Harper's New Monthly Magazine. No. XVI.—September, 1851—Vol. III

The English immediately took possession of the island, and retained it for two years. The fickle Corsicans soon grew weary of their new masters, in whose language, manners, and religion they found no congeniality, and a general rising took place. A small force from France effected a landing, notwithstanding the vigilance of the English cruisers. Beacon fires, the signals of insurrection, by previous concert, blazed from every hill, and the hoarse sound of the horn, echoing along the mountain sides and through the ravines, summoned the warlike peasants to arms. The English were driven from the island with even more precipitation than they had taken possession of it. Paoli retired with them to London, deeply regretting that he had not followed the wise counsel of young Napoleon. Bonaparte never visited Corsica again. He could not love the people in whose defense he had suffered such injustice. To the close of life, however, he retained a vivid recollection of the picturesque beauties of his native island, and often spoke, in most animating terms, of the romantic glens, and precipitous cliffs, and glowing skies endeared to him by all the associations of childhood. The poetic and the mathematical elements were both combined in the highest degree in the mind of Napoleon, and though his manly intellect turned away in disgust from mawkish and effeminate sentimentalism, he enjoyed the noble appreciation of all that is beautiful, and all that is sublime. His retentive memory was stored with the most brilliant passages from the tragedies of Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire, and no one could quote them with more appropriateness.

We now approach more eventful scenes in the life of this extraordinary man. All the monarchies of Europe were allied, in arms, against the French Revolution, and slowly, but resistlessly, their combined armies were marching upon Paris. The emigrant nobles and monarchists, many thousands in number, were incorporated into the embattled hosts of these allies. The spirit of insurrection against the government began to manifest itself very strongly in several important cities. Toulon, on the shores of the Mediterranean, was the great naval dépôt and arsenal of France. It contained a population of about twenty-five thousand inhabitants. More than fifty ships-of-the-line and frigates were riding at anchor in its harbor, and an immense quantity of military and naval stores, of every description, was collected in its spacious magazines. The majority of the inhabitants of this city were friends of the old monarchy. Some ten thousand of the royalists of Marseilles, Lyons, and other parts of the south of France, took refuge within the walls of Toulon, and, uniting with the royalist inhabitants, surrendered the city, its magazines, its ships, and its forts to the combined English and Spanish fleet, which was cruising outside of its harbor. The English ships sailed triumphantly into the port, landed five thousand English troops, and eight thousand Spaniards, Neapolitans, and Piedmontese, took full possession of the place. This treacherous act excited to the highest pitch the alarm and the indignation of the revolutionary government; and it was resolved that, at all hazards, Toulon must be retaken, and the English driven from the soil of France. But the English are not easily expelled from the posts which they once have occupied; and it was an enterprise of no common magnitude to displace them, with their strong army and their invincible navy, from fortresses so impregnable as those of Toulon, and where they found stored up for them, in such profuse abundance, all the munitions of war.

Two armies were immediately marched upon Toulon, the place invested, and a regular siege commenced. Three months had passed away, during which time no apparent progress had been effected toward the capture of the town. Every exertion was made by the allied troops and the royalist inhabitants to strengthen the defenses, and especially to render impregnable a fort called the Little Gibraltar, which commanded the harbor and the town. The French besieging force, amounting to about forty thousand men, were wasting their time outside of the entrenchments, keeping very far away from the reach of cannon balls. The command of these forces had been intrusted to Gen. Cartaux, a portrait-painter from Paris, as ignorant of all military science, as he was self-conceited. Matters were in this state when Napoleon, whose commanding abilities were now beginning to attract attention, was promoted to the rank of Brigadier-general, and invested with the command of the artillery train at Toulon. He immediately hastened to the scene of action, and beheld, with utter astonishment, the incapacity with which the siege was conducted. He found batteries erected which would not throw their balls one half the distance between the guns and the points they were designed to command. Balls also were heated in the peasants' houses around, at perfectly ridiculous distances from the guns, as if they were articles to be transported at one's leisure. Napoleon requested the commander-in-chief, at whose direction these batteries were reared, to allow him to witness the effect of a few discharges from the guns. With much difficulty he obtained consent. And when the general saw the shot fall more than half-way short of the mark, he turned upon his heel, and said, "These aristocrats have spoiled the quality of the powder with which I am supplied."

