Napoleon: The Man Behind the Myth

On 10 August he was roused at his lodgings on the rue du Mail near the Place des Victoires by the sound of the tocsin. Hearing that the Tuileries Palace was being stormed, he set off for the place du Carrousel, where Bourrienne’s brother had a furniture shop, from where he would be able to see what was going on. ‘Before I reached the Carrousel I encountered in the rue des Petits-Champs a group of hideous men bearing a head on the end of a pike,’ he reminisced many years later. ‘Seeing me passably well dressed and looking like a gentleman, they accosted me and made me shout Vive la Nation!, which I readily did, as one can imagine.’10

A mob numbering some 20,000 armed with guns, pikes, axes, knives and even spits had attacked the Tuileries, which were defended by 900 men of the Swiss Guards and a hundred or so courtiers and nobles. The king and his family fled to the protection of the Legislative Assembly, but the defenders of the palace were butchered. When it was over, Napoleone ventured into the palace gardens, where people were finishing off the wounded and mutilating their bodies in obscene ways. ‘Never since has any of my battlefields struck me by the number of dead bodies as did the mass of the Swiss, maybe on account of the constricted space or perhaps because it was the first time I had seen anything like it,’ he recalled. ‘I saw even quite well dressed women commit the most extreme indecencies on the bodies of the Swiss guards.’ Napoleone was terrified as well as horrified, and never shed his fear of the mob.11

He was not going to remain in Paris to watch the slide into anarchy, and he could not afford to leave his sister in an institution that identified her as a noblewoman. On 31 August he went to Saint-Cyr to collect Maria-Anna, and brought her to Paris. On 2 September mobs began breaking into prisons and slaughtering the inmates in reaction to a declaration by the Duke of Brunswick, commander of the allied army marching into France to restore the monarchy, in which he vowed to deal severely with the population of the French capital if the king or any of his family were harmed. The massacre of aristocrats, priests and others detained for one reason or another went on for five days, and it was only on 9 September that Napoleone and his sister were able to leave Paris. They stopped at Marseille just long enough to collect his pay arrears, and on 10 October, by which time the monarchy had been abolished and France declared a republic, the two siblings embarked at Toulon, reaching Ajaccio five days later. Napoleone promptly set off for Corte, hoping to restore the Buonaparte clan to favour.

Paoli may have been a dictator, but his attempts to set up an efficient executive had failed. The culture of the island had been profoundly affected by French rule: the influx of specie up-ended a system in which the majority of the population had never previously held a coin, while the creation of a salaried administration launched a rush for official posts which opened up new fields for conflict between rival clans and tempting prospects for corruption. Most of those in office were more concerned with score-settling, nepotism and profiteering than running the country. It was they who would acquire the biens nationaux being sold off: these made up 12 per cent of the land surface of the island, but only 500 out of a population of 150,000 were able to benefit. This altered the previously egalitarian pattern of land ownership, while newly-introduced regulations impinged on unwritten age-old grazing and gathering rights, leading to disputes and banditry on a scale no government could control.12

Paoli was not well, and was unable to exercise the same authority as in the past. His relationship with France was strained, and he could not but be wary of those who identified with that country or with the Revolution. He viewed the Buonaparte brothers with mistrust. He had dismissed Joseph, whom he regarded as too ambitious for his merits, and had refused to take on the hot-headed Lucien as secretary. When Napoleone appeared in Corte hoping for a senior command, Paoli brushed him off with vague promises and sent him back to Ajaccio to await orders in connection with an impending invasion of Sardinia.

The idea had been mooted in Paris more than a year before. The island was only a few hours’ sailing from Corsica. It was rich in grain and cattle, which the French government needed to feed its armies, and it was assumed that its people needed liberating. Its ruling dynasty, the house of Savoy, also reigned over Piedmont and Savoy, and had joined the coalition against France.

