Читать книгу Harper's New Monthly Magazine. No. XVI.—September, 1851—Vol. III - Various - Страница 1

BY JOHN S.C. ABBOTT

II. DAWNING GREATNESS

While Napoleon was spending his few months of furlough in Corsica, he devoted many hours every day to the careful composition, after the manner of Plutarch, of the lives of illustrious Corsicans. Though he had made considerable progress in the work, it was lost in the subsequent disorders of those times. He also established a debating club, composed of the several officers in the army upon the island, to discuss the great political questions which were then agitating Europe. These subjects he studied with most intense application. In this club he was a frequent speaker, and obtained much distinction for his argumentative and oratorical powers. Napoleon, at this time, warmly espoused the cause of popular liberty, though most sternly hostile to lawless violence. As the reign of terror began to shed its gloom on Paris, and each day brought its tidings of Jacobin cruelty and carnage, Napoleon imbibed that intense hatred of anarchy which he ever after manifested, and which no temptation could induce him to disguise. One day he expressed himself in the club so vehemently, that an enemy, Salicetti, reported him to the government as a traitor. He was arrested, taken to Paris, and obtained a triumphant acquittal. Some years after he had an opportunity to revenge himself, most magnanimously, upon his enemy who had thus meanly sought his life, and whom he could not but despise. Salicetti, in his turn, became obnoxious to the Jacobins, and was denounced as an outlaw. The officers of police were in pursuit of him, and the guillotine was ravenous for his blood. He ungenerously sought concealment under the roof of Madame Permon, the mother of the young lady who had suggested to Napoleon the idea of "Puss in Boots." By this act he exposed to the most imminent peril the lives of Madame Permon and of all the members of her household. Napoleon was on terms of familiar intimacy with the family, and Salicetti was extremely apprehensive that he might discover his retreat, and report him to the police. Madame Permon also, knowing the hatred with which Salicetti had sought Napoleon's life, participated in these fears.

The very next morning Napoleon made his appearance in the saloon of Madame Permon.

"Well, Madame Permon," said he, "Salicetti will now in his turn be able to appreciate the bitter fruits of arrest. And to him they ought to be the more bitter, since he aided, with his own hand, to plant the trees which bear them."

"How!" exclaimed Madame Permon, with an air of affected astonishment, "is Salicetti arrested?"

"And is it possible," replied Napoleon, "that you do not know that he has been proscribed. I presumed that you were aware of the fact, since it is in your house that he is concealed."

"Concealed in my house!" she cried, "surely, my dear Napoleon, you are mad. I entreat you do not repeat such a joke in any other place. I assure you it would peril my life."

Napoleon rose from his seat, advanced slowly toward Madame Permon, folded his arms upon his breast, and fixing his eyes in a steadfast gaze upon her, remained for a moment in perfect silence.

"Madame Permon!" he then said, emphatically, "Salicetti is concealed in your house. Nay – do not interrupt me. I know that yesterday at five o'clock he was seen proceeding from the Boulevard in this direction. It is well known that he has not in this neighborhood any acquaintances, you excepted, who would risk their own safety, as well as that of their friends by secreting him."

"And by what right," Madame Permon replied, with continued duplicity, "should Salicetti seek an asylum here? He is well aware that our political sentiments are at variance, and he also knows that I am on the point of leaving Paris."

"You may well ask," Napoleon rejoined, "by what right he should apply to you for concealment. To come to an unprotected woman, who might be compromised by affording a few hours of safety to an outlaw who merits his fate, is an act of baseness to which no consideration ought to have driven him."

"Should you repeat abroad this assertion," she replied, "for which there is no possible foundation, it would entail the most serious consequences upon me."

Again Napoleon, with much apparent emotion, fixed his steadfast gaze upon Madame Permon, and exclaimed, "You, Madame, are a generous woman, and Salicetti is a villain. He was well aware that you could not close your doors against him, and he would selfishly allow you to peril your own life and that of your child, for the sake of his safety. I never liked him. Now I despise him."

With consummate duplicity Madame Permon took Napoleon's hand, and fixing her eye unquailing upon his, firmly uttered the falsehood, "I assure you, Napoleon, upon my honor, that Salicetti is not in my apartments. But stay – shall I tell you all?"

