of Thermidor the Convention intrusted him with the command of the " army of the interior," and the energy which he then dis- played gained for him the same position in the equally
64 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I ghaf.
critical days of Vendemiaire. Though he subsequently carped at the conduct of Buonaparte, his action proved his complete confidence in that young officer's capacity : he at once sent for him, and intrusted him with most important duties. Herein lies the chief chance of immortality for the name of Barras ; not that, as a terrorist, he slaughtered royalists at Toulon ; not that he was the military chief of the Thermidorians, who, from fear of their own necks, ended the supremacy of Robespierre ; not even that he degraded the new rSgime by a cynical display of all the worst vices of the old ; but rather because he was now privileged to hold the stirrup for the great captain who vaulted lightly into the saddle.
The present crisis certainly called for a man of skill and determination. The malcontents had been emboldened by the timorous actions of General Menou, who had previously been intrusted with the task of suppressing the agitation. Owing to a praiseworthy desire to avoid bloodshed, that general wasted time in parleying with the most rebellious of the "sections" of Paris. The Convention now ap- pointed Barras to the command, while Buonaparte, Brune, Carteaux, Dupont, Loison, Vachot, and Vezu were charged to serve under him.^ Such was the decree of the Conven- tion, which therefore refutes Napoleon's later claim that he was in command, and that of his admirers that he was second in command. Yet, intrusted from the outset by Barras with important duties, he unquestionably became the animating spirit of the defence. "From the first," says Thiebault, " his activity was astonishing : he seemed to be everywhere at once : he surprised people by his la- conic, clear, and prompt orders : everybody was struck by the vigour of his arrangements, and passed from admi- ration to confidence, from confidence to enthusiasm." Everything now depended on skill and enthusiasm. The defenders of the Convention, comprising some four or five thousand troops of the line, and between one and two thousand patriots, gendarmes, and Invalides, were con-
1 M. Zivy, "Le treize Vendemiaire," pp. 60-62, quotes the decree signing the different commands. A MS. written by Buonaparte, now in the French War Office Archives, proves also that it was Barras who gave the order to letch the camion from the Sablons camp.
IT
V£ND]fi:MIAIRE 66
fronted by nearly thirty thousand National Guards. The odds were therefore wellnigh as heavy as those which menaced Louis XVI. on the day of his final overthrow. But the place of the yielding king was now filled by determined men, who saw the needs of the situation. In the earlier scenes of the Revolution, Buonaparte had pondered on the eflScacy of artillery in street-fighting — a fit subject for his geometrical genius. With a few cannon, he knew that he could sweep all the approaches to the palace ; and, on Barras' orders, he despatched a dashing cavalry officer, Murat — a name destined to become famous from Madrid to Moscow — to bring the artillery from the neighbouring camp of Sablons. Murat secured them before the malcon- tents of Paris could lay hands on them ; and as the ^^ sec- tions " of Paris had yielded up their own cannon after the afPrays of May, they now lacked the most potent force in street-fighting. Their actions were also paralyzed by divided counsels : their commander, an old general named Danican, moved his men hesitatingly ; he wasted precious minutes in parleying, and thus gave time to Barras' small but compact force to fight them in detail. Buonaparte had skilfully disposed his cannon to bear on the royalist colunms that threatened the streets north of the Tuileries. But for some time the two parties stood face to face, seek- ing to cajole or intimidate one another. As the autumn afternoon waned, shots were fired from some houses near the church of St. Roch, where the malcontents had their headquarters.^ At once the streets became the scene of a furious fight ; furious but unequal ; for Buonaparte's cannon tore away the heads of the malcontent columns. In vain did the royalists pour in their volleys from behind barricades, or from the neighbouring houses ; finally they retreated on the barricaded church, or fled down the Rue St. Honore. Meanwhile their bands from across the river, 5,000 strong, were filing across the bridges, and menaced the Tuileries from that side, until here also they melted away before the grapeshot and musketry poured into their front and flank. By six o'clock the conflict was over. The fight presents few, if any, incidents which are authen-
1 Baonaparte afterwards asserted that it was he who had given the order to fire, and certainly delay was all in favour of hi^ opponents.
66 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I ohap.
tic. The well-known engraving of Helman, which shows Buonaparte directing the storming of the church of St. Roch is unfortunately quite incorrect. He was not engaged there, but in the streets further east : the church was not stormed : the malcontents held it all through the night, and quietly surrendered it next morning.
Such was the great day of Vendemiaire. It cost the lives of about two hundred on each side ; at least, that is the usual estimate, which seems somewhat incongruous with the stories of fusillading and cannonading at close quarters, until we remember that it is the custom of me- moir writers and newspaper editors to trick out the details of a fight, and in the case of civil warfare to minimize the bloodshed. Certainly the Convention acted with clem- ency in the hour of victory : two only of the rebel leaders were put to death ; and it is pleasing to remember that when Menou was charged with treachery, Buonaparte used his influence to procure his freedom.
Bourrienne states that in his later days the victor deeply regretted his action in this day of Vendemiaire. The assertion seems incredible. The "whiff of grapeshot" crushed a movement which could have led only to present anarchy, and probably would have brought France back to royalism of an odious type. It taught a severe lesson to a fickle populace which, according to Mme. de Stael, was hungering for the spoils of place as much as for any polit- ical object. Of all the events of his post-Corsican life, Buonaparte need surely never have felt compunctions for Vendemiaire.^
After four signal reverses in his career, he now enters on a path strewn with glories. The first reward for his signal services to the Republic was his appointment to be second in command of the army of the interior ; and when Barras resigned the first command, he took that responsible post. But more brilliant honours were soon to follow, the first of a social character, the second purely military.
