A Jacobin Hegira.
The Waning of Corsican Patriotism -- Rise of French
Radicalism -- Alliance with Salicetti -- Another Scheme for
Leadership -- Failure to Seize the Citadel of Ajaccio --
Second Plan -- Paoli's Attitude Toward the Convention --
Buonaparte Finally Discredited in Corsica -- Paoli Turns to
England -- Plans of the Buonaparte Family -- Their Arrival
in Toulon -- Napoleon's Character -- His Corsican Career --
Lessons of His Failures -- His Ability, Situation, and
Experience.
[Sidenote: 1793.]
Buonoparte was for an instant among the most zealous of Paoli's
supporters, and, taking up his ever-ready pen, he wrote two
impassioned papers whose respective tenors it is not easy to
reconcile: one an appeal to the Convention in Paoli's behalf, the
other a demand addressed to the municipality of Ajaccio that the
people should renew their oath of allegiance to France. The
explanation is somewhat recondite, perhaps, but not discreditable.
Salicetti, as chairman of a committee of the convention on Corsican
affairs, had conferred with Paoli on April thirteenth. The result was
so satisfactory that on the sixteenth the latter was urged to attend a
second meeting at Bastia in the interest of Corsican reconciliation
and internal peace. Meantime Lucien's performance at Marseilles had
fired the train which led to the Convention's action against Paoli,
and on the seventeenth the order for his arrest reached Salicetti, who
was of course charged with its execution. For this he was not
prepared, nor was Buonaparte. The essential of Corsican annexation to
France was order. The Corsican folk flocked to protect Paoli in
Corte, and the local government declared for him. There was inchoate
rebellion and within a few days the districts of Calvi and Bastia were
squarely arrayed with Salicetti against Bonifacio and Ajaccio, which
supported Paoli and Pozzo di Borgo. The Buonapartes were convinced
that the decree of the Convention was precipitate, and pleaded for its
recall. At the same time they saw no hope for peace in Corsica, except
through incorporation with France. But compromise proved impossible.
There was a truce when Paoli on April twenty-sixth wrote to the
Convention regretting that he could not obey their summons on account
of infirmities, and declaring his loyalty to France. In consequence
the Convention withdrew its decree and sent a new commission of which
Salicetti was not a member. This was in May, on the eve of the
Girondin overthrow. The measures of reconciliation proved unavailing,
because the Jacobins of Marseilles, learning that Paoli was Girondist
in sentiment, stopped the commission, and forbade their proceeding to
Corsica.
Meantime Captain Buonaparte's French regiment had already been some
five months in active service. If his passion had been only for
military glory, that was to be found nowhere so certainly as in its
ranks, where he should have been. But his passion for political renown
was clearly far stronger. Where could it be so easily gratified as in
Corsica under the present conditions? The personality of the young
adventurer had for a long time been curiously double: but while he had
successfully retained the position of a French officer in France, his
identity as a Corsican patriot had been nearly obliterated in Corsica
by his constant quarrels and repeated failures. Having become a French
radical, he had been forced into a certain antagonism to Paoli and
had thereby jeopardized both his fortunes and his career as far as
they were dependent on Corsican support. But with Paoli under the ban
of the Convention, and suspected of connivance with English schemes,
there might be a revulsion of feeling and a chance to make French
influence paramount once more in the island under the leadership of
the Buonapartes and their friends. For the moment Napoleon preserved
the outward semblance of the Corsican patriot, but he seems to have
been weary at heart of the thankless rôle and entirely ready to
exchange it for another. Whatever may have been his plan or the
principles of his conduct, it appears as if the decisive step now to
be taken had no relation to either plan or principles, but that it was
forced upon him by a chance development of events which he could not
have foreseen, and which he was utterly unable to control.