"Yes! all! all!" he vehemently rejoined.

"Well, then," she continued, with great apparent frankness, "Salicetti was, I confess, under my roof yesterday at six o'clock; but he left in a few hours after. I pointed out to him the moral impossibility of his remaining concealed with me, living as publicly as I do. Salicetti admitted the justice of my objection, and took his departure."

Napoleon, with hurried step, traversed the room two or three times, and then exclaimed, "It is just as I suspected. He was coward enough to say to a woman, 'Expose your life for mine.' But," he continued, stopping before Madame Permon, and fixing a doubting eye upon her, "you really believe, then, that he left your house and returned home!"

"Yes!" she replied, "I told him that since he must conceal himself in Paris, it were best to bribe the people of his own hotel, because that would be the last place where his enemies would think of searching for him."

Napoleon then took his leave, and Madame Permon opened the door of the closet where Salicetti was concealed. He had heard every word of the conversation, and was sitting on a small chair, his head leaning upon his hand, which was covered with blood, from a hemorrhage with which he had been seized. Preparations were immediately made for an escape from Paris, and passports were obtained for Salicetti as the valet de chambre of Madame Permon. In the early dawn of the morning they left Paris, Salicetti as a servant, seated upon the box of the carriage. When they had arrived at the end of the first stage, several miles from the city, the postillion came to the window of the coach, and presented Madame Pennon with a note, which, he said, a young man had requested him to place in her hands at that post. It was from Napoleon. Madame Permon opened it and read as follows:

"I never like to be thought a dupe. I should appear to be such to you, did I not tell you that I knew perfectly well of Salicetti's place of concealment.

"You see, then, Salicetti, that I might have returned the ill you did to me. In so doing I should only have avenged myself. But you sought my life when I never had done aught to harm you. Which of us stands in the preferable point of view at the present moment? I might have avenged my wrongs; but I did not. Perhaps you may say, that it was out of regard to your benefactress that I spared you. That consideration, I confess, was powerful. But you, alone, unarmed and an outlaw, would never have been injured by me. Go in peace, and seek an asylum where you may cherish better sentiments. On your name my mouth is closed. Repent and appreciate my motives.

"Madame Permon! my best wishes are with you and your child. You are feeble and defenseless beings. May Providence and a friend's prayers protect you. Be cautious, and do not tarry in the large towns through which you may have to pass. Adieu."

Having read the letter, Madame Permon turned to Salicetti, and said, "You ought to admire the noble conduct of Bonaparte. It is most generous."

"Generous!" he replied, with a contemptuous smile, "What would you have had him do? Would you have wished him to betray me?"

The indignant woman looked upon him with disgust, and said, "I do not know what I might expect you to do. But this I do know, that it would be pleasant to see you manifest a little gratitude."

When they arrived at a seaport, as Salicetti embarked on board a small vessel which was to convey him to Italy, he seemed for a moment not to be entirely unmindful of the favors he had received. Taking Madame Permon's hands in his, he said, "I should have too much to say, were I to attempt to express to you my gratitude by words. As to Bonaparte, tell him I thank him. Hitherto I did not believe him capable of generosity. I am now bound to acknowledge my mistake. I thank him."

Napoleon, after his acquittal from the charges brought against him by Salicetti, remained in Paris for two or three months. He lived in the most frugal manner, spending no money or time in dissipation or amusements. He passed most of his hours in the libraries, reading volumes of solid worth, and seeking the conversation of distinguished men. Without any exhibition of vanity, he seemed to repose great reliance upon his own powers, and was never abashed in the slightest degree by the presence of others, of whatever rank or attainments. Indeed he seemed, even then, to be animated by the assurance that he was destined for some great achievements. His eye was surveying the world. He was meditating upon the rise and fall of empires. France, Europe even, seemed too small for his majestic designs. He studied with intense interest the condition of the countless myriads of men who swarm along the rivers and the hill-sides of internal Asia; and dreamed of being himself the founder of an Empire there, in comparison with which the dynasties of Europe should be insignificant. Indeed he never, in all his subsequent career, manifested the least surprise in view of his elevation. He rose from step to step, regarding each ascent as a matter of course, never shrinking in the least degree from assuming any weight of responsibility, and never manifesting the slightest embarrassment in taking the command from the hands of gray-headed veterans.