1 1 caution readers against accepting the statement of Carlyle (** French ReTolution,*' yol. iii. ad fin,) that *Hhe thing we specifically call French Revolation is blown into space by the whiff of grapeshot." On the con- trary, it was perpetuated, though in a more organic and more orderly governmental form.
IV
VEND^MIAIRE 67
Buonaparte had already appeared timidly and awkwardly at the salon of the voluptaous Barras, where the fair but frail Madame Tallien — Notre Dame de Thermidor she was styled — dazzled Parisian society by her classic features and the uncinctured grace of her attire. There he reap- peared, not in the threadbare uniform that had attracted the giggling notice of that giddy throng, but as the lion of the society which his talents had saved. His previous attempts to gain the hand of a lady had been unsuccessful. He had been refused, first by Mile. Clary, sister of his brother Joseph's wife, and quite recently by Madame Per- mon. Indeed, the scarecrow young officer had not been a brilliant match. But now he saw at that salon a charming widow, Josephine de Beauharnais, whose husband had per- ished in the Terror. The ardour of his southern tempera- ment, long repressed by his privations, speedily rekindles in her presence : his stiff, awkward manners thaw under her smiles : his silence vanishes when she praises his mili- tary gifts : he admires her tact, her sympathy, her beauty : he determines to marry her. The lady, on her part, seems to have been somewhat terrified by her uncanny wooer : she comments questioningly on his ^^ violent tenderness almost amounting to frenzy " : she notes uneasily his ^^ keen inex- plicable gaze which imposes even on our Directors " : how would this eager nature, this masterful energy, consort with her own "Creole nonchalance"? She did well to ask herself whether the general's almost volcanic passion would not soon exhaust itself, and turn from her own fad- ing charms to those of women who were his equals in age. Besides, when she frankly asked her own heart, she found that she loved him not : she only admired him. Her chief consolation was that if she married him, her friend Barras would help to gain for Buonaparte the command of the Army of Italy. The advice of Barras undoubtedly helped to still the questioning surmises of Josephine; and the wedding was celebrated, as a civil contract, on March 9th, 1796. With a pardonable coquetry, the bride entered her age on the register as four years less than the thirty-four which had passed over her : while her husband, desiring still further to lessen the disparity, entered his date of birth as 1768,
68 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap.
A fortnight before the wedding, he had been appointed to command the Army of Italy : and after a honeymoon of two days at Paris, he left his bride to take up his new military doties. Clearly, then, there was some connec- tion between this brilliant fortune and his espousal of Josephine. But the assertion that this command was the ^* dowry" offered by Barras to the somewhat reluctant bride is more piquant than correct. That the brilliance of Buonaparte's prospects finally dissipated her scruples may be frankly admitted. But the appointment to a command of a French army did not rest with Barras. He was only one of the five Directors who now decided the chief details of administration. His colleagues were Letourneur, Kewbell, La Reveilliere-Lepeaux, and the great Camot ; and, as a matter of fact, it was the last- named who chiefly decided the appointment in question. He had seen and pondered over the plan of campaign which Buonaparte had designed for the Army of Italy ; and the vigour of the conception, the masterly apprecia- tion of topographical details which it displayed, and the trenchant energy of its style had struck conviction to his strategic genius. Buonaparte owed his command, not to a backstairs intrigue, as was currently believed in the army, but rather to his own commanding powers. Dur- ing his mission to Genoa in 1794, he had carefully studied the coast-line and the passes leading inland ; and, accord- ing to the well-known savant, Volney, the young officer, shortly after bis release from imprisonment, sketched out to him and to a Commissioner of the Convention the de- tails of the very plan of campaign which was to carry him victoriously from the Genoese Riviera into the heart of Austria.^ While describing this masterpiece of strategy, says Volney, Buonaparte spoke as if inspired. We can fancy the wasted form dilating with a sense of power, the thin sallow cheeks aglow with enthusiasm, the hawk-like eyes flashing at the sight of the helpless Imperial quarry, as he pointed out on the map of Piedmont and Lombardy the features which would favour a dashing invader and carry him to the very gates of Vienna. The splendours of the Imperial Court at the Tuileries seem tawdry and
^ Chaptal, ** Mes Soayenirs sar Napolton," p. 196.
From DeliToche's
" Nnpiileoii Meibls,"
vr
VEKD^MIAIRE 60
insipid when compared with the intellectual grandeur which lit up that humble lodging at Nice with the first rays that heralded the dawn of Italian liberation.
With the fuller knowledge which he had recently acquired, he now, in January, 1796, elaborated this plan of campaign, so that it at once gained Carnot's admiration. The Directors forwarded it to General Scherer, who was in command of the Army of Italy, but promptly received the "brutal" reply that the man who had drafted the plan ought to come and carry it out. Long dissatisfied with Scherer's inactivity and constant complaints, the Directory now took him at his word, and replaced him by Buonaparte. Such is the truth about Buonaparte's appointment to the Army of Italy.
