The French revolutionists had overturned the absolute monarchy of the
Bourbons, but they themselves had split into factions. The Moderates
who favored constitutional monarchy had been trodden under foot by
the Girondins who favored a federated republic; and the Girondins, in
their turn, had been crushed by the Jacobins who favored an undivided
republic based upon the absolute political equality of all Frenchmen.
To this doctrine they welded State-socialism with a boldness which
shocked the world at the time, and converted it a few years later. The
Girondins did not yield without a struggle, drawing to themselves all
disaffected elements, including the royalists; and the revolt which
followed was supported by the English. Threatened thus from within and
without, the Revolution seemed doomed to perish.
It was in the midst of this turmoil that the Bonapartes landed at
Toulon in June, 1793. In a short while they removed to Marseilles.
Warmly greeted by the Jacobins, who regarded them as martyrs to the
good cause, the immediate necessities of the family were relieved by a
small pension which the government had provided for such cases. Still,
as they had fled in such haste from their house in Ajaccio that Madame
Letitia had to snatch up the little Jerome and bear him in her arms,
their condition upon reaching France was one of destitution.
[Illustration: NAPOLEON
From an engraving by Tomkins of a drawing from life during the campaign
in Italy. In the collection of Mr. W. C. Crane]
“One of the liveliest recollections of my youth,” said Prince Napoleon,
son of Jerome Bonaparte, “is the account my father gave of the arrival
of our family in a miserable house situated in the lanes of Meilhan,”
a poor district of Marseilles. “They found themselves in the greatest
poverty.”
Having arranged for the family as well as he could, Napoleon rejoined
his regiment at Nice. To shield himself from censure, on account of
his prolonged absence, he produced Salicetti’s certificate to the
effect that the Commissioner had kept him in Corsica. The statement was
false, but served its purpose. So many officers had fled their posts,
and affairs were so unsettled, that it was no time to reject offers of
service; nor was it a good time to ride rough-shod over the certificate
of so influential a Jacobin as Salicetti.
Napoleon’s first service in France was against the Girondin revolt. At
Avignon, which the insurgents held, and which the Convention forces had
invested, Napoleon, who had been sent from Nice to secure necessary
stores, was appointed to the command of a battery. Mr. Lanfrey says,
“It is certain that with his own hands he pointed the cannons with
which Carteaux cleared Avignon of the Marseilles federates.”
About this time it was that Napoleon came in contact with Augustin
Robespierre, brother of the great man in Paris. The Convention
had adopted the policy of sending commissioners to the armies to
stimulate, direct, and report. Robespierre was at the head of one of
these formidable delegations, and was now at Avignon in his official
capacity. With him, but on a separate commission, were Salicetti and
Gasparin.
To these gentlemen Napoleon read a political pamphlet he had just
finished, and which he called _The Supper of Beaucaire_. The pamphlet
was a discussion of the political situation. The author threw it into
the attractive and unusual form of a dialogue between several guests
whom he supposed to have met at an inn in the town of Beaucaire. An
actual occurrence of the sort was doubtless the basis of the pamphlet.
A citizen of Nismes, two merchants of Marseilles, a manufacturer
of Montpellier, and a soldier (supposed to be Napoleon), finding
themselves at supper together, fell naturally into conversation and
debate, the subject being the recent convulsions. The purpose of the
pamphlet was to demonstrate the weakness of the insurgent cause, and
the necessity of submission to the established authorities at Paris.
The Commissioners were so well pleased with Napoleon’s production that
they ordered the work published at the expense of the government.
Exerting himself in behalf of his family, Napoleon secured positions in
the public service for Lucien, Joseph, and Uncle Fesch.
* * * * *
Into the great seaport town of Toulon, thousands of the Girondin
insurgents had thrown themselves. The royalists and the Moderates of
the city made common cause with the revolting republicans, and England
was ready to help hold the place against the Convention.
The royalists, confident the counter-revolution had come, began to
massacre the Jacobins in the town. The white flag of the Bourbons was
run up, displacing the red, white, and blue. The little boy, son of
Louis XVI., who was lying in prison at Paris, was proclaimed king
under the name of Louis XVII. Sir Samuel Hood, commanding the British
fleet, sailed into the harbor and took possession of about twenty-five
French ships, “in trust” for the Bourbons; General O’Hara hurried
from Gibraltar with troops to aid in holding this “trust”; and to the
support of the English flocked Spaniards, Sardinians, and Neapolitans.
Even the Pope could not withhold his helping hand; he sent some priests
to lend their prayers and exhortations.
