Buonaparte the Corsican Jacobin.
Buonaparte's Corsican Patriotism -- His Position in His
Family -- The Situation of Joseph -- Corsican Politics --
Napoleon's Power in the Jacobin Club of Ajaccio -- His
Failure as a Contestant for Literary Honors -- Appointed
Adjutant-General -- His Attitude Toward France -- His New
Ambitions -- Use of Violence -- Lieutenant-Colonel of
Volunteers -- Politics in Ajaccio -- His First Experience of
Street Warfare -- His Manifesto -- Dismissed to Paris -- His
Plans -- The Position of Louis XVI -- Buonaparte's
Delinquencies -- Disorganization in the Army -- Petition for
Reinstatement -- The Marseillais -- Buonaparte a Spectator
-- His Estimate of France -- His Presence at the Scenes of
August Tenth -- State of Paris -- Flight of Lafayette.
[Sidenote: 1791-92.]
This was the third time in four years that Buonaparte had revisited
his home.[26] On the plea of ill health he had been able the first
time to remain a year and two months, giving full play to his Corsican
patriotism and his own ambitions by attendance at Orezza, and by
political agitation among the people. The second time he had remained
a year and four months, retaining his hold on his commission by
subterfuges and irregularities which, though condoned, had strained
his relations with the ministry of war in Paris. He had openly defied
the royal authority, relying on the coming storm for the concealment
of his conduct if it should prove reprehensible, or for preferment in
his own country if Corsica should secure her liberties. There is no
reason, therefore, to suppose that his intentions for the third visit
were different from those displayed in the other two, although again
solicitude for his family was doubtless one of many considerations.
[Footnote 26: It is not entirely clear whether he
arrived late in September or early in October, 1791. He
remained until May, 1792.]
During Napoleon's absence from Corsica the condition of his family had
not materially changed. Soon after his arrival the old archdeacon
died, and his little fortune fell to the Buonapartes. Joseph, failing
shortly afterward in his plan of being elected deputy to the French
legislature, was chosen a member of the Corsican directory. He was,
therefore, forced to occupy himself entirely with his new duties and
to live at Corte. Fesch, as the eldest male, the mother's brother, and
a priest at that, expected to assume the direction of the family
affairs. But he was doomed to speedy disenchantment: thenceforward
Napoleon was the family dictator. In conjunction with his uncle he
used the whole or a considerable portion of the archdeacon's savings
for the purchase of several estates from the national domain, as the
sequestrated lands of the monasteries were called. Rendered thus more
self-important, he talked much in the home circle concerning the
greatness of classical antiquity, and wondered "who would not
willingly have been stabbed, if only he could have been Cæsar? One
feeble ray of his glory would be an ample recompense for sudden
death." Such chances for Cæsarism as the island of Corsica afforded
were very rapidly becoming better.
The Buonapartes had no influence whatever in these elections. Joseph
was not even nominated. The choice fell upon two men selected by
Paoli: one of them, Peraldi, was already embittered against the
family; the other, Pozzo di Borgo, though so far friendly enough,
thereafter became a relentless foe. Rising to eminence as a diplomat,
accepting service in one and another country of Europe, the latter
thwarted Napoleon at several important conjunctures. Paoli is thought
by some to have been wounded by the frank criticism of his strategy by
Napoleon: more likely he distrusted youths educated in France, and
who, though noisy Corsicans, were, he shrewdly guessed, impregnated
with French idealism. He himself cared for France only as by her help
the largest possible autonomy for Corsica could be secured. In the
directory of the department of Corsica, Joseph, and with him the
Buonaparte influence, was reduced to impotence, while gratified with
high position. The ignorance of the administrators was only paralleled
by the difficulties of their work.
During the last few months religious agitation had been steadily
increasing. Pious Catholics were embittered by the virtual expulsion
of the old clergy, and the induction to office of new priests who had
sworn to uphold the constitution. Amid the disorders of administration
the people in ever larger numbers had secured arms; as of yore, they
appeared at their assemblies under the guidance of their chiefs, ready
to fight at a moment's notice. It was but a step to violence, and
without any other provocation than religious exasperation the
townsfolk of Bastia had lately sought to kill their new bishop. Even
Arena, who had so recently seized the place in Paoli's interest, was
now regarded as a French radical, maltreated, and banished with his
supporters to Italy. The new election was at hand; the contest between
the Paolists and the extreme French party grew hotter and hotter. Not
only deputies to the new assembly, but likewise the superior officers
of the new guard, were to be elected. Buonaparte, being only a
lieutenant of the regulars, could according to the law aspire no
higher than an appointment as adjutant-major with the title and pay of
captain. It was not worth while to lose his place in France for this,
so he determined to stand for one of the higher elective offices,
that of lieutenant-colonel, a position which would give him more
power, and, under the latest legislation, entitle him to retain his
grade in the regular army.