To Nice, then, the young general set out (March 21st) accompanied, or speedily followed, by his faithful friends, Marmont and Junot, as well as by other officers of whose energy he was assured, Berthier, Murat, and Duroc. How much had happened since th^ early summer of 1795, when he had barely the means to pay his way to Paris ! A sure instinct had drawn him to that hot-bed of intrigues. He had played a desperate game, risking his commission in order that he might keep in close touch with the central authority. His reward for this almost superhuman confidence in his own powers was correspond- ingly great ; and now, though he knew nothing of the handling of cavalry and infantry save from books, he determined to lead the Army of Italy to a series of con- quests that would rival those of Caesar. In presence of a will so stubborn and genius so fervid, what wonder that a friend prophesied that his halting-place would be either the throne or the scaffold ?
CHAPTER V
THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN (1796)
In the personality of Napoleon nothing is more remark- able than the combination of gifts which in most natures are mutually exclusive ; his instincts were both political and military ; his survey of a land took in not only the geographical environment but also the material welfare of the people. Facts, which his foes ignored, offered a firm fulcrum for the leverage of his will : and their political edifice or their military policy crumbled to ruin under an assault planned with consummate skill and pressed home with relentless force.
For the exercise of all these gifts what land was so fitted as the mosaic of States which was dignified with the name of Italy ?
That land had long been the battle-ground of the Bourbons and the Hapsburgs ; and their rivalries, aided by civic dissensions, had reduced the people that once had given laws to Europe into a condition of miserable weak- ness. Europe was once the battle-field of the Romans : Italy was now the battle-field of Europe. The Haps- burgs dominated the north, where they held the rich Duchy of Milan, along with the great stronghold of Man- tua, and some scattered imperial fiefs. A scion of the House of Austria reigned at Florence over the prosperous Duchy of Tuscany. Modena and Lucca were under the general control of the Court of Vienna. The south of the peninsula, along with Sicily, was swayed by Ferdi- nand IV., a descendant of the Spanish Bourbons, who kept his people in a condition of mediaeval ignorance and servi- tude ; and this dynasty controlled the Duchy of Parma. The Papal States were also sunk in the torpor of the
70
CHAP. V THE ITALIAN CABfPAION 71
Middle Ages ; bat in the northern districts of Bologna and Ferrara, known as the ^^ Legations/' the inhabitants still remembered the time of their independence, and chafed under the irritating restraints of Papal rule. This was seen when the leaven of French revolutionary thought began to ferment in Italian towns. Two young men of Bologna were so enamoured of the new ideas, as to raise an Italian tricolour flag, green, white, and red, and sum- mon their fellow-citizens to revolt against the rule of the Pope's legate (November, 1794). The revolt was crushed, and the chief offenders were hanged ; but elsewhere the force of democracy made itself felt, especially among the more virile peoples of Northern Italy. Lombardy and Piedmont throbbed with suppressed excitement. Even when the King of Sardinia, Victor Amadeus III., was waging war against the French Republic, the men of Turin were with difficulty feept from revolt ; and, as we have seen, the Austro-Sardinian alliance was powerless to recover Savoy and Nice from the soldiers of liberty or to guard the Italian Riviera from invasion.
In fact, Bonaparte — for he henceforth spelt his name thus — detected the political weakness of the Hapsburgs' position in Italy. Masters of eleven distinct peoples north of the Alps, how could they hope permanently to dominate a wholly alien people south of that great moun- tain barrier ? The many failures of the old GhibelUne or Imperial party in face of any popular impulse which moved the Italian nature to its depths revealed the arti- ficiality of their rule. Might not such an impulse be imparted by the French Revolution? And would not the hopes of national freedom and of emancipation from feudal imposts fire these peoples with zeal for the French cause ? Evidently there were vast possibilities in a dem- ocratic propaganda. At the outset Bonaparte's racial sympathies were warmly aroused for the liberation of Italy ; and though his judgment was to be warped by the promptings of ambition, he never lost sight of the welfare of the people whence he was descended. In his ^^ Memoirs written at St. Helena" he summed up his convictions respecting the Peninsula in this statesman- like utterance : ^^ Italy, isolated within its natural limits,
72 THB LIFE OF NAPOLEON I ohap. t
separated by the sea and by very high moantains from the rest of Europe, seems called to be a great and power- ful nation. • . . Unity in manners, language, literature, ought finally, in a future more or less remote, to unite its inhistbitants under a single government. . • . Rome is beyond doubt the capital which the Italians wiU one day choose." A prophetic saying : it came from a man who, as conqueror and organizer, awakened that people from the torpor of centuries and breathed into it something of his own indomitable energy.
And then &g&in, the Austrian possessions south of the Alps were difficult to hold for purely military reasons. They were separated from Vienna by difficult mountain ranges through which armies struggled with difficulty. True, Mantua was a formidable stronghold, but no for- tress could make the Milanese other than a weak and straggling territory, the retention of which by the Court of Vienna was a defiance to the gospel of nature of which Rousseau was the herald and Bonaparte the militant exponent.
The Austro-Sardinian forces were now occupying the pass which separates the Apennines from the Maritime Alps north of the town of Savona. They were accord- ingly near the headwaters of the Bormida and the Tanaro, two of the chief affluents of the River Po : and roads fol- lowing those river valleys led, the one north-east, in the direction of Milan, the other north-west towards Turin, the Sardinian capital. A wedge of mountainous country separated these roads as they diverged'from the neighbour- hood of Montenotte. Here obviously was the vulnerable point of the Austro-Sardinian position. Here therefore Bonaparte purposed to deliver his first strokes, foreseeing that, should he sever the allies, he would have in his favour every advantage both political and topographical.