When it became known throughout France that Toulon had revolted,
had begun to exterminate patriots, had proclaimed a Bourbon king,
had surrendered to the British the arsenal, the harbor, the immense
magazines, and the French fleet, a tide of furious resentment rose
against the town. There was but one thought: Toulon must be taken,
Toulon must be punished. The hunger for revenge said it; the promptings
of self-preservation said it; the issue was one of life or death to the
Revolution.
The Convention realized the crisis; the Great Committee realized
it; and the measures taken were prompt. Commissioners hurried to
the scene, and troops poured in. Barras, a really effective man in
sudden emergencies, Fréron, Salicetti, Gasparin, Ricord, Albitte,
and Robespierre the Younger were all on hand to inspirit the army
and direct events. Some twenty odd thousand soldiers soon beleagured
the town. They were full of courage, fire, and enthusiasm; but
their commander was a painter, Carteaux, whose ideas of war were
very primitive. To find where the enemy was, and then cannonade him
vigorously, and then fall on him with muskets, was about the substance
of Carteaux’ military plans. At Toulon, owing to peculiarities of the
position, such a plan was not as excellent as it might have been at
some other places. Besides, he had no just conception of the means
needed for such a work as he had undertaken. Toulon, with its double
harbor, the inner and the outer, its defences by land and by sea, to
say nothing of the fortresses which Lord Mulgrave had constructed
on the strip of land which separated and commanded the two harbors,
presented difficulties which demanded a soldier. Carteaux was brave and
energetic, but no soldier; and week after week wasted away without any
material progress having been made in the siege.
Near the middle of September, 1793, Napoleon appeared at Toulon,--at
just the right moment,--for the artillery service had well-nigh broken
down. General Duteuil, who was to have directed it, had not arrived;
and Dommartin had been disabled by a wound. How did Napoleon, of the
army of Italy, happen to be at Toulon at this crisis? The question is
one of lasting interest, because his entire career pivots on Toulon.
Mr. Lanfrey states that, on his way from Avignon to Nice, Napoleon
stopped at Toulon, was invited by the Commissioners to inspect the
works, and so won upon them by his intelligent comments, criticisms,
and suggestions, that they appointed him at once to a command.
Napoleon’s own account of the matter was that the Minister of War
sent him to Toulon to take charge of the artillery, and that it was
with written authority that he confronted Carteaux, who was not at
all pleased to see him. “This was not necessary!” exclaimed Carteaux.
“Nevertheless, you are welcome. You will share the glory of taking the
town without having borne any of the toil!”
But the biographers are almost unanimous in refusing to credit this
account. Why Napoleon should have falsified it, is not apparent. Mr.
Lanfrey says that Napoleon’s reason for not wishing to admit that the
Commissioners appointed him was that he was unwilling to own that he
had been under obligations to Salicetti. But Salicetti was only one
of the Commissioners; he alone could not appoint. So far was Napoleon
from being ashamed to acknowledge debts of gratitude that he never
wearied of adding to the list. In his will he admits what he owed to
the protection of Gasparin at this very period, and left a legacy of
$20,000 to that Commissioner’s son. Hence Mr. Lanfrey’s reasoning is
not convincing. Napoleon surely ought to have known how he came to be
at Toulon, and his narrative is natural, is seemingly truthful, and is
most positive.
But these recent biographers who dig and delve, and turn things over,
and find out more about them a century after the occurrences than the
men who took part in them ever knew, assert most emphatically that
both Mr. Lanfrey and Napoleon are wrong. They insist that the way it
all happened was this: After Dommartin was wounded, Adjutant General
Cervoni, a Corsican, was sent to Marseilles to hunt around and find
a capable artillery officer. Apparently it was taken for granted by
whoever sent Cervoni, that capable artillery officers were straggling
about at random, and could be found by diligent searchers in the lanes
and by-ways of towns and cities. We are told that Cervoni, arrived in
Marseilles, was strolling the streets, his eyes ready for the capable
artillery officer,--when, who should he see coming down the road,
dusty and worn, but his fellow-Corsican, Napoleon Bonaparte! Here,
indeed, was a capable artillery officer, one who had just been to
Avignon, and was on his way back to Nice.
That Cervoni should at once invite the dusty Napoleon into a café
to take a drink of punch was quite as natural as any other part of
this supernatural yarn. While drinking punch, Cervoni tells Napoleon
his business, and urges him to go to Toulon and take charge of the
artillery. And this ardently ambitious young man, who is yearning
for an opening, is represented as at first declining the brilliant
opportunity Cervoni thrusts upon him! But at length punch, persuasion,
and sober second thought soften Napoleon, and he consents to go.
