The Revolution in the Rhone Valley.
A Dark Period -- Buonaparte, First Lieutenant -- Second
Sojourn in Valence -- Books and Reading -- The National
Assembly of France -- The King Returns from Versailles --
Administrative Reforms in France -- Passing of the Old Order
-- Flight of the King -- Buonaparte's Oath to Sustain the
Constitution -- His View of the Situation -- His
Revolutionary Zeal -- Insubordination -- Impatience with
Delay -- A Serious Blunder Avoided -- Return to Corsica.
[Sidenote: 1791.]
The tortuous course of Napoleon's life for the years from 1791 to 1795
has been neither described nor understood by those who have written in
his interest. It was his own desire that his biographies, in spite of
the fact that his public life began after Rivoli, should commence with
the recovery of Toulon for the Convention. His detractors, on the
other hand, have studied this prefatory period with such evident bias
that dispassionate readers have been repelled from its consideration.
And yet the sordid tale well repays perusal; for in this epoch of his
life many of his characteristic qualities were tempered and ground to
the keen edge they retained throughout. Swept onward toward the
trackless ocean of political chaos, the youth seemed afloat without
oars or compass: in reality, his craft was well under control, and his
chart correct. Whether we attribute his conduct to accident or to
design, from an adventurer's point of view the instinct which made him
spread his sails to the breezes of Jacobin favor was quite as sound as
that which later, when Jacobinism came to be abhorred, made him
anxious that the fact should be forgotten.
In the earlier stages of army reorganization, changes were made
without much regard to personal merit, the dearth of efficient
officers being such that even the most indifferent had some value.
About the first of June, 1791, Buonaparte was promoted to the rank of
first lieutenant, with a salary of thirteen hundred livres, and
transferred to the Fourth Regiment, which was in Valence. He heard the
news with mingled feelings: promotion was, of course, welcome, but he
shrank from returning to his former station, and from leaving the
three or four warm friends he had among his comrades in the old
regiment. On the ground that the arrangements he had made for
educating Louis would be disturbed by the transfer, he besought the
war office for permission to remain at Auxonne with the regiment, now
known as the First. Probably the real ground of his disinclination was
the fear that a residence at Valence might revive the painful emotions
which time had somewhat withered. He may also have felt how discordant
the radical opinions he was beginning to hold would be with those
still cherished by his former friends. But the authorities were
inexorable, and on June fourteenth the brothers departed, Napoleon for
the first time leaving debts which he could not discharge: for the new
uniform of a first lieutenant, a sword, and some wood, he owed about a
hundred and fifteen livres. This sum he was careful to pay within a
few years and as soon as his affairs permitted.
Arrived at Valence, he found that the old society had vanished. Both
the bishop and the Abbé Saint-Ruf were dead. Mme. du Colombier had
withdrawn with her daughter to her country-seat. The brothers were
able, therefore, to take up their lives just where they had made the
break at Auxonne: Louis pursuing the studies necessary for entrance to
the corps of officers, Napoleon teaching him, and frequenting the
political club; both destitute and probably suffering, for the
officer's pay was soon far in arrears. In such desperate straits it
was a relief for the elder brother that the allurements of his former
associations were dissipated; such companionship as he now had was
among the middle and lower classes, whose estates were more
proportionate to his own, and whose sentiments were virtually
identical with those which he professed.
The list of books which he read is significant: Coxe's "Travels in
Switzerland," Duclos's "Memoirs of the Reigns of Louis XIV and Louis
XV," Machiavelli's "History of Florence," Voltaire's "Essay on
Manners," Duvernet's "History of the Sorbonne," Le Noble's "Spirit of
Gerson," and Dulaure's "History of the Nobility." There exist among
his papers outlines more or less complete of all these books. They
prove that he understood what he read, but unlike other similar
jottings by him they give little evidence of critical power. Aside
from such historical studies as would explain the events preliminary
to that revolutionary age upon which he saw that France was entering,
he was carefully examining the attitude of the Gallican Church toward
the claims of the papacy, and considering the rôle of the aristocracy
in society. It is clear that he had no intention of being merely a
curious onlooker at the successive phases of the political and social
transmutation already beginning; he was bent on examining causes,
comprehending reasons, and sharing in the movement itself.
By the summer of 1791 the first stage in the transformation of France
had almost passed. The reign of moderation in reform was nearly over.