Napoleon respectfully but firmly made his remonstrance to the Convention, assuring them that the siege must be conducted with far more science and energy if a successful result was to be expected. He recommended that the works against the city itself should be comparatively neglected, and that all the energies of the assaults should be directed against Little Gibraltar. That fort once taken, it was clear to his mind that the English fleet, exposed to a destructive fire, must immediately evacuate the harbor, and the town would no longer be defensible. In fact, he pursued precisely the course by which Washington had previously driven the British from Boston. The distinguished American general turned aside from the city itself, and by a masterly movement planted his batteries on Dorchester heights, from which he could rain down a perfect tempest of balls upon the decks of the English ships. The invaders were compelled to fly, and to take with them their Tory allies. Napoleon did the same thing at Toulon. The enterprise was, however, vastly more arduous, since the English had foreseen the importance of that port, and had surrounded it with works so unapproachable that they did not hesitate to call it their Little Gibraltar. Napoleon, then but twenty-three years of age, undertook their dislodgment. Dugommier, a scarred and war-worn veteran, was now placed in the supreme command, and cordially sympathized with his young artillery officer in all his plans. The agents of the Convention, who were in the camp as spies to report proceedings to the government, looked with much incredulity upon this strange way of capturing Toulon. One morning some of these commissioners ventured to criticise the direction of a gun which Napoleon was superintending. "Do you," he tartly replied, "attend to your duty as a national commissioner, and I will be answerable for mine with my head."

Napoleon's younger brother, Louis, visited him during the siege. They walked out one morning to a place where an unavailing assault had been made by a portion of the army, and two hundred mangled bodies of Frenchmen were strewn over the ground. On beholding the slaughter which had taken place, Napoleon exclaimed, "All those men have been needlessly sacrificed. Had intelligence commanded here none of these lives need have been lost. Learn from this, my brother, how indispensable and imperatively necessary it is, that those should possess knowledge who aspire to assume the command over others."

Napoleon, with an energy which seemed utterly exhaustless, devoted himself to the enterprise he had undertaken. He shared all the toils and all the perils of his men. He allowed himself but a few hours' sleep at night, and then wrapped in his cloak, threw himself under the guns. By the utmost exertions he soon obtained, from all quarters, a train of two hundred heavy battering cannon. In the midst of a storm of shot and shells incessantly falling around him, he erected five or six powerful batteries, within point-blank range of the works he would assail. One battery in particular which was masked by a plantation of olives, he constructed very near the entrenchments of the enemy. He seemed utterly regardless of his own safety, had several horses shot from under him, and received from an Englishman so serious a bayonet wound in his left thigh that for a time he was threatened with the necessity of amputation. All these operations were carried on in the midst of the storms of battle. There were daily and nightly skirmishes and sallies, and deadly assaults, and the dreadful tide of successful and unsuccessful war ever ebbed and flowed. One day an artillery man was shot down by his side, and the ramrod which he was using was drenched with blood. Napoleon immediately sprung into the dead man's place, seized the rod, and to the great encouragement of the soldiers, with his own hand, repeatedly charged the gun.

While the siege was in progress, one day, fifteen carriages, from Paris, suddenly made their appearance in the camp, and about sixty men alighting from them, dressed in gorgeous uniform, and with the pomp and important air of embassadors from the revolutionary government, demanded to be led into the presence of the commander-in-chief.

"Citizen general," said the orator of the party. "We come from Paris. The patriots are indignant at your inactivity and delay. The soil of the Republic has been violated. She trembles to think that the insult still remains unavenged. She asks, Why is Toulon not yet taken? why is the English fleet not yet destroyed? In her indignation she has appealed to her brave sons. We have obeyed her summons and burn with impatience to fulfill her expectations. We are volunteer gunners from Paris. Furnish us with arms. To-morrow we will march against the enemy."