All this was possible to a commander who could over- come the initial difficulties. But these difficulties were enormous. The position of the French Army of Italy in March, 1796, was precarious. Its detachments, echelonned near the coast from Savona to Loano, and thence to Nice, or inland to the Col di Tenda, comprised in all 42,000 man, as against the Austro-Sardinian forces amounting to
74 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap.
52,000 men.^ Moreover, the allies occupied strong posi- tions on the northern slopes of the Maritime Alps and Apennines, and, holding the inner and therefore shorter curve, they could by a dextrous concentration have pushed their more widely scattered opponents on to the shore, where the republicans would have been harassed by the guns of the British cruisers. Finally, Bonaparte's troops were badly equipped, worse clad, and were not paid at all. On his arrival at Nice at the close of March, the young com- mander had to disband one battalion for mutinous conduct.^ For a brief space it seemed doubtful how the army would receive this slim, delicate-looking youth, known nitherto only as a skilful artillerist at Toulon and in the streets of Paris. But he speedily gained the respect and confidence of the rank and file, not only by stern punishment of the mutineers, but by raising money from a local banker, so as to make good some of the long arrears of pay. Other grievances he rectified by prompt reorganization of the commissariat and kindred departments. But, above all, by his burning words he thrilled them : " Soldiers, you are half starved and half naked. The Government owes you much, but can do nothing for you. Your patience and courage are honourable to you, but they procure you neither advantage nor glory. I am about to lead you into the most fertile valleys of the world : there you will find flour- ishing cities and teeming provinces : there you will reap honour, glory, and riches. Soldiers of the Army of Italy, will you lack courage ? " Two years previously so open a bid for the soldiers' allegiance would have conducted any French commander forthwith to the guillotine. But much had changed since the days of Robespierre's su- premacy ; Spartan austerity had vanished ; and the former insane jealousy of individual pre-eminence was now favour- ing a startling reaction which was soon to install the one supremely able man as absolute master of France.
Bonaparte's conduct produced a deep impression alike on
^ Koch, <' M^moires de Mass^na,'* vol. ii.» p. 13, credits the French with only 37,775 men present with the colours, the Austrians with 32,000, and the Saidinians with 20,000. All these figures omit the troops in garrison or guarding communications.
3 Napoleon's '' Correspondence/' March 28th, 1796.
▼ THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN 76
troops and officers. From Massena his energy and his tren- chant orders extorted admiration: and the tsdl swaggering Augereau shrank beneath the intellectual superiority of his gaze. Moreover, at the beg^nnine of April the French re- ceived reinforcements which raised their total to 49,300 men, and gave them a superiority of force ; for though the allies had 62,000, yet they were so widely scattered as to be infe- rior in any one district. Besides, the Austrian commander, Beaulieu, was seventy-one years of age, had only just been sent into Italy, with which land he was ill-acquainted, and found one-third of his troops down with sickness.^
Bonaparte now began to concentrate his forces near Savona. Fortune favoured him even before the cam- paign commenced. The snows of winter, still lying on the mountains, though thawing on the southern slopes, helped to screen his movements from the enemy's out- posts ; and the French vanguard pushed along the coast- line even as far as Voltri. This movement was designed to coerce the Senate of Genoa into payment of a fine for its acquiescence in the seizure of a French vessel by a British cruiser within its neutral roadstead ; but it served to alarm Beaulieu, who, breaking up his cantonments, sent a strong column towards that city. At the time this circumstance greatly annoyed Bonaparte, who had hoped to catch the Imperialists dozing in their winter quarters. Yet it is certain that the hasty move of their left flank towards Voltri largely contributed to that brilliant opening of Bonaparte's campaign, which his admirers have generally regarded as due solely to his genius.^ For, wen Beaulieu had thrust his column into
1 See my articles on Colonel Graham's despatches from Italy in the ^*£ng. Hist. Review" of January and April, 1899.
s ThoB Mr. Sargent (*^ Bonaparte's First Campaign") says that Bona- parte was expecting Beaulieu to move on Genoa, and saw herein a chance of crashing the Austrian centre. But Bonaparte, in his despatch of April 6th to the Directory, referring to the French advance towards Genoa, writes : '* J'ai ^t6 trto fftch^ et extrSmement m^ontent de ce mouvement sur G§nes, d'autant plus d^plac^ qu'il a oblige cette r^publique k prendre une attitude hostile, et a r^veill^ I'ennemi que j'aurais pris tranquiUe : ce sont des hommes de plus quMl nous en content." For the question how far Napoleon was indebted to Marshal MaUlebois' campaign of 1746 for his general design, see the brochure of M. Pierron. I agree with " J. G." that this design was in the main Napoleon's own. But see Bouvier's ^'Bonaparte en Italic," p. 197.