There were now two political clubs in Ajaccio: that of the Corsican
Jacobins, country people for the most part; and that of the Corsican
Feuillants, composed of the officials and townsfolk. Buonaparte became
a moving spirit in the former, and determined at any cost to destroy
the influence of the latter. The two previous attempts to secure
Ajaccio for the radicals had failed; a third was already under
consideration. The new leader began to garnish his language with those
fine and specious phrases which thenceforth were never wanting in his
utterances at revolutionary crises. "Law," he wrote about this time,
"is like those statues of some of the gods which are veiled under
certain circumstances." For a few weeks there was little or nothing to
do in the way of electioneering at home; he therefore obtained
permission to travel with the famous Volney, who desired a
philosopher's retreat from Paris storms and had been chosen director
of commerce and manufactures in the island. This journey was for a
candidate like Buonaparte invaluable as a means of observation and of
winning friends for his cause.
Before the close of this trip his furlough had expired, his regiment
had been put on a war footing, and orders had been issued for the
return of every officer to his post by Christmas day. But in the
execution of his fixed purpose the young Corsican patriot was heedless
of military obligations to France, and wilfully remained absent from
duty. Once more the spell of a wild, free life was upon him; he was
enlisted for the campaign, though without position or money to back
him. The essay on happiness which he had presented to the Academy of
Lyons had failed, as a matter of course, to win the prize, one of the
judges pronouncing it "too badly arranged, too uneven, too
disconnected, and too badly written to deserve attention." This
decision was a double blow, for it was announced about this time, at a
moment when fame and money would both have been most welcome. The
scanty income from the lands purchased with the legacy of the old
archdeacon remained the only resource of the family for the lavish
hospitality which, according to immemorial, semi-barbarous tradition,
was required of a Corsican candidate.
A peremptory order was now issued from Paris that those officers of
the line who had been serving in the National Guard with a grade lower
than that of lieutenant-colonel should return to regular service
before April first, 1792. Here was an implication which might be
turned to account. As a lieutenant on leave, Buonaparte should of
course have returned on December twenty-fifth; if, however, he were an
officer of volunteers he could plead the new order. Though as yet the
recruits had not come in, and no companies had been formed, the mere
idea was sufficient to suggest a means for saving appearances. An
appointment as adjutant-major was solicited from the major-general in
command of the department, and he, under authorization obtained in due
time from Paris, granted it. Safe from the charge of desertion thus
far, it was essential for his reputation and for his ambition that
Buonaparte should be elected lieutenant-colonel. Success would enable
him to plead that his first lapse in discipline was due to irregular
orders from his superior, that anyhow he had been an adjutant-major,
and that finally the position of lieutenant-colonel gave him immunity
from punishment, and left him blameless.
He nevertheless was uneasy, and wrote two letters of a curious
character to his friend Sucy, the commissioner-general at Valence. In
the first, written five weeks after the expiration of his leave, he
calmly reports himself, and gives an account of his occupations,
mentioning incidentally that unforeseen circumstances, duties the
dearest and most sacred, had prevented his return. His correspondent
would be so kind as not to mention the letter to the "gentlemen of the
regiment," but the writer would immediately return if his friend in
his unassisted judgment thought best. In the second he plumply
declares that in perilous times the post of a good Corsican is at
home, that therefore he had thought of resigning, but his friends had
arranged the middle course of appointing him adjutant-major in the
volunteers so that he could make his duty as a soldier conform to his
duty as a patriot. Asking for news of what is going on in France, he
says, writing like an outsider, "If _your_ nation loses courage at
this moment, it is done with forever."
It was toward the end of March that the volunteers from the mountains
began to appear in Ajaccio for the election of their officers.
Napoleon had bitter and powerful rivals, but his recent trip had
apparently enabled him to win many friends among the men. While,
therefore, success was possible by that means, there was another
influence almost as powerful--that of three commissioners appointed by
the directory of the island to organize and equip the battalion. These
were Morati, a friend of Peraldi, the Paolist deputy; Quenza, more or
less neutral, and Grimaldi, a devoted partisan of the Buonapartes.
