The Life of Napoleon I Part 2

After firing off this tirade Buonaparte returned to his regiment at Auxonne (February, 1791). It was high time; for his furlough, though prolonged on the plea of ill-health, had expired in the preceding October, and he was therefore liable to six months' imprisonment. But the young officer rightly gauged the weakness of the moribund monarchy; and the officers of his almost mutinous regiment were glad to get him back on any terms. Everywhere in his journey through Provence and Dauphine, Buonaparte saw the triumph of revolutionary principles. He notes that the peasants are to a man for the Revolution; so are the rank and file of the regiment. The officers are aristocrats, along with three-fourths of those who belong to "good society": so are all the women, for "Liberty is fairer than they, and eclipses them." The Revolution was evidently gaining completer hold over his mind and was somewhat blurring his insular sentiments, when a rebuff from Paoli further weakened his ties to Corsica. Buonaparte had dedicated to him his work on Corsica, and had sent him the ma.n.u.script for his approval. After keeping it an unconscionable time, the old man now coldly replied that he did not desire the honour of Buonaparte's panegyric, though he thanked him heartily for it; that the consciousness of having done his duty sufficed for him in his old age; and, for the rest, history should not be written in youth. A further request from Joseph Buonaparte for the return of the slighted ma.n.u.script brought the answer that he, Paoli, had no time to search his papers. After this, how could hero-wors.h.i.+p subsist?

The four months spent by Buonaparte at Auxonne were, indeed, a time of disappointment and hards.h.i.+p. Out of his slender funds he paid for the education of his younger brother, Louis, who shared his otherwise desolate lodging. A room almost bare but for a curtainless bed, a table heaped with books and papers, and two chairs--such were the surroundings of the lieutenant in the spring of 1791. He lived on bread that he might rear his brother for the army, and that he might buy books, overjoyed when his savings mounted to the price of some coveted volume.

Perhaps the depressing conditions of his life at Auxonne may account for the acrid tone of an essay which he there wrote in compet.i.tion for a prize offered by the Academy of Lyons on the subject--"What truths and sentiments ought to be inculcated to men for their happiness." It was unsuccessful; and modern readers will agree with the verdict of one of the judges that it was incongruous in arrangement and of a bad and ragged style. The thoughts are set forth in jerky, vehement clauses; and, in place of the _sensibilite_ of some of his earlier effusions, we feel here the icy breath of materialism. He regards an ideal human society as a geometrical structure based on certain well-defined postulates. All men ought to be able to satisfy certain elementary needs of their nature; but all that is beyond is questionable or harmful. The ideal legislator will curtail wealth so as to restore the wealthy to their true nature--and so forth. Of any generous outlook on the wider possibilities of human life there is scarcely a trace. His essay is the apotheosis of social mediocrity. By Procrustean methods he would have forced mankind back to the dull levels of Sparta: the opalescent glow of Athenian life was beyond his ken. But perhaps the most curious pa.s.sage is that in which he preaches against the sin and folly of ambition. He pictures Ambition as a figure with pallid cheeks, wild eyes, hasty step, jerky movements and sardonic smile, for whom crimes are a sport, while lies and calumnies are merely arguments and figures of speech. Then, in words that recall Juvenal's satire on Hannibal's career, he continues: "What is Alexander doing when he rushes from Thebes into Persia and thence into India? He is ever restless, he loses his wits, he believes himself G.o.d. What is the end of Cromwell? He governs England. But is he not tormented by all the daggers of the furies?"--The words ring false, even for this period of Buonaparte's life; and one can readily understand his keen wish in later years to burn every copy of these youthful essays. But they have nearly all survived; and the diatribe against ambition itself supplies the feather wherewith history may wing her shaft at the towering flight of the imperial eagle.[15]