76 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap.
the broken coast district between Genoa and Voltri, he severed it dangerously far from his centre, which marched up the valley of the eastern branch of the Bormida to occupy the passes of the Apennines north of Savona. This, again, was by no means in close touch with the Sardinian allies encamped further to the west in and be- yond Ceva. Beaulieu, writing at a later date to Colonel Graham, the English attaehS at his headquarters, ascribed his first disasters to Argenteau, his lieutenant at Monte- notte, who employed only a third of the forces placed under his command. But division of forces was charac- teristic of the Austrians in all their operations, and they now gave a fine opportunity to any enterprising opponent who should crush their weak and unsupported centre. In obedience to orders from Vienna, Beaulieu assumed the offensive ; but he brought his chief force to bear on the French vanguard at Voltri, which he drove in with some loss. While he was occupying Voltri, the boom of cannon echoing across the mountains warned his outposts that the real campaign was opening in the broken country north of Savona.^ There the weak Austrian centre had occupied a ridge or plateau above the village of Monte- notte, through which ran the road leading to Alessandria and Milan. Argenteau's attack partly succeeded ; but the stubborn bravery of a French detachment checked it before the redoubt which commanded the southern pro- longation of the heights named Monte-Legino.^
1 Nelson was then endeavouring to cut off the vessels conveying stores from Toulon to the French forces. The following extracts from his de- spatches are noteworthy. January 6th, 1706 : ** If the French mean to carry on the war, they most penetrate into Italy. Holland and Flanders, with their own country, ^ey have entirely stripped: Italy is the gold mine, and if once entered, is without the means of resistance. '' Then on April 28th, after Piedmont was overpowered by the French : " We Eng- lish have to regret that we cannot always decide the fate of Empires on the Sea.*' Again, on May 16th: **I very much believe that England, who commenced the war with all Europe for her allies, will finish it by having nearly all Europe for her enemies."
' The picturesque story of the commander (who was not Rampon, butFom^) summoning the defenders of the central redoubt to swear on their colours and on the cannon that they would defend it to the death has been endlessly repeated by historians. But the documents which furnish the only authentic details show that there was in the redoubt no cannon and no flag. Forney's words simply were : ** C'est ici, mes amis,
T THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN 77
Sach was the position of affairs when Bonaparte hurried up. On the following day (April 12th), massing the French columns of attack under cover of an early morn- ing mist, he moved them to their positions, so that the first struggling rays of sunlight revealed to the astonished Austrians the presence of an army ready to crush their front and turn their flanks. For a time the Imperialists struggled bravely against the superior forces in their front ; but when Massena pressed round their right wing, they gave way and beat a speedy retreat to save them- selves from entire capture. Bonaparte took no active share in the battle : he was, very properly, intent on the wider problem of severing the Austrians from their allies, first by the turning movement of Massena, and then by pouring other troops into the gap thus made. In this he entirely succeeded. The radical defects in the Austrian dispositions left them utterly unable to withstand the blows which he now showered upon them. The Sardinians were too far away on the west to help Argenteau in his hour of need : they were in and beyond Ceva, intent on covering the road to Turin : whereas, as Napoleon him- self subsequently wrote, they should have been near enough to their allies to form one powerful army, which, at Dego or Montenotte, would have defended both Turin and Milan. "United, the two forces would have been superior to the French army: separated, they were lost."
The configuration of the ground favoured Bonaparte's plan of driving the Imperialists down the valley of the Bormida in a north-easterly direction ; and the natural desire of a beaten general to fall back towards his base of supplies also impelled Beaulieu and Argenteau to retire towards Milan. But that would sever their connections with the Sardinians, whose base of supplies, Turin, lay in a north-westerly direction.
Bonaparte therefore hurled his forces at once against the Austrians and a Sardinian contingent at Millesimo, and defeated them, Augereau's division cutting off the retreat of twelve hundred of their men under Provera.
qn^il faat vaincre ou mourir '^ — sorely much grander than the histrionic oath. (See '^M^moires de Massena,*' vol. ii.; ^* Pieces Just.,'* No. 3; also BouTier, op, ctt.)
78 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I cbat.
Weakened by this second blow, the allies fell back on the intrenched village of Dego. Their position was of a strength proportionate to its strategic importance ; for its loss would completely sever all connection between their two main armies save by devious routes many miles in their rear. They therefore clung desperately to the six mamelons and redoubts which barred the valley and domi- nated some of the neighbouring heights. Yet such was the superiority of the French in numbers that these posi- tions were speedily turned by Massena, whom Bonaparte again intrusted with the movement on the enemy's flank and rear. A strange event followed. The victors, while pillaging the country for the supplies which Bonaparte's sharpest orders failed to draw from the magazines and stores on the sea-coast, were attacked in the dead of night by five Austrian battalions that had been ordered up to support their countrymen at Dego. These, after straying among the mountains, found themselves among bands of the marauding French, whom they easily scattered, seizing Dego itself. Apprised of this mishap, Bonaparte hurried up more troops from the rear, and on the 15th recovered the prize which had so nearly been snatched from his grasp. Had Beaulieu at this time thrown all his forces on the French, he might have retrieved his first misfortunes ; but foresight and energy were not to be found at the Aus- trian headquarters : the surprise at Dego was the work of a colonel ; and for many years to come the incompetence of their aged commanders was to paralyze the fine fighting qualities of the "white-coats." In three confiicts they had been outmanoeuvred and outnumbered, and drew in their shattered columns to Acqui.
