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'état, c'est moi." That was a bold
claim, even for an age attuned to the whims of autocrats: but this of
the young Corsican is even more daring, for he thereby equated himself
with a movement which claimed to be wide as humanity and infinite as
truth. And yet when he spoke these words, they were not scouted as
presumptuous folly: to most Frenchmen they seemed sober truth and
practical good sense. How came it, one asks in wonder, that after the
short space of fifteen years a world-wide movement depended on a
single life, that the infinitudes of 1789 lived on only in the form,
and by the pleasure, of the First Consul? Here surely is a political
incarnation unparalleled in the whole course of human history. The
riddle cannot be solved by history alone. It belongs in part to the
domain of psychology, when that science shall undertake the study, not
merely of man as a unit, but of the aspirations, moods, and whims of
communities and nations. Meanwhile it will be our far humbler task to
strive to point out the relation of Buonaparte to the Revolution, and
to show how the mighty force of his will dragged it to earth.
The first questions that confront us are obviously these. Were the
lofty aims and aspirations of the Revolution attainable? And, if so,
did the men of 1789 follow them by practical methods? To the former of
these questions the present chapter will, in part at least, serve as
an answer. On the latter part of the problem the events described in
later chapters will throw some light: in them we shall see that the
great popular upheaval let loose mighty forces that bore Buonaparte on
to fortune.
Here we may notice that the Revolution was not a simple and therefore
solid movement. It was complex and contained the seeds of discord
which lurk in many-sided and militant creeds. The theories of its
intellectual champions were as diverse as the motives which spurred on
their followers to the attack on the outworn abuses of the age.
Discontent and faith were the ultimate motive powers of the
Revolution. Faith prepared the Revolution and discontent accomplished
it. Idealists who, in varied planes of thought, preached the doctrine
of human perfectibility, succeeded in slowly permeating the dull
toiling masses of France with hope. Omitting here any notice of
philosophic speculation as such, we may briefly notice the teachings
of three writers whose influence on revolutionary politics was to be
definite and practical. These were Montesquieu, Voltaire, and
Rousseau. The first was by no means a revolutionist, for he decided in
favour of a mixed form of government, like that of England, which
guaranteed the State against the dangers of autocracy, oligarchy, and
mob-rule. Only by a ricochet did he assail the French monarchy. But he
re-awakened critical inquiry; and any inquiry was certain to sap the
base of the _ancien régime_ in France. Montesquieu's teaching inspired
the group of moderate reformers who in 1789 desired to re-fashion the
institutions of France on the model of those of England. But popular
sentiment speedily swept past these Anglophils towards the more
attractive aims set forth by Voltaire.
This keen thinker subjected the privileged classes, especially the
titled clergy, to a searching fire of philosophic bombs and barbed
witticisms. Never was there a more dazzling succession of literary
triumphs over a tottering system. The satirized classes winced and
laughed, and the intellect of France was conquered, for the
Revolution. Thenceforth it was impossible that peasants who were
nominally free should toil to satisfy the exacting needs of the
State, and to support the brilliant bevy of nobles who flitted gaily
round the monarch at Versailles. The young King Louis XVI., it is
true, carried through several reforms, but he had not enough strength
of will to abolish the absurd immunities from taxation which freed the
nobles and titled clergy from the burdens of the State. Thus, down to
1789, the middle classes and peasants bore nearly all the weight of
taxation, while the peasants were also encumbered by feudal dues and
tolls. These were the crying grievances which united in a solid
phalanx both thinkers and practical men, and thereby gave an immense
impetus to the levelling doctrines of Rousseau.