At midsummer he is transferred, as first lieutenant, to another regiment which happened to be quartered at Valence; but his second sojourn there is remarkable only for signs of increasing devotion to the revolutionary cause. In the autumn of 1791 he is again in Corsica on furlough, and remains there until the month of May following. He finds the island rent by strifes which it would be tedious to describe. Suffice it to say that the breach between Paoli and the Buonapartes gradually widened owing to the dictator's suspicion of all who favoured the French Revolution. The young officer certainly did nothing to close the breach. Determined to secure his own election as lieutenant-colonel in the new Corsican National Guard, he spent much time in gaining recruits who would vote for him. He further a.s.sured his success by having one of the commissioners, who was acting in Paoli's interest, carried off from his friends and detained at the Buonapartes' house in Ajaccio--his first _coup_[16] Stranger events were to follow. At Easter, when the people were excited by the persecuting edicts against the clergy and the closing of a monastery, there was sharp fighting between the populace and Buonaparte's companies of National Guards. Originating in a petty quarrel, which was taken up by eager partisans, it embroiled the whole of the town and gave the ardent young Jacobin the chance of overthrowing his enemies. His plans even extended to the seizure of the citadel, where he tried to seduce the French regiment from its duty to officers whom he dubbed aristocrats. The attempt was a failure. The whole truth can, perhaps, scarcely be discerned amidst the tissue of lies which speedily enveloped the affair; but there can be no doubt that on the second day of strife Buonaparte's National Guards began the fight and subsequently menaced the regular troops in the citadel. The conflict was finally stopped by commissioners sent by Paoli; and the volunteers were sent away from the town.

Buonaparte's position now seemed desperate. His conduct exposed him to the hatred of most of his fellow-citizens and to the rebukes of the French War Department. In fact, he had doubly sinned: he had actually exceeded his furlough by four months: he was technically guilty, first of desertion, and secondly of treason. In ordinary times he would have been shot, but the times were extraordinary, and he rightly judged that when a Continental war was brewing, the most daring course was also the most prudent, namely, to go to Paris. Thither Paoli allowed him to proceed, doubtless on the principle of giving the young madcap a rope wherewith to hang himself.

On his arrival at Ma.r.s.eilles, he hears that war has been declared by France against Austria; for the republican Ministry, which Louis XVI.

had recently been compelled to accept, believed that war against an absolute monarch would intensify revolutionary fervour in France and hasten the advent of the Republic. Their surmises were correct.

Buonaparte, on his arrival at Paris, witnessed the closing scenes of the reign of Louis XVI. On June 20th he saw the crowd burst into the Tuileries, when for some hours it insulted the king and queen. Warmly though he had espoused the principles of the Revolution, his patrician blood boiled at the sight of these vulgar outrages, and he exclaimed: "Why don't they sweep off four or five hundred of that _canaille_ with cannon? The rest would then run away fast enough." The remark is significant. If his brain approved the Jacobin creed, his instincts were always with monarchy. His career was to reconcile his reason with his instincts, and to impose on weary France the curious compromise of a revolutionary Imperialism.

On August 10th, from the window of a shop near the Tuileries, he looked down on the strange events which dealt the _coup de grace_ to the dying monarchy. Again the chieftain within him sided against the vulture rabble and with the well-meaning monarch who kept his troops to a tame defensive. "If Louis XVI." (so wrote Buonaparte to his brother Joseph) "had mounted his horse, the victory would have been his--so I judge from the spirit which prevailed in the morning."

When all was over, when Louis sheathed his sword and went for shelter to the National a.s.sembly, when the fierce Ma.r.s.eillais were slaughtering the Swiss Guards and bodyguards of the king, Buonaparte dashed forward to save one of these unfortunates from a southern sabre. "Southern comrade, let us save this poor wretch.--Are you of the south?--Yes.--Well, we will save him."

Altogether, what a time of disillusionment this was to the young officer. What depths of cruelty and obscenity it revealed in the Parisian rabble. What folly to treat them with the Christian forbearance shown by Louis XVI. How much more suitable was grapeshot than the beat.i.tudes. The lesson was stored up for future use at a somewhat similar crisis on this very spot.