It is unknown whether Salicetti or he made the first advances in
coming to an understanding for mutual support, or when that
understanding was reached, but it existed as early as January, 1793, a
fact conclusively shown by a letter of the former dated early in that
month. It was April fifth when Salicetti reached Corsica; the news of
Paoli's denunciation by the Convention arrived, as has been said, on
the seventeenth. Seeing how nicely adjusted the scales of local
politics were, the deputy was eager to secure favor from Paris, and
wrote on the sixteenth an account of how warmly his commission had
been received. Next day the blow of Paoli's condemnation fell, and it
became plain that compromise was no longer possible. When even the
Buonapartes were supporting Paoli, the reconciliation of the island
with France was clearly impracticable. Salicetti did not hesitate, but
as between Paoli and Corsica with no career on the one side, and the
possibilities of a great career under France on the other, quickly
chose the latter. The same considerations weighed with Buonaparte; he
followed his patron, and as a reward was appointed by the French
commission inspector-general of artillery for Corsica.
Salicetti had granted what Paoli would not: Buonaparte was free to
strike his blow for Corsican leadership. With swift and decisive
measures the last scene in his Corsican adventures was arranged.
Several great guns which had been saved from a war-ship wrecked in the
harbor were lying on the shore unmounted. The inspector-general
hypocritically declared that they were a temptation to insurgents and
a menace to the public peace; they should be stored in the citadel.
His plan was to seize the moment when the heavy pieces were passing
the drawbridge, and at the head of his followers to take possession of
the stronghold he had so long coveted, and so often failed to capture.
If he could hold it for the Convention, a career in Corsica would be
at last assured.
But again he was doomed to disappointment. The former garrison had
been composed of French soldiers. On the failure of the Sardinian
expedition most of these had been landed at Toulon, where they still
were. The men in the citadel of Ajaccio were therefore in the main
islanders, although some French infantry and the French gunners were
still there; the new commander was a Paolist who refused to be
hoodwinked, and would not act without an authorization from his
general-in-chief. The value of the seizure depended on its promptness.
In order to secure a sufficient number of faithful followers,
Buonaparte started on foot for Bastia to consult the commission.
Learning that he was already a suspect at Corte and in danger of
arrest, he turned on his steps only to be confronted at Bocognano by a
band of Peraldi's followers. Two shepherds from his own estate found
a place of concealment for him in a house belonging to their friends,
and he passed a day in hiding, escaping after nightfall to Ucciani,
whence he returned to Ajaccio in safety.[33] Thwarted in one notion,
Buonaparte then proposed to the followers he already had two
alternatives: to erect a barricade behind which the guns could be
mounted and trained on the citadel, or, easier still, to carry one of
the pieces to some spot before the main entrance and then batter in
the gate. Neither scheme was considered feasible, and it was
determined to secure by bribes, if possible, the coöperation of a
portion of the garrison. The attempt failed through the integrity of a
single man, and is interesting only as having been Napoleon's first
lesson in an art which was thenceforward an unfailing resource. Rumors
of these proceedings soon reached the friends of Paoli, and Buonaparte
was summoned to report immediately at Corte. Such was the intensity of
popular bitterness against him in Ajaccio for his desertion of Paoli
that after a series of narrow escapes from arrest he was compelled to
flee in disguise and by water to Bastia, which he reached on May
tenth, 1793. Thwarted in their efforts to seize Napoleon, the hostile
party vented its rage on the rest of the family, hunting the mother
and children from their town house, which was pillaged and burned,
first to Milleli, then through jungle and over hilltops to the lonely
tower of Capitello near the sea.
[Footnote 33: Both these men were generously remembered
in the secret codicils of Napoleon's will.]
A desire for revenge on his Corsican persecutors would now give an
additional stimulus to Buonaparte, and still another device to secure
the passionately desired citadel of Ajaccio was proposed by him to the
commissioners of the Convention, and adopted by them. The remnants of
a Swiss regiment stationed near by were to be marched into the city,
as if for embarkment; several French war vessels from the harbor of
St. Florent, including one frigate, with troops, munitions, and
artillery on board, were to appear unexpectedly before the city, land
their men and guns, and then, with the help of the Switzers and such
of the citizens as espoused the French cause, were to overawe the town
and seize the citadel. Corsican affairs had now reached a crisis, for
this was a virtual declaration of war. Paoli so understood it, and
measures of mutual defiance were at once taken by both sides. The
French commissioners formally deposed the officials who sympathized
with Paoli; they, in turn, took steps to increase the garrison of
Ajaccio, and to strengthen the popular sentiment in their favor.