All this you may read in some of the most recent works of the diggers
and delvers; and you may believe it, if you are very, very credulous.
* * * * *
The arrival on the scene of an educated artillery officer like
Napoleon, one whose handling of his guns at Avignon had achieved
notable success, was a welcome event. His friends, the Commissioners,
took him over the field of operations to show him the placing and
serving of the batteries. He was astonished at the crude manner in
which all the arrangements had been made, and pointed out the errors
to the Commissioners. First of all, the batteries were not in range of
the enemy; the balls fell into the sea, far short of the mark. “Let us
try a proof-shot,” said Napoleon; and luckily he used a technical term,
_coup d’épreuve_. Favorably impressed with this scientific method of
expression, the Commissioners and Carteaux consented. The proof-shot
was fired, and the ball fell harmlessly into the sea, less than
halfway to its mark. “Damn the aristocrats!” said Carteaux; “they have
spoilt our powder.”
But the Commissioners had lost faith in Carteaux’ management of the
artillery; they determined to put Napoleon in charge of it.
On the 29th of September, Gasparin and Salicetti recommended his
promotion to the rank of major, and on the next day they reported that
Bonaparte was “the only artillery captain able to grasp the operations.”
From the first Napoleon threw his whole heart into his work. He never
seemed to sleep or to rest. He never left his batteries. If exhausted,
he wrapped himself in his cloak, and lay down on the ground beside the
guns.
From Lyons, Grenoble, Briançon, he requisitioned additional material.
From the army of Italy he got more cannon. From Marseilles he took
horses and workmen, to make gabions, hurdles, and fascines. Eight
bronze guns he took from Martigues; timbers from La Seyne; horses from
Nice, Valence, and Montpellier. At the ravine called Ollioules he
established an arsenal with forty workmen, blacksmiths, wheelwrights,
carpenters, all busy making those things the army needed; also a
gunsmith’s shop for the repair of muskets; and he took steps to
reëstablish the Dardennes gun foundry.
Thus he based his hopes of success upon _work_, intense, well-directed,
comprehensive work. All possible precautions were taken, all
possible preparations made, every energy bent to bring to bear those
means necessary to the end. Nothing was left to chance, good luck,
providence, or inspiration. Cold calculation governed all, tireless
labor provided all, colossal driving force moved it all. In ever so
short a time, Napoleon was felt to be “the soul of the siege.” In
November he was made acting commander of the artillery. Carteaux had
been dismissed, and to the painter succeeded a doctor named Doppet.
The physician had sense enough to soon see that an easier task than
the taking of Toulon would be an agreeable change, and he asked to be
sent elsewhere. To him succeeded Dugommier, an excellent soldier of
the old school. Dutiel, official commander of the artillery, at length
arrived, and he was so well pleased with Napoleon’s work that he did
not interfere.
The Committee of Public Safety, sitting in Paris, had sent a plan of
operations, the main idea of which was a complete investment of the
town. This would have required sixty thousand troops, whereas Dugommier
had but twenty-five thousand. But he dared not disobey the terrible
Committee. Between the loss of Toulon and his own head he wavered
painfully. A council of war met. The Commissioners of the Convention
were present, among them Barras, Ricord, and Fréron. Officers of the
army thought the committee plan bad, but hesitated to say so in plain
words. One, and the youngest, spoke out; it was Napoleon. He pointed to
the map lying unrolled on the table, explained that Toulon’s defence
depended on the British fleet, that the fleet could not stay if a land
battery commanded the harbor, and that by seizing a certain point, the
French would have complete mastery of the situation. On that point on
the map he put his finger, saying, “There is Toulon.”
He put his plan in writing, and it was sent to the war office in Paris.
A second council of war adopted his views, and ordered him to put them
into execution.
The English had realized the importance of the strategic point named by
Napoleon, and they had already fortified it. The redoubt was known as
Fort Mulgrave; also as Little Gibraltar.
On the 30th of November the English made a desperate attempt to storm
Napoleon’s works. They were repulsed, and their leader, General O’Hara,
was taken prisoner. At St. Helena Napoleon said that he himself had
seized the wounded Englishman and drawn him within the French lines.
This statement appears to have been one of his fancy sketches. Others
say that General O’Hara was taken by four obscure privates of Suchet’s
battalion.
A cannoneer having been killed by his side, Napoleon seized the rammer
and repeatedly charged the gun. The dead man had had the itch; Napoleon
caught it, and was not cured until he became consul.