The invasion was to be carried out by a combined force of French regulars, volunteers from Marseille and Corsican national guards. At the end of October, a few days after Napoleone’s return from Corte, the French naval squadron carrying the regulars and a detachment of volunteers dropped anchor off Ajaccio. Its commander, Rear-Admiral Laurent Truguet, was received by the principal families of the town, who entertained him with dinners and dances. The forty-year-old sailor was a frequent guest at the Buonaparte house, having taken a fancy to the sixteen-year-old Maria-Anna. Accompanying him on his flagship was Charles Huguet de Sémonville, on his way to take up the post of ambassador in Constantinople. He too was courted by the Buonaparte family, and he agreed to take Lucien along as his secretary. According to Lucien, Napoleone contemplated going east too, to take service with the British in India, calculating that his professional credentials would provide the chance for a command that would give him the opportunity of achieving great things. In the meantime, he nearly met his end on the streets of Ajaccio.13

When allowed off their ships, the French troops roamed the city picking fights. On 15 December a force of volunteers from Marseille sailed in. It was made up of the dregs of the city’s port, and three days later they teamed up with some of the regulars and began lynching people they accused of being ‘aristos’, including members of the Corsican National Guard, mutilating their bodies and parading them around town before dumping them in the harbour. Order was restored with some difficulty, but in January 1793 a further contingent of volunteers sailed in and Napoleone was only saved from being lynched by some of his guardsmen.

On 18 February, to the relief of the people of Ajaccio, the expedition sailed. Napoleone was in command of a small artillery section under his colleague Quenza. The expedition had been divided into two forces, the larger of which, composed of French regulars, was to attack Cagliari, the capital of Sardinia, while the smaller, made up mostly of Corsican volunteers, took the island of Maddalena off the island’s north coast. This force, commanded by Colonna Cesari, consisted of the corvette La Fauvette and a number of troop transports. Unfavourable winds pushed the flotilla back, and it was only four days later that it sailed, landing on Maddalena on 23 February. The Sardinian garrison took refuge in the small town of Maddalena. Napoleone set up a battery which began bombarding the place into submission, and after two days it was on the point of surrendering. But the crew of La Fauvette decided to sail home, and Cesari was obliged to order immediate withdrawal, with instructions to jettison guns and other heavy equipment. Napoleone and Quenza had to scramble back to the boats, whose crews had been seized by panic. The flotilla was back in Corsica by 28 February.

Napoleone wasted no time in covering his own back. He wrote up a detailed account of the events for Paoli; another, critical of Cesari and by extension Paoli, for the minister of war in Paris; and signed another jointly with the other officers who had taken part, in which he defended Cesari. It was not as easy to defend himself from more direct threats, and he was on the point of being lynched as an ‘aristo’ by sailors from La Fauvette when a group of his own men delivered him.14

In Paris, Saliceti had been putting it about that Paoli was no longer fit to rule and that his clan was embezzling on a gigantic scale. The Convention, which had replaced the National Assembly, decided to investigate, and designated three commissioners with Saliceti at their head to travel to Corsica. Their official brief was to see to the defence of the island against a potential attack by the Royal Navy, as the international situation had become critical. King Louis XVI had been guillotined on 21 January, which shocked public opinion accross Europe and broadened support for the coalition of Austria, Prussia, Spain and Sardinia already fighting France. On 1 February France declared war on Britain and the Netherlands. Paoli’s monarchist and Anglophile sympathies were no secret in Paris. The Convention ordered the four battalions of Corsican national guards to be disbanded and replaced by French regulars, and placed all the forces on the island under the command of a French general.

On 14 March, Lucien, who had accompanied Sémonville back to Toulon when he was recalled, made a speech in the local Société Patriotique denouncing Paoli. He may have been put up to it by some of Paoli’s enemies gathered in Toulon, and he would later claim that he did not really know what he was saying. Nevertheless, on 2 April his speech was read out to the Convention in Paris, which only the day before had received news that the commander of the French army facing the Austrians, General Dumouriez, had defected to the enemy. Seeing treason everywhere, it issued a decree outlawing Paoli and ordering his arrest.15

Saliceti and the other two commissioners were still riding at anchor in the Golfe Juan awaiting favourable winds when they heard the news, and wrote to Paris asking for the decree to be suspended while they investigated. It was not until the beginning of April that they reached Bastia, where they were joined by Joseph Buonaparte. Given the intricate web of alliances, enmities and motivations spread over the island, and that almost everyone involved later destroyed and doctored documents, falsified evidence and spun colourful tales, it is impossible to be certain what the commissioners intended. Saliceti probably hoped to maintain Paoli but replace those around him with his own clan and associates, in which category he may have included the Buonaparte.16