The general was not a little disconcerted by this pompous and authoritative address. But Napoleon whispered to him, "Turn those gentlemen over to me. I will take care of them." They were very hospitably entertained, and the next morning, at daybreak, Napoleon conducted them to the sea-shore, and gave them charge of several pieces of artillery, which he had placed there during the night, and with which he requested them to sink an English frigate whose black and threatening hull was seen, through the haze of the morning, at anchor some distance from the shore. The trembling volunteers looked around with most nervous uneasiness in view of their exposed situation, and anxiously inquired if there was no shelter behind which they could stand. Just then John Bull uttered one of his most terrific roars, and a whole broadside of cannon balls came whistling over their heads. This was not the amusement they had bargained for, and the whole body of braggadocios took to precipitate flight. Napoleon sat quietly upon his horse, without even a smile moving his pensive and marble features as he contemplated, with much satisfaction, the dispersion of such troublesome allies.

Upon another occasion, when the enemy were directing their fire upon the works which he was constructing, having occasion to send a dispatch from the trenches, he called for some one who could write, that he might dictate an order. A young private stepped out from the ranks and, resting the paper upon the breastwork, began to write, as he dictated. While thus employed, a cannon ball, from the enemy's battery, struck the ground but a few feet from them, covering their persons and the paper with the earth. "Thank you," said the soldier, gayly, "we shall need no more sand upon this page." The instinctive fearlessness and readiness thus displayed arrested the attention of Napoleon. He fixed his keen and piercing eye upon him for a moment, as if scrutinizing all his mental and physical qualities, and then said, "Young man! what can I do for you?" The soldier blushed deeply, but promptly replied, "Every thing," and then touching his left shoulder with his hand, he added, "you can change this worsted into an epaulet." A few days after, Napoleon sent for the same soldier, to reconnoitre the trenches of the enemy, and suggested that he should disguise his dress, as his exposure would be very great. "Never," replied the soldier; "do you take me for a spy? I will go in my uniform, though I should never return." He set out immediately, and fortunately escaped unharmed. These two incidents revealed character, and Napoleon immediately recommended him for promotion. This was Junot, afterward Duke of Abrantes, and one of the most efficient friends of Napoleon. "I love Napoleon," said Junot afterward, most wickedly, "as my God. To him I am indebted for all that I am."1

At last the hour arrived when all things were ready for the grand attempt. It was in the middle watches of the night of the 17th of December, 1793, when the signal was given for the assault. A cold storm of wind and rain was wailing its midnight dirges in harmony with the awful scene of carnage, destruction, and woe, about to ensue. The genius of Napoleon had arranged every thing and inspired the desperate enterprise. No pen can describe the horrors of the conflict. All the energies of both armies were exerted to the utmost in the fierce encounter. To distract the attention of the enemy, the fortifications were every where attacked, while an incessant shower of bomb-shells were rained down upon the devoted city, scattering dismay and death in all directions. In the course of a few hours eight thousand shells from the effective batteries of Napoleon were thrown into Little Gibraltar, until the massive works were almost one pile of ruins. In the midst of the darkness, the storm, the drenching rain, the thunder of artillery, and the gleaming light of bomb-shells, the French marched up to the very muzzles of the English guns, and were mown down like grass before the scythe by the tremendous discharges of grape-shot and musketry. The ditches were filled with the dead and the dying. Again and again the French were repulsed, only to return again and again to the assault. Napoleon was every where present, inspiring the onset, even more reckless of his own life than of the lives of his soldiers. For a long time the result seemed very doubtful. But the plans of Napoleon were too carefully laid for final discomfiture. His mangled, bleeding columns rushed in at the embrasures of the rampart, and the whole garrison were in a few moments silent and still in death. "General," said Bonaparte to Dugommier, broken down by fatigue and age, as he raised the tricolored flag over the crumbling walls of the rampart, "go and sleep. We have taken Toulon." "It was," says Scott, "upon this night of terror, conflagration, tears, and blood, that the star of Napoleon first ascended the horizon, and though it gleamed over many a scene of horror ere it set, it may be doubted whether its light was ever blended with that of one more dreadful."