Two only of his political teachings concern us here, namely, social
equality and the unquestioned supremacy of the State; for to these
dogmas, when they seemed doomed to political bankruptcy, Napoleon
Buonaparte was to act as residuary legatee. According to Rousseau,
society and government originated in a social contract, whereby all
members of the community have equal rights. It matters not that the
spirit of the contract may have evaporated amidst the miasma of
luxury. That is a violation of civil society; and members are
justified in reverting at once to the primitive ideal. If the
existence of the body politic be endangered, force may be used:
"Whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be constrained to do
so by the whole body; which means nothing else than that he shall be
forced to be free." Equally plausible and dangerous was his teaching
as to the indivisibility of the general will. Deriving every public
power from his social contract, he finds it easy to prove that the
sovereign power, vested in all the citizens, must be incorruptible,
inalienable, unrepresentable, indivisible, and indestructible.
Englishmen may now find it difficult to understand the enthusiasm
called forth by this quintessence of negations; but to Frenchman
recently escaped from the age of privilege and warring against the
coalition of kings, the cry of the Republic one and indivisible was a
trumpet call to death or victory. Any shifts, even that of a
dictatorship, were to be borne, provided that social equality could be
saved. As republican Rome had saved her early liberties by intrusting
unlimited powers to a temporary dictator, so, claimed Rousseau, a
young commonwealth must by a similar device consult Nature's first law
of self-preservation. The dictator saves liberty by temporarily
abrogating it: by momentary gagging of the legislative power he
renders it truly vocal.
The events of the French Revolution form a tragic commentary on these
theories. In the first stage of that great movement we see the
followers of Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau marching in an
undivided host against the ramparts of privilege. The walls of the
Bastille fall down even at the blast of their trumpets. Odious feudal
privileges disappear in a single sitting of the National Assembly; and
the _Parlements_, or supreme law courts of the provinces, are swept
away. The old provinces themselves are abolished, and at the beginning
of 1790 France gains social and political unity by her new system of
Departments, which grants full freedom of action in local affairs,
though in all national concerns it binds France closely to the new
popular government at Paris. But discords soon begin to divide the
reformers: hatred of clerical privilege and the desire to fill the
empty coffers of the State dictate the first acts of spoliation.
Tithes are abolished: the lands of the Church are confiscated to the
service of the State; monastic orders are suppressed; and the
Government undertakes to pay the stipends of bishops and priests.
Furthermore, their subjection to the State is definitely secured by
the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (July, 1790) which invalidates
their allegiance to the Pope. Most of the clergy refuse: these are
termed non-jurors or orthodox priests, while their more complaisant
colleagues are known as constitutional priests. Hence arises a serious
schism in the Church, which distracts the religious life of the land,
and separates the friends of liberty from the champions of the
rigorous equality preached by Rousseau.
The new constitution of 1791 was also a source of discord. In its
jealousy of the royal authority, the National Assembly seized very
many of the executive functions of government. The results were
disastrous. Laws remained without force, taxes went uncollected, the
army was distracted by mutinies, and the monarchy sank slowly into the
gulf of bankruptcy and anarchy. Thus, in the course of three years,
the revolutionists goaded the clergy to desperation, they were about
to overthrow the monarchy, every month was proving their local
self-government to be unworkable, and they themselves split into
factions that plunged France into war and drenched her soil by
organized massacres.
* * * * *
We know very little about the impression made on the young Buonaparte
by the first events of the Revolution. His note-book seems even to
show that he regarded them as an inconvenient interference with his
plans for Corsica. But gradually the Revolution excites his interest.
In September, 1789, we find him on furlough in Corsica sharing the
hopes of the islanders that their representatives in the French
National Assembly will obtain the boon of independence. He exhorts
his compatriots to favour the democratic cause, which promises a
speedy deliverance from official abuses. He urges them to don the new
tricolour cockade, symbol of Parisian triumph over the old monarchy;
to form a club; above all, to organize a National Guard. The young
officer knew that military power was passing from the royal army, now
honeycombed with discontent, to the National Guard. Here surely was
Corsica's means of salvation. But the French governor of Corsica
intervenes. The club is closed, and the National Guard is dispersed.