While in Paris, he was, on the famous morning of the 20th of June, 1792, walking with his friend Bourrienne, along the banks of the Seine, when he saw a vast mob of men, women, and boys, with hideous yells and frantic gestures, and brandishing weapons of every kind, rolling like an inundation through the streets of the metropolis, and directing their steps toward the palace of the imprisoned monarch. Napoleon ran before them that he might witness their proceedings. Climbing, by an iron fence, upon the balustrade of a neighboring building, he saw the squalid mass of thirty thousand miscreants break into the garden of the Tuileries, swarm through the doors of the regal mansion, and, at last, compel the insulted and humiliated king, driven into the embrasure of a window, to put the filthy red cap of Jacobinism upon his brow. This triumph of the drunken vagrants, from the cellars and garrets of infamy, over all law and justice, and this spectacle of the degradation of the acknowledged monarch of one of the proudest nations on the globe, excited the indignation of Napoleon to the highest pitch. He turned away from the sight as unendurable, exclaiming, "The wretches! how could they suffer this vile mob to enter the palace! They should have swept down the first five hundred with grape shot, and the rest would have soon taken to flight."

New scenes of violence were now daily enacted before the eyes of Napoleon in the streets of Paris, until the dreadful 10th of August arrived. He then again saw the triumphant and unresisted mob sack the palace of the Tuileries. He witnessed the king and the royal family driven from the halls of their ancestors, and followed by the frenzied multitude, with hootings, and hissings, and every conceivable insult, in momentary peril of assassination, until they took refuge in the Assembly. He saw the merciless massacre of the faithful guards of the king, as they were shot in the garden, as they were pursued and poniarded in the streets, as they were pricked down with bayonets, from the statues upon which they had climbed for protection, and in cold blood butchered. He saw, with his bosom glowing with shame and indignation, the drunken rioters marching exultingly through the streets of the metropolis, with the ghastly heads of the slaughtered guards borne aloft, upon the points of their pikes, as the trophies of their victory.

These hideous spectacles wrought quite a revolution in the mind of Napoleon. They effectually arrested the progress of all his tendencies toward democracy. He had been a great admirer of constitutional liberty in England, and a still greater admirer of republican liberty in America. He now became convinced that the people of France were too ignorant and degraded for self-government, that they needed the guidance and control of resistless law. He hated and despised the voluptuousness, the imbecility, and the tyranny of the effete monarchy. He had himself suffered most keenly from the superciliousness of the old nobility who grasped at all the places of profit and honor, merely to gratify their own sensuality, and left no career open to merit. Napoleon had his own fortune to make, and he was glad to see all these bulwarks battered down, which the pride and arrogance of past ages had reared to foster a worthless aristocracy; and to exclude the energetic and the aspiring, unaided by wealth and rank, from all the avenues of influence and celebrity. On the other hand the dominion of the mob appeared to him so execrable that he said, "I frankly declare that if I were compelled to choose between the old monarchy and Jacobin misrule, I should infinitely prefer the former." Openly and energetically, upon all occasions, fearless of consequences, he expressed his abhorrence of those miscreants who were trampling justice and mercy beneath their feet, and who were, by their atrocities, making France a by-word among all nations. This is a key to the character of Napoleon. Those opposing forces guided his future career. He ever, subsequently, manifested the most decisive resolution to crush the Jacobins. He displayed untiring energy in reconstructing in France a throne invincible in power, which should govern the people, which should throw every avenue to greatness open to all competitors, making wealth, and rank, and influence, and power the reward of merit. Napoleon openly avowed his conviction that France, without education and without religion, was not prepared for the republicanism of the United States. In this sentiment La Fayette and most of the wisest men of the French nation fully concurred. With an arm of despotic power he crushed every lawless outbreak. And he gathered around his throne eminent abilities, wherever he could find them, in the shop of the artisan, in the ranks of the army, and in the hut of the peasant. In France at this time, there was neither intelligence, religion, nor morality, among the masses. There was no reverence for law either human or divine. Napoleon expressed his high approval of the constitutional monarchy of England, and declared that to be the model upon which he would have the new government of France constructed. He judged that France needed an imposing throne, supported by an illustrious nobility and by a standing army of invincible power, with civil privileges cautiously and gradually disseminated among the people. And though in the pride of subsequent success he was disposed to gather all power into his own hands, few persons could have manifested during so long a reign, and through the temptations of so extraordinary a career, more unwavering consistency.