During the few days when victorious Paris left Louis with the sham t.i.tle of king, Buonaparte received his captain's commission, which was signed for the king by Servan, the War Minister. Thus did the revolutionary Government pa.s.s over his double breach of military discipline at Ajaccio. The revolutionary motto, "La carriere ouverte aux talents," was never more conspicuously ill.u.s.trated than in the facile condoning of his offences and in this rapid promotion. It was indeed a time fraught with vast possibilities for all republican or Jacobinical officers. Their monarchist colleagues were streaming over the frontiers to join the Austrian and Prussian invaders. But National Guards were enrolling by tens of thousands to drive out the Prussian and Austrian invaders; and when Europe looked to see France fall for ever, it saw with wonder her strength renewed as by enchantment. Later on it learnt that that strength was the strength of Antaeus, of a peasantry that stood firmly rooted in their native soil. Organization and good leaders.h.i.+p alone were needed to transform these ardent ma.s.ses into the most formidable soldiery; and the brilliant military prospects now opened up certainly knit Buonaparte's feelings more closely with the cause of France. Thus, on September 21st, when the new National a.s.sembly, known as the Convention, proclaimed the Republic, we may well believe that sincere convictions no less than astute calculations moved him to do and dare all things for the sake of the new democratic commonwealth.[17]

For the present, however, a family duty urges him to return to Corsica. He obtains permission to escort home his sister Elise, and for the third time we find him on furlough in Corsica. This laxity of military discipline at such a crisis is explicable only on the supposition that the revolutionary chiefs knew of his devotion to their cause and believed that his influence in the island would render his informal services there more valuable than his regimental duties in the army then invading Savoy. For the word Republic, which fired his imagination, was an offence to Paoli and to most of the islanders; and the phrase "Republic one and indivisible," ever on the lips of the French, seemed to promise that the island must become a petty replica of France--France that was now dominated by the authors of the vile September ma.s.sacres. The French party in the island was therefore rapidly declining, and Paoli was preparing to sever the union with France. For this he has been bitterly a.s.sailed as a traitor. But, from Paoli's point of view, the acquisition of the island by France was a piece of rank treachery; and his allegiance to France was technically at an end when the king was forcibly dethroned and the Republic was proclaimed. The use of the appellation "traitor"

in such a case is merely a piece of childish abuse. It can be justified neither by reference to law, equity, nor to the popular sentiment of the time. Facts were soon to show that the islanders were bitterly opposed to the party then dominant in France. This hostility of a clannish, religious, and conservative populace against the bloodthirsty and atheistical innovators who then lorded it over France was not diminished by the action of some six thousand French volunteers, the off-scourings of the southern ports, who were landed at Ajaccio for an expedition against Sardinia. In their zeal for Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, these _bonnets rouges_ came to blows with the men of Ajaccio, three of whom they hanged. So fierce was the resentment caused by this outrage that the plan of a joint expedition for the liberation of Sardinia from monarchical tyranny had to be modified; and Buonaparte, who was again in command of a battalion of Corsican guards, proposed that the islanders alone should proceed to attack the Madalena Isles.

These islands, situated between Corsica and Sardinia, have a double interest to the historical student. One of them, Caprera, was destined to shelter another Italian hero at the close of his career, the n.o.ble self-denying Garibaldi: the chief island of the group was the objective of Buonaparte's first essay in regular warfare. After some delays the little force set sail under the command of Cesari-Colonna, the nephew of Paoli. According to Buonaparte's own official statement at the close of the affair, he had successfully landed his men near the town to be a.s.sailed, and had thrown the Sardinian defences into confusion, when a treacherous order from his chief bade him to cease firing and return to the vessels. It has also been stated that this retreat was the outcome of a secret understanding between Paoli and Cesari-Colonna that the expedition should miscarry. This seems highly probable. A mutiny on board the chief s.h.i.+p of the flotilla was a.s.signed by Cesari-Colonna as the cause of his order for a retreat; but there are mutinies and mutinies, and this one may have been a trick of the Paolists for thwarting Buonaparte's plan and leaving him a prisoner. In any case, the young officer only saved himself and his men by a hasty retreat to the boats, tumbling into the sea a mortar and four cannon. Such was the ending to the great captain's first military enterprise.