Thereupon Buonaparte launches a vigorous protest against the tyranny
of the governor and appeals to the National Assembly of France for
some guarantee of civil liberty. His name is at the head of this
petition, a sufficiently daring step for a junior lieutenant on
furlough. But his patriotism and audacity carry him still further. He
journeys to Bastia, the official capital of his island, and is
concerned in an affray between the populace and the royal troops
(November 5th, 1789). The French authorities, fortunately for him, are
nearly powerless: he is merely requested to return to Ajaccio; and
there he organizes anew the civic force, and sets the dissident
islanders an example of good discipline by mounting guard outside the
house of a personal opponent.
Other events now transpired which began to assuage his opposition to
France. Thanks to the eloquent efforts of Mirabeau, the Corsican
patriots who had remained in exile since 1768 were allowed to return
and enjoy the full rights of citizenship. Little could the friends of
liberty at Paris, or even the statesman himself, have foreseen all the
consequences of this action: it softened the feelings of many
Corsicans towards their conquerors; above all, it caused the heart of
Napoleon Buonaparte for the first time to throb in accord with that of
the French nation. His feelings towards Paoli also began to cool. The
conduct of this illustrious exile exposed him to the charge of
ingratitude towards France. The decree of the French National
Assembly, which restored him to Corsican citizenship, was graced by
acts of courtesy such as the generous French nature can so winningly
dispense. Louis XVI. and the National Assembly warmly greeted him, and
recognized him as head of the National Guard of the island. Yet,
amidst all the congratulations, Paoli saw the approach of anarchy, and
behaved with some reserve. Outwardly, however, concord seemed to be
assured, when on July 14th, 1790, he landed in Corsica; but the hatred
long nursed by the mountaineers and fisherfolk against France was not
to be exorcised by a few demonstrations. In truth, the island was
deeply agitated. The priests were rousing the people against the newly
decreed Civil Constitution of the Clergy; and one of these
disturbances endangered the life of Napoleon himself. He and his
brother Joseph chanced to pass by when one of the processions of
priests and devotees was exciting the pity and indignation of the
townsfolk. The two brothers, who were now well known as partisans of
the Revolution, were threatened with violence, and were saved only by
their own firm demeanour and the intervention of peacemakers.
Then again, the concession of local self-government to the island, as
one of the Departments of France, revealed unexpected difficulties.
Bastia and Ajaccio struggled hard for the honour of being the official
capital. Paoli favoured the claims of Bastia, thereby annoying the
champions of Ajaccio, among whom the Buonapartes were prominent. The
schism was widened by the dictatorial tone of Paoli, a demeanour which
ill became the chief of a civic force. In fact, it soon became
apparent that Corsica was too small a sphere for natures so able and
masterful as those of Paoli and Napoleon Buonaparte.
The first meeting of these two men must have been a scene of deep
interest. It was on the fatal field of Ponte Nuovo. Napoleon doubtless
came there in the spirit of true hero-worship. But hero-worship which
can stand the strain of actual converse is rare indeed, especially
when the expectant devotee is endowed with keen insight and habits of
trenchant expression. One phrase has come down to us as a result of
the interview; but this phrase contains a volume of meaning. After
Paoli had explained the disposition of his troops against the French
at Ponte Nuovo, Buonaparte drily remarked to his brother Joseph, "The
result of these dispositions was what was inevitable." [13]
For the present, Buonaparte and other Corsican democrats were closely
concerned with the delinquencies of the Comte de Buttafuoco, the
deputy for the twelve nobles of the island to the National Assembly of
France. In a letter written on January 23rd, 1791, Buonaparte
overwhelms this man with a torrent of invective.--He it was who had
betrayed his country to France in 1768. Self-interest and that alone
prompted his action then, and always. French rule was a cloak for his
design of subjecting Corsica to "the absurd feudal _régime_" of the
barons. In his selfish royalism he had protested against the new
French constitution as being unsuited to Corsica, "though it was
exactly the same as that which brought us so much good and was wrested
from us only amidst streams of blood."--The letter is remarkable for
the southern intensity of its passion, and for a certain hardening of
tone towards Paoli. Buonaparte writes of Paoli as having been ever
"surrounded by enthusiasts, and as failing to understand in a man any
other passion than fanaticism for liberty and independence," and as
duped by Buttafuoco in 1768.[14] The phrase has an obvious reference
to the Paoli of 1791, surrounded by men who had shared his long exile
and regarded the English constitution as their model. Buonaparte, on
the contrary, is the accredited champion of French democracy, his
furious epistle being printed by the Jacobin Club of Ajaccio.
