1793-1796
Greatness now began to dawn for Napoleon. Practically penniless, in
a great and heartless city, even the lower classes began to perceive
that here was one before whom there lay a brilliant future.
Restaurateurs, laundresses, confectioners--all trusted him. An
instance of the regard people were beginning to have for him is shown
in the pathetic interview between Napoleon and Madame Sans Gene, his
laundress.
"Here is your wash, lieutenant," said she, after climbing five
flights of stairs, basket in hand, to the miserable lodging of the
future Emperor.
Napoleon looked up from his books and counted the clothes.
"There is one sock missing," said he, sternly.
"No," returned Sans Gene. "Half of each sock was washed away, and I
sewed the remaining halves into one. One good sock is better than
two bad ones. If you ever lose a leg in battle you may find the odd
one handy."
"How can I ever repay you?" cried Napoleon, touched by her friendly
act.
"I'm sure I don't know," returned Madame Sans Gene, demurely, "unless
you will escort me to the Charity Ball--I'll buy the tickets."
"And, pray, what good will that do?" asked Bonaparte.
"It will make Lefebvre jealous," said Madame Sans Gene, "and maybe
that will bring him to the point. I want to marry him, but,
encourage him as I will, he does not propose, and as in revising the
calendar the government has abolished leap-year, I really don't know
what to do."
"I cannot go to the ball," said Napoleon, sadly. "I don't dance,
and, besides, I have loaned my dress-suit to Bourrienne. But I will
flirt with you on the street if you wish, and perhaps that will
suffice."
It is hardly necessary to tell the reader that the ruse was
successful, and that Lefebvre, thus brought to the point, married
Madame Sans Gene, and subsequently, through his own advancement, made
her the Duchess of Dantzig. The anecdote suffices to show how
wretchedly poor and yet how full of interest and useful to those
about him Napoleon was at the time.
In February, 1793, a change for the better in his fortunes occurred.
Bonaparte, in cooperation with Admiral Turget, was ordered to make a
descent upon Sardinia. What immediately followed can best be told in
Bonaparte's own words. "My descent was all right," he said
afterwards, "and I had the Sardines all ready to put in boxes, when
Turget had a fit of sea-sickness, lost his bearings, and left me in
the lurch. There was nothing left for me but to go back to Corsica
and take it out of Joseph, which I did, much to Joseph's unhappiness.
It was well for the family that I did so, for hardly had I arrived at
Ajaccio when I found my old friend Paoli wrapping Corsica up in a
brown-paper bundle to send to the King of England with his
compliments. This I resisted, with the result that our whole family
was banished, and those fools of Corsicans broke into our house and
smashed all of our furniture. They little knew that that furniture,
if in existence to-day, would bring millions of francs as curios if
sold at auction. It was thus that the family came to move to France
and that I became in fact what I had been by birth--a Frenchman. If
I had remained a Corsican, Paoli's treachery would have made me an
Englishman, to which I should never have become reconciled, although
had I been an Englishman I should have taken more real pleasure out
of the battle of Waterloo than I got.
"After this I was ordered to Toulon. The French forces here were
commanded by General Cartaux, who had learned the science of war
painting portraits in Paris. He ought to have been called General
Cartoon. He besieged Toulon in a most impressionistic fashion. He'd
bombard and bombard and bombard, and then leave the public to guess
at the result. It's all well enough to be an impressionist in
painting, but when it comes to war the public want more decided
effects. When I got there, as a brigadier-general, I saw that
Cartaux was wasting his time and ammunition. His idea seemed to be
that by firing cannon all day he could so deafen the enemy that at
night the French army could sneak into Toulon unheard and capture the
city, which was, to say the least, unscientific. I saw at once that
Cartaux must go, and I soon managed to make life so unbearable for
him that he resigned, and a man named Doppet, a physician, was placed
in command. Doppet was worse than Cartaux. Whenever anybody got
hurt he'd stop the war and prescribe for the injured man. If he
could have prescribed for the enemy they'd have died in greater
numbers I have no doubt, but, like the idiot he was, he practised on
his own forces. Besides, he was more interested in surgery than in
capturing Toulon. He always gave the ambulance corps the right of
line, and I believe to this day that his plan of routing the English
involved a sudden rush upon them, taking them by surprise, and the
subsequent amputation of their legs. The worst feature of the
situation, as I found it, was that these two men, falling back upon
their rights as my superior officers, refused to take orders from me.
I called their attention to the fact that rank had been abolished,
and that in France one man was now as good as another; but they were
stubborn, so I wrote to Paris and had them removed. Then came
Dugommier, who backed me up in my plans, and Toulon as a consequence
immediately fell with a dull, sickening thud."