On his return to Ajaccio (March 3rd, 1793), Buonaparte found affairs in utter confusion. News had recently arrived of the declaration of war by the French Republic against England and Holland. Moreover, Napoleon's young brother, Lucien, had secretly denounced Paoli to the French authorities at Toulon; and three commissioners were now sent from Paris charged with orders to disband the Corsican National Guards, and to place the Corsican dictator under the orders of the French general commanding the army of Italy.[18]

A game of truly Macchiavellian skill is now played. The French commissioners, among whom the Corsican deputy, Salicetti, is by far the most able, invite Paoli to repair to Toulon, there to concert measures for the defence of Corsica. Paoli, seeing through the ruse and discerning a guillotine, pleads that his age makes the journey impossible; but with his friends he quietly prepares for resistance and holds the citadel of Ajaccio. Meanwhile the commissioners make friendly overtures to the old chief; in these Napoleon partic.i.p.ates, being ignorant of Lucien's action at Toulon. The sincerity of these overtures may well be called in question, though Buonaparte still used the language of affection to his former idol. However this may be, all hope of compromise is dashed by the zealots who are in power at Paris.

On April 2nd they order the French commissioners to secure Paoli's person, by whatever means, and bring him to the French capital. At once a cry of indignation goes up from all parts of Corsica; and Buonaparte draws up a declaration, vindicating Paoli's conduct and begging the French Convention to revoke its decree.[19] Again, one cannot but suspect that this declaration was intended mainly, if not solely, for local consumption. In any case, it failed to cool the resentment of the populace; and the partisans of France soon came to blows with the Paolists.

Salicetti and Buonaparte now plan by various artifices to gain the citadel of Ajaccio from the Paolists, but guile is three times foiled by guile equally astute. Failing here, the young captain seeks to communicate with the French commissioners at Bastia. He sets out secretly, with a trusty shepherd as companion, to cross the island: but at the village of Bocognano he is recognized and imprisoned by the partisans of Paoli. Some of the villagers, however, retain their old affection to the Buonaparte family, which here has an ancestral estate, and secretly set him free. He returns to Ajaccio, only to find an order for his arrest issued by the Corsican patriots. This time he escapes by timely concealment in the grotto of a friend's garden; and from the grounds of another family connection he finally glides away in a vessel to a point of safety, whence he reaches Bastia.

Still, though a fugitive, he persists in believing that Ajaccio is French at heart, and urges the sending of a liberating force. The French commissioners agree, and the expedition sails--only to meet with utter failure. Ajaccio, as one man, repels the partisans of France; and, a gale of wind springing up, Buonaparte and his men regain their boats with the utmost difficulty. At a place hard by, he finds his mother, uncle, brothers and sisters. Madame Buonaparte, with the extraordinary tenacity of will that characterized her famous son, had wished to defend her house at Ajaccio against the hostile populace; but, yielding to the urgent warnings of friends, finally fled to the nearest place of safety, and left the house to the fury of the populace, by whom it was nearly wrecked.

For a brief s.p.a.ce Buonaparte clung to the hope of regaining Corsica for the Republic, but now only by the aid of French troops. For the islanders, stung by the demand of the French Convention that Paoli should go to Paris, had rallied to the dictator's side; and the aged chief made overtures to England for alliance. The partisans of France, now menaced by England's naval power, were in an utterly untenable position. Even the steel-like will of Buonaparte was bent. His career in Corsica was at an end for the present; and with his kith and kin he set sail for France.

The interest of the events above described lies, not in their intrinsic importance, but in the signal proof which they afford of Buonaparte's wondrous endowments of mind and will. In a losing cause and in a petty sphere he displays all the qualities which, when the omens were favourable, impelled him to the domination of a Continent.

