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