Constantly in the thick of the fighting, he got a bayonet thrust in the
thigh. He fell into the arms of Colonel Muiron, who bore him to a place
of safety. Napoleon showed the scar to O’Meara at St. Helena.
It was at Toulon that fame first took up that young dare-devil, Junot,
whom Napoleon afterward spoiled by lifting him too high.
Supping with some brother officers near the batteries, a shell from
the enemy fell into the tent, and was about to burst, when Junot rose,
glass in hand, and exclaimed, “I drink to those who are about to die!”
The shell burst, one poor fellow was killed, and Junot drank, “To the
memory of a hero!”
Some days after this incident Junot volunteered to make for Napoleon a
very dangerous reconnoissance. “Go in civilian’s dress; your uniform
will expose you to too much risk.”--“No,” replied Junot, “I will
not shrink from the chance of being shot like a soldier; but I will
not risk being hanged like a spy.” The reconnoissance made, Junot
came to Napoleon to report. “Put it in writing,” said Napoleon; and
Junot, using the parapet of the battery as a desk, began to write. As
he finished the first page, a shot meant for him struck the parapet,
covering him and the paper with earth. “Polite of these English,” he
cried, laughing, “to send me some sand just when I wanted it.” Before
very long Napoleon was a general, and Junot was his aide-de-camp.
On December 17 everything was ready for the grand assault on the
English works. Between midnight and day, and while a rainstorm was
raging, the forts, which for twenty-four hours had been bombarded by
five batteries, were attacked by the French. Repulsed at the first
onset, Dugommier’s nerve failed him, and he cried, “I am a lost man,”
thinking of that terrible committee in Paris which would cut off his
head. Fresh troops were hurried up, the attack renewed, and Little
Gibraltar taken. Thus Napoleon’s first great military success was won
in a fair square fight with the English.
[Illustration: LETTER FROM BONAPARTE, COMMANDANT OF ARTILLERY, TO
GENERAL CARTEAUX.]
Assaults on other points in the line of defence had also been made, and
had succeeded; and Toulon was at the mercy of Napoleon’s batteries. The
night that followed was one of the most frightful in the annals of war.
The English fleet was no longer safe in the harbor, and was preparing
to sail away. Toulon was frantic with terror. The royalists, the
Girondins, the refugees from Lyons and Marseilles, rushed from their
homes, crowded the quays, making every effort to reach the English
ships. The Jacobins of the town, now that their turn had come, made the
most of it, and pursued the royalists, committing every outrage which
hate and lust could prompt. Prisoners broke loose, to rob, to murder,
to ravish. The town became a pandemonium. Fathers, mothers, children,
rushed wildly for safety to the quays, screaming with terror, and
plunging into the boats in the maddest disorder. And all this while the
guns, the terrible guns of Napoleon, were playing on the harbor and
on the town, the balls crashing through dwellings, or cutting lanes
through the shrieking fugitives on the quays, or sinking the boats
which were carrying the wretched outcasts away. The English set fire
to the arsenal, dockyard, and such ships as could not be carried off,
and the glare shone far and wide over the ghastly tumult. Intensifying
the horror of this hideous night came the deafening explosion of the
magazine ships, and the rain of the fragments they scattered over all
the surrounding water.
Some fourteen thousand of the inhabitants of Toulon fled with the
English; some other thousands must have perished in the bombardment
and in the butcheries of the days that followed. Toulon’s baseness had
aroused the ire, the diabolism of the Revolution, and the vilest men of
all her ravening pack were sent to wreak revenge. There was Barras, the
renegade noble; Fréron, the Marat in ferocity without Marat’s honesty
or capacity; Fouché, the renegade priest. And the other Commissioners
were almost as ferocious; while from the Convention itself came the
voice of Barère demanding the total destruction of Toulon. Great
was the sin of the doomed city; ghastly was its punishment. Almost
indiscriminately people were herded and mown down with musketry.
On one of the days which ensued, Fouché wrote to his friend, Collot
d’Herbois: “We have sent to-day 213 rebels to hell fire. Tears of joy
run down my cheeks and flood my soul.” Royalist writers do not fail
to remind the reader that this miscreant, Fouché, became minister of
police to Napoleon. They omit the statement that he was used by Louis
XVIII. in the same capacity.
Napoleon exerted himself to put a stop to these atrocities, but he
was as yet without political influence, and he could do nothing. Some
unfortunates he rescued from his own soldiers, and secretly sent away.