With skilful diplomacy Napoleon agreed that he would not presume to be
a candidate for the office of first lieutenant-colonel, which was
desired by Peretti, a near friend of Paoli, for his brother-in-law,
Quenza, but would seek the position of second lieutenant-colonel. In
this way he was assured of good will from two of the three
commissioners; the other was of course hostile, being a partizan of
Peraldi.
The election, as usual in Corsica, seems to have passed in turbulence
and noisy violence. His enemies attacked Buonaparte with every weapon:
their money, their influence, and in particular with ridicule. His
stature, his poverty, and his absurd ambitions were held up to
contempt and scorn. The young hotspur was cut to the quick, and,
forgetting Corsican ways, made the witless blunder of challenging
Peraldi to a duel, an institution scorned by the Corsican devotees of
the vendetta. The climax of contempt was Peraldi's failure even to
notice the challenge. At the crisis, Salicetti, a warm friend of the
Buonapartes and a high official of the department, appeared with a
considerable armed force to maintain order. This cowed the
conservatives. The third commissioner, living as a guest with Peraldi,
was seized during the night preceding the election by a body of
Buonaparte's friends, and put under lock and key in their candidate's
house--"to make you entirely free; you were not free where you were,"
said the instigator of the stroke, when called to explain. To the use
of fine phrases was now added a facility in employing violence at a
pinch which likewise remained characteristic of Buonaparte's career
down to the end. Nasica, who alone records the tale, sees in this
event the precursor of the long series of state-strokes which
culminated on the eighteenth Brumaire. There is a story that in one of
the scuffles incident to this brawl a member of Pozzo di Borgo's
family was thrown down and trampled on. Be that as it may, Buonaparte
was successful. This of course intensified the hatred already
existing, and from that moment the families of Peraldi and of Pozzo di
Borgo were his deadly enemies.
Quenza, who was chosen first lieutenant-colonel, was a man of no
character whatever, a nobody. He was moreover absorbed in the duties
of a place in the departmental administration. Buonaparte, therefore,
was in virtual command of a sturdy, well-armed, legal force. Having
been adjutant-major, and being now a regularly elected lieutenant-colonel
according to statute, he applied, with a well-calculated effrontery,
to his regimental paymaster for the pay which had accrued during his
absence. It was at first refused, for in the interval he had been
cashiered for remaining at home in disobedience to orders; but such
were the irregularities of that revolutionary time that later, virtual
deserter as he had been, it was actually paid and he was restored to
his place. He sought and obtained from the military authorities of the
island certificates of his regular standing and leave to present them
in Paris if needed to maintain his rank as a French officer, but in
the final event there was no necessity for their use. No one was more
adroit than Buonaparte in taking advantage of possibilities. He was a
pluralist without conscience. A French regular if the emergency should
demand it, he was likewise a Corsican patriot and commander in the
volunteer guard of the island, fully equipped for another move.
Perhaps, at last, he could assume with success the liberator's rôle of
Sampiero. But an opportunity must occur or be created. One was easily
arranged.
Ajaccio had gradually become a resort for many ardent Roman Catholics
who had refused to accept the new order. The town authorities,
although there were some extreme radicals among them, were, on the
whole, in sympathy with these conservatives. Through the devices of
his friends in the city government, Buonaparte's battalion, the
second, was on one pretext or another assembled in and around the
town. Thereupon, following the most probable account, which, too, is
supported by Buonaparte's own story, a demand was made that according
to the recent ecclesiastical legislation of the National Assembly, the
Capuchin monks, who had been so far undisturbed, should evacuate their
friary. Feeling ran so high that the other volunteer companies were
summoned; they arrived on April first. At once the public order was
jeopardized: on one extreme were the religious fanatics, on the other
the political agitators, both of whom were loud with threats and ready
for violence. In the middle, between two fires, was the mass of the
people, who sympathized with the ecclesiastics, but wanted peace at
any hazard. Quarreling began first between individuals of the various
factions, but it soon resulted in conflicts between civilians and the
volunteer guard. The first step taken by the military was to seize and
occupy the cloister, which lay just below the citadel, the final goal
of their leader, whoever he was, and the townsfolk believed it was
Buonaparte. Once inside the citadel walls, the Corsicans in the
regular French service would, it was hoped, fraternize with their kin;
with such a beginning, all the garrison might in time be won over.
