The Mediterranean coast of France being almost at the mercy of the
English fleet, Napoleon was sent, immediately after the fall of Toulon,
to inspect the defences and put them into proper condition. He threw
into this task the same activity and thoroughness which had marked him
at Toulon, and in a short while the coast and the coasting trade were
secure from attack.
His duties carried him to Marseilles, where he found that a fortress
necessary to the defence of the harbor and town had been dismantled by
the patriots, who detested it as a local Bastille. Napoleon advised
that the fortifications be restored “so as to command the town.” This
raised a storm. The Marseilles Jacobins denounced Bonaparte to the
Convention. By that body he was summoned to appear at its bar. He had
no inclination to take such a risk, and hastened to Toulon, where he
put himself under the protection of Salicetti and Augustin Robespierre.
At their instance he wrote to the Paris authorities an exculpatory
letter, and the storm blew over.
In March, 1794, Napoleon returned to headquarters at Nice. By his
influence over the Commissioners of the Convention, young Robespierre
in particular, he became the dominant spirit of the army of Italy.
General Dumerbion, commander-in-chief, a capable officer but too old,
had been wasting time, or the strength of his troops, for several
months, in attacks upon the enemy (Piedmontese and Austrians) who were
intrenched at the foot of the maritime Alps. Despondent after repeated
failures, officers and men were contenting themselves with holding
their positions, and conducting such operations as were consistent with
extreme prudence. Napoleon had no sooner made a careful study of the
positions of the opposing forces, than he drew up a plan of campaign,
and submitted it to the commander-in-chief and the Commissioners. In
a council of war it was discussed and approved. Early in April, the
army was in motion; the position of the enemy was to be turned. Masséna
led the corps which was to do what fighting was necessary. The enemy
was beaten in two engagements, and Piedmont entered by the victorious
French, who then turned back toward the Alps. The communications
between Piedmont and the fortified camps of the enemy being thus
endangered, they abandoned them without a fight; and thus in a campaign
of a month the French won command of the whole range of the Alps, which
had so long resisted every attack in front.
At this time the Bonaparte family was living in Nice, and Napoleon,
during the months of May and June, 1794, spent much of his time with
his mother and sisters. Uncle Fesch, Joseph, and Lucien were in good
positions; and Napoleon secured for Louis, by the telling of some
falsehoods and the use of the influence of Salicetti, the rank of
lieutenant in the army. Louis was represented as having served as a
volunteer at Toulon, and as having been wounded there. As a matter of
fact, Louis had visited Napoleon during the siege, but had not served,
and had not been wounded.
Joseph Bonaparte was made war commissioner of the first class.
Napoleon, in securing him the place, represented Joseph as being the
holder of the commission of lieutenant colonel of Corsican volunteers,
the commission which Napoleon had won for himself at such a cost in his
native land. The fraud was discovered later on; but, for the present,
his brother Joseph was snugly berthed.
In July, 1794, Napoleon went to Genoa on a twofold mission. That
republic, which was wholly controlled by a few rich families, had been
giving aid and comfort to the enemies of republican France. The English
and the Austrians had been allowed to violate Genoa’s neutrality.
Also, the English had been permitted to set up an establishment for
the manufacture of counterfeit assignats--that peculiar policy of the
British ministry which had been used with good effect against the
revolted American colonies. Besides, there was a complaint that certain
stores bought from Genoa, and paid for, had not been delivered to the
French.
Ostensibly, therefore, Napoleon’s mission was about the stores which
Genoa withheld, and about the neutrality which she was allowing to
be violated. But within this purpose lay another. Genoa, and her
neutrality was an obstacle to French military plans; she was weak, and
the temptation to seize upon her was strong. Napoleon while at Genoa
was to look about him with the keen eyes of a military expert, and to
form an opinion as to the ease with which the little republic could be
made the victim of a sudden spring.
This mission, which bears an unpleasant resemblance to that of a spy,
was undertaken at the instance of the younger Robespierre. Salicetti
and Albitte had not been consulted, and knew nothing of the secret
instructions given to Napoleon. Suddenly recalled to Paris by his
brother, Robespierre wished to take with him the young officer whose
“transcendent merit” he had applauded. With Napoleon to command the
Paris troops, instead of Henriot, the Robespierres might confidently
expect victory in the crisis they saw coming. But it was a part of
Napoleon’s “transcendent merit” to possess excellent judgment, and he
declined to go to Paris. So the friends parted: the one to visit little
Genoa and bully its feeble Doge, the other to return to the raging
capital and to meet sudden death there in generous devotion to his
brother.
Napoleon reached Nice again, July 21, 1794, after his successful
mission to Genoa, and in a few days later came the crash. The
Robespierres were overthrown, and the Bonapartes, classed with that
faction, fell with it. Napoleon was put under arrest; his brothers
thrown out of employment. For some reason Salicetti and Albitte,
previously so friendly to Napoleon, had turned upon him, had denounced
him to the Convention, and had signed the order of arrest--an order
almost equivalent to a death warrant.
It was a stunning, unexpected blow. Madame Junot, in her _Memoirs_,
hints that the traditional woman was at the bottom of it; that the
younger man, Napoleon, had found favor in the eyes of a lady who
looked coldly upon the suit of Salicetti. But this explanation does
not explain the hostility of other commissioners, for members of two
separate commissioners signed against Napoleon. Surely he had not cut
them all off from the smiles of their ladies. No; it would seem that
Napoleon owed his tumble to the fact that he was standing upon the
Robespierre scaffolding when it fell. He merely fell with it.