He was forced to witness the execution of one old man of eighty-four,
whose crime was that he was a millionnaire. “When I saw this,” said
Napoleon afterward, “it seemed to me that the end of the world had
come.”
In his spiteful _Memoirs_, Barras labors hard to draw a repulsive
portrait of the Napoleon of Toulon. The young officer is represented
as bustling about with a bundle of his _Supper of Beaucaire_, handing
copies right and left to officers and men. He is made to profess rank
Jacobinism, and to allude to Robespierre and Marat as “my saints.”
He pays servile court to the wife of Commissioner Ricord, and to the
Convention potentates generally. Of course he was on his knees to
Barras. That lofty magnate stoops low enough to mention, as a matter
detrimental to Napoleon, that his uniform was worn out and dirty--as
if a tattered and soiled uniform at the close of such a siege, such
herculean work, could have been anything but a badge of honor to
the soldier who wore it! Dugommier’s official report on the taking
of Toulon contains no mention of Napoleon by name, but he uses this
expression, “The fire from our batteries, directed with the greatest
talent,” etc. This allusion could have been to no other than to
Napoleon.
To the minister of war Duteil wrote on December 19, 1793, “I cannot
find words to describe the merit of Bonaparte; a considerable amount
of science, just as much intelligence, and too much bravery, such is a
feeble outline of the virtues of that rare officer.”
The Commissioners themselves, whose names crowded the name of Bonaparte
out of the official report, recognized his services by at once
nominating him to the post of general of brigade.
* * * * *
English authors dwell extensively on Napoleon’s hatred of their
country: do they never recall the origin of the feeling? Had not
England deceived old Paoli, crushed the opposite faction, and treated
Corsica as a conquest? Was it not the English faction which had sacked
the home, confiscated the property, and sought the lives of the
Bonaparte family? Had not England been striving to force the Bourbons
back on France; had it not seized the French ships at Toulon “in
trust”; had it not then given to the flames not only the ships, but
dockyards, arsenals, and magazines? Did not William Pitt, in the King’s
speech of 1794, include among the subjects of congratulation “the
circumstances attending the evacuation of Toulon”? Had not England,
in 1793, bargained with Austria to despoil France and divide the
booty: Austria to have Alsace and Lorraine; and England to have the
foreign settlements and colonies of France? “His Majesty” (of England)
“has an interest in seeing the house of Austria strengthen itself by
acquisitions on the French frontier; the Emperor” (of Austria) “must
see with pleasure the relative increase of the naval and commercial
resources of this country” (England) “over those of France.”
Historians have long said that England’s war with France was forced
upon her, that it was defensive. Does the language just quoted
(official despatches) sound like the terms of self-defence? It is the
language of aggression, of unscrupulous conquest; and the spirit which
dictated this bargain between two powers to despoil a third is the
same which gave life to each successive combination against the French
Republic and the Napoleonic Empire.
Like master, like man: the British ministry having adopted the policy
of blind and rancorous hostility in dealing with France, the same
fury of hatred pervaded the entire public service. Edmund Burke and
William Pitt inoculated the whole nation. “Young gentlemen,” said
Nelson to his midshipmen, “among the things you must constantly bear
in mind is to hate a Frenchman as you would the devil.” At another
time, the same illustrious Englishman declared, “I hate all Frenchmen;
they are equally the object of my detestation, whether royalists or
republicans.” Writing to the Duke of Clarence, he stated: “To serve my
king and to destroy the French, I consider the great order of all....
Down, down with the damned French villains! My blood boils at the name
of Frenchman!” At Naples he exclaimed, “Down, down with the French! is
my constant prayer.”
I quote Nelson simply because he was a controlling factor in these
wars, a representative Englishman, a man in full touch with the policy,
purpose, and passion of his government.
Consider England’s bargain with Austria; consider her bribes to Prussia
to continue the struggle when even Austria had withdrawn; consider the
animus of such leading actors as Burke and Nelson--is it any wonder
that Napoleon regarded Great Britain as the one irreconcilable and
mortal enemy of France?
And what was England’s grievance? Her rival across the Channel had
overturned a throne, slain a king, and proclaimed principles which were
at war with established tyranny. But had England never upset a throne,
slain a king, and proclaimed a republic?
Was it any matter of rightful concern to Great Britain that France had
cast out the Bourbons, and resorted to self-government? Did England, by
any law human or divine, have the right to impose her own will upon a
sister state? Was she right in seizing and destroying the French fleet
at Toulon, which she had accepted as a trust? Unless all these can be
answered Yes, Napoleon deserves no deep damnation for his hatred of
Great Britain.