It was during this siege that Bonaparte first encountered Junot.
Having occasion to write a note while under fire from the enemy's
batteries, Napoleon called for a stenographer. Junot came to him.
"Do you know shorthand?" asked the general, as a bomb exploded at his
feet.
"Slightly," said Junot, calmly.
"Take this message," returned the general, coolly, dictating.
Junot took down Bonaparte's words, but just as he finished another
bomb exploded near by, scattering dust and earth and sand all over
the paper.
"Confounded boors, interrupting a gentleman at his correspondence!"
said Bonaparte, with an angry glance at the hostile gunners. "I'll
have to dictate that message all over again."
"Yes, general," returned Junot, quickly, "but you needn't mind that.
There will be no extra charge. It's really my fault. I should have
brought an umbrella."
"You are a noble fellow," said Napoleon, grasping his hand and
squeezing it warmly. "In the heyday of my prosperity, if my
prosperity ever goes a-haying, I shall remember you. Your name?"
"Junot, General," was the reply.
Bonaparte frowned. "Ha! ha!" he laughed, acridly. "You jest, eh?
Well, Junot, when I am Jupiter I'll reward you."
Later on, discovering his error, Bonaparte made a memorandum
concerning Junot, which was the first link in the chain which
ultimately bound the stenographer to fame as a marshal of France.
There have been various other versions of this anecdote, but this is
the only correct one, and is now published for the first time on the
authority of M. le Comte de B--, whose grandfather was the bass
drummer upon whose drum Junot was writing the now famous letter, and
who was afterwards ennobled by Napoleon for his services in Egypt,
where, one dark, drizzly night, he frightened away from Bonaparte's
tent a fierce band of hungry lions by pounding vigorously upon his
instrument.
About this time Napoleon, who had been spelling his name in various
ways, and particularly with a "u," as Buonaparte, decided to settle
finally upon one form of designation.
"People are beginning to bother the life out of me with requests for
my autograph," he said to Bourrienne, "and it is just as well that I
should settle on one. If I don't, they'll want me to write out a
complete set of them, and I haven't time to do that."
"Buonaparte is a good-looking name," suggested Bourrienne. "It is
better than Bona Parte, as you sometimes call yourself. If you
settle on Bona Parte, you'd have really three names; and as you don't
write society verse for the comic papers, what's the use? Newspaper
reporters will refer to you as Napoleon B. Parte or N. Bona Parte,
and the public hates a man who parts his name in the middle. Parte
is a good name in its way, but it's too short and abrupt. Few men
with short, sharp, decisive names like that ever make their mark.
Let it be Buonaparte, which is sort of high-sounding--it makes a
mouthful, as it were."
"If I drop the 'u' the autograph will be shorter, and I'll gain time
writing it," said Napoleon. "It shall be Bonaparte without 'u.'"
"Humph!" ejaculated Bourrienne. "Bonaparte without me! I like that.
Might as well talk of Dr. Johnson without Boswell."
Bonaparte now went to Nice as chief of batallion in the army of
Italy; but having incurred the displeasure of a suspicious home
government, he was shortly superseded, and lived in retirement with
his family at Marseilles for a brief time. Here he fell in love
again, and would have married Mademoiselle Clery, whom he afterwards
made Queen of Sweden, had he not been so wretchedly poor.
"This, my dear," he said, sadly, to Mademoiselle Clery, "is the
beastly part of being the original ancestor of a family instead of a
descendant. I've got to make the fortune which will enrich
posterity, while I'd infinitely prefer having a rich uncle somewhere
who'd have the kindness to die and leave me a million. There's
Joseph--lucky man. He's gone and got married. He can afford it. He
has me to fall back on, but I--I haven't anybody to fall back on, and
so, for the second time in my life, must give up the only girl I ever
loved."
With these words Napoleon left Mademoiselle Clery, and returned to
Paris in search of employment.
"If there's nothing else to do, I can disguise myself as a Chinaman
and get employment in Madame Sans Gene's laundry," he said. "There's
no disgrace in washing, and in that way I may be able to provide
myself with decent linen, anyhow. Then I shall belong to the
laundered aristocracy, as the English have it."
But greater things than this awaited Napoleon at Paris. Falling in
with Barras, a member of the Convention which ruled France at this
time, he learned that the feeling for the restoration of the monarchy
was daily growing stronger, and that the royalists of Paris were a
great menace to the Convention.
"They'll mob us the first thing we know," said Barras. "The members
look to me to save them in case of attack, but I must confess I'd
like to sublet the contract."
