NAPOLEON AND ROBESPIERRE—OUT OF WORK—GENERAL-IN-CHIEF OF THE ARMY OF THE
INTERIOR
The favors granted Napoleon for his services at Toulon were extended to
his family. Madame Bonaparte was helped by the municipality of
Marseilles. Joseph was made commissioner of war. Lucien was joined to
the Army of Italy, and in the town where he was stationed became famous
as a popular orator—“little Robespierre,” they called him. He began,
too, here to make love to his landlord’s daughter, Christine Boyer,
afterwards his wife.
The outlook for the refugees seemed very good, and it was made still
brighter by the very particular friendship of the younger Robespierre
for Napoleon. This friendship was soon increased by the part Napoleon
played in a campaign of a month with the Army of Italy, when, largely by
his genius, the seaboard from Nice to Genoa was put into French power.
If this victory was much for the army and for Robespierre, it was more
for Napoleon. He looked from the Tende, and saw for the first time that
in Italy there was “a land for a conqueror.” Robespierre wrote to his
brother, the real head of the government at the moment, that Napoleon
possessed “transcendent merit.” He engaged him to draw up a plan for a
campaign against Piedmont, and sent him on a secret mission to Genoa.
The relations between the two young men were, in fact, very close, and,
considering the position of Robespierre the elder, the outlook for
Bonaparte was good.
That Bonaparte admired the powers of the elder Robespierre, is
unquestionable. He was sure that if he had “remained in power, he would
have reëstablished order and law; the result would have been attained
without any shocks, because it would have come through the quiet
exercise of power.” Nevertheless, it is certain that the young general
was unwilling to come into close contact with the Terrorist leader, as
his refusal of an offer to go to Paris to take the command of the
garrison of the city shows. No doubt his refusal was partly due to his
ambition—he thought the opening better where he was—and partly due, too,
to his dislike of the excesses which the government was practising. That
he never favored the policy of the Terrorists, all those who knew him
testify, and there are many stories of his efforts at this time to save
_émigrés_ and suspects from the violence of the rabid patriots; even to
save the English imprisoned at Toulon. He always remembered Robespierre
the younger with kindness, and when he was in power gave Charlotte
Robespierre a pension.
Things had begun to go well for Bonaparte. His poverty passed. If his
plan for an Italian campaign succeeded, he might even aspire to the
command of the army. His brothers received good positions. Joseph was
betrothed to Julie Clary, and life went gayly at Nice and Marseilles,
where Napoleon had about him many of his friends—Robespierre and his
sister; his own two pretty sisters; Marmont, and Junot, who was deeply
in love with Pauline. Suddenly all this hope and happiness were
shattered. On the 9th Thermidor Robespierre fell, and all who had
favored him were suspected, Napoleon among the rest. His secret mission
to Genoa gave a pretext for his arrest, and for thirteen days, in
August, 1794, he was a prisoner, but through his friends was liberated.
Soon after his release, came an appointment to join an expedition
against Corsica. He set out, but the undertaking was a failure, and the
spring found him again without a place.
In April, 1795, Napoleon received orders to join the Army of the West.
When he reached Paris he found that it was the infantry to which he was
assigned. Such a change was considered a disgrace in the army. He
refused to go. “A great many officers could command a brigade better
than I could,” he wrote a friend, “but few could command the artillery
so well. I retire, satisfied that the injustice done to the service will
be sufficiently felt by those who know how to appreciate matters.” But
though he might call himself “satisfied,” his retirement was a most
serious affair for him. It was the collapse of what seemed to be a
career, the shutting of the gate he had worked so fiercely to open.
He must begin again, and he did not see how. A sort of despair settled
over him. “He declaimed against fate,” says the Duchess d’Abrantès. “I
was idle and discontented,” he says of himself. He went to the theatre
and sat sullen and inattentive through the gayest of plays. “He had
moments of fierce hilarity,” says Bourrienne.
A pathetic distaste of effort came over him at times; he wanted to
settle. “If I could have that house,” he said one day to Bourrienne,
pointing to an empty house near by, “with my friends and a cabriolet, I
should be the happiest of men.” He clung to his friends with a sort of
desperation, and his letters to Joseph are touching in the extreme.