This further exasperated the ultramontanes, and on Easter day, April
eighth, they made demonstrations so serious that the scheming
commander--Buonaparte again, it was believed--found the much desired
pretext to interfere; there was a mêlée, and one of the militia
officers was killed. Next morning the burghers found their town beset
by the volunteers. Good citizens kept to their houses, while the
acting mayor and the council were assembled to authorize an attack on
the citadel. The authorities could not agree, and dispersed; the
following forenoon it was discovered that the acting mayor and his
sympathizers had taken refuge in the citadel. From the vantage of
this stronghold they proposed to settle the difficulty by the
arbitration of a board composed of two from each side, under the
presidency of the commandant. There was again no agreement.
Worn out at last by the haggling and delay, an officer of the garrison
finally ordered the militia officers to withdraw their forces. By the
advice of some determined radical--Buonaparte again, in all
probability--the latter flatly refused, and the night was spent in
preparation for a conflict which seemed inevitable. But early in the
morning the commissioners of the department, who had been sent by
Paoli to preserve the peace, arrived in a body. They were welcomed
gladly by the majority of the people, and, after hearing the case,
dismissed the battalion of volunteers to various posts in the
surrounding country. Public opinion immediately turned against
Buonaparte, convinced as the populace was that he was the author of
the entire disturbance. The commander of the garrison was embittered,
and sent a report to the war department displaying the young officer's
behavior in the most unfavorable light. Buonaparte's defense was
contained in a manifesto which made the citizens still more furious by
its declaration that the whole civic structure of their town was
worthless, and should have been overthrown.
The aged Paoli found his situation more trying with every day. Under a
constitutional monarchy, such as he had admired and studied in
England, such as he even yet hoped for and expected in France, he had
believed his own land might find a virtual autonomy. With riot and
disorder in every town, it would not be long before the absolute
disqualification of his countrymen for self-government would be proved
and the French administration restored. For his present purpose,
therefore, the peace must be kept, and Buonaparte, upon whom, whether
justly or not, the blame for these recent broils rested, must be
removed elsewhere, if possible; but as the troublesome youth was the
son of an old friend and the head of a still influential family, it
must be done without offense. The government at Paris might be
pacified if the absentee officer were restored to his post; with
Quenza in command of the volunteers, there would be little danger of a
second outbreak in Ajaccio.
It was more than easy, therefore, for the discredited revolutionary,
on the implied condition and understanding that he should leave
Corsica, to secure from the authorities the papers necessary to put
himself and his actions in the most favorable light. Buonaparte armed
himself accordingly with an authenticated certificate as to the posts
he had held, and the period during which he had held them, and with
another as to his "civism"--the phrase used at that time to designate
the quality of friendliness to the Revolution. The former seems to
have been framed according to his own statements, and was speciously
deceptive; yet in form the commander-in-chief, the municipality of
Ajaccio, and the authorities of the department were united in
certifying to his unblemished character and regular standing. This was
something. Whither should the scapegoat betake himself? Valence, where
the royalist colonel regarded him as a deserter, was of course closed,
and in Paris alone could the necessary steps be taken to secure
restoration to rank with back pay, or rather the reversal of the whole
record as it then stood on the regimental books. For this reason he
likewise secured letters of introduction to the leading Corsicans in
the French capital. His departure was so abrupt as to resemble
flight. He hastened to Corte, and remained just long enough to
understand the certainty of his overwhelming loss in public esteem
throughout Corsica. On the way he is said to have seen Paoli for a
short time and to have received some encouragement in a plan to raise
another battalion of volunteers. Joseph claimed to have advised his
brother to have nothing to do with the plan, but to leave immediately
for France. In any case Napoleon's mind was clear. A career in Corsica
on the grand scale was impossible for him. Borrowing money for the
journey, he hurried away and sailed from Bastia on May second, 1792.
The outlook might have disheartened a weaker man. Peraldi, the
Corsican deputy, was a near relative of the defeated rival; Paoli's
displeasure was only too manifest; the bitter hate of a large element
in Ajaccio, including the royalist commander of the garrison, was
unconcealed. Napoleon's energy, rashness, and ambition combined to
make Pozzo di Borgo detest him. He was accused of being a traitor, the
source of all trouble, of plotting a new St. Bartholomew, ready for
any horror in order to secure power. Rejected by Corsica, would France
receive him? Would not the few French friends he had be likewise
alienated by these last escapades? Could the formal record of
regimental offenses be expunged? In any event, how slight the prospect
of success in the great mad capital, amid the convulsive throes of a
nation's disorders!