After firing off this tirade Buonaparte returned to his regiment at
Auxonne (February, 1791). It was high time; for his furlough, though
prolonged on the plea of ill-health, had expired in the preceding
October, and he was therefore liable to six months' imprisonment. But
the young officer rightly gauged the weakness of the moribund
monarchy; and the officers of his almost mutinous regiment were glad
to get him back on any terms. Everywhere in his journey through
Provence and Dauphiné, Buonaparte saw the triumph of revolutionary
principles. He notes that the peasants are to a man for the
Revolution; so are the rank and file of the regiment. The officers
are aristocrats, along with three-fourths of those who belong to "good
society": so are all the women, for "Liberty is fairer than they, and
eclipses them." The Revolution was evidently gaining completer hold
over his mind and was somewhat blurring his insular sentiments, when a
rebuff from Paoli further weakened his ties to Corsica. Buonaparte had
dedicated to him his work on Corsica, and had sent him the manuscript
for his approval. After keeping it an unconscionable time, the old man
now coldly replied that he did not desire the honour of Buonaparte's
panegyric, though he thanked him heartily for it; that the
consciousness of having done his duty sufficed for him in his old age;
and, for the rest, history should not be written in youth. A further
request from Joseph Buonaparte for the return of the slighted
manuscript brought the answer that he, Paoli, had no time to search
his papers. After this, how could hero-worship subsist?
The four months spent by Buonaparte at Auxonne were, indeed, a time of
disappointment and hardship. Out of his slender funds he paid for the
education of his younger brother, Louis, who shared his otherwise
desolate lodging. A room almost bare but for a curtainless bed, a
table heaped with books and papers, and two chairs--such were the
surroundings of the lieutenant in the spring of 1791. He lived on
bread that he might rear his brother for the army, and that he might
buy books, overjoyed when his savings mounted to the price of some
coveted volume.
Perhaps the depressing conditions of his life at Auxonne may account
for the acrid tone of an essay which he there wrote in competition for
a prize offered by the Academy of Lyons on the subject--"What truths
and sentiments ought to be inculcated to men for their happiness." It
was unsuccessful; and modern readers will agree with the verdict of
one of the judges that it was incongruous in arrangement and of a bad
and ragged style. The thoughts are set forth in jerky, vehement
clauses; and, in place of the _sensibilité_ of some of his earlier
effusions, we feel here the icy breath of materialism. He regards an
ideal human society as a geometrical structure based on certain
well-defined postulates. All men ought to be able to satisfy certain
elementary needs of their nature; but all that is beyond is
questionable or harmful. The ideal legislator will curtail wealth so
as to restore the wealthy to their true nature--and so forth. Of any
generous outlook on the wider possibilities of human life there is
scarcely a trace. His essay is the apotheosis of social mediocrity. By
Procrustean methods he would have forced mankind back to the dull
levels of Sparta: the opalescent glow of Athenian life was beyond his
ken. But perhaps the most curious passage is that in which he preaches
against the sin and folly of ambition. He pictures Ambition as a
figure with pallid cheeks, wild eyes, hasty step, jerky movements and
sardonic smile, for whom crimes are a sport, while lies and calumnies
are merely arguments and figures of speech. Then, in words that recall
Juvenal's satire on Hannibal's career, he continues: "What is
Alexander doing when he rushes from Thebes into Persia and thence into
India? He is ever restless, he loses his wits, he believes himself
God. What is the end of Cromwell? He governs England. But is he not
tormented by all the daggers of the furies?"--The words ring false,