[Illustration:
NAPOLEON IN PRISON.
After a lithograph by Motte. Bonaparte, master of Toulon, had already
attained fame when the events of Thermidor imposed a sudden check on
his career. His relations with the younger Robespierre laid him open
to suspicion; he was suspended from his functions and put under
arrest by the deputies of the Convention.]
Love as well as failure caused his melancholy. All about him, indeed,
turned thoughts to marriage. Joseph was now married, and his happiness
made him envious. “What a lucky rascal Joseph is!” he said. Junot, madly
in love with Pauline, was with him. The two young men wandered through
the alleys of the Jardin des Plantes and discussed Junot’s passion. In
listening to his friend, Napoleon thought of himself. He had been
attracted by Désirée Clary, Joseph’s sister-in-law. Why not try to win
her? And he began to demand news of her from Joseph. Désirée had asked
for his portrait, and he wrote: “I shall have it taken for her; you must
give it to her, if she still wants it; if not, keep it yourself.” He was
melancholy when he did not have news of her, accused Joseph of purposely
omitting her name from his letters, and Désirée herself of forgetting
him. At last he consulted Joseph: “If I remain here, it is just possible
that I might feel inclined to commit the folly of marrying. I should be
glad of a line from you on the subject. You might perhaps speak to
Eugénie’s [Désirée’s] brother, and let me know what he says, and then it
will be settled.” He waited the answer to his overtures “with
impatience”; urged his brother to arrange things so that nothing “may
prevent that which I long for.” But Désirée was obdurate. Later she
married Bernadotte and became Queen of Sweden.
Yet in these varying moods he was never idle. As three years before, he
and Bourrienne indulged in financial speculations; he tried to persuade
Joseph to invest his wife’s _dot_ in the property of the _émigrés_. He
prepared memorials on the political disorders of the times and on
military questions, and he pushed his brothers as if he had no personal
ambition. He did not neglect to make friends either. The most important
of those whom he cultivated was Paul Barras, revolutionist,
conventionalist, member of the Directory, and one of the most
influential men in Paris at that moment. He had known Napoleon at
Toulon, and showed himself disposed to be friendly. “I attached myself
to Barras,” said Napoleon later, “because I knew no one else.
Robespierre was dead; Barras was playing a _rôle_: I had to attach
myself to somebody and something.” One of his plans for himself was to
go to Turkey. For two or three years, in fact, Napoleon had thought of
the Orient as a possible field for his genius, and his mother had often
worried lest he should go. Just now it happened that the Sultan of
Turkey asked the French for aid in reorganizing his artillery and
perfecting the defences of his forts, and Napoleon asked to be allowed
to undertake the work. While pushing all his plans with extraordinary
enthusiasm, even writing Joseph almost daily letters about what he would
do for him when he was settled in the Orient, he was called to do a
piece of work which was to be of importance in his future.
The war committee needed plans for an Italian campaign; the head of the
committee was in great perplexity. Nobody knew anything about the
condition of things in the South. By chance, one day, one of Napoleon’s
acquaintances heard of the difficulties and recommended the young
general. The memorial he prepared was so excellent that he was invited
into the topographical bureau of the Committee of Public Safety. His
knowledge, sense, energy, fire, were so remarkable that he made strong
friends and became an important personage.
Such was the impression he made, that when in October, 1795, the
government was threatened by the revolting sections, Barras, the nominal
head of the defence, asked Napoleon to command the forces which
protected the Tuileries, where the Convention had gone into permanent
session. He hesitated for a moment. He had much sympathy for the
sections. His sagacity conquered. The Convention stood for the republic;
an overthrow now meant another proscription, more of the Terror, perhaps
a royalist succession, an English invasion.
“I accept,” he said to Barras; “but I warn you that once my sword is out
of the scabbard I shall not replace it till I have established order.”
It was on the night of 12th Vendémiaire that Napoleon was appointed.