He was known as a Robespierre man, and to a very great extent he
was. He had been put under heavy obligations by the younger brother
whom he liked, and he did not believe that the elder was at heart
a bad man. He had seen private letters which the elder brother had
written to the younger, in which letters the crimes of the more rabid
and corrupt revolutionists were deplored, and the necessity for
moderation and purity expressed. Among those who befouled the names
of the Robespierres, either then or afterward, Napoleon is not to be
found. He understood well enough that the convulsion of July 27, 1794
(Thermidor), was the work of a gang of scoundrels (Barras, Fouché,
Carrier, Tallien, Billaud, Collot), who took advantage of circumstances
to pull down a man who had threatened to punish them for their crimes.
Napoleon believed then and afterward that Robespierre had been a
scapegoat, and that he had not been responsible for the awful days of
the Terror in June and July 1794. The manly constancy with which he
always clung to his own estimates of men and events is shown by the
way in which he spoke well of the Robespierre brothers when all others
damned them, and by his granting Charlotte Robespierre a pension at a
time when the act could not have been one of policy. Marvellous was
the complexity of Napoleon’s character; but like a thread of gold runs
through all the tangled warp and woof of his life the splendid loyalty
with which he remembered those who had ever been kind to him. Not once
did he ever pursue a foe and take revenge so far as I can discover;
not once did he ever fail to reward a friend, so far as the record is
known.
Napoleon’s arrest created such indignation among the young officers of
the army of Italy that a scheme for his forcible release was broached.
Junot, Marmont, and other ardent friends were to take him out of prison
and flee with him into Genoese territory. Napoleon would not hear of
it. “Do nothing,” he wrote Junot. “You would only compromise me.”
Junot the hot-headed, Junot the tender-hearted, was beside himself
with grief; and he wept like a child as he told the bad news to Madame
Letitia.
But Napoleon himself was not idle. He knew that to be sent to Paris
for trial at that time was almost like going to the scaffold, and he
made his appeal directly to the Commissioners. By name he addressed
Salicetti and Albitte, in words manly, bold, and passionate, protesting
against the wrong done him, demanding that they investigate the case,
and appealing to his past record and services for proofs of his
republican loyalty. This protest had its effect. Salicetti himself
examined Napoleon’s papers, and found nothing against him. The
suspicious trip to Genoa was no longer suspicious, for his official
instructions for that trip were found.
After an imprisonment of about two weeks, he was released, but his
employment was gone. He still held his rank in the army, but he was
not on duty. It was only as an adviser and spectator that he remained,
and, at the request of Dumerbion, furnished a plan of campaign, which
was successful to the extent that Dumerbion pushed it. He did not push
it far enough to gain any very solid advantages, much to Napoleon’s
disgust.
It was at this time that the incident occurred which he related at
St. Helena. He was taking a stroll with the wife of the influential
Commissioner Turreau, when it occurred to him to divert and interest
her by giving her an illustration of what war was like. Accordingly he
gave orders to a French outpost to attack the Austrian pickets. It was
a mere whim; the attack could not lead to anything. It was done merely
to entertain a lady friend. The soldiers could but obey orders. The
attack was made and resisted. There was a little battle, and there were
soldiers wounded, there were soldiers killed. And the entertainment
which the lady got out of it was the sole other result of the attack.
It was Napoleon who told this story on himself: he declared that he had
never ceased to regret the occurrence.
Corsican affairs now claimed attention for a moment in the counsels of
the government at Paris (September, 1794). For after the Bonapartes had
fled the island, Paoli had called the English in. The old hero intended
that there should be a protectorate, thought that England would be
satisfied with an arrangement of that sort, and that he, Paoli, would
be left in control as viceroy or something of the kind. But the English
had no idea of putting forth their strength for any such halfway
purpose. They intended that Corsica should belong to England, and that
an English governor should rule it. They intrigued with Paoli’s stanch
friend, Pozzo di Borgo, and Pozzo became a convert to the English
policy. King George III. of England wrote Paoli a polite and pressing
invitation to visit England, and Paoli accepted.
England bombarded and took the remaining French strongholds (February,
1794), went into quiet and peaceable possession of the island, and
appointed Sir Gilbert Elliott, governor. Of course Paoli’s stanch
friend, Pozzo di Borgo, was not forgotten; he was made president of the
state council under Elliott.
When commissioners from Paris came to the headquarters of the army of
Italy, instructed to suspend the operations of the army and to prepare
for an expedition against Corsica, Napoleon saw an opportunity to get
back into active service again. He sought and obtained, perhaps by the
favor of Salicetti, command of the artillery for the expedition. Great
preparations were made at Toulon to organize the forces and to equip
the fleet. In this work Napoleon was intensely engaged for several
months. His mother and the younger children took up their residence in
pleasant quarters near Antibes, and he was able to enjoy the luxury
of the home circle while getting ready to drive the English out of
Corsica. In due time the French fleet set sail; in due time it did what
French fleets have usually done--failed dismally. The English were on
the alert, swooped down, and captured two French vessels. The others
ran to shelter under the guns of shore forts. The conquest of Corsica
was postponed.