On receipt of the news that he had been summoned to Paris and that
hostile commissioners had been sent to take his place, Paoli had
immediately forwarded, by the hands of two friendly representatives,
the temperate letter in which he had declared his loyalty to France.
In it he had offered to resign and leave Corsica. His messengers were
seized and temporarily detained, but in the end they reached Paris,
and were kindly received. On May twenty-ninth they appeared on the
floor of the Convention, and won their cause. On June fifth the former
decree was revoked, and two days later a new and friendly commission
of two members started for Corsica. But at Marseilles they fell into
the hands of the Jacobin mob, and were arrested. Ignorant of these
favorable events, and the untoward circumstances by which their effect
was thwarted, the disheartened statesman had written and forwarded on
May fourteenth a second letter, of the same tenor as the first. This
measure likewise had failed of effect, for the messenger had been
stopped at Bastia, now the focus of Salicetti's influence, and the
letter had never reached its destination.
It was probably in this interval that Paoli finally adopted, as a last
desperate resort, the hitherto hazy idea of putting the island under
English protection, in order to maintain himself in the mission to
which he felt that Providence had called him. The actual departure of
Napoleon's expedition from St. Florent gave the final impulse. That
event so inflamed the passions of the conservative party in Ajaccio
that the Buonaparte family could no longer think of returning within a
reasonable time to their home. Some desperate resolution must be
taken, though it should involve leaving their small estates to be
ravaged, their slender resources to be destroyed, and abandoning their
partizans to proscription and imprisonment. They finally found a
temporary asylum with a relative in Calvi. The attacking flotilla had
been detained nearly a week by a storm, and reached Ajaccio on May
twenty-ninth, in the very height of these turmoils. It was too late
for any possibility of success. The few French troops on shore were
cowed, and dared not show themselves when a party landed from the
ships. On the contrary, Napoleon and his volunteers were received with
a fire of musketry, and, after spending two anxious days in an
outlying tower which they had seized and held, were glad to reëmbark
and sail away. Their leader, after still another narrow escape from
seizure, rejoined his family at Calvi. The Jacobin commission held a
meeting, and determined to send Salicetti to justify their course at
Paris. He carried with him a wordy paper written by Buonaparte in his
worst style and spelling, setting forth the military and political
situation in Corsica, and containing a bitter tirade against Paoli,
which remains to lend some color to the charge that the writer had
been, since his leader's return from exile, a spy and an informer,
influenced by no high principle of patriotism, but only by a base
ambition to supplant the aged president, and then to adopt whichever
plan would best further his own interest: ready either to establish a
virtual autonomy in his fatherland, or to deliver it entirely into the
hands of France.[34]
[Footnote 34: For this paper, see Napoléon inconnu, II,
462. Jung: Bonaparte et son temps, II, 266 and 498.
There appear to have been an official portion intended
to be filed, and a free, carelessly written running
commentary on men and things. The passage quoted is
taken from the latter.]
In this painful document Buonaparte sets forth in fiery phrase the
early enthusiasm of republicans for the return of Paoli, and their
disillusionment when he surrounded himself with venal men like Pozzo
di Borgo, with relatives like his nephew Leonetti, with his vile
creatures in general. The misfortunes of the Sardinian expedition, the
disgraceful disorders of the island, the failure of the commissioners
to secure Ajaccio, are all alike attributed to Paoli. "Can perfidy
like this invade the human heart?... What fatal ambition overmasters a
graybeard of sixty-eight?... On his face are goodness and gentleness,
in his heart hate and vengeance; he has an oily sensibility in his
eyes, and gall in his soul, but neither character nor strength." These
were the sentiments proper to a radical of the times, and they found
acceptance among the leaders of that class in Paris. More moderate men
did what they could to avert the impending breach, but in vain.