Though Little Gibraltar was thus taken, the conflict continued all around the city until morning. Shells were exploding, and hot shot falling in the thronged dwellings. Children in the cradle, and maidens in their chambers had limb torn from limb by the dreadful missiles. Conflagrations were continually bursting forth, burning the mangled and the dying, while piercing shrieks of dismay and of agony rose even above the thunders of the terrific cannonade. The wind howled in harmony with the awful scene, and a cold and drenching rain swept the streets. One can not contemplate such a conflict without wondering that a God of mercy could have allowed his children thus brutally to deform this fair creation with the spirit of the world of woe. For the anguish inflicted upon suffering humanity that night a dread responsibility must rest somewhere. A thousand houses were made desolate. Thousands of hearts were lacerated and crushed, with every hope of life blighted forever. The English government thought that they did right, under the circumstances of the case, to send their armies and take possession of Toulon. Napoleon deemed that he was nobly discharging his duty, in the Herculean and successful endeavors he made to drive the invaders from the soil of France. It is not easy for man, with his limited knowledge, to adjust the balance of right and wrong. But here was a crime of enormous magnitude committed – murder, and robbery, and arson, and violence – the breaking of every commandment of God upon the broadest scale; and a day of Judgment is yet to come in which the responsibility will be with precise and accurate justice awarded.

The direful tragedy was, however, not yet terminated. When the morning sun dawned dimly and coldly through the lurid clouds, an awful spectacle was revealed to the eye. The streets of Toulon were red with blood, while thousands of the mangled and the dead, in all the most hideous forms of mutilation, were strewed through the dwellings and along the streets. Fierce conflagrations were blazing in many parts of the city, while mouldering ruins and shattered dwellings attested the terrific power of the midnight storm of man's depravity. The cannonade was still continued, and shells were incessantly exploding among the terrified and shrieking inhabitants.

Napoleon, having accomplished the great object of his exertions, the capture of Little Gibraltar, allowed himself not one moment for triumph, or repose, or regret; but, as regardless of the carnage around him, as if he were contemplating a field over which the scythe of the mower had passed, immediately prepared his guns to throw their plunging balls into the English ships, and to harass them at every point of exposure. No sooner did Lord Howe see the tricolored flag floating from the parapets of Little Gibraltar, than, conscious that the city was no longer tenable, he made signal for the fleet to prepare for immediate evacuation. The day was passed by the English in filling their ships with stores from the French arsenals, they having determined to destroy all the munitions of war which they could not carry away. The victorious French were straining every nerve in the erection of new batteries, to cripple and, if possible, to destroy the retiring foe. Thus passed the day, when another wintry night settled gloomily over the beleaguered and woe-exhausted city. The terror of the royalists was dreadful. They saw, by the embarkation of the British sick and wounded, the indications that the English were to evacuate the city, and that they were to be left to their fate. And full well they knew what doom they, and their wives and their children, were to expect from republican fury in those days of unbridled violence. The English took as many of the French ships of the line as could be got ready for sea, to accompany them in their escape. The rest, consisting of fifteen ships of the line and eight frigates, were collected to be burned. A fire-ship, filled with every combustible substance, was towed into their midst, and at ten o'clock the torch was applied. The night was dark and still. The flames of the burning ships burst forth like a volcano from the centre of the harbor, illumining the scene with lurid and almost noonday brilliance. The water was covered with boats, crowded with fugitives, hurrying, frantic with despair, in the abandonment of homes and property, to the English and Spanish ships. More than twenty thousand loyalists, men, women, and children, of the highest rank, crowded the beach and the quays, in a state of indescribable consternation, imploring rescue from the infuriate army of the republicans howling like wolves around the walls of the city, eager to get at their prey. In increase of the horror of the scene, a most furious cannonade was in progress all the time from every ship and every battery. Cannon balls tore their way through family groups. Bombs exploded upon the thronged decks of the ships, and in the crowded boats. Many boats were thus sunk, and the shrieks of drowning women and children pierced through the heavy thunders of the cannonade. Husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters were separated from each other, and ran to and fro upon the shore in delirious agony. The daughter was left mangled and dying upon the beach; the father was borne by the rush into one boat, the wife into another, and no one knew who was living, and who, mercifully, was dead. The ships, the magazines, the arsenals were all now in flames. The Jacobins of Toulon began to emerge from garrets and cellars, and frenzied with intoxication, like demons of darkness, with torch and sword, rioted through the city, attacked the flying royalists, tore their garments from their backs, and inflicted upon maids and matrons every conceivable brutality. A little after midnight two frigates, each containing many thousand barrels of gunpowder, blew up, with an explosion so terrific, that it seemed to shake, like an earthquake, even the solid hills. As at last the rear-guard of the English abandoned the ramparts and hurried to their boats, the triumphant republican army, nearly forty thousand strong, came rushing into the city at all points. The allied fleet, with favoring winds, spread its sails, and soon disappeared beneath the horizon of the silent sea, bearing away nearly twenty thousand wretched exiles to homelessness, penury, and a life-long woe.

