Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/206

Rh 194 NAPOLEON [1792- restored to him. Will he not hurry to^his regiment, eager to give proof of his military talents 1 No, his thoughts are still in Corsica. On the pretext of conducting his sister to her home he sets off without delay for Ajaccio, where he arrives on the 17th. The winter was spent in the unsuccessful expedition, which may be called Napoleon s first campaign, made from Corsica against the island of Sardinia. On his return he found a new scene opened. The Second Revolution was beginning to produce its effect in Corsica, which was no mere province of France, and in which everything was modified by the presence of Paoli. Elsewhere the Convention was able by its Representatives in Mission to crush opposition, but they could not so crush Corsica and Paoli. There was thus a natural opposition between the Convention and Paoli, and the islanders began to fall into opposite parties, as adherents of the former or of the latter. It might have been expected that Bonaparte, who all his life had glorified Paoli, and whose early letters are full of hatred to France, would have been an enthusiastic Paolist. But a breach seems to have taken place between them soon after Napoleon s return from Paris, perhaps in consequence of his escapade of Easter 1792. The crisis came on April 2d, when Paoli was denounced before the Convention, among others by Marat, and it was decreed that he and Pozzo di Borgo should come to Paris and render an account of their conduct to the Convention. Paoli refused, but with the remarkable, perhaps excessive, moderation which char acterized him offered to leave Corsica if his presence there appeared to the Convention undesirable. But the islanders rallied round him almost as one man. There could be no reason why the horrors of the Second Revolution should extend to Corsica, even if we consider them to have been inevitable in France. For a Corsican patriot no fairer opportunity could offer of dissolving with universal approbation the connexion with France which had begun in 1769. Napoleon took the opposite side. He stood out with Salicetti as the leading champion of the French connexion and the bitterest opponent of Paoli. Was his motive envy, or the bitterness caused by a recent personal quarrel with Paoli 1 We cannot positively say, but we can form an estimate of the depth of that insular patriotism which fills the Letters on the History of Corsica. Paoli summoned a national consulta at the end of May, and the dissolution of the French connexion now began. The consulta denounced the Bonaparte family by name. Napoleon answered by desperate attempts to execute his old plan of getting possession of the citadel of Ajaccio. But he failed, and the whole Bonaparte family, with Madame Letitia and Fesch, pursued by the fury of the people, took refuge in France. With this Hijra the first period of Napoleon comes to an end. Up to this time Napoleon has regarded the French nation with dislike, French ways and habits are strange and foreign, and he has more than once turned aside from a French career when it seemed open to him. Henceforth he has no other career to look for, unless indeed it may be possible, as for some time he continued to hope, to make his way back to Corsica by means of French arms. A certain change seems now to pass over his character. Up to this time his writings, along with their intensity, have had a highly moral and sentimental tone. He seems sincerely to have thought himself not only stronger and greater but better than other men. At school he found himself among school-fellows who were a hundred &quot; fathoms below the noble sentiments which animated himself,&quot; and again much later he pronounced that &quot; the men among whom he lived had ways of thinking as differ ent from his own as moonlight is from sunlight.&quot; Prob ably he still felt that he had more vivid thoughts than other men, but he ceases henceforth to be a moralist. His next pamphlet, Le Souper de Beaucaire, is entirely free from sentiment, and in a very short time he appears as a cynic, and even pushing cynicism to an extreme. It was in June 1793 that the Bonaparte family found At themselves at Toulon in the midst of the Corsican emigra- Toulon - tion. France was in a condition not less disturbed than Corsica, for it was the moment of the fall of the Girondins. Plunged into this new party strife, Bonaparte could hardly avoid taking the side of the Mountain. Paoli had been in a manner the Girondin of Corsica, and Bonaparte had headed the opposition to him. In Le Souper de Beaucaire (published in August 1793), which is the mani festo of this period as the Letter to Buttafuoco is of the earlier period, he himself compares the Girondins to Paoli, and professes to think that the safety of the state re quires a deeper kind of republicanism than theirs. The immediate occasion of this pamphlet is the civil war of the south, into which he was now plunged. Marseilles had declared against the Convention, and had sent an army under Rousselet which had occupied Avignon, but had evacuated it speedily on being attacked by the troops of the Mountain under Carteaux. Bonaparte took part in the attack, commanding the artillery, but it seems an unfounded statement that he specially distinguished himself. This was in July, and a month later the pamphlet was written. It is a dialogue between inhabit ants of Marseilles, Nimes, and Montpellier and a military man. It is highly characteristic, full of keen and sarcastic sagacity, of clear military views ; but the temperature of its author s mind has evidently fallen suddenly ; it has no warmth, but a remarkable cynical coldness. Among the Representatives in Mission recently arrived at Avignon was the younger Robespierre, with whom Salicetti was intimate. Bonaparte, introduced by Salicetti and recom mended by this pamphlet, naturally rose high in his favour. He is now a Jacobin. We must not be misled by the violence with which Bonaparte attacked this party some years later, and the horror he professed to feel for their crimes, so as to conclude that his connexion with the Jacobins, and especially the Robespierres, was purely accidental and professional. What contemporary evidence we have exhibits Bonaparte at this time as holding the language of a terrorist, and we shall see how narrowly he escaped perishing with the Robespierres in Thermidor. Of course it is not necessary to disbelieve Marmont when he says that the atrocities of the Robespierrists were not to Bonaparte s taste, and that he did much to check them within the sphere of his influence. Bonaparte marched with Carteaux into Marseilles late in August, and about the same time Toulon delivered itself into the hands of the English. Just at this moment he was promoted to the rank of chef de bataillon in the second regiment of artillery, which gave him practically the command of the artillery in the force which was now formed to besiege Toulon. The story of his relations with the generals who were sent successively to conduct the siege, Carteaux the painter, Doppet the physician, Dugommier the brave veteran, and of his discovery of the true way to take Toulon, are perhaps somewhat legendary, but he may probably have been eloquent and persuasive at the council of war held November 25th, in which the plan of the siege was laid down. That he distinguished himself in action is more certain, for Dugommier writes, &quot; Among those who distinguished themselves most, and who most aided me to rally the troops and push them forward, are citizens P:iona Parte, commanding the artillery, Arena and Cervoni, adjutants general &quot; (Moniteur, December 7, 1793). He was now named general of brigade.