The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte (Vol. 1-4). William Milligan Sloane
sixth, 1792, the day on which his promotion would have occurred in due course if he had been present in full standing with his regiment. His arrears for that rank were to be paid in full. Such success was intoxicating. Monge, the great mathematician, had been his master at the military school in Paris, and was now minister of the navy. True to his nature, with the carelessness of an adventurer and the effrontery of a gambler, the newly fledged captain promptly put in an application for a position as lieutenant-colonel of artillery in the sea service. The authorities must have thought the petition a joke, for the paper was pigeonholed, and has been found marked S. R., that is, sans réponse—without reply. Probably it was written in earnest, the motive being possibly an invincible distaste for the regiment in which he had been disgraced, which was still in command of a colonel who was not disposed to leniency.
An easy excuse for shirking duty and returning to the old habits of a Corsican agitator was at hand. The events of August tenth settled the fate of all monarchical institutions, even those which were partly charitable. Among other royal foundations suppressed by the Assembly on August eighteenth was that of St. Cyr, formally styled the Establishment of St. Louis. The date fixed for closing was just subsequent to Buonaparte's promotion, and the pupils were then to be dismissed. Each beneficiary was to receive a mileage of one livre for every league she had to traverse. Three hundred and fifty-two was the sum due to Elisa. Some one must escort an unprotected girl on the long journey; no one was so suitable as her elder brother and natural protector. Accordingly, on September first, the brother and sister appeared before the proper authorities to apply for the traveling allowance of the latter. Whatever other accomplishments Mlle. de Buonaparte had learned at the school of St. Louis, she was still as deficient in writing and spelling as her brother. The formal requisitions written by both are still extant; they would infuriate any conscientious teacher in a primary school. Nor did they suffice: the school authorities demanded an order from both the city and department officials. It was by the kind intervention of the mayor that the red tape was cut; the money was paid on the next day, and that night the brother and the sister lodged in the Holland Patriots' Hotel in Paris, where they appear to have remained for a week.
This is the statement of an early biographer, and appears to be borne out by an autograph letter of Napoleon's, recently found, in which he says he left Paris on a date which, although the figure is blurred, seems to be the ninth.[30] Some days would be necessary for the new captain to procure a further leave of absence. Judging from subsequent events, it is possible that he was also seeking further acquaintance and favor with the influential Jacobins of Paris. During the days from the second to the seventh more than a thousand of the royalists confined in the prisons of Paris were massacred. It seems incredible that a man of Napoleon's temperament should have seen and known nothing of the riotous events connected with such bloodshed. Yet nowhere does he hint that he had any personal knowledge. It is possible that he left earlier than is generally supposed, but it is not likely in view of the known dates of his journey. In any case he did not seriously compromise himself, doing at the most nothing further than to make plans for the future. It may have become clear to him, for it was true and he behaved accordingly, that France was not yet ready for him, nor he for France.
It is, moreover, a strong indication of Buonaparte's interest in the French Revolution being purely tentative that as soon as the desired leave was granted, probably in the second week of September, without waiting for the all-important fifteen hundred livres of arrears, now due him, but not paid until a month later, he and his sister set out for home. They traveled by diligence to Lyons, and thence by the Rhone to Marseilles. During the few hours' halt of the boat at Valence, Napoleon's friends, among them some of his creditors, who apparently bore him no grudge, waited on him with kindly manifestations of interest. His former landlady, Mme. Bou, although her bill had been but insignificantly diminished by payments on account, brought as her gift a basket of the fruit in which the neighborhood abounds at that season. The regiment was no longer there, the greater portion, with the colonel, being now on the northeastern frontier under Dumouriez, facing the victorious legions of Prussia and Austria. On the fourteenth the travelers were at Marseilles; in that friendly democratic city they were nearly mobbed as aristocrats because Elisa wore feathers in her hat. It is said that Napoleon flung the offending object into the crowd with a scornful "No more aristocrats than you," and so turned their howls into laughing approval. It was about a month before the arrears of pay reached Marseilles, two thousand nine hundred and fifty livres in all, a handsome sum of money and doubly welcome at such a crisis. It was probably October tenth when they sailed for Corsica, and on the seventeenth Buonaparte was once more in his home, no longer so confident, perhaps, of a career among his own people, but determined to make another effort. It was his fourth return. Lucien and Fesch were leaders in the radical club; Joseph was at his old post, his ambition to represent Ajaccio at Paris was again thwarted, the successful candidate having been Multedo, a family friend; Louis, as usual, was disengaged and idle; Mme. Buonaparte and the younger children were well; he himself was of course triumphantly vindicated by his promotion. The ready money from the fortune of the old archdeacon was long since exhausted, to be sure; but the excellent vineyards, mulberry plantations, and gardens of the family properties were still productive, and Napoleon's private purse had been replenished by the quartermaster of his regiment.
The course of affairs in France had materially changed the aspect of Corsican politics; the situation was, if anything, more favorable for a revolutionary venture than ever before. Salicetti had returned to Corsica after the adjournment of the Constituent Assembly with many new ideas which he had gathered from observing the conduct of the Paris commune, and these he unstintingly disseminated among his sympathizers. They proved to be apt scholars, and quickly caught the tricks of demagogism, bribery, corruption, and malversation of the public funds. He had returned to France before Buonaparte arrived, as a member of the newly elected legislature, but his evil influence survived his departure, and his lieutenants were ubiquitous and active. Paoli had been rendered helpless, and was sunk in despair. He was now commander-in-chief of the regular troops in garrison, but it was a position to which he had been appointed against his will, for it weakened his influence with his own party. Pozzo di Borgo, his stanch supporter and Buonaparte's enemy, was attorney-general in Salicetti's stead. As Paoli was at the same time general of the volunteer guard, the entire power of the islands, military and civil, was in his hands: but the responsibility for good order was likewise his, and the people were, if anything, more unruly than ever; for it was to their minds illogical that their idol should exercise such supreme power, not as a Corsican, but in the name of France. The composition of the two chief parties had therefore changed materially, and although their respective views were modified to a certain extent, they were more embittered than ever against each other.
Buonaparte could not be neutral; his nature and his surroundings forbade it. His first step was to resume his command in the volunteers, and, under pretext of inspecting their posts, to make a journey through the island; his second was to go through the form of seeking a reconciliation with Paoli. Corsican historians, in their eagerness to appropriate the greatness of both Paoli and Napoleon, habitually misrepresent their relations. At this time each was playing for his own hand, the elder exclusively for Corsica's advantage as he saw it; the younger was more ambitious personally, although he was beginning to see that in the course of the Revolution Corsica would secure more complete autonomy as a French department than in any other way. It is not at all clear that as late as this time Paoli was eager for Napoleon's assistance nor the latter for Paoli's support. The complete breach came soon and lasted until, when their views no longer clashed, they both spoke generously one of the other. In the clubs, among his friends and subordinates at the various military stations, Napoleon's talk was loud and imperious, his manner haughty and assuming. A letter written by him at the time to Costa, then lieutenant in the militia and a thorough Corsican, explains that the writer is detained from going to Bonifacio by an order from the general (Paoli) to come to Corte; he will, however, hasten to his post at the head of the volunteers on the very next day, and there will be an end to all disorder and irregularity. "Greet our friends, and assure them of my desire to further their interests." The epistle was written in Italian, but that fact signifies little in comparison with the new tone used in speaking about France: "The enemy has abandoned Verdun and Longwy, and recrossed the river to return home, but our people are not asleep." Lucien added a postscript explaining that he had sent a pamphlet to his dear Costa, as to a friend, not as to a co-worker, for that he