The National Assembly had apprehended the magnitude but not the nature
of its task, and was unable to grasp the consequences of the new
constitution it had outlined. The nation was sufficiently familiar
with the idea of the crown as an executive, but hitherto the executive
had been at the same time legislator; neither King nor people quite
knew how the King was to obey the nation when the former, trained in
the school of the strictest absolutism, was deprived of all volition,
and the latter gave its orders through a single chamber, responsive to
the levity of the masses, and controlled neither by an absolute veto
power, nor by any feeling of responsibility to a calm public opinion.
This was the urgent problem which had to be solved under conditions
the most unfavorable that could be conceived.
During the autumn of 1789 famine was actually stalking abroad. The
Parisian populace grew gaunt and dismal, but the King and aristocracy
at Versailles had food in plenty, and the contrast was heightened by a
lavish display in the palace. The royal family was betrayed by one of
its own house, the despicable Philip "Égalité," who sought to stir up
the basest dregs of society, that in the ferment he might rise to the
top; hungry Paris, stung to action by rumors which he spread and by
bribes which he lavished, put Lafayette at its head, and on October
fifth marched out to the gates of the royal residence in order to make
conspicuous the contrast between its own sufferings and the wasteful
comfort of its servants, as the King and his ministers were now
considered to be. Louis and the National Assembly yielded to the
menace, the court returned to Paris, politics grew hotter and more
bitter, the fickleness of the mob became a stronger influence. Soon
the Jacobin Club began to wield the mightiest single influence, and as
it did so it grew more and more radical.
Throughout the long and trying winter the masses remained,
nevertheless, quietly expectant. There was much tumultuous talk, but
action was suspended while the Assembly sat and struggled to solve its
problem, elaborating a really fine paper constitution. Unfortunately,
the provisions of the document had no relation to the political habits
of the French nation, or to the experience of England and the United
States, the only free governments then in existence. Feudal privilege,
feudal provinces, feudal names having been obliterated, the whole of
France was rearranged into administrative departments, with
geographical in place of historical boundaries. It was felt that the
ecclesiastical domains, the holders of which were considered as mere
trustees, should be adapted to the same plan, and this was done.
Ecclesiastical as well as aristocratic control was thus removed by the
stroke of a pen. In other words, by the destruction of the mechanism
through which the temporal and spiritual authorities exerted the
remnants of their power, they were both completely paralyzed. The King
was denied all initiative, being granted merely a suspensive veto, and
in the reform of the judicial system the prestige of the lawyers was
also destroyed. Royalty was turned into a function, and the courts
were stripped of both the moral and physical force necessary to compel
obedience to their decrees. Every form of the guardianship to which
for centuries the people had been accustomed was thus removed--royal,
aristocratic, ecclesiastical, and judicial. Untrained to self-control,
they were as ready for mad excesses as were the German Anabaptists
after the Reformation or the English sectaries after the execution of
Charles.
Attention has been called to the disturbances which arose in Auxonne
and elsewhere, to the emigration of the nobles from that quarter, to
the utter break between the parish priests and the higher church
functionaries in Dauphiny; this was but a sample of the whole. When,
on July fourteenth, 1790, the King accepted a constitution which
decreed a secular reorganization of the ecclesiastical hierarchy
according to the terms of which both bishops and priests were to be
elected by the taxpayers, two thirds of all the clergy in France
refused to swear allegiance to it. All attempts to establish the new
administrative and judicial systems were more or less futile; the
disaffection of officials and lawyers became more intense. In Paris
alone the changes were introduced with some success, the municipality
being rearranged into forty-eight sections, each with a primary
assembly. These were the bodies which later gave Buonaparte the
opening whereby he entered his real career. The influence of the
Jacobin Club increased, just in proportion as the majority of its
members grew more radical. Necker trimmed to their demands, but lost
popularity by his monotonous calls for money, and fell in September,
reaching his home on Lake Leman only with the greatest difficulty.
Mirabeau succeeded him as the sole possible prop to the tottering
throne. Under his leadership the moderate monarchists, or Feuillants,
as they were later called, from the convent of that order to which
they withdrew, seceded from the Jacobins, and before the Assembly had
ceased its work the nation was cleft in two, divided into opponents
and adherents of monarchy. As if to insure the disasters of such an
antagonism, the Assembly, which numbered among its members every man
in France of ripe political experience, committed the incredible folly
of self-effacement, voting that not one of its members should be
eligible to the legislature about to be chosen.