One evening he returned home from a walk, through the streets of the tumultuous metropolis, in which his ears had been deafened by the shouts of the people in favor of a new republican constitution. It was in the midst of the reign of terror, and the guillotine was drenched in blood. "How do you like the new constitution?" said a lady to him. He replied, hesitatingly, "Why, it is good in one sense, to be sure; but, all that is connected with carnage, is bad," and then, as if giving way to an outburst of sincere feeling, he exclaimed, emphatically, "No! no! no! away with this constitution. I do not like it!"

The republicanism of the United States is founded on the intelligence, the Christianity, and the reverence for law so generally prevalent throughout the whole community. And should that dark day ever come, in which the majority of the people will be unable to read the printed vote which is placed in their hands, and lose all reverence for earthly law, and believe not in God, before whose tribunal they must finally appear, it is certain that the republic can not stand for a day. Anarchy must ensue, from which there can be no refuge but in a military despotism.

In these days of pecuniary embarrassment Napoleon employed a bootmaker, a very awkward workman, but a man who manifested very kindly feelings toward him, and accommodated him in his payments. When dignity and fortune were lavished upon the first consul and the emperor, he was frequently urged to employ a more fashionable workman. But no persuasions could induce him to abandon the humble artisan who had been the friend of his youthful days. Instinctive delicacy told him that the man would be more gratified by being the shoemaker of the emperor, and that his interests would thus be better promoted than by any other favors he could confer.

A silversmith, in one of Napoleon's hours of need, sold him a dressing-case upon credit. The kindness was never forgotten. Upon his return from the campaign of Italy, he called, rewarded him liberally, and ever after employed him, and also recommended him to his marshals and to his court in general. In consequence the jeweler acquired an immense fortune.

Effects must have their causes. Napoleon's boundless popularity in the army and in the nation, was not the result of accident, the sudden outbreak of an insane delusion. These exhibitions of an instinctive and unstudied magnanimity won the hearts of the people as rapidly as his transcendent abilities and Herculean toil secured for him renown.

Napoleon with his political principles modified by the scenes of lawless violence which he had witnessed in Paris, returned again to Corsica.

Soon after his return to his native island, in February, 1793, he, being then 22 years of age, was ordered, at the head of two battalions, in co-operation with Admiral Turget, to make a descent upon the island of Sardinia. Napoleon effected a landing and was entirely successful in the accomplishment of his part of the expedition. The admiral, however, failed, and Napoleon, in consequence, was under the necessity of evacuating the positions where he had entrenched himself, and of returning to Corsica.

He found France still filled with the most frightful disorders. The king and queen had both fallen upon the scaffold. Paoli, disgusted with the political aspect of his own country, treasonably plotted to surrender Corsica, over which he was the appointed governor, to the crown of England. It was a treacherous act, and was only redeemed from utter infamy by the brutal outrages with which France was disgraced. A large party of the Corsicans rallied around Paoli. He exerted all the influence in his power to induce Napoleon, the son of his old friend and comrade, and whose personal qualities he greatly admired, to join his standard. Napoleon, on the other hand, with far greater penetration into the mysteries of the future, entreated Paoli to abandon the unpatriotic enterprise. He argued that the violence with which France was filled was too terrible to be lasting, and that the nation must soon return again to reason and to law. He represented that Corsica was too small and feeble to think of maintaining independence in the midst of the powerful empires of Europe; that in manners, language, customs, and religion it never could become a homogeneous part of England; that the natural connection of the island was with France, and that its glory could only be secured by its being embraced as a province of the French Empire. And above all, he argued that it was the duty of every good citizen, in such hours of peril, to cling firmly and fearlessly to his country, and to exert every nerve to cause order to emerge from the chaos into which all things had fallen. These were unanswerable arguments, but Paoli had formed strong attachments in England, and remembered, with an avenging spirit, the days in which he had fled before the armies of conquering France.