even for this period of Buonaparte's life; and one can readily
understand his keen wish in later years to burn every copy of these
youthful essays. But they have nearly all survived; and the diatribe
against ambition itself supplies the feather wherewith history may
wing her shaft at the towering flight of the imperial eagle.[15]
At midsummer he is transferred, as first lieutenant, to another
regiment which happened to be quartered at Valence; but his second
sojourn there is remarkable only for signs of increasing devotion to
the revolutionary cause. In the autumn of 1791 he is again in Corsica
on furlough, and remains there until the month of May following. He
finds the island rent by strifes which it would be tedious to
describe. Suffice it to say that the breach between Paoli and the
Buonapartes gradually widened owing to the dictator's suspicion of all
who favoured the French Revolution. The young officer certainly did
nothing to close the breach. Determined to secure his own election as
lieutenant-colonel in the new Corsican National Guard, he spent much
time in gaining recruits who would vote for him. He further assured
his success by having one of the commissioners, who was acting in
Paoli's interest, carried off from his friends and detained at the
Buonapartes' house in Ajaccio--his first _coup_[16] Stranger events
were to follow. At Easter, when the people were excited by the
persecuting edicts against the clergy and the closing of a monastery,
there was sharp fighting between the populace and Buonaparte's
companies of National Guards. Originating in a petty quarrel, which
was taken up by eager partisans, it embroiled the whole of the town
and gave the ardent young Jacobin the chance of overthrowing his
enemies. His plans even extended to the seizure of the citadel, where
he tried to seduce the French regiment from its duty to officers
whom he dubbed aristocrats. The attempt was a failure. The whole
truth can, perhaps, scarcely be discerned amidst the tissue of
lies which speedily enveloped the affair; but there can be no
doubt that on the second day of strife Buonaparte's National
Guards began the fight and subsequently menaced the regular troops in
the citadel. The conflict was finally stopped by commissioners sent by
Paoli; and the volunteers were sent away from the town.
Buonaparte's position now seemed desperate. His conduct exposed him to
the hatred of most of his fellow-citizens and to the rebukes of the
French War Department. In fact, he had doubly sinned: he had actually
exceeded his furlough by four months: he was technically guilty, first
of desertion, and secondly of treason. In ordinary times he would have
been shot, but the times were extraordinary, and he rightly judged
that when a Continental war was brewing, the most daring course was
also the most prudent, namely, to go to Paris. Thither Paoli allowed
him to proceed, doubtless on the principle of giving the young madcap
a rope wherewith to hang himself.
On his arrival at Marseilles, he hears that war has been declared by
France against Austria; for the republican Ministry, which Louis XVI.
had recently been compelled to accept, believed that war against an
absolute monarch would intensify revolutionary fervour in France and
hasten the advent of the Republic. Their surmises were correct.
Buonaparte, on his arrival at Paris, witnessed the closing scenes of
the reign of Louis XVI. On June 20th he saw the crowd burst into the
Tuileries, when for some hours it insulted the king and queen. Warmly
though he had espoused the principles of the Revolution, his patrician
blood boiled at the sight of these vulgar outrages, and he exclaimed:
"Why don't they sweep off four or five hundred of that _canaille_ with
cannon? The rest would then run away fast enough." The remark is
significant. If his brain approved the Jacobin creed, his instincts
were always with monarchy. His career was to reconcile his reason with
his instincts, and to impose on weary France the curious compromise of
a revolutionary Imperialism.