The French commander now led his columns westward against the Sardinians, who had fallen back on their forti- fied camp at Ceva, in the upper valley of the Tanaro. There they beat ofiF one attack of the French. A check in front of a strongly intrenched position was serious. It might have led to a French disaster, had the Austrians been able to bring aid to their allies. Bonaparte even summoned a council of war to deliberate on the situation. As a rule, a council of war gives timid advice. This one strongly advised a second attack on the camp — a striking
V THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN 79
proof of the ardour which then nerved the republicaa generals. Not yet were they condottieri carving out for- tunes by their swords : not yet were they the pampered minions of an autocrat, intent primarily on guarding the estates which his favour had bestowed. Timidity was rather the mark of their opponents. When the assault on the intrenchments of Ceva was about to be renewed, the Sardinian forces were discerned filing away westwards. Their general indulged the fond hope of holding the French at bay at several strong natural positions on his march. He was bitterly to rue his error. The French divisions of Serurier and Dommartin closed in on him, drove him from Mondovi, and away towards Turin.
Bonaparte had now completely succeeded. Using to the full the advantage of his central position between the widely scattered detachments of his foes, he had struck vigorously at their natural point of junction, Montenotte, and by three subsequent successes — for the evacuation of Ceva can scarcely be called a French victory — had forced them further and further apart until Turin was almost within his power.
It now remained to push these military triumphs to their natural conclusion, and impose terms of peace on the House of Savoy, which was secretly desirous of peace. The Directors had ordered Bonaparte that he should seek to detach Sardinia from the Austrian alliance by holding out the prospect of a valuable compensation for the loss of Savoy and Nice in the fertile Milanese.^ The prospect of this rich prize would, the Directors surmised, dissolve the Austro-Sardinian alliance, as soon as the allies had felt the full vigour of the French arms. Not that Bona- parte himself was to conduct these negotiations. He was to forward to the Directory all offers of submission. Nay, he was not empowered to grant on his own responsibility even an armistice. He was merely to push the foe hard, and feed his needy soldiers on the conquered territory. He was to be solely a general, never a negotiator.
The Directors herein showed keen jealousy or striking ignorance of military aflfairs. How could he keep the Aus- trians quiet while envoys passed between Turin and Paris?
1 Jomini, vol. viii., p. 340 ; *» Pieces Justifa."
80 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap.
All the dictates of common sense required him to grant an armistice to the Court of Turin before the Austrians could recover from their recent disasters. But the King of Sar- dinia drew him from a perplexing situation by instructing Colli to make overtures for an armistice as preliminary to a peace. At once the French commander replied that such powers belonged to the Directory ; but as for an armistice, it would only be possible if the Court of Turin placed in his hands three fortresses, Coni, Tortona, and Alessandria, besides guaranteeing the transit of French armies through Piedmont and the passage of the Po at Valenza. Then, with his unfailing belief in accomplished facts, Bonaparte pushed on his troops to Cherasco.
Near that town he received the Piedmontese envoys; and from the pen of one of them we have an account of the general's behaviour in his first essay in diplomacy. His demeanour was marked by that grave and frigid courtesy which was akin to Piedmontese customs. In reply to the suggestions of the envoys that some of the conditions were of little value to the French, he answered : ^^ The Republic, in intrusting to me the command of an army, has credited me with possessing enough discern- ment to judge of what that army requires, without having recourse to the advice of my enemy." Apart, however, from this sarcasm, which was uttered in a hard and biting voice, his tone was coldly polite. He reserved his home thrust for the close of the conference. When it had dragged on till considerably after noon with no definite result, he looked at his watch and exclaimed : ^^ Gentle- men, I warn you that a general attack is ordered for two o'clock, and that if I am not assured that Coni will be put in my hands before nightfall, the attack will not be postponed for one moment. It may happen to me to lose battles, but no one shall ever see me lose minutes either by over-confidence or by sloth." The terms of the armistice of Cherasco were forthwith signed (April 28th) ; they were substantially the same as those first offered by the victor. During th^ luncheon which followed, the envoys were still further impressed by his imperturbable confidence and trenchant phrases ; as when he told them that the campaign was the exact counterpart of what
T THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN 81
he had planned in 1794 ; or described a council of war as a convenient device for covering cowardice or irresolution in the commander; or assertea that nothing could now stop him before the walls of Mantua.^
As a matter of fact, the French army was at that time so disorganized by rapine as scarcely to have withstood a combined and vi&rorous attack by Beaulieu and Colli. The repubUcans, lon| exposed to hunger and privations, were now revelling in the fertile plains of Piedmont. Large bands of marauders ranj?ed the neighbouring country, and the regiments were often reduced to mere companies. From the grave risks of this situation Bonaparte was res- cued by the timidity of the Court of Turin, which signed the armistice at Cherasco eighteen days after the com- mencement of the campaign. A fortnight later the pre- liminaries of peace were signed between France and the Ring of Sardinia, by which the latter yielded up his prov- inces of Savoy and Nice, and renounced the alliance with Austria. Great indignation was felt in the Imperialist camp at this news ; and it was freely stated that the Pied- montese had let themselves be beaten in order to compass a peace that had been tacitly agreed upon in the month of January.^
Even before this auspicious event, Bonaparte's de- spatches to the Directors were couched in almost imperious terms, which showed that he felt himself the master of the situation. He advised them as to their policy towards Sardinia, pointing out that, as Victor Amadeus had yielded up three important fortresses, he was practically in the hands of the French : ^^ If you do not accept peace with him, if your plan is to dethrone him, you must amuse him for a few decades ^ and must warn me : I then seize Va- lenza and march on Turin." In military affairs the young general showed that he would brook no interference from Paris. He requested the Directory to draft 16,000 men from Kellermann's Army of the Alps to reinforce him :
1 *' Un Homme d'aatrefoiB,** par Costa de Beauregard.