The last interview which took place between these distinguished men, was at a secluded convent in the interior of the island. Long and earnestly they argued with each other, for they were devoted personal friends. The veteran governor was eighty years of age, Napoleon was but twenty-two. It was with the greatest reluctance that either of them could consent to draw the sword against the other. But there was no alternative. Paoli was firm in his determination to surrender the island to the English. No persuasions could induce Napoleon to sever his interests from those of his native country. Sadly they separated to array themselves against each other in civil war.

As Napoleon, silent and thoughtful, was riding home alone, he entered a wild ravine among the mountains, when suddenly he was surrounded by a party of mountaineers, in the employ of Paoli, and taken prisoner. By stratagem he effected his escape, and placed himself at the head of the battalion of national guards over which he had been appointed commander. Hostilities immediately commenced. The governor, who with his numerous forces had possession of the town of Ajaccio, invited the English into the harbor, surrendering to them the island. The English immediately took possession of those heights on the opposite side of the gulf, which, it will be remembered, that Napoleon had previously so carefully examined. The information he gained upon this occasion was now of special service to him. One dark and stormy night he embarked in a frigate, with a few hundred soldiers, landed near the entrenchments, guided the party in the darkness, over the ground, with which he was perfectly familiar, surprised the English in their sleep, and, after a short but sanguinary conflict, took possession of the fort. The storm, however, increased to a gale, and when the morning dawned, they strained their eyes in vain through the driving mist to discern the frigate. It had been driven by the tempest far out to sea. Napoleon and his little band were immediately surrounded by the allied English and Corsicans, and their situation seemed desperate. For five days they defended themselves most valiantly, during which time they were under the necessity of killing their horses for food to save themselves from starvation. At last the frigate again appeared. Napoleon then evacuated the town in which he had so heroically contended against vastly outnumbering foes, and, after an ineffectual attempt to blow up the fort, succeeded in safely effecting an embarkation. The strength of Paoli was daily increasing, and the English in greater numbers crowding to his aid. Napoleon saw that it was in vain to attempt further resistance, and that Corsica was no longer a safe residence for himself or for the family. He accordingly disbanded his forces and prepared to leave the island.

Paoli called upon Madame Letitia, and exhausted his powers of persuasion in endeavoring to induce the family to unite with him in the treasonable surrender of the island to the English. "Resistance is hopeless," said he, "and by this perverse opposition, you are bringing irreparable ruin and misery on yourself and family." "I know of but two laws," replied Madame Letitia, heroically, "which it is necessary for me to obey, the laws of honor and of duty." A decree was immediately passed banishing the family from the island. One morning Napoleon hastened to inform his mother that several thousand peasants, armed with all the implements of revolutionary fury, were on the march to attack the house. The family fled precipitately, with such few articles of property as they could seize at the moment, and for several days wandered, houseless and destitute, on the sea-shore, until Napoleon could make arrangements for their embarkation. The house was sacked by the mob, and the furniture entirely destroyed.

It was midnight when an open boat manned by four strong rowers, with muffled oars, approached the shore in the vicinity of the pillaged and battered dwelling of Madame Letitia. A dim lantern was held by an attendant, as the whole Bonaparte family, in silence and in sorrow, with the world, its poverty and all its perils, wide before them, entered the boat. A few trunks and bandboxes, contained all their available property. The oarsmen pulled out into the dark and lonely sea. Earthly boat never before held such a band of emigrants. There sat Madame Letitia, Joseph, Napoleon, Lucien, Louis, Jerome, Eliza, Pauline, and Caroline. Little did those poor and friendless fugitives then imagine that all the thrones of Europe were to tremble before them, and that their celebrity was to fill the world. Napoleon took his stand at the bows, for although the second son, he was already the commanding spirit of the family. They soon ascended the sides of a small vessel which was waiting for them in the offing, with her sails fluttering in the breeze, and when the morning sun arose over the blue waters of the Mediterranean, they were approaching the harbor of Nice. Here they remained but a short time, when they removed to Marseilles, where the family resided in great pecuniary embarrassment until relieved by the rising fortunes of Napoleon.

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."

