In the middle of June 1791, Napoleon bade farewell to Auxonne and set out for Valence, where the Fourth Regiment was in garrison, he having been made first lieutenant of the first company of the second battalion. His brother accompanied him, lodging elsewhere, as it was not found convenient for Louis to remain in the same house. By way of recreation, frequent visits were paid to Madame de Colombier, but politics more and more absorbed Napoleon. He entered with great zest into the doings of the Society of the Friends of the Constitution, an avowedly revolutionary and republican gathering, and soon became so popular with its members that he was elected secretary and librarian.
The Academy of Lyons having offered a handsome prize, amounting to about £50, for the best essay on “What Truths and what Sentiments is it most Important to impress upon Men for their Happiness?” Napoleon found further scope for his literary gifts. “By sentiment,” he assures us in his competitive composition, “we enjoy ourselves, nature, our country, and the men who surround us,” and in support of the statement he draws on his own experience. “You return to your country,” he writes; “after four years of absence, you visit the spots where you played in your earliest age, where you first experienced the knowledge of men and the awakening of the passions. In a moment you live the life of your childhood, you enjoy its pleasures, you are fired with the love of your country, you have a father and a tender mother, sisters still innocent, brothers who are like friends; too happy man, run, fly, do not lose a moment. If death stop you on your way you will never have known the delights of life, of sweet gratitude, of tender respect, of sincere friendship. These are the real pleasures of life, and they are greater if you have a wife and children.” He says hard things of immoderate ambition, the very disease which was to prove his own ruin, and calls it “a violent unreflecting madness, which only ceases with life—a conflagration, fanned by a pitiless wind, which does not end till it has consumed everything.” We wonder whether the Emperor, in his hours of introspection on the island of St Helena, when he was proving the truth of the above statement, ever thought of his essay. It did not gain the prize—Napoleon’s name was last but one on the list of competitors.
Yet another leave of absence was requested and granted. It seems little short of extraordinary that, when France was at white heat, holidays should have been granted to soldiers, but such was the case. Napoleon and Louis saw the blue mountains of Corsica and their family in September 1791, a few weeks before the death of Archdeacon Lucien. It almost seemed, from Napoleon’s point of view, as though Fate invariably had an unpleasant surprise for him when he visited Ajaccio, but Letizia always regarded her second son’s homecoming as an act of Providence. Fortunately, his venerable relative left a handsome sum of money to the Bonapartes, a certain amount of which was invested by Napoleon in the purchase of a house in Ajaccio and two properties some little distance away.
It looked for a time as though the tide of fortune was beginning to turn in their favour. Joseph was elected a member of the Directory, the executive committee of the island, and on the 22nd February 1792, Napoleon was appointed Adjutant-Major of the Corsican Volunteers at Ajaccio. Some six weeks later, he was elected second lieutenant-colonel, a position which allowed him to absent himself from his French regiment but made for him an enemy in Pozzo di Borgo, a man who afterwards rose to distinction at the Russian Court, and had much to do with his successful rival’s fall in after years.
Napoleon’s opportunity for action soon came. Revolutionary principles regarded religion as of little consequence, and it was decided that the convents in the four most important towns of Corsica should be suppressed. This was not to be achieved without difficulty, and as strife and possibly bloodshed were thought highly probable, it was decided that a number of volunteers should be on hand at Ajaccio. On Easter Day 1792, a disturbance occurred in one of the streets. A dozen volunteers marched out to end it, only to make the disorder more general. Napoleon felt it his duty to interfere, but was obliged to take refuge after one of the men had been killed. The action of the volunteers was, of course, illegal, as they had acted on their own responsibility. Napoleon defended them, and in company with Quenza, his senior in command, endeavoured to persuade Colonel Maillard, the commander of the fortress, to deliver it into their hands. The Colonel, however, would have nothing to do with them beyond giving food for their men.
Early the following morning another band of volunteers entered the Seminary, fired indiscriminately, and angered the inhabitants. Disorder increased to such an extent as the day began to wane that it became necessary to proclaim martial law—in other words, the regular military were given absolute control until order should be restored. Various outrages on the part of the volunteers, of which Napoleon was by no means innocent, followed during the night. He endeavoured to corrupt the regular soldiers without success, and thus began that scheme of lying and plotting which he was to pursue even after he had been elected Emperor of the French. He was absolutely unscrupulous when, as always, he had his own ends to serve. In the case under consideration, he undertook that his men should be kept under restraint, the authorities promising that they would see that the people did not interfere with the volunteers. Napoleon’s intention may have been good, but his men certainly continued to behave in a most disgraceful manner. Eventually order was restored, and a rebuke administered to Napoleon by his battalion being ordered to retire to Corte.
The part he had played did not increase his popularity, and he thought it well to return to the French capital a month after war had been declared against Austria. As he himself said, “The beginning of a revolution was a fine time for an enterprising young man!”
CHAPTER V
The Eve of the Reign of Terror
(1792–1793)
Paris was in a ferment. The King had to be guarded by a double cordon of soldiers, so bitter was the animosity against the Royal Family and all that it stood for. With his usual shrewdness and faculty for penetrating into the probabilities of the future, Napoleon correctly anticipated events, and wrote to his brother Joseph that “everything tends to a revolution.” On the 20th June 1792, a wild procession of insurrectionists, accompanied by cannon, made its way to the Tuileries, and intimidated the Guard. The latter opened the gates of the courtyard and the motley mob crowded into the beautiful palace, openly insulting King Louis and Queen Marie Antoinette. A republican Assembly had been forced upon the monarch, who was duly reaping the first-fruits of the harvest. Bourrienne gives a graphic account of what happened and how it affected the ardent politician of twenty-three. Napoleon’s remarks clearly show that he had no belief in the aspirations of the rebels, notwithstanding his own ardent republicanism. Throughout his life he always held the canaille in profound contempt.
“We met,” Bourrienne tells us, “by appointment, at a restaurateur’s in the Rue St Honoré, near the Palais Royal. On going out we saw a mob approaching in the direction of the market-place, which Bonaparte estimated at from five to six thousand men. They were a parcel of blackguards, armed with weapons of every description, and shouting the grossest abuse, whilst they proceeded at a rapid rate towards the Tuileries. This mob appeared to consist of the vilest and most profligate of the population of the suburbs. ‘Let us follow the rabble,’ said Bonaparte. We got the start of them, and took up our station on the terrace bordering the river. It was there that he was an eye-witness of the scandalous scenes that ensued; and it would be difficult to describe the surprise and indignation which they excited in him. ‘Such weakness and forbearance,’ he said, ‘could not be excused’; but when the King showed himself at a window which looked out upon the garden, with the red cap, which one of the mob had just placed upon his head, he could no longer repress his indignation: ‘What madness!’