1794.] SERVICE IN SARDINIA AND CORSICA. 21 position and monstrous execution of King Louis, who had given him his commission, and whom he believed to be animated by an eager desire to render his country happy, refused to acknowledge the Republic which had been proclaimed at Paris; most of his countrymen shared in his sentiments, rallied round him, applied for English assistance (for at last we were at war), and drove the French and their partisans away from Ajaccio, Corte, and other towns. The old and most intimate union and sympathy with Paoli were now disregarded. The Bonaparte family remained attached to the union with France, in which the young members of it had placed all their expectations and hopes; and as partisans they were obliged to fly from Ajaccio, and to seek a refuge in the other Corsican town of Bastia, which was held by a French garrison, until Nelson knocked the place about their ears, and the commandant capitulated on the 21st of May, 1794. The house of the Bonapartes at Ajaccio was plundered, and the little property they had was confiscated. Napoleon himself is said to have escaped in disguise. He was at Bastia when the Commissioners of the Convention, La Combe St. Michel and the Corsican Saliceti, arrived from Toulon with reinforcements, and with a decree of outlawry against Paoli. Two frigates were sent to retake Ajaccio, and Bonaparte embarked with some troops in one of them. He landed at his native town, and had some skirmishes with De Paoli's men; but the enthusiastic peasantry rushed down from the mountains in such numbers that he beat a retreat, and was glad to return on board the frigate. Thus, even in his second affair of arms, this great soldier was unfortunate. It was soon after this that the English first landed in Corsica. By the 10th of August, 1794, Calvi was reduced by Nelson, and then the French were entirely expelled from Corsica. Napoleon and the rest of his family emigrated to Nice; and from Nice they soon proceeded to Marseilles, where his mother, with her three daughters, and Louis and Jerome, her two youngest sons, lived for a time in great penury upon the wretched allowance which the French Republic made to political refugees of their own party. Family letters of the period have been preserved, which strongly exhibit the extreme distress to which they were occasionally reduced. Not many years ago there were people living in Marseilles who remembered seeing the youngest daughter, afterwards Madame Murat, Grand Duchess of Berg, and Queen of Naples, performing at home the offices of a housemaid.* Young Lucien obtained a situation in the commissariat of St. Maximin, near Marseilles, and Joseph, the eldest, found employment as a clerk in an office, until he married, a year or two after this season of clouds and adverse winds (in August, 1794), Julia Clari, the daughter of one of the richest merchants in Marseilles, who brought him some ready money with the future hope of a good fortune.† As for Napoleon, after seeing his family settled at Marseilles, he went to Paris to seek once more for active employment. He never more returned to Corsica, nor does he appear to have retained any great affection for the country of his birth. After arriving at supreme power, he bestowed one small fountain on Ajaccio, and succeeded, by the death of a relative, to a pretty olive-grove near that town. In the sequel of his history the name of Corsica scarcely recurs. By dint of solicitations at head-quarters, he obtained the confirmation of his local rank of chef de bataillon, and in September, 1793, when Robespierre and the Jacobins ruled France in a reign of terror, he was appointed to serve in the artillery at the siege of Toulon, which town, fortress, and arsenal had been given up by the persecuted desperate French Royalists to the combined forces of Great Britain and Spain. About this time he published another political pamphlet, entitled, "The Supper of Beaucaire," being an imaginary dialogue between men of different parties in the south of France, which was then distracted and desolated by a civil war of the very worst kind. One of the interlocutors, a military man, supposed to speak the sentiments of the author, recommends union and patriotism, and obedience to the laws and decrees of the Convention (which assuredly was the * On their first arrival from Corsica, the family received rations of bread from the Republican Government. + It should appear that by this time Joseph was appointed a commissary of war. Both the appointment and the marriage were no doubt promoted by the distinction which Napoleon had by this time acquired at the siege of Toulon. But Joseph, when young, had some of the personal good looks and pleasing manners of the family Lockhart, "History of Napoleon Bonaparte. SIEGE OF TOULON. 