'These were General Beaulieu^s words to Colonel Graham on May 22nd.
* Periods of ten days, whidh, in the reYolntionary calendar, saperaeded the week.
82 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap.
" That will give me an army of 45,000 men, of which pos- sibly I may send a part to Rome. If you continue your confidence and approve these plans, I am sure of success: Italy is yours." Somewhat later, the Directors proposed to grant the required reinforcements, but stipulated for the retention of part of the army in the Milanese under the command of Kellermann. Thereupon Bonaparte re- plied (May 14th) that, as the Austrians had been rein- forced, it was highly impolitic to divide the command. Each general had his own way of making war. Keller- raann, having more experience, would doubtless do it better : but both together would do it very badly.
Again the Directors had blundered. In seeking to sub- ject Bonaparte to the same rules as had been imposed on all French generals since the treason of Dumouriez in 1793, they were doubtless consulting the vital interests of the Commonwealth. But, while striving to avert all possibili- ties of Caesarism, they now sinned against that elementary principle of strategy which requires unity of design in military operations. Bonaparte's retort was unanswerable, and nothing more was heard of the luckless proposal.
Meanwhile the peace with the House of Savoy had thrown open the Milanese to Bonaparte's attack. Hold- ing three Sardinian fortresses, he had an excellent base of operations ; for the lands restored to the King of Sardinia were to remain subject to requisitions for the French army until the general peace. The Austrians, on the other hand, were weakened by the hostility of their Italian subjects, and, worst of all, they depended ultimately on reinforce- ments drawn from beyond the Alps by way of Mantua. In the rich plains of Lombardy they, however, had one advantage which was denied to them among the rocks of the Apennines. Their generals could display the tactical skill on which they prided themselves, and their splendid cavalry had some chance of emulating the former exploits of the Hungarian and Croatian horse. They therefore awaited the onset of the French, little dismayed by recent disasters, and animated by the belief that their antagonist, unversed in regular warfare, would at once lose in the plains the bubble reputation gained in ravines. But the country in the second part of this campaign was not less
T THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN 83
favourable to Bonaparte's peculiar gifts than that in which he had won his first laurels as commander. Amidst the Apennines, where only small bodies of men could be moved, a general inexperienced in the handling of cavalry and infantry could make his first essays in tactics with fair chances of success. NSpeed, energy, and the prompt seiz- ure of a commanding central position were the prime requisites ; the handling of vast masses of men was impos- sible. The plains of Lombardy facilitated larger move- ments ; but even here the* numerous broad swift streams fed by the Alpine snows, and the network of irrigating dykes, favoured the designs of a young and daring leader who saw how to use natural obstacles so as to baffle and ensnare his foes. Bonaparte was now to show that he ex- celled his enemies, not only in quickness of eye and vigour of intellect, but also in the minutiae of tactics and in those larger strategic conceptions which decide the fate of nations. In the first place, having the superiority of force, he was able to attack. This is an advantage at all times : for the aggressor can generally mislead his adversary by a series of feints until the real blow can be delivered with crushing effect. Such has been the aim of all great leaders from the time of Epaminondas and Alexander, Hannibal and Csesar, down to the age of Luxembourg, Marlborough, and Frederick the Great. Aggressive tac- tics were particularly suited to the French soldiery, always eager, active, and intelligent, and now endowed with boundless enthusiasm in their cause and in their leader.
Then again he was fully aware of the inherent vice of the Austrian situation. It was as if an unwieldy organ- ism stretched a vulnerable limb across the huge barrier of the Alps, exposing it to the attack of a compacter body. It only remained for Bonaparte to turn against his foes the smaller geographical features on which they too implicitly relied. Beaulieu had retired beyond the Po and the Ticino, expecting that the attack on the Milanese would be deliv- ered across the latter stream by the ordinary route, which crossed it at Pavia. Near that city the Austrians occupied a strong position with 26,000 men, while other detachments patrolled the banks of the Ticino further north, and those of the Po towards Valenza, only 5,000 men being sent
84 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap.
towards Piacenza. Bonaparte, however, was not minded to take the ordinary route. He determined to march, not as yet on the north of the River Po, where 8now-«wollen streams coursed down from the Alps, but rather on the south side, where the Apennines throw off fewer streams and also of smaller volume. From the fortress of Tortona he could make a rush at Piacenza, cross the Po there, and thus gain the Milanese almost without a blow. To this end he had stipulated in the recent terms of peace that he might cross the Po at Valenza ; and now, amusing his foes by feints on that side, he vigorously pushed his main columns along the southern bank of the Po, where they gathered up all the available boats. The vanguard, led by the impetuous Lannes, seized the ferry at Piacenza, before the Austrian horse appeared, and scattered a squad- ron or two which strove to drive them back into the river (May 7th).