On August 10th, from the window of a shop near the Tuileries, he
looked down on the strange events which dealt the _coup de grâce_ to
the dying monarchy. Again the chieftain within him sided against the
vulture rabble and with the well-meaning monarch who kept his troops
to a tame defensive. "If Louis XVI." (so wrote Buonaparte to his
brother Joseph) "had mounted his horse, the victory would have been
his--so I judge from the spirit which prevailed in the morning."
When all was over, when Louis sheathed his sword and went for
shelter to the National Assembly, when the fierce Marseillais were
slaughtering the Swiss Guards and bodyguards of the king, Buonaparte
dashed forward to save one of these unfortunates from a southern
sabre. "Southern comrade, let us save this poor wretch.--Are you
of the south?--Yes.--Well, we will save him."
Altogether, what a time of disillusionment this was to the young
officer. What depths of cruelty and obscenity it revealed in the
Parisian rabble. What folly to treat them with the Christian
forbearance shown by Louis XVI. How much more suitable was grapeshot
than the beatitudes. The lesson was stored up for future use at a
somewhat similar crisis on this very spot.
During the few days when victorious Paris left Louis with the sham
title of king, Buonaparte received his captain's commission, which was
signed for the king by Servan, the War Minister. Thus did the
revolutionary Government pass over his double breach of military
discipline at Ajaccio. The revolutionary motto, "La carrière ouverte
aux talents," was never more conspicuously illustrated than in the
facile condoning of his offences and in this rapid promotion. It was
indeed a time fraught with vast possibilities for all republican or
Jacobinical officers. Their monarchist colleagues were streaming over
the frontiers to join the Austrian and Prussian invaders. But National
Guards were enrolling by tens of thousands to drive out the Prussian
and Austrian invaders; and when Europe looked to see France fall for
ever, it saw with wonder her strength renewed as by enchantment. Later
on it learnt that that strength was the strength of Antæus, of a
peasantry that stood firmly rooted in their native soil. Organization
and good leadership alone were needed to transform these ardent masses
into the most formidable soldiery; and the brilliant military
prospects now opened up certainly knit Buonaparte's feelings more
closely with the cause of France. Thus, on September 21st, when the
new National Assembly, known as the Convention, proclaimed the
Republic, we may well believe that sincere convictions no less than
astute calculations moved him to do and dare all things for the sake
of the new democratic commonwealth.[17]
For the present, however, a family duty urges him to return to
Corsica. He obtains permission to escort home his sister Elise, and
for the third time we find him on furlough in Corsica. This laxity of
military discipline at such a crisis is explicable only on the
supposition that the revolutionary chiefs knew of his devotion to
their cause and believed that his influence in the island would render
his informal services there more valuable than his regimental duties
in the army then invading Savoy. For the word Republic, which fired
his imagination, was an offence to Paoli and to most of the
islanders; and the phrase "Republic one and indivisible," ever on the
lips of the French, seemed to promise that the island must become a
petty replica of France--France that was now dominated by the authors
of the vile September massacres. The French party in the island was
therefore rapidly declining, and Paoli was preparing to sever the
union with France. For this he has been bitterly assailed as a
traitor. But, from Paoli's point of view, the acquisition of the
island by France was a piece of rank treachery; and his allegiance to
France was technically at an end when the king was forcibly dethroned
and the Republic was proclaimed. The use of the appellation "traitor"
in such a case is merely a piece of childish abuse. It can be
justified neither by reference to law, equity, nor to the popular
sentiment of the time. Facts were soon to show that the islanders were
bitterly opposed to the party then dominant in France. This hostility
of a clannish, religious, and conservative populace against the
bloodthirsty and atheistical innovators who then lorded it over France
was not diminished by the action of some six thousand French
volunteers, the off-scourings of the southern ports, who were landed
at Ajaccio for an expedition against Sardinia. In their zeal for
Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, these _bonnets rouges_ came to
blows with the men of Ajaccio, three of whom they hanged. So fierce
was the resentment caused by this outrage that the plan of a joint
expedition for the liberation of Sardinia from monarchical tyranny had
to be modified; and Buonaparte, who was again in command of a
battalion of Corsican guards, proposed that the islanders alone should
proceed to attack the Madalena Isles.
