The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte (Vol. 1-4). William Milligan Sloane
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