He fights every inch of ground tenaciously; at each emergency he evinces a truly Italian fertility of resource, gliding round obstacles or striving to shatter them by sheer audacity, seeing through men, cajoling them by his insinuations or overawing them by his mental superiority, ever determined to try the fickle jade Fortune to the very utmost, and retreating only before the inevitable. The sole weakness discoverable in this nature, otherwise compact of strength, is an excess of will-power over all the faculties that make for prudence. His vivid imagination only serves to fire him with the full a.s.surance that he must prevail over all obstacles.

And yet, if he had now stopped to weigh well the lessons of the past, hitherto fertile only in failures and contradictions, he must have seen the powerlessness of his own will when in conflict with the forces of the age; for he had now severed his connection with the Corsican patriots, of whose cause he had only two years before been the most pa.s.sionate champion. It is evident that the schism which finally separated Buonaparte and Paoli originated in their divergence of views regarding the French Revolution. Paoli accepted revolutionary principles only in so far as they promised to base freedom on a due balance of cla.s.s interests. He was a follower of Montesquieu. He longed to see in Corsica a const.i.tution similar to that of England or to that of 1791 in France. That hope vanished alike for France and Corsica after the fall of the monarchy; and towards the Jacobinical Republic, which banished orthodox priests and guillotined the amiable Louis, Paoli thenceforth felt naught but loathing: "We have been the enemies of kings," he said to Joseph Buonaparte; "let us never be their executioners." Thenceforth he drifted inevitably into alliance with England.

Buonaparte, on the other hand, was a follower of Rousseau, whose ideas leaped to power at the downfall of the monarchy. Despite the excesses which he ever deplored, this second Revolution appeared to him to be the dawn of a new and intelligent age. The clear-cut definitions of the new political creed dovetailed in with his own rigid views of life. Mankind was to be saved by law, society being levelled down and levelled up until the ideals of Lycurgus were attained. Consequently he regarded the Republic as a mighty agency for the social regeneration not only of France, but of all peoples. His insular sentiments were gradually merged in these vaster schemes.

Self-interest and the differentiating effects of party strifes undoubtedly a.s.sisted the mental transformation; but it is clear that the study of the "Social Contract" was the touchstone of his early intellectual growth. He had gone to Rousseau's work to deepen his Corsican patriotism: he there imbibed doctrines which drew him irresistibly into the vortex of the French Revolution, and of its wars of propaganda and conquest.

CHAPTER III

TOULON

When Buonaparte left Corsica for the coast of Provence, his career had been remarkable only for the strange contrast between the brilliance of his gifts and the utter failure of all his enterprises. His French partisans.h.i.+p had, as it seemed, been the ruin of his own and his family's fortunes. At the age of twenty-four he was known only as the unlucky leader of forlorn hopes and an outcast from the island around which his fondest longings had been entwined. His land-fall on the French coast seemed no more promising; for at that time Provence was on the verge of revolt against the revolutionary Government. Even towns like Ma.r.s.eilles and Toulon, which a year earlier had been noted for their republican fervour, were now disgusted with the course of events at Paris. In the third climax of revolutionary fury, that of June 2nd, 1793, the more enlightened of the two republican factions, the Girondins, had been overthrown by their opponents, the men of the Mountain, who, aided by the Parisian rabble, seized on power. Most of the Departments of France resented this violence and took up arms. But the men of the Mountain acted with extraordinary energy: they proclaimed the Girondins to be in league with the invaders, and blasted their opponents with the charge of conspiring to divide France into federal republics. The Committee of Public Safety, now installed in power at Paris, decreed a _levee en ma.s.se_ of able-bodied patriots to defend the sacred soil of the Republic, and the "organizer of victory," Carnot, soon drilled into a terrible efficiency the hosts that sprang from the soil. On their side the Girondins had no organization whatever, and were embarra.s.sed by the adhesion of very many royalists. Consequently their wavering groups speedily gave way before the impact of the new, solid, central power.