23 very worst Government that France or any other country in modern Europe had been acquainted with). The spirit of the composition is sternly republican, but its logic and style are superior to those of his former declamatory pamphlet. If not aided by others, he had much improved as a writer within the last two years. Still, those have not consulted the author's reputation who have copiously quoted from, or reproduced in toto, this pièce de circonstance. When Montholon praised it, he was simply mad. The pamphlet was distributed among the Jacobins, who then monopolized political power and all official stations; and it no doubt produced to Bonaparte some of the benefits which he desired, and for which alone he had written it. When he arrived before Toulon, the French besieging army had made little or no progress in its operations against the place, and had been repeatedly worsted and thrown into confusion, by sorties made by the English troops. It was commanded by one Cartaux, a rough illiterate fellow, who had been a private of dragoons before the Revolution. The man was extremely ignorant of military matters, but, like so many others, he had made his way by affecting republican fanaticism, and by using the coarse revolutionary jargon then in fashion. Bonaparte has given an amusing account of his reception at Cartaux's head-quarters, and of the gross ignorance and absurd vanity of this sans-culotte general. He had great difficulty in making him understand the simplest notion concerning a battery. On a trial of one of his guns, the shot was found to reach not one-third of the distance; yet Cartaux had been blazing away the ball and powder of the Republic! To conciliate his good-will, Bonaparte adopted his shibboleth and jargon. Cartaux was taken in. Not so Madame his wife, who was accustomed to say, “ Cartaux, you are a fool to take the gentleman for a Jacobin! That young man has too much good sense to be a Jacobin! No, no! That young officer's manners are too good for him to be a real Jacobin." Fortunately Gasparin, a commissioner of the Convention, arrived at the camp. He was a man of education and of some military experience, and was thus able to understand Bonaparte, and to make some new friends for him. Cartaux was recalled, but his immediate successor was not worth more than he.* This was Doppet, a Savoyard doctor, now transformed into a general, who understood making pills better than directing cannon-balls. In a few days, however, he was superseded by the veteran General Dugommier, who had served in both hemispheres, and who placed entire confidence in Bonaparte, forthwith giving him the command of the whole artillery for the siege. The French were now reinforced to more than 30,000 men, while the allies did not exceed 11,000, consisting of the soldiers of four or five different nations, some of whom, the Spaniards, proved very lukewarm in the cause, while others, the Neapolitans, were exceedingly deficient in organization and discipline. On the whole, our allies at Toulon were quite as bad as Bonaparte's two first generals. Nor can it be said that at this time there was much military science on the part of our commanding officers, to make up for the want of numbers and other deficiencies. Our generals had not even an état major, or the elements for forming one. Such elements did not exist in our army until nearly seven years later, when Sir Ralph Abercrombie landed in Egypt, to encounter the French there. The science we wanted, Napoleon possessed. A council of war was held in the camp of the besiegers. The executive at Paris had sent a plan of attack to General Dugommier—a plan probably drawn up by Carnot, who was one of the governing party. Dugommier thought, and they all thought, that the plan was a good one; but young Bonaparte suggested better. "All that you want," said he, "is to force the English to evacuate Toulon. Instead of attacking them in the town, which must involve a long series of operations, try and establish batteries, which shall sweep the harbour and the roadstead. If you can only drive away the ships, the troops will not remain.” He pointed out the rocky promontory of La Grasse, which stands nearly opposite to the town, and commands both the inner and the outer harbour, and said, "Take La Grasse, and in two days Toulon will be yours!" If Cartaux had made the attempt two months * Poor Cartaux went through many vicissitudes. At one time he was a lottery-office keeper in Paris; at another he was employed at a small Government office in Tuscany. He died about 1808, leaving his wife, who had shrewdly discovered the non-Jacobinism of Napoleon, in the lowest depths of poverty. |