The following morning, Napoleone sat down and described what happened next as though he were writing up a scientific experiment. ‘My soul, agitated by the vigorous sentiments natural to it, made me bear the cold with indifference,’ he wrote, ‘but when my imagination cooled, I began to feel the rigours of the season and made for the arcades.’ There a young girl caught his eye. She was obviously a prostitute but did not have the brazen manner of the others, and returned his look with modesty. ‘Her timidity encouraged me and I addressed her … I who more than anyone else felt the horror of her kind, and had always felt myself sullied by a mere look from one …’ In his account, he makes it clear that he was looking for someone ‘who would be useful for the observations I wished to make’. He admits that previous attempts to pick up a prostitute had not been ‘crowned with success’, which might appear odd, as a young officer would not normally have difficulty carrying out such a transaction in the Palais-Royal. His record of their conversation goes some way to explain why: he began by asking how she came to her present condition, which was neither tactful nor to the point, and after more such banter on a freezing November night, it was she who suggested they go back to his lodgings, only to be asked what for. ‘Well, we could warm ourselves and you could satisfy your fancy,’ she answered. The clinical account does not mention whether the experience had been pleasurable or not.11
On 1 December, having obtained a six-month extension of his leave, Napoleone set off for Corsica once more. His efforts in Paris had come to nothing, which only contributed to his disenchantment with a state of affairs that seemed to exclude him as well as his native land, whose subjugation he was beginning to take personally. His vision of a noble nation oppressed by a wicked and corrupt France fitted well with a feeling that he and his family were being thwarted, or at least disrespected, by the regime in Paris.
He spent the next four and a half months in Corsica, and it was not until 14 June 1788 that he rejoined his regiment, now stationed at Auxonne, after an absence of twenty-one months. This was not unusual, as in peacetime officers were allowed to absent themselves for long periods.
Auxonne was a fortified town on the river Saône with an artillery school under the sixty-six-year-old lieutenant general baron Jean-Pierre du Teil, a clever and innovative commander who worked his men hard by setting them challenges that upset their routines. Du Teil took an immediate liking to Napoleone. He set him the task of designing and constructing earthworks, which involved calculations of firepower, resistance and ballistics, followed by ten days of physical work, with Napoleone marshalling 200 men with picks and shovels. ‘This extraordinary mark of favour earned me the ill-feeling of the captains who claimed it was insulting to them that a mere lieutenant be charged with such an important task and that if there were more than 50 men involved one of their rank should be in command,’ he wrote to Joseph Fesch on 29 August. He nevertheless pacified them and even gained their friendship; considering him an intellectual, they tasked him with drawing up the Calotte, a regimental code of conduct. He rose to the challenge and produced a document that was both reasoned and idealistic, very much in the spirit of Rousseau, which could have been the constitution for a popular dictatorship.12
From his essays and notes it is clear that he was already a republican, having, like Rousseau, come to the conclusion that existing systems of government were absurd and that kings had no right to rule. In the introduction to what was to be a dissertation on royal authority, he argued that this was entirely ‘usurped’, since sovereignty resided in the people, adding that ‘there are very few kings who have not deserved to be dethroned’. He also adopted Rousseau’s thesis that religion was destructive, since it was in competition with the state as it held out the promise of happiness in another world, when it was for the state to provide people with the means to achieve it in this.13
He continued to read, annotating and commenting as he went, on subjects as varied as ancient and modern history, geography, the fiscal systems of different states, the role of artillery and ballistics, Greek philosophy, Arab culture, biology, natural history, the possibility of digging a canal through the isthmus of Suez, and many more. That summer he read Richardson’s Clarissa and Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther, and himself wrote Le Comte d’Essex, a gothick novella about an imagined conspiracy against Charles I featuring ghosts, blood and daggers, and Le Masque Prophète, a short piece set in the Arab world which is a kind of parable about dictatorship. The plots are melodramatic, the prose bristles with adjectives and metaphors, not to mention spelling mistakes, the characterisation is non-existent.14
Auxonne lay in a marshy, misty part of the Burgundian plain, and Napoleone believed it was the insalubrious exhalations from the stagnant moat beyond the ramparts which brought him down with a fever that autumn, but it may in part have been a consequence of his lifestyle. He was economising on food in order to be able to send money home to his mother. He lived in barracks, in a small room with a bed, a table, six straw-seated chairs and one armchair. He messed with the other officers, but although his lodgings were free, he was still only on the pay of second lieutenant, so he had to be careful. But there was also a manic element to his life at this time. ‘I have no other resource here but work,’ he wrote to his great-uncle Luciano in March 1789. ‘I only get dressed once a week, I sleep very little since my illness. It is incredible. I go to bed at ten o’clock and get up at four in the morning. I only take one meal and dine at three; it suits my health very well.’ He would keep the shutters closed to help his concentration. He did in fact go out, for, as he proudly explained in the same letter, ‘I have gained quite a distinguished reputation in this little town with my speeches on various occasions.’15
The French monarchy was virtually bankrupt, and as a last resort to raise money the king called the Estates General. As this body, representing the clergy, the nobility and the non-noble ‘third estate’, had not been summoned for nearly two centuries, this opened up a Pandora’s box of questions about the nature of the government. All over the country people of every station aired their views and propounded solutions to the political crisis. This was accompanied by popular unrest, and on 1 April Napoleone was sent to the town of Seurre with 100 men to suppress riots. The rebellious spirit inspired bad behaviour, and one day he was sent to the monastery of Citeaux to quell a mutiny by the monks. Over dinner a grateful abbot served him ‘delicious wine’ from the Clos Vougeot in the monastery cellar, which the monks had tried to raid. In a letter to Letizia, he described the sumptuous Easter dinner he was given by a local nobleman. ‘But I would rather have been eating ravioli or lasagne in Ajaccio,’ he concluded.16
He was in high spirits. His health had recovered, the weather was glorious, and he bathed in the Saône (once he got a cramp and nearly drowned). ‘My friend, if my heart were susceptible to love, what a favourable moment this would be: fêted everywhere, treated with a respect that you could not imagine,’ he wrote to Joseph, boasting that ‘The prettiest women are delighted with our company.’17
Like most of his generation, he was in a state of excitement about political events. ‘This year heralds some beginnings which will be very welcome to all right-thinking people,’ he wrote to his proxy godfather Giubega from Auxonne in June, ‘and after so many centuries of feudal barbarism and political slavery, it is wonderful to see the word Liberty inflame hearts which seemed corrupted by luxury, weakness and the arts.’ But this raised questions closer to home. ‘While France is being reborn, what will become of us, unfortunate Corsicans?’ he asked. The moment seemed ripe for him to strike a blow for his island nation by publishing a history of Corsica, but he felt