A movement so wanting in definiteness as that of the Girondins was destined to slide into absolute opposition to the men of the Mountain: it was doomed to become royalist. Certainly it did not command the adhesion of Napoleon. His inclinations are seen in his pamphlet, "Le Souper de Beaucaire," which he published in August, 1793. He wrote it in the intervals of some regimental work which had come to hand: and his pa.s.sage through the little town of Beaucaire seems to have suggested the scenic setting of this little dialogue. It purports to record a discussion between an officer--Buonaparte himself--two merchants of Ma.r.s.eilles, and citizens of Nimes and Montpellier. It urges the need of united action under the lead of the Jacobins. The officer reminds the Ma.r.s.eillais of the great services which their city has rendered to the cause of liberty. Let Ma.r.s.eilles never disgrace herself by calling in the Spanish fleet as a protection against Frenchmen. Let her remember that this civil strife was part of a fight to the death between French patriots and the despots of Europe. That was, indeed, the practical point at issue; the stern logic of facts ranged on the Jacobin side all clear-sighted men who were determined that the Revolution should not be stamped out by the foreign invaders.

On the ground of mere expediency, men must rally to the cause of the Jacobinical Republic. Every crime might be condoned, provided that the men now in power at Paris saved the country. Better their tyranny than the vengeance of the emigrant _n.o.blesse_. Such was the instinct of most Frenchmen, and it saved France.

As an _expose_ of keen policy and all-dominating opportunism, "Le Souper de Beaucaire" is admirable. In a national crisis anything that saves the State is justifiable--that is its argument. The men of the Mountain are abler and stronger than the Girondins: therefore the Ma.r.s.eillais are foolish not to bow to the men of the Mountain. The author feels no sympathy with the generous young Girondins, who, under the inspiration of Madame Roland, sought to establish a republic of the virtues even while they converted monarchical Europe by the sword.

Few men can now peruse with undimmed eyes the tragic story of their fall. But the scenes of 1793 had transformed the Corsican youth into a dry-eyed opportunist who rejects the Girondins as he would have thrown aside a defective tool: nay, he blames them as "guilty of the greatest of crimes."[20]

Nevertheless Buonaparte was alive to the miseries of the situation. He was weary of civil strifes, in which it seemed that no glory could be won. He must hew his way to fortune, if only in order to support his family, which was now drifting about from village to village of Provence and subsisting on the slender sums doled out by the Republic to Corsican exiles.

He therefore applied, though without success, for a regimental exchange to the army of the Rhine. But while toiling through his administrative drudgery in Provence, his duties brought him near to Toulon, where the Republic was face to face with triumphant royalism.

The hour had struck: the man now appeared.

In July, 1793, Toulon joined other towns of the south in declaring against Jacobin tyranny; and the royalists of the town, despairing of making headway against the troops of the Convention, admitted English and Spanish squadrons to the harbour to hold the town for Louis XVII, (August 28th). This event shot an electric thrill through France. It was the climax of a long series of disasters. Lyons had hoisted the white flag of the Bourbons, and was making a desperate defence against the forces of the Convention: the royalist peasants of La Vendee had several times scattered the National Guards in utter rout: the Spaniards were crossing the Eastern Pyrenees: the Piedmontese were before the gates of Gren.o.ble; and in the north and on the Rhine a doubtful contest was raging.

Such was the condition of France when Buonaparte drew near to the republican forces encamped near Ollioules, to the north-west of Toulon. He found them in disorder: their commander, Carteaux, had left the easel to learn the art of war, and was ignorant of the range of his few cannon; Dommartin, their artillery commander, had been disabled by a wound; and the Commissioners of the Convention, who were charged to put new vigour into the operations, were at their wits' end for lack of men and munitions. One of them was Salicetti, who hailed his coming as a G.o.dsend, and urged him to take Dommartin's place.

Thus, on September 16th, the thin, sallow, threadbare figure took command of the artillery.