With incredible rapidity he massed the men and cannon he could secure at
the openings into the palace and at the points of approach. He armed
even the members of the Convention as a reserve. When the sections
marched their men into the streets and upon the bridges leading to the
Tuileries, they were met by a fire which scattered them at once. That
night Paris was quiet. The next day Napoleon was made general of
division. On October 26th he was appointed general-in-chief of the Army
of the Interior.
At last the opportunity he had sought so long and so eagerly had come.
It was a proud position for a young man of twenty-six, and one may well
stop and ask how he had obtained it. The answer is not difficult for one
who, dismissing the prejudices and superstitions which have long
enveloped his name, studies his story as he would that of an unknown
individual. He had won his place as any poor and ambitious boy in any
country and in any age must win his—by hard work, by grasping at every
opportunity, by constant self-denial, by courage in every failure, by
springing to his feet after every fall.
He succeeded because he knew every detail of his business (“There is
nothing I cannot do for myself. If there is no one to make powder for
the cannon I can do it”); because neither ridicule nor coldness nor even
the black discouragement which made him write once to Joseph, “If this
state of things continues I shall end by not turning out of my path when
a carriage passes,” could stop him; because he had profound faith in
himself. “Do these people imagine that I want their help to rise? They
will be too glad some day to accept mine. My sword is at my side, and I
will go far with it.” That he had misrepresented conditions more than
once to secure favor, is true; but in doing this he had done simply what
he saw done all about him, what he had learned from his father, what the
oblique morality of the day justified. That he had shifted opinions and
allegiance, is equally true; but he who in the French Revolution did not
shift opinion was he who regarded “not what is, but what might be.”
Certainly in no respect had he been worse than his environment, and in
many respects he had been far above it. He had struggled for place, not
that he might have ease, but that he might have an opportunity for
action; not that he might amuse himself, but that he might achieve
glory. Nor did he seek honors merely for himself; it was that he might
share them with others.
[Illustration:
PEN PORTRAIT OF BONAPARTE IN PROFILE.
By Gros. This drawing, which I discovered among the portfolios of the
Louvre, is one of the most precious documents of Napoleonic
portraiture. It was the gift of Monsieur Delestre, the pupil and
biographer of Gros. In this clear profile we see already all that
_characteristic expression_ sought for by Gros above everything, and
superbly rendered by him soon after in the portrait of _Bonaparte at
Arcola_. I imagine that this pen sketch was preparatory to a
finished portrait.—A. D.]
The first use Bonaparte made of his power after he was appointed
general-in-chief of the Army of the Interior, was for his family and
friends. Fifty or sixty thousand francs, _assignats_, and dresses go to
his mother and sisters; Joseph is to have a consulship; “a roof, a
table, and carriage” are at his disposal in Paris; Louis is made a
lieutenant and his aide-de-camp; Lucien, commissioner of war; Junot and
Marmont are put on his staff. He forgets nobody. The very day after the
13th Vendémiaire, when his cares and excitements were numerous and
intense, he was at the Permons, where Monsieur Permon had just died. “He
was like a son, a brother.” This relation he soon tried to change,
seeking to marry the beautiful widow Permon. When she laughed merrily at
the idea, for she was many years his senior, he replied that the age of
his wife was a matter of indifference to him so long as she did not
_look over thirty_.
The change in Bonaparte himself was great. Up to this time he had gone
about Paris “in an awkward and ungainly manner, with a shabby round hat
thrust down over his eyes, and with curls (known at that time as
_oreilles des chiens_) badly powdered and badly combed, and falling over
the collar of the iron-gray coat which has since become so celebrated;
his hands, long, thin, and black, without gloves, because, he said, they
were an unnecessary expense; wearing ill-made and ill-cleaned boots.”
The majority of people saw in him only what Monsieur de Pontécoulant,
who took him into the War Office, had seen at their first interview; “A
young man with a wan and livid complexion, bowed shoulders, and a weak
and sickly appearance.”
But now, installed in an elegant _hôtel_, driving his own carriage,
careful of his person, received in every _salon_ where he cared to go,
the young general-in-chief is a changed man. Success has had much to do
with this; love has perhaps had more.