Dugommier, the commander of the republican army, notwithstanding all his exertions, found it utterly impossible to restrain the passions of his victorious soldiers, and for many days violence and crime ran rampant in the doomed city. The crime of having raised the flag of royalty, and of having surrendered the city and its stores to the foe, was one not to be forgiven. The Jacobin government in Paris sent orders for a bloody and a terrible vengeance, that the loyalists all over France might be intimidated from again conspiring with the enemy. Napoleon did every thing in his power to protect the inhabitants from the fury which was wreaked upon them. He witnessed, with anguish, scenes of cruelty which he could not repress. An old merchant, eighty-four years of age, deaf and almost blind, was guilty of the crime of being worth five millions of dollars. The Convention, coveting his wealth, sentenced him to the scaffold. "When I witnessed the inhuman execution of this old man," said Napoleon, "I felt as if the end of the world was at hand." He exposed his own life to imminent peril in his endeavors to save the helpless from Jacobin rage. One day a Spanish prize was brought into the harbor, on board of which had been taken the noble family of Chabrillant, well known loyalists, who were escaping from France. The mob, believing that they were fleeing to join the emigrants and the allied army in their march against Paris, rushed to seize the hated aristocrats, and to hang them, men and women, at the nearest lamp-posts. The guard came up for their rescue and were repulsed. Napoleon saw among the rioters several gunners who had served under him during the siege. He mounted a platform, and their respect for their general secured him a hearing. He induced them, by those powers of persuasion which he so eminently possessed, to intrust the emigrants to him, to be tried and sentenced the next morning. At midnight he placed them in an artillery wagon, concealed among barrels of powder and casks of bullets, and had them conveyed out of the city as a convoy of ammunition. He also provided a boat to be in waiting for them on the shore, and they embarked and were saved.

Though the representatives of the Convention made no allusion to Napoleon in their report, he acquired no little celebrity among the officers in the army by the energy and skill he had manifested. One of the deputies, however, wrote to Carnot, "I send you a young man, who distinguished himself very much during the siege, and earnestly recommend to you to advance him speedily. If you do not, he will most assuredly advance himself."

Soon after the capture of Toulon, Napoleon accompanied General Dugommier to Marseilles. He was in company with him there, when some one, noticing his feminine figure, inquired, "Who is that little bit of an officer, and where did you pick him up?" "That officer's name," gravely replied General Dugommier, "is Napoleon Bonaparte. I picked him up at the siege of Toulon, to the successful termination of which he eminently contributed. And you will probably one day see that this little bit of an officer is a greater man than any of us."