Corsica was far, communication slow, and the misunderstanding which
occurred was consequently unavoidable. It was not until July first
that Paoli received news of the pacificatory decrees passed by the
Convention more than a month before, and then it was too late; groping
in the dark, and unable to get news, he had formed his judgment from
what was going on in Corsica, and had therefore committed himself to a
change of policy. To him, as to most thinking men, the entire
structure of France, social, financial, and political, seemed rotten.
Civil war had broken out in Vendée; in Brittany the wildest excesses
passed unpunished; the great cities of Marseilles, Toulon, and Lyons
were in a state of anarchy; the revolutionary tribunal had been
established in Paris; the Committee of Public Safety had usurped the
supreme power; the France to which he had intrusted the fortunes of
Corsica was no more. Already an agent was in communication with the
English diplomats in Italy. On July tenth Salicetti arrived in Paris;
on the seventeenth Paoli was declared a traitor and an outlaw, and his
friends were indicted for trial. But the English fleet was already in
the Mediterranean, and although the British protectorate over Corsica
was not established until the following year, in the interval the
French and their few remaining sympathizers on the island were able at
best to hold only the three towns of Bastia, St. Florent, and Calvi.
After the last fiasco before the citadel of Ajaccio, the situation of
the Buonapartes was momentarily desperate. Lucien says in his memoirs
that shortly before his brother had spoken longingly of India, of the
English empire as destined to spread with every year, and of the
career which its expansion opened to good officers of artillery, who
were scarce among the British--scarce enough everywhere, he thought.
"If I ever choose that career," said he, "I hope you will hear of me.
In a few years I shall return thence a rich nabob, and bring fine
dowries for our three sisters." But the scheme was deferred and then
abandoned. Salicetti had arranged for his own return to Paris, where
he would be safe. Napoleon felt that flight was the only resort for
him and his. Accordingly, on June eleventh, three days earlier than
his patron, he and Joseph, accompanied by Fesch, embarked with their
mother and the rest of the family to join Lucien, who had remained at
Toulon, where they arrived on the thirteenth. The Jacobins of that
city had received Lucien, as a sympathetic Corsican, with honor.
Doubtless his family, homeless and destitute for their devotion to the
republic, would find encouragement and help until some favorable turn
in affairs should restore their country to France, and reinstate them
not only in their old possessions, but in such new dignities as would
fitly reward their long and painful devotion. Such, at least, appears
to have been Napoleon's general idea. He was provided with a legal
certificate that his family was one of importance and the richest in
the department. The Convention had promised compensation to those who
had suffered losses.
As had been hoped, on their arrival the Buonapartes were treated with
every mark of distinction, and ample provision was made for their
comfort. By act of the Convention, women and old men in such
circumstances received seventy-five livres a month, infants forty-five
livres. Lads received simply a present of twenty-five livres. With the
preliminary payment of one hundred and fifty livres, which they
promptly received, the Buonapartes were better off than they had been
at home. Lucien had appropriated Napoleon's certificate of birth in
order to appear older than he was, and, having now developed into a
fluent demagogue, was soon earning a small salary in the commissary
department of the army. Fesch also found a comfortable berth in the
same department. Joseph calmly displayed Napoleon's commission in the
National Guard as his own, and received a higher place with a better
salary. The sovereignty of the Convention was everywhere acknowledged,
their revolutionary courts were established far and wide, and their
legations, clothed with dictatorial power, were acknowledged in every
camp of the land as supreme, superior even to the commanders-in-chief.
It was not exactly a time for further military irregularities, and
Napoleon, armed with a certificate from Salicetti that his presence in
Corsica for the past six months had been necessary, betook himself to
the army headquarters at Nice, where a detachment of his regiment was
now stationed. When he arrived, no awkward questions were asked by the
authorities. The town had but recently been captured, men were needed
to hold it, and the Corsican refugee was promptly appointed captain of
the shore battery. To casual observers he appeared perfectly content
in this subordinate position. He still cherished the hope, it seems,
that he might find some opportunity to lead a successful expedition
against the little citadel of Ajaccio. Such a scheme, at all events,
occupied him intermittently for nearly two years, or until it was
banished forever by visions of a European control far transcending the
limits of his island home.