The republicans menaced the town on two sides. Carteaux with some 8,000 men held the hills between Toulon and Ollioules, while a corps 3,000 strong, under Lapoype, observed the fortress on the side of La Valette. Badly led though they were, they wrested the valley north of Mount Faron from the allied outposts, and nearly completed the besiegers' lines (September 18th). In fact, the garrison, which comprised only 2,000 British troops, 4,000 Spaniards, 1,500 French royalists, together with some Neapolitans and Piedmontese, was insufficient to defend the many positions around the city on which its safety depended. Indeed, General Grey wrote to Pitt that 50,000 men were needed to garrison the place; but, as that was double the strength of the British regular army then, the English Minister could only hold out hopes of the arrival of an Austrian corps and a few hundred British.[21]

Before Buonaparte's arrival the Jacobins had no artillery: true, they had a few field-pieces, four heavier guns and two mortars, which a sergeant helplessly surveyed; but they had no munitions, no tools, above all no method and no discipline. Here then was the opportunity for which he had been pining. At once he a.s.sumes the tone of a master.

"You mind your business, and let me look after mine," he exclaims to officious infantrymen; "it is artillery that takes fortresses: infantry gives its help." The drudgery of the last weeks now yields fruitful results: his methodical mind, brooding over the chaos before him, flashes back to this or that detail in some coast fort or magazine: his energy hustles on the leisurely Provencaux, and in a few days he has a respectable park of artillery--fourteen cannon, four mortars, and the necessary stores. In a brief s.p.a.ce the Commissioners show their approval of his services by promoting him to the rank of _chef de bataillon_.

By this time the tide was beginning to turn in favour of the Republic.

On October 9th Lyons fell before the Jacobins. The news lends a new zest to the Jacobins, whose left wing had (October 1st) been severely handled by the allies on Mount Faron. Above all, Buonaparte's artillery can be still further strengthened. "I have despatched," he wrote to the Minister of War, "an intelligent officer to Lyons, Briancon, and Gren.o.ble, to procure what might be useful to us. I have requested the Army of Italy to furnish us with the cannon now useless for the defence of Antibes and Monaco.... I have established at Ollioules an a.r.s.enal with 80 workers. I have requisitioned horses from Nice right to Valence and Montpellier.... I am having 5,000 gabions made every day at Ma.r.s.eilles." But he was more than a mere organizer.

He was ever with his men, animating them by his own ardour: "I always found him at his post," wrote Doppet, who now succeeded Carteaux; "when he needed rest he lay on the ground wrapped in his cloak: he never left the batteries." There, amidst the autumn rains, he contracted the febrile symptoms which for several years deepened the pallor of his cheeks and furrowed the rings under his eyes, giving him that uncanny, almost spectral, look which struck a chill to all who saw him first and knew not the fiery energy that burnt within. There, too, his zeal, his unfailing resource, his bulldog bravery, and that indefinable quality which separates genius from talent speedily conquered the hearts of the French soldiery. One example of this magnetic power must here suffice. He had ordered a battery to be made so near to Fort Mulgrave that Salicetti described it as within a pistol-shot of the English guns. Could it be worked, its effect would be decisive. But who could work it? The first day saw all its gunners killed or wounded, and even the reckless Jacobins flinched from facing the iron hail. "Call it _the battery of the fearless_," ordered the young captain. The generous French nature was touched at its tenderest point, personal and national honour, and the battery thereafter never lacked its full complement of gunners, living and dead.

The position at Fort Mulgrave, or the Little Gibraltar, was, indeed, all important; for if the republicans seized that commanding position, the allied squadrons could be overpowered, or at least compelled to sail away; and with their departure Toulon must fall.

Here we come on to ground that has been fiercely fought over in wordy war. Did Bonaparte originate the plan of attack? Or did he throw his weight and influence into a scheme that others beside him had designed? Or did he merely carry out orders as a subordinate?