A new impulse to the revolutionary movement was given by the death of
Mirabeau on April second, 1791. His obsequies were celebrated in many
places, and, being a native of Provence, there were probably solemn
ceremonies at Valence. There is a tradition that they occurred during
Buonaparte's second residence in the city, and that it was he who
superintended the draping of the choir in the principal church. It is
said that the hangings were arranged to represent a funerary urn, and
that beneath, in conspicuous letters, ran the legend: "Behold what
remains of the French Lycurgus." Mirabeau had indeed displayed a
genius for politics, his scheme for a strong ministry, chosen from the
Assembly, standing in bold relief against the feebleness of Necker in
persuading Louis to accept the suspensive veto, and to choose his
cabinet without relation to the party in power. When the mad
dissipation of the statesman's youth demanded its penalty at the hour
so critical for France, the King and the moderates alike lost courage.
In June the worried and worn-out monarch determined that the game was
not worth the playing, and on the twenty-first he fled. Though he was
captured, and brought back to act the impossible rôle of a democratic
prince, the patriots who had wished to advance with experience and
tradition as guides were utterly discredited. All the world could see
how pusillanimous was the royalty they had wished to preserve, and the
masses made up their mind that, real or nominal, the institution was
not only useless, but dangerous. This feeling was strong in the Rhone
valley and the adjoining districts, which have ever been the home of
extreme radicalism. Sympathy with Corsica and the Corsicans had long
been active in southeastern France. Neither the island nor its people
were felt to be strange. When a society for the defense of the
constitution was formed in Valence, Buonaparte, though a Corsican, was
at first secretary, then president, of the association.
The "Friends of the Constitution" grew daily more numerous, more
powerful, and more radical in that city; and when the great solemnity
of swearing allegiance to the new order was to be celebrated, it was
chosen as a convenient and suitable place for a convention of
twenty-two similar associations from the neighboring districts. The
meeting took place on July third, 1791; the official administration of
the oath to the civil, military, judicial, and ecclesiastical
authorities occurred on the fourteenth. Before a vast altar erected on
the drill-ground, in the presence of all the dignitaries, with cannon
booming and the air resounding with shouts and patriotic songs, the
officials in groups, the people in mass, swore with uplifted hands to
sustain the constitution, to obey the National Assembly, and to die,
if need be, in defending French territory against invasion. Scenes as
impressive and dramatic as this occurred all over France. They
appealed powerfully to the imagination of the nation, and profoundly
influenced public opinion. "Until then," said Buonaparte, referring to
the solemnity, "I doubt not that if I had received orders to turn my
guns against the people, habit, prejudice, education, and the King's
name would have induced me to obey. With the taking of the national
oath it became otherwise; my instincts and my duty were thenceforth in
harmony."
But the position of liberal officers was still most trying. In the
streets and among the people they were in a congenial atmosphere;
behind the closed doors of the drawing-rooms, in the society of
ladies, and among their fellows in the mess, there were constraint and
suspicion. Out of doors all was exultation; in the houses of the
hitherto privileged classes all was sadness and uncertainty. But
everywhere, indoors or out, was spreading the fear of war, if not
civil at least foreign war, with the French emigrants as the allies of
the assailants. On this point Buonaparte was mistaken. As late as
July twenty-seventh, 1791, he wrote to Naudin, an intimate friend who
was chief of the military bureau at Auxonne: "Will there be war? No;
Europe is divided between sovereigns who rule over men and those who
rule over cattle and horses. The former understand the Revolution, and
are terrified; they would gladly make personal sacrifices to
annihilate it, but they dare not lift the mask for fear the fire
should break out in their own houses. See the history of England,
Holland, etc. Those who bear the rule over horses misunderstand and
cannot grasp the bearing of the constitution. They think this chaos of
incoherent ideas means an end of French power. You would suppose, to
listen to them, that our brave patriots were about to cut one
another's throats and with their blood purge the land of the crimes
committed against kings." The news contained in this letter is most
interesting. There are accounts of the zeal and spirit everywhere
shown by the democratic patriots, of a petition for the trial of the
King sent up from the recent meeting at Valence, and an assurance by
the writer that his regiment is "sure," except as to half the
officers. He adds in a postscript: "The southern blood courses in my
veins as swiftly as the Rhone. Pardon me if you feel distressed in
reading my scrawl."[25]
[Footnote 25: Buonaparte to Naudin, 27 July, 1791, in
Buchez et Roux, Histoire Parlementaire, XVII, 56.]
Restlessness is the habit of the agitator, and Buonaparte's
temperament was not exceptional. His movements and purposes during the
months of July and August are very uncertain in the absence of
documentary evidence sufficient to determine them. But his earliest
biographers, following what was in their time a comparatively short
tradition, enable us to fix some things with a high degree of
probability. The young radical had been but two months with his new
command when he began to long for change; the fever of excitement and
the discomfort of his life, with probably some inkling that a Corsican
national guard would ere long be organized, awakened in him a purpose
to be off once more, and accordingly he applied for leave of absence.