These islands, situated between Corsica and Sardinia, have a double
interest to the historical student. One of them, Caprera, was destined
to shelter another Italian hero at the close of his career, the noble
self-denying Garibaldi: the chief island of the group was the
objective of Buonaparte's first essay in regular warfare. After some
delays the little force set sail under the command of Cesari-Colonna,
the nephew of Paoli. According to Buonaparte's own official statement
at the close of the affair, he had successfully landed his men near
the town to be assailed, and had thrown the Sardinian defences into
confusion, when a treacherous order from his chief bade him to cease
firing and return to the vessels. It has also been stated that this
retreat was the outcome of a secret understanding between Paoli and
Cesari-Colonna that the expedition should miscarry. This seems highly
probable. A mutiny on board the chief ship of the flotilla was
assigned by Cesari-Colonna as the cause of his order for a retreat;
but there are mutinies and mutinies, and this one may have been a
trick of the Paolists for thwarting Buonaparte's plan and leaving him
a prisoner. In any case, the young officer only saved himself and his
men by a hasty retreat to the boats, tumbling into the sea a mortar
and four cannon. Such was the ending to the great captain's first
military enterprise.
On his return to Ajaccio (March 3rd, 1793), Buonaparte found affairs
in utter confusion. News had recently arrived of the declaration of
war by the French Republic against England and Holland. Moreover,
Napoleon's young brother, Lucien, had secretly denounced Paoli to the
French authorities at Toulon; and three commissioners were now sent
from Paris charged with orders to disband the Corsican National
Guards, and to place the Corsican dictator under the orders of the
French general commanding the army of Italy.[18]
A game of truly Macchiavellian skill is now played. The French
commissioners, among whom the Corsican deputy, Salicetti, is by far
the most able, invite Paoli to repair to Toulon, there to concert
measures for the defence of Corsica. Paoli, seeing through the ruse
and discerning a guillotine, pleads that his age makes the journey
impossible; but with his friends he quietly prepares for resistance
and holds the citadel of Ajaccio. Meanwhile the commissioners make
friendly overtures to the old chief; in these Napoleon participates,
being ignorant of Lucien's action at Toulon. The sincerity of these
overtures may well be called in question, though Buonaparte still used
the language of affection to his former idol. However this may be, all
hope of compromise is dashed by the zealots who are in power at Paris.
On April 2nd they order the French commissioners to secure Paoli's
person, by whatever means, and bring him to the French capital. At
once a cry of indignation goes up from all parts of Corsica; and
Buonaparte draws up a declaration, vindicating Paoli's conduct and
begging the French Convention to revoke its decree.[19] Again, one
cannot but suspect that this declaration was intended mainly, if not
solely, for local consumption. In any case, it failed to cool the
resentment of the populace; and the partisans of France soon came to
blows with the Paolists.
Salicetti and Buonaparte now plan by various artifices to gain the
citadel of Ajaccio from the Paolists, but guile is three times foiled
by guile equally astute. Failing here, the young captain seeks to
communicate with the French commissioners at Bastia. He sets out
secretly, with a trusty shepherd as companion, to cross the island:
but at the village of Bocognano he is recognized and imprisoned by the
partisans of Paoli. Some of the villagers, however, retain their old
affection to the Buonaparte family, which here has an ancestral
estate, and secretly set him free. He returns to Ajaccio, only to find
an order for his arrest issued by the Corsican patriots. This time he
escapes by timely concealment in the grotto of a friend's garden; and
from the grounds of another family connection he finally glides away
in a vessel to a point of safety, whence he reaches Bastia.