According to the Commissioner Barras, the last was the case. But Barras was with the eastern wing of the besiegers, that is, some miles away from the side of La Seyne and L'Eguillette, where Buonaparte fought. Besides, Barras' "Memoires" are so untruthful where Buonaparte is concerned, as to be unworthy of serious attention, at least on these points.[22] The historian M. Jung likewise relegates Buonaparte to a quite subordinate position.[23] But his narrative omits some of the official doc.u.ments which show that Buonaparte played a very important part in the siege. Other writers claim that Buonaparte's influence on the whole conduct of operations was paramount and decisive. Thus, M. Duruy quotes the letter of the Commissioners to the Convention: "We shall take care not to lay siege to Toulon by ordinary means, when we have a surer means to reduce it, that is, by burning the enemy's fleet.... We are only waiting for the siege-guns before taking up a position whence we may reach the s.h.i.+ps with red-hot b.a.l.l.s; and we shall see if we are not masters of Toulon." But this very letter disproves the Buonapartist claim. It was written on September 13th. Thus, _three days before Buonaparte's arrival_, the Commissioners had fully decided on attacking the Little Gibraltar; and the claim that Buonaparte originated the plan can only be sustained by antedating his arrival at Toulon.[24] In fact, every experienced officer among besiegers and besieged saw the weak point of the defence: early in September Hood and Mulgrave began the fortification of the heights behind L'Eguillette. In face of these facts, the a.s.sertion that Buonaparte was the first to design the movements which secured the surrender of Toulon must be relegated to the domain of hero-wors.h.i.+p. (See note on p. 56.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SIEGE OF TOULON, 1793, from "L'Histoire de France depuis la Revolution de 1789," by Emmanuel Toulougeon. Paris, An. XII.

[1803]. A. Fort Mulgrave. A'. Promontory of L'Eguillette. 1 and 2.

Batteries. 3. Battery "Hommes sans Peur." The black and shaded rectangles are the Republican and Allied positions respectively.]

Carteaux having been superseded by Doppet, more energy was thrown into the operations. Yet for him Buonaparte had scarcely more respect.

On November 15th an affair of outposts near Fort Mulgrave showed his weakness. The soldiers on both sides eagerly took up the affray; line after line of the French rushed up towards that frowning redoubt: O'Hara, the leader of the allied troops, encouraged the British in a sortie that drove back the blue-coats; whereupon Buonaparte headed the rallying rush to the gorge of the redoubt, when Doppet sounded the retreat. Half blinded by rage and by the blood trickling from a slight wound in his forehead, the young Corsican rushed back to Doppet and abused him in the language of the camp: "Our blow at Toulon has missed, because a---- has beaten the retreat." The soldiery applauded this revolutionary licence, and bespattered their chief with similar terms.

A few days later the tall soldierly Dugommier took the command: reinforcements began to pour in, finally raising the strength of the besiegers to 37,000 men. Above all, the new commander gave Buonaparte _carte blanche_ for the direction of the artillery. New batteries accordingly began to ring the Little Gibraltar on the landward side; O'Hara, while gallantly heading a sortie, fell into the republicans'

hands, and the defenders began to lose heart. The worst disappointment was the refusal of the Austrian Court to fulfil its promise, solemnly given in September, to send 5,000 regular troops for the defence of Toulon.

The final conflict took place on the night of December 16-17, when torrents of rain, a raging wind, and flashes of lightning added new horrors to the strife. Scarcely had the a.s.sailants left the sheltering walls of La Seyne, than Buonaparte's horse fell under him, shot dead: whole companies went astray in the darkness: yet the first column of 2,000 men led by Victor rush at the palisades of Fort Mulgrave, tear them down, and sweep into the redoubt, only to fall in heaps before a second line of defence: supported by the second column, they rally, only to yield once more before the murderous fire. In despair, Dugommier hurries on the column of reserve, with which Buonaparte awaits the crisis of the night. Led by the gallant young Muiron, the reserve sweeps into the gorge of death; Muiron, Buonaparte, and Dugommier hack their way through the same embrasure: their men swarm in on the overmatched red-coats and Spaniards, cut them down at their guns, and the redoubt is won.