His colonel, a very lukewarm constitutionalist, angry at the notoriety
which his lieutenant was acquiring, had already sent in a complaint of
Buonaparte's insubordinate spirit and of his inattention to duty.
Standing on a formal right, he therefore refused the application. With
the quick resource of a schemer, Buonaparte turned to a higher
authority, his friend Duteil, who was inspector-general of artillery
in the department and not unfavorable. Something, however, must have
occurred to cause delay, for weeks passed and the desired leave was
not granted.
While awaiting a decision the applicant was very uneasy. To friends he
said that he would soon be in Paris; to his great-uncle he wrote,
"Send me three hundred livres; that sum would take me to Paris. There,
at least, a person can show himself, overcome obstacles. Everything
tells me that I shall succeed there. Will you stop me for lack of a
hundred crowns?" And again: "I am waiting impatiently for the six
crowns my mother owes me; I need them sadly." These demands for money
met with no response. The explanation of Buonaparte's impatience is
simple enough. One by one the provincial societies which had been
formed to support the constitution were affiliating themselves with
the influential Jacobins at Paris, who were now the strongest single
political power in the country. He was the recognized leader of their
sympathizers in the Rhone valley. He evidently intended to go to
headquarters and see for himself what the outlook was. With backers
such as he thus hoped to find, some advantage, perhaps even the
long-desired command in Corsica, might be secured.
It was rare good fortune that the young hotspur was not yet to be cast
into the seething caldron of French politics. The time was not yet
ripe for the exercise of his powers. The storming of the Bastille had
symbolized the overthrow of privilege and absolute monarchy; the
flight of the King presaged the overthrow of monarchy, absolute or
otherwise. The executive gone, the legislature popular and democratic
but ignorant how to administer or conduct affairs, the judiciary
equally disorganized, and the army transforming itself into a
patriotic organization--was there more to come? Yes. Thus far, in
spite of well-meant attempts to substitute new constructions for the
old, all had been disintegration. French society was to be reorganized
only after further pulverizing; cohesion would begin only under
pressure from without--a pressure applied by the threats of erratic
royalists that they would bring in the foreign powers to coerce and
arbitrate, by the active demonstrations of the emigrants, by the
outbreak of foreign wars. These were the events about to take place;
they would in the end evolve from the chaos of mob rule first the
irregular and temporary dictatorship of the Convention, then the
tyranny of the Directory; at the same time they would infuse a fervor
of patriotism, into the whole mass of the French nation, stunned,
helpless, and leaderless, but loyal, brave, and vigorous. In such a
crisis the people would tolerate, if not demand, a leader strong to
exact respect for France and to enforce his commands; would prefer the
vigorous mastery of one to the feeble misrule of the many or the few.
Still further, the man was as unready as the time; for it was, in all
probability, not as a Frenchman but as an ever true Corsican patriot
that Buonaparte wished to "show himself, overcome obstacles" at this
conjuncture.
On August fourth, 1791, the National Assembly at last decided to form
a paid volunteer national guard of a hundred thousand men, and their
decision became a law on August twelfth. The term of enlistment was a
year; four battalions were to be raised in Corsica. Buonaparte heard
of the decision on August tenth, and was convinced that the hour for
realizing his long-cherished aspirations had finally struck. He could
certainly have done much in Paris to secure office in a
French-Corsican national guard, and with this in mind he immediately
wrote a memorandum on the armament of the new force, addressing it,
with characteristic assurance, to the minister of war. When, however,
three weeks later, on August thirtieth, 1791, a leave of absence
arrived, to which he was entitled in the course of routine, and which
was not granted by the favor of any one, he had abandoned all idea of
service under France in the Corsican guard. The disorder of the times
was such that while retaining office in the French army he could test
in an independent Corsican command the possibility of climbing to
leadership there before abandoning his present subordinate place in
France. In view, apparently, of this new venture, he had for some time
been taking advances from the regimental paymaster, until he had now
in hand a considerable sum--two hundred and ninety livres. A formal
announcement to the authorities might have elicited embarrassing
questions from them, so he and Louis quietly departed without
explanations, leaving for the second time debts of considerable
amount. They reached Ajaccio on September sixth, 1791. Napoleon was
not actually a deserter, but he had in contemplation a step toward the
defiance of French authority--the acceptance of service in a Corsican
military force.