But in the last consideration lay his only chance: the nation's
disorder was to supply the remedy for Buonaparte's irregularities. The
King had refused his sanction to the secularization of the estates
which had once been held by the emigrants and recusant ecclesiastics;
the Jacobins retorted by open hostility to the monarchy. The plotting
of noble and princely refugees with various royal and other schemers
two years before had been a crime against the King and the
constitutionalists, for it jeopardized their last chance for
existence, even their very lives. Within so short a time what had been
criminal in the emigrants had seemingly become the only means of
self-preservation for their intended victim. His constitutional
supporters recognized that, in the adoption of this course by the
King, the last hope of a peaceful solution to their awful problem had
disappeared. It was now almost certain and generally believed that
Louis himself was in negotiation with the foreign sovereigns; to
thwart his plans and avert the consequences it was essential that open
hostilities against his secret allies should be begun. Consequently,
on April twentieth, 1792, by the influence of the King's friends war
had been declared against Austria. The populace, awed by the armies
thus called out, were at first silently defiant, an attitude which
changed to open fury when the defeat of the French troops in the
Austrian Netherlands was announced.
The moderate republicans, or Girondists, as they were called from the
district where they were strongest, were now the mediating party;
their leader, Roland, was summoned to form a ministry and appease this
popular rage. It was one of his colleagues who had examined the
complaint against Buonaparte received from the commander of the
garrison at Ajaccio. According to a strict interpretation of the
military code there was scarcely a crime which Buonaparte had not
committed: desertion, disobedience, tampering, attack on constituted
authority, and abuse of official power. The minister reported the
conduct of both Quenza and Buonaparte as most reprehensible, and
declared that if their offense had been purely military he would have
court-martialed them.
Learning first at Marseilles that war had broken out, and that the
companies of his regiment were dispersed to various camps for active
service, Buonaparte hastened northward. A new passion, which was
indicative of the freshly awakened patriotism, had taken possession of
the popular fancy. Where the year before the current and universal
phrase had been "federation," the talk was now all for the "nation."
It might well be so. Before the traveler arrived at his destination
further disaster had overtaken the French army, one whole regiment had
deserted under arms to the enemy, and individual soldiers were
escaping by hundreds. The officers of the Fourth Artillery were
resigning and running away in about equal numbers. Consternation ruled
supreme, treason and imbecility were everywhere charged against the
authorities. War within, war without, and the army in a state of
collapse! The emigrant princes would return, and France be sold to a
bondage tenfold more galling than that from which she was struggling
to free herself.
When Buonaparte reached Paris on May twenty-eighth, 1792, the outlook
was poor for a suppliant, bankrupt in funds and nearly so in
reputation; but he was undaunted, and his application for
reinstatement in the artillery was made without the loss of a moment.
A new minister of war had been appointed but a few days before,--there
were six changes in that office during as many months,--and the
assistant now in charge of the artillery seemed favorable to the
request. For a moment he thought of restoring the suppliant to his
position, but events were marching too swiftly, and demands more
urgent jostled aside the claims of an obscure lieutenant with a shady
character. Buonaparte at once grasped the fact that he could win his
cause only by patience or by importunity, and began to consider how he
should arrange for a prolonged stay in the capital. His scanty
resources were already exhausted, but he found Bourrienne, a former
school-fellow at Brienne, in equal straits, waiting like himself for
something to turn up. Over their meals in a cheap restaurant on the
Rue St. Honoré they discussed various means of gaining a livelihood,
and seriously contemplated a partnership in subletting furnished
rooms. But Bourrienne very quickly obtained the post of secretary in
the embassy at Stuttgart, so that his comrade was left to make his
struggle alone by pawning what few articles of value he possessed.
The days and weeks were full of incidents terrible and suggestive in
their nature. The Assembly dismissed the King's body-guard on May
twenty-ninth; on June thirteenth, the Girondists were removed from the
ministry; within a few days it was known at court that Prussia had
taken the field as an ally of Austria, and on the seventeenth a
conservative, Feuillant cabinet was formed. Three days later the
popular insurrection began, on the twenty-sixth the news of the
coalition was announced, and on the twenty-eighth Lafayette endeavored
to stay the tide of furious discontent which was now rising in the
Assembly. But it was as ruthless as that of the ocean, and on July
eleventh the country was declared in danger. There was, however, a
temporary check to the rush, a moment of repose in which the King, on
the fourteenth, celebrated among his people the fall of the Bastille.
