The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte (Vol. 1-4). William Milligan Sloane
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.
CHAPTER XVI.
"The Supper of Beaucaire".
Revolutionary Madness—Uprising of the Girondists—Convention Forces Before Avignon—Bonaparte's First Success in Arms—Its Effect upon His Career—His Political Pamphlet—The Genius it Displays—Accepted and Published by Authority—Seizure of Toulon by the Allies.
1793.
It was a tempestuous time in Provence when on June thirteenth the Buonapartes arrived at Toulon. Their movements during the first few months cannot be determined; we only know that, after a very short residence there, the family fled to Marseilles.[35] Much, too, is obscure in regard even to Napoleon, soldier as he was. It seems as if this period of their history had been wilfully confused to conceal how intimate were the connections of the entire family with the Jacobins. But the obscurity may also be due to the character of the times. Fleeing before the storms of Corsican revolution, they were caught in the whirlwind of French anarchy. The Girondists, after involving the country in a desperate foreign warfare, had shown themselves incompetent to carry it on. In Paris, therefore, they had to give way before the Jacobins, who, by the exercise of a reckless despotism, were able to display an unparalleled energy in its prosecution. Against their tyranny the moderate republicans and the royalists outside of Paris now made common cause, and civil war broke out in many places, including Vendée, the Rhone valley, and the southeast of France. Montesquieu declares that honor is the distinguishing characteristic of aristocracy: the emigrant aristocrats had been the first in France to throw honor and patriotism to the winds; many of their class who remained went further, displaying in Vendée and elsewhere a satanic vindictiveness. This shameful policy colored the entire civil war, and the bitterness in attack and retaliation that was shown in Marseilles, Lyons, Toulon, and elsewhere would have disgraced savages in a prehistoric age.
The westward slopes of the Alps were occupied by a French army under the command of Kellermann, designated by the name of its situation; farther south and east lay the Army of Italy, under Brunet. Both these armies were expected to draw their supplies from the fertile country behind them, and to coöperate against the troops of Savoy and Austria, which had occupied the passes of lower Piedmont, and blocked the way into Lombardy. By this time the law for compulsory enlistment had been enacted, but the general excitement and topsy-turvy management incident to such rapid changes in government and society, having caused the failure of the Sardinian expedition, had also prevented recruiting or equipment in either of these two divisions of the army. The outbreak of open hostilities in all the lands immediately to the westward momentarily paralyzed their operations; and when, shortly afterward, the Girondists overpowered the Jacobins in Marseilles, the defection of that city made it difficult for the so-called regulars, the soldiers of the Convention, even