Napoleon was immediately employed in fortifying the maritime coast of southern France, to afford the inhabitants protection against attacks from the allied fleet. With the same exhaustless, iron diligence which had signalized his course at Toulon, he devoted himself to this new enterprise. He climbed every headland, explored every bay, examined all soundings. He allowed himself no recreation, and thought not of repose. It was winter, and cold storms of wind and rain swept the bleak hills. But the energies of a mind more intense and active than was perhaps ever before encased in human flesh, rendered this extraordinary man, then but twenty-three years of age, perfectly regardless of all personal indulgences. Drenched with rain, living upon such coarse fare as he chanced to meet in the huts of fishermen and peasants; throwing himself, wrapped in his cloak, upon any poor cot, for a few hours of repose at night, he labored, with both body and mind, to a degree which no ordinary constitution could possibly have endured, and which no ordinary enthusiasm could have inspired. In a few weeks he accomplished that to which others would have devoted years of energetic action. It seems incredible that a human mind, in so short a time, could have matured plans so comprehensive and minute, and could have achieved such vast results. While other young officers, of his age, were sauntering along the windings of mountain streams with hook and line, or strolling the fields with fowling-pieces, or, in halls of revelry, with mirthful maidens, were accomplishing their destiny in cotillions and waltzes, Napoleon, in Herculean toil, was working day and night, with a sleepless energy, which never has been surpassed. He divided the coast batteries into three classes: those for the defense of men-of-war in important harbors; those for the protection of merchant vessels, and those reared upon promontories and headlands, under whose guns the coasting trade could hover.

Having accomplished this vast undertaking in the two wintry months of January and February, early in March, 1794, he joined the head-quarters of the army of Italy in Nice, promoted to the rank of Brigadier-general of Artillery. The personal appearance of Napoleon, at this time, was any thing but prepossessing. He was diminutive in stature, and thin and emaciated in the extreme. His features were angular and sharp, and his complexion sallow. His hair, contrary to the fashion of the times, was combed straight over his forehead. His hands were perfectly feminine in their proportions. Quite regardless of the display of dress, he usually appeared without gloves, which, he said, were a useless luxury, in a plain round hat, with boots clumsily fitted to his feet, and with that gray great-coat, which afterward became as celebrated as the white plume of Henry IV. His eye, however, was brilliant, and his smile ever peculiarly winning.

Napoleon, upon his arrival at Nice, found the French army idly reposing in their intrenchments among the Maritime Alps, and surrounded by superior forces of Austrians and Sardinians. General Dumerbion, who was in command, was a fearless and experienced soldier, but aged and infirm, and suffering severely from the gout. The sun of returning spring was causing the hills and the valleys to rejoice. Mild airs from the south were breathing gently over the opening foliage, and the songs of birds and the perfume of flowers lured to listless indulgence. Napoleon was pale and emaciate from the toils of his batteries at Toulon, and from his sleepless exertions in fortifying the coast. He now had an opportunity for repose, and for the recruiting of his apparently exhausted frame. He, however, did not allow himself one single day of recreation or of rest. The very hour of his arrival found him intensely occupied in informing himself respecting all the particulars of the numbers, positions, the organization, and the available resources of the two armies. He carefully examined every outpost of the French, and reconnoitred with the most scrutinizing attention the line occupied by the opposing hosts. He studied the map of the country. He galloped hour after hour, and day after day through the ravines and over the mountains, to make himself perfectly familiar with all the localities of the region. After a day of incessant toil he would spend the night with his maps and charts before him, with every meandering stream, every valley, every river carefully laid down, and with pins, the heads of some covered with red sealing-wax to represent the French, and others with blue to designate the enemy, he would form all possible combinations, and study the advantages or the perils of the different positions which the republican army might assume. Having thrown himself upon his cot for a few hours of repose, the earliest dawn of the morning would find him again upon his horse's back, exploring all the intricate and perilous fastnesses of the Alps.

A large force of Austrians were intrenched near Saorgia, along the banks of the fertile Roya, in the enjoyment of ease and abundance, and dreaming not of peril. Napoleon, with great deliberation, formed his plan. He had foreseen all probable contingencies, and guarded against every conceivable danger. A council was assembled. He presented his suggestions so forcibly and so clearly, as to insure their immediate adoption. Massena,2 with fifteen thousand men, secretly and rapidly was to ascend the banks of the Oreglia, a stream running parallel with the Roya, till, far up near the sources of the two rivers, crossing over to the Roya, he was to descend that valley, and fall unexpectedly upon the Austrians in the rear. At the same time General Dumerbion, the commander-