Not that the outcast Buonaparte was any longer exclusively a Corsican.
It is impossible to conceive of a lot more pitiful or a fate more
obdurate than his so far had been. There was little hereditary
morality in his nature, and none had been inculcated by training; he
had nothing of what is called vital piety, nor even sincere
superstition. A butt and an outcast at a French school under the old
régime, he had imbibed a bitter hatred for the land indelibly
associated with such haughty privileges for the rich and such
contemptuous disdain for the poor. He had not even the consolation of
having received an education. His nature revolted at the religious
formalism of priestcraft; his mind turned in disgust from the
scholastic husks of its superficial knowledge. What he had learned
came from inborn capacity, from desultory reading, and from the
untutored imaginings of his garden at Brienne, his cave at Ajaccio, or
his barrack chambers. What more plausible than that he should first
turn to the land of his birth with some hope of happiness, usefulness,
or even glory! What more mortifying than the revelation that in
manhood he was too French for Corsica, as in boyhood he had been too
Corsican for France!
The story of his sojourns and adventures in Corsica has no
fascination; it is neither heroic nor satanic, but belongs to the dull
and mediocre realism which makes up so much of commonplace life. It is
difficult to find even a thread of continuity in it: there may be one
as to purpose; there is none as to either conduct or theory. There is
the passionate admiration of a southern nature for a hero as
represented by the ideal Paoli. There is the equally southern quality
of quick but transient hatred. The love of dramatic effect is shown at
every turn, in the perfervid style of his writings, in the mock
dignity of an edict issued from the grotto at Milleli, in the empty
honors of a lieutenant-colonel without a real command, in the paltry
style of an artillery inspector with no artillery but a few dismantled
guns.
But the most prominent characteristic of the young man was his
shiftiness, in both the good and bad senses of the word. He would
perish with mortification rather than fail in devising some expedient
to meet every emergency; he felt no hesitation in changing his point
of view as experience destroyed an ideal or an unforeseen chance was
to be seized and improved. Moreover, repeated failure did not
dishearten him. Detesting garrison life, he neglected its duties, and
endured punishment, but he secured regular promotion; defeated again
and again before the citadel of Ajaccio, each time he returned
undismayed to make a fresh trial under new auspices or in a new way.
He was no spendthrift, but he had no scruples about money. He was
proud in the headship of his family, and reckless as to how he should
support them, or should secure their promotion. Solitary in his
boyhood, he had become in his youth a companion and leader; but his
true friendships were not with his social equals, whom he despised,
but with the lowly, whom he understood. Finally, here was a citizen of
the world, a man without a country; his birthright was gone, for
Corsica repelled him; France he hated, for she had never adopted him.
He was almost without a profession, for he had neglected that of a
soldier, and had failed both as an author and as a politician. He was
apparently, too, without a single guiding principle; the world had
been a harsh stepmother, at whose knee he had neither learned the
truth nor experienced kindness. He appears consistent in nothing but
in making the best of events as they occurred. So far he was a man
neither much better nor much worse than the world into which he was
born. He was quite as unscrupulous as those about him, but he was far
greater than they in perspicacity, adroitness, adaptability, and
persistence. During the period before his expulsion from Corsica these
qualities of leadership were scarcely recognizable, but they existed.
As yet, to all outward appearance, the little captain of artillery was
the same slim, ill-proportioned, and rather insignificant youth; but
at twenty-three he had had the experience of a much greater age.
Conscious of his powers, he had dreamed many day-dreams, and had
acquired a habit of boastful conversation in the family circle; but,
fully cognizant of the dangers incident to his place, and the
unsettled conditions about him, he was cautious and reserved in the
outside world.