"Give it to me, then. I'm temporarily out of a job," said Napoleon,
"and the life I'm leading is killing me. If it weren't for Talma's
kindness in letting me lead his armies on the stage at the Odeon,
with a turn at scene-shifting when they are not playing war dramas, I
don't know what I'd do for my meals; and even when I do get a
sandwich ahead occasionally I have to send it to Marseilles to my
mother. Give me your contract, and if I don't save your Convention
you needn't pay me a red franc. I hate aristocrats, and I hate mobs;
and this being an aristocratic mob, I'll go into the work with
enthusiasm."
"You!" cried Barras. "A man of your size, or lack of it, save the
Convention from a mob of fifty thousand? Nonsense!"
"Did you ever hear that little slang phrase so much in vogue in
America," queried Napoleon, coldly fixing his eye on Barras--"a
phrase which in French runs, 'Petit, mais O Moi'--or, as they have
it, 'Little, but O My'? Well, that is me. {1} Besides, if I am
small, there is less chance of my being killed, which will make me
more courageous in the face of fire than one of your bigger men would
be."
"I will put my mind on it," said Barras, somewhat won over by
Napoleon's self-confidence.
"Thanks," said Napoleon; "and now come into the cafe and have dinner
with me."
"Save your money, Bonaparte," said Barras. "You can't afford to pay
for your own dinner, much less mine."
"That's precisely why I want you to dine with me," returned Napoleon.
"If I go alone, they won't serve me because they know I can't pay.
If I go in with you, they'll give me everything they've got on the
supposition that you will pay the bill. Come! En avant!"
"Vous etes un bouchonnier, vraiment!" said Barras, with a laugh.
"A what?" asked Napoleon, not familiar with the idiom.
"A corker!" explained Barras.
"Very good," said Napoleon, his face lighting up. "If you'll order a
bottle of Burgundy with the bird I will show you that I am likewise
something of an uncorker."
This readiness on Napoleon's part in the face of difficulty
completely captured Barras, and as a result the young adventurer had
his first real chance to make an impression on Paris, where, on the
13th Vendemiaire (or October 4, 1795), he literally obliterated the
forces of the Sectionists, whose success in their attack upon the
Convention would have meant the restoration of the Bourbons to the
throne of France. Placed in command of the defenders of the
Convention, Napoleon with his cannon swept the mob from the four
broad avenues leading to the palace in which the legislators sat.
"Don't fire over their heads," said he to his gunners, as the mob
approached. "Bring our arguments right down to their comprehension,
and remember that the comprehension of a royalist is largely affected
by his digestion. Therefore, gunners, let them have it there. If
these assassins would escape appendicitis they would better avoid the
grape I send them."
The result is too well known to need detailed description here.
Suffice it to say that Bonaparte's attentions to the digestive
apparatus of the rioters were so effective that, in token of their
appreciation of his services, the Convention soon afterwards placed
him in command of the Army of the Interior.
Holding now the chief military position in Paris, Bonaparte was much
courted by every one, but he continued his simple manner of living as
of yore, overlooking his laundry and other bills as unostentatiously
as when he had been a poor and insignificant subaltern, and daily
waxing more taciturn and prone to irritability.
"You are becoming gloomy, General," said Barras one morning, as the
two men breakfasted. "It is time for you to marry and become a
family man."
"Peste!" said Napoleon, "man of family! It takes too long--it is
tedious. Families are delightful when the children are grown up; but
I could not endure them in a state of infancy."
"Ah!" smiled Barras, significantly. "But suppose I told you of a
place where you could find a family ready made?"
Napoleon at once became interested.
"I should marry it," he said, "for truly I do need some one to look
after my clothing, particularly now that, as a man of high rank, my
uniforms hold so many buttons."
Thus it happened that Barras took the young hero to a reception at
the house of Madame Tallien, where he introduced him to the lovely
widow, Josephine de Beauharnais, and her two beautiful children.
"There you are, Bonaparte," he whispered, as they entered the room;
"there is the family complete--one wife, one son, one daughter. What
more could you want? It will be yours if you ask for it, for Madame
de Beauharnais is very much in love with you."
"Ha!" said Napoleon. "How do you know that?"
"She told me so," returned Barras.
"Very well," said Napoleon, making up his mind on the instant. "I
will see if I can involve her in a military engagement."
Which, as the world knows, he did; and on the 9th of March, 1796,
Napoleon and Josephine were united, and the happy groom, writing to
his mother, announcing his marriage to "the only woman he ever
loved," said: "She is ten years older than I, but I can soon
overcome that. The opportunities for a fast life in Paris are
unequalled, and I have an idea that I can catch up with her in six
months if the Convention will increase my salary."