Time was thus gained for a considerable number of French to cross the river in boats or by the ferry. Work- ing under the eye of their leader, the French conquered all obstacles : a bridge of boats soon spanned the stream, and was defended by a t6te de pont; and with forces about equal in number to Liptay's Austrians, the republicans ad- vanced northwards, and, after a tough struggle, dislodged their foes from the village of Fombio. This success drove a solid wedge between Liptay and his commander-in-chief, who afterwards bitterly blamed him, first for retreating, and secondly for not reporting his retreat to headquarters. It would appear, however, that Liptay had only 6,000 men (not the 8,000 which Napoleon and French historians have credited to him), that he was sent by Beaulieu to Piacenza too late to prevent the crossing by the French, and that at the close of the fight on the following day he was completely cut off from communicating with his supe- rior. Beaulieu, with his main force, advanced on Fombio, stumbled on the French, where he looked to find Liptay, and after a confused fight succeeded in disengaging him- self and withdrawing towards Lodi, where the high-road leading to Mantua crossed the River Adda. To that stream he directed his remaining forces to retire. He thereby left Milan uncovered (except for the garrison which held the
i
-r ^
3 -I
: 1
I i
▼ THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN 86
citadel), and abandoned more than the half of Liombardy; but, from the military point of view, his retreat to the Adda was thoroughly sound. Yet here again a movement stra- tegically correct was marred by tactical blunders. Had he concentrated all his forces at the nearest point of the Adda which the French could cross, namely Pizzighetone, he would have rendered any flank march of theirs to the northward extremely hazardous ; but he had not yet suffi- ciently learned from his terrible teacher the need of con- centration ; and, having at least three passages to guard, he kept his forces too spread out to oppose a vigorous move against any one of them. Indeed, he despaired of holding the line of the Adda, and retired eastwards with a great part of his arma^l
Consequently, when Bonaparte, only three days after the seizure of Piacenza, threw his almost undivided force against the town of Lodi, his passage was disputed only by the rearguard, whose anxiety to cover the retreat of a belated detachment far exceeded their determination to defend the bridge over the Adda. This was a narrow structure, some eighty fathoms long, standing high above the swift but shallow river. Resolutely held by well- massed troops and cannon, it might have cost the French a severe struggle ; but the Imperialists were badly handled : some were posted in and around the town, which was between the river and the advancing French ; and the weak walls of Lodi were soon escaladed by the impetuous republicans. The Austrian commander, Sebot- tendorf, now hastily ranged his men along the eastern bank of the river, so as to defend the bridge and prevent any passage of the river by boats or by a ford above the town. The Imperialists numbered only 9,627 men ; they were discouraged by defeats and by the consciousness that no serious stand could be attempted before they reached the neighbourhood of Mantua ; and their efforts to break down tne bridge were now frustrated by the French, who, posted behind the walls of Lodi on the higher bank of the stream, swept their opponents' position with a searching artillery fire. Having 'Shaken the constancy of his foes and refreshed his own infantry by a brief rest in Lodi, Bonaparte at 6 p.m. secretly formed a column of his
80 THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I chap.
choicest troops and hurled it against the bridge. A hot fire of grapeshot and musketry tore its front, and for a time the column bent before the iron hail. But, encour- aged by the words of their young leader, generals, cor- porals, and grenadiers pressed home their charge. This time, aided by sharp-shooters who waded to islets in the river, the assailants cleared the bridge, bayoneted the Austrian cannoneers, attacked the first and second lines of supporting foot, and, when reinforced, compelled horse and foot to retreat towards Mantua.^
Such was the affair of Lodi (May 10th). A leejendary glamour hovers around all the details of this conflict and invests it with fictitious importance. Beaulieu's main force was far away, and there was no hope of entrapping anything more than the rear of his army. Moreover, if this were the object, why was not the flank move of the French cavalry above Lodi pushed home earlier in the fight? This, if supported by infantry, could have out- flanked the enemy while the perilous rush was made against the bridge ; and such a turning movement would probably have enveloped the Austrian force while it was being shattered in front. That is the view in which the strategist, Clausewitz, regards this encounter. Far differ- ent was the impression which it created among the soldiers and Frenchmen at large. They valued a commander more for bravery of the DuU-dog type than for any powers of reasoning and subtle combination. These, it is true, Bonaparte had already shown. He now enchanted the soldiery by dealing a straight sharp blow. It had a magical effect on their minds. On the evening of that day the French soldiers, with antique republican cama- raderie^ saluted their commander as le petit caporal for
1 1 have followed the accounts given by Jomini, vol. viii.. pp. 120-130 ; that by Scheie in the »»0e8t. Milit. Zeitschrift" for 1826, vol. ii.; also Bouvier, *^ Bonaparte en Italie,** ch. xiii. ; and J. G.'s ** Etudes but la Campagne de 1706-97.'* Most French accounts, being based on Napo- leon's "M^moires," vol. iii., p. 212 et seq,^ are a tissue of inaccuracies. Bonaparte affected to believe that at Lodi he defeated an army of sixteen thousand men. Thiers states that the French cavalry, after fording the river at Montanasso, influenced the result : but the official report of May 11th, 1706, expressly states that the French horse could not cross the river at that place till the fight wsa over. See too Desvernois, ** Mems.,'' ch. vii.
▼ THE ITALIAN CAMPAIGN 87
his personal bravery in the fray, and this endearing phrase helped to immortalize the affair of the bridge of Lodi.^ It shot a thrill of exultation through France. With pardonable exaggeration, men told how he charged at the head of the column, and, with Lannes, was the first to reach the opposite side ; and later generations havi^ figured him charging before his tall grenadiers — a feat that was actually performed by Lannes, Berthier, Massena, Cervoni, and Dallemagne.