But an address from the local assembly at Marseilles had arrived,
demanding the dethronement of Louis and the abolition of the monarchy.
Such was the impatience of the great southern city that, without
waiting for the logical effect of their declaration, its inhabitants
determined to make a demonstration in Paris. On the thirtieth a
deputation five hundred strong arrived before the capital. On August
third, they entered the city singing the immortal song which bears
their name, but which was written at Strasburg by an officer of
engineers, Rouget de Lisle. The southern fire of the newcomers kindled
again the flame of Parisian sedition, and the radicals fanned it. At
last, on August tenth, the conflagration burst forth in an uprising
such as had not yet been seen of all that was outcast and lawless in
the great town; with them consorted the discontented and the envious,
the giddy and the frivolous, the curious and the fickle, all the
unstable elements of society. This time the King was unnerved; in
despair he fled for asylum to the chamber of the Assembly. That body,
unsympathetic for him, but sensitive to the ragings of the mob
without, found the fugitive unworthy of his office. Before night the
kingship was abolished, and the royal family were imprisoned in the
Temple.
There is no proof that the young Corsican was at this time other than
an interested spectator. In a hurried letter written to Joseph on May
twenty-ninth he notes the extreme confusion of affairs, remarks that
Pozzo di Borgo is on good terms with the minister of war, and
recommends his brother to keep on good terms with Paoli. There is a
characteristic little paragraph on the uniform of the national guard.
Though he makes no reference to the purpose of his journey, it is
clear that he is calm, assured that in the wholesale flight of
officers a man like himself is assured of restoration to rank and
duty. Two others dated June fourteenth and eighteenth respectively are
scarcely more valuable. He gives a crude and superficial account of
French affairs internal and external, of no value as history. He had
made unsuccessful efforts to revive the plea for their mother's
mulberry subsidies, had dined with Mme. Permon, had visited their
sister Marianna at St. Cyr, where she had been called Elisa to
distinguish her from another Marianna. He speculates on the chance of
her marrying without a dot. In quiet times, the wards of St. Cyr
received, on leaving, a dowry of three thousand livres, with three
hundred more for an outfit; but as matters then were, the
establishment was breaking up and there were no funds for that
purpose. Like the rest, the Corsican girl was soon to be stripped of
her pretty uniform, the neat silk gown, the black gloves, and the
dainty bronze slippers which Mme. de Maintenon had prescribed for the
noble damsels at that royal school. In another letter written four
days later there is a graphic account of the threatening
demonstrations made by the rabble and a vivid description which
indicates Napoleon's being present when the mob recoiled at the very
door of the Tuileries before the calm and dignified courage of the
King. There is even a story, told as of the time, by Bourrienne, a
very doubtful authority, but probably invented later, of Buonaparte's
openly expressing contempt for riots. "How could the King let the
rascals in! He should have shot down a few hundred, and the rest would
have run." This statement, like others made by Bourrienne, is to be
received with the utmost caution.
[Illustration: From the collection of W. C. Crane.
Bonaparte, General in Chief of the Army of Italy.]
In a letter written about the beginning of July, probably to Lucien or
possibly to Joseph, and evidently intended to be read in the Jacobin
Club of Ajaccio, there are clear indications of its writer's temper.
He speaks with judicious calmness of the project for educational
reform; of Lafayette's appearance before the Assembly, which had
pronounced the country in danger and was now sitting in permanence, as
perhaps necessary to prevent its taking an extreme and dangerous
course; of the French as no longer deserving the pains men took for
them, since they were a people old and without continuity or
coherence;[27] of their leaders as poor creatures engaged on low
plots; and of the damper which such a spectacle puts on ambition.
Clearly the lesson of moderation which he inculcates is for the first
time sincerely given. The preacher, according to his own judgment for
the time being, is no Frenchman, no demagogue, nothing but a simple
Corsican anxious to live far from the madness of mobs and the
emptiness of so-called glory.