On 18 April news of the Convention’s decree outlawing Paoli reached the island. Paoli tried to calm tempers, and sent two delegates to the Convention to justify himself, but Corsican patriots were in uproar, demanding war with France. Napoleone was in Ajaccio, where he wrote a defence of Paoli, which he personally posted on walls around town with a demand for the Convention’s decree to be rescinded. He also attempted to persuade his fellow citizens to affirm their loyalty to the French Republic, in the hope of avoiding a break with France. But most of the notables of Ajaccio had turned against the Buonaparte clan, and he was warned of a plan to assassinate him. He thought of joining Saliceti in Bastia, but changed his mind, and on 2 May set off for Corte to see Paoli. By then news of Lucien’s Toulon speech had reached the island. Worse, a letter from Lucien to his brother boasting that he had provoked the Convention’s decree against Paoli had been intercepted and sent to Corte.17

On his way, Napoleone met a kinsman who warned him that if he went to Corte he would never get out alive. He turned back and reached Bocognano on the evening of 5 May. But he was by no means out of danger, as Marius Peraldi, brother of his erstwhile rival for the Ajaccio colonelcy, was hot on his heels meaning to arrest him and take him to Corte. The various accounts of what happened next read like an adventure story, with Napoleone arrested, locked up under guard, freed at night by cunning subterfuge, pursued, caught, held with a gun to his temple in a stand-off, and finally spirited away while rival gangs of bandits settled scores. What is certain is that he was arrested in Bocognano, that he was freed by a cousin, briefly held again, and eventually taken to a kinsman shepherd’s hut outside Ajaccio.18

Napoleone could not show himself openly, so he slipped into the poor suburb, the Borgo, where he was popular, and that night went to the house of his friend Levie, former mayor of Ajaccio, in which his partisans had gathered. There they cowered, sleeping on the floor, their guns at the ready, for two days, while a boat was prepared to take Napoleone away at night. On the evening of his intended escape the house was surrounded by gendarmes. Levie told his guests to hide, and invited the chief of the gendarmes in. As they talked, both noticed that some of the sleeping-mats had not been hidden. The gendarme, fearing for his life, pretended to see nothing, and the two men continued to drink and talk while Napoleone was smuggled out of the back of the house and down to the beach, where a boat was waiting. By 10 May he was safe in Bastia.19

On the night of 23 May, Letizia was woken by a knock on the door; a cousin had come to warn her that Paoli’s partisans were on their way to seize everyone in the house. He had brought a handful of armed relatives to escort them to safety. Letizia left her two youngest children, Maria Nunziata and Geronimo, in safe hands and took Louis, Maria-Anna, Maria Paolina and Fesch with her. They crept out of town and made for the hills. A few hours later the Buonaparte home was sacked.

Meanwhile Napoleone had persuaded Saliceti and the other commissioners at Bastia that it would be easy to recover control of Ajaccio with a show of force. Four hundred French regulars were assembled and set sail in two ships, with Napoleone, Joseph and the three commissioners on board. The attempt to take the city failed, but Letizia and her children, Joseph Fesch and various French loyalists were evacuated.20

By 3 June Napoleone and his family were in Calvi, one of only three ports still held by the French. The rest of the island was under Paoli’s sway. On 27 May a thousand-strong assembly in Corte had issued a proclamation condemning the Buonaparte. ‘Born in despotism, nourished and brought up at the expense of a lustful pasha who ruled the island, the three brothers turned themselves with ardent enthusiasm into the zealous collaborators and the perfidious agents of Saliceti,’ it ran. ‘As punishment, the Assembly abandons them to their private remorse and to public opinion which has already condemned them to eternal execration and infamy.’21

Whether the French could hang on at Calvi for much longer was open to doubt, and the Buonaparte could no longer hope to play a part in Corsican affairs. On 11 June Letizia, her half-brother Fesch and her brood sailed for France. It was not a good time to be going there.

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