Still, though a fugitive, he persists in believing that Ajaccio is
French at heart, and urges the sending of a liberating force. The
French commissioners agree, and the expedition sails--only to meet
with utter failure. Ajaccio, as one man, repels the partisans of
France; and, a gale of wind springing up, Buonaparte and his men
regain their boats with the utmost difficulty. At a place hard by, he
finds his mother, uncle, brothers and sisters. Madame Buonaparte, with
the extraordinary tenacity of will that characterized her famous son,
had wished to defend her house at Ajaccio against the hostile
populace; but, yielding to the urgent warnings of friends, finally
fled to the nearest place of safety, and left the house to the fury of
the populace, by whom it was nearly wrecked.
For a brief space Buonaparte clung to the hope of regaining Corsica
for the Republic, but now only by the aid of French troops. For the
islanders, stung by the demand of the French Convention that Paoli
should go to Paris, had rallied to the dictator's side; and the aged
chief made overtures to England for alliance. The partisans of France,
now menaced by England's naval power, were in an utterly untenable
position. Even the steel-like will of Buonaparte was bent. His career
in Corsica was at an end for the present; and with his kith and kin he
set sail for France.
The interest of the events above described lies, not in their
intrinsic importance, but in the signal proof which they afford of
Buonaparte's wondrous endowments of mind and will. In a losing cause
and in a petty sphere he displays all the qualities which, when the
omens were favourable, impelled him to the domination of a Continent.
He fights every inch of ground tenaciously; at each emergency he
evinces a truly Italian fertility of resource, gliding round obstacles
or striving to shatter them by sheer audacity, seeing through men,
cajoling them by his insinuations or overawing them by his mental
superiority, ever determined to try the fickle jade Fortune to the
very utmost, and retreating only before the inevitable. The sole
weakness discoverable in this nature, otherwise compact of strength,
is an excess of will-power over all the faculties that make for
prudence. His vivid imagination only serves to fire him with the full
assurance that he must prevail over all obstacles.
And yet, if he had now stopped to weigh well the lessons of the past,
hitherto fertile only in failures and contradictions, he must have
seen the powerlessness of his own will when in conflict with the
forces of the age; for he had now severed his connection with the
Corsican patriots, of whose cause he had only two years before been
the most passionate champion. It is evident that the schism which
finally separated Buonaparte and Paoli originated in their divergence
of views regarding the French Revolution. Paoli accepted revolutionary
principles only in so far as they promised to base freedom on a due
balance of class interests. He was a follower of Montesquieu. He
longed to see in Corsica a constitution similar to that of England or
to that of 1791 in France. That hope vanished alike for France and
Corsica after the fall of the monarchy; and towards the Jacobinical
Republic, which banished orthodox priests and guillotined the amiable
Louis, Paoli thenceforth felt naught but loathing: "We have been the
enemies of kings," he said to Joseph Buonaparte; "let us never be
their executioners." Thenceforth he drifted inevitably into alliance
with England.
Buonaparte, on the other hand, was a follower of Rousseau, whose ideas
leaped to power at the downfall of the monarchy. Despite the excesses
which he ever deplored, this second Revolution appeared to him to be
the dawn of a new and intelligent age. The clear-cut definitions of
the new political creed dovetailed in with his own rigid views of
life. Mankind was to be saved by law, society being levelled down and
levelled up until the ideals of Lycurgus were attained. Consequently
he regarded the Republic as a mighty agency for the social
regeneration not only of France, but of all peoples. His insular
sentiments were gradually merged in these vaster schemes.
Self-interest and the differentiating effects of party strifes
undoubtedly assisted the mental transformation; but it is clear that
the study of the "Social Contract" was the touchstone of his early
intellectual growth. He had gone to Rousseau's work to deepen his
Corsican patriotism: he there imbibed doctrines which drew him
irresistibly into the vortex of the French Revolution, and of its wars
of propaganda and conquest.
* * * * *