[Footnote 27: The rare and curious pamphlet entitled
"Manuscrit de l'Île d'Elbe," attributed to Montholon and
probably published by Edward O'Meara, contains headings
for ten chapters which were dictated by Napoleon at Elba
on February twenty-second, 1815. The argument is: The
Bourbons ascended the throne, in the person of Henry IV,
by conquering the so-called Holy League against the
Protestants, and by the consent of the people; a third
dynasty thus followed the second; then came the
republic, and its succession was legitimated by victory,
by the will of the people, and by the recognition of all
the powers of Europe. The republic made a new France by
emancipating the Gauls from the rule of the Franks. The
people had raised their leader to the imperial throne in
order to consolidate their new interests: this was the
fourth dynasty, etc., etc. The contemplated book was to
work out in detail this very conception of a nation as
passing through successive phases: at the close of each
it is worn out, but a new rule regenerates it, throwing
off the incrustations and giving room to the life
within. It is interesting to note the genesis of
Napoleon's ideas and the pertinacity with which he held
them.]
It has been asserted that on the dreadful day of August tenth
Buonaparte's assumed philosophy was laid aside, and that he was a mob
leader at the barricades. His own account of the matter as given at
St. Helena does not bear this out. "I felt," said he, "as if I should
have defended the King if called to do so. I was opposed to those who
would found the republic by means of the populace. Besides, I saw
civilians attacking men in uniforms; that gave me a shock." He said
further in his reminiscences that he viewed the entire scene from the
windows of a furniture shop kept by Fauvelet de Bourrienne, brother
of his old school friend. The impression left after reading his
narrative of the frightful carnage before the Tuileries, of the
indecencies committed by frenzied women at the close of the fight, of
the mad excitement in the neighboring cafés, and of his own calmness
throughout, is that he was in no way connected either with the actors
or their deeds, except to shout, "Hurrah for the nation!" when
summoned to do so by a gang of ruffians who were parading the streets
under the banner of a gory head elevated on a pike.[28] The truth of
his statements cannot be established by any collateral evidence.
[Footnote 28: Las Cases: Mémorial de Sainte Hélène, V,
170.]
It is not likely that an ardent radical leader like Buonaparte, well
known and influential in the Rhone valley, had remained a stranger to
the Marseilles deputation. If the Duchesse d'Abrantès be worthy of any
credence, he was very influential, and displayed great activity with
the authorities during the seventh and eighth, running hither,
thither, everywhere, to secure redress for an illegal domiciliary
visit which her mother, Mme. Permon, had received on the seventh. But
her testimony is of very little value, such is her anxiety to
establish an early intimacy with the great man of her time. Joseph, in
his memoirs,[29] declares that his brother was present at the conflict
of August tenth, and that Napoleon wrote him at the time, "If Louis
XVI had appeared on horseback, he would have conquered." "After the
victory of the Marseillais," continues the passage quoted from the
letter, "I saw a man about to kill a soldier of the guard. I said to
him, 'Southron, let us spare the unfortunate!' 'Art thou from the
South?' 'Yes.' 'Well, then, we will spare him.'" Moreover, it is a
fact that Santerre, the notorious leader of the mob on that day, was
three years later, on the thirteenth of Vendémiaire, most useful to
Buonaparte; that though degraded from the office of general to which
he was appointed in the revolutionary army, he was in 1800 restored to
his rank by the First Consul. All this is consistent with Napoleon's
assertion, but it proves nothing conclusively; and there is certainly
ground for suspicion when we reflect that these events were ultimately
decisive of Buonaparte's fortunes.
[Footnote 29: Mémoires du roi Joseph, I, 47.]
The Feuillant ministry fell with the King, and an executive council
composed of radicals took its place. For one single day Paris reeled
like a drunkard, but on the next the shops were open again. On the
following Sunday the opera was packed at a benefit performance for the
widows and orphans of those who had fallen in victory. A few days
later Lafayette, as commander of the armies in the North, issued a
pronunciamento against the popular excesses. He even arrested the
commissioners of the Assembly who were sent to supplant him and take
the ultimate direction of the campaign. But he quickly found that his
old prestige was gone; he had not kept pace with the mad rush of
popular opinion; neither in person nor as the sometime commander of
the National Guard had he any longer the slightest influence.
Impeached and declared an outlaw, he, like the King, lost his balance,
and fled for refuge into the possessions of Liège. The Austrians
violated the sanctuary of neutral territory, and captured him, exactly
as Napoleon at a later day violated the neutrality of Baden in the
case of the Duc d'Enghien. On August twenty-third the strong place of
Longwy was delivered into the hands of the Prussians, the capitulation
being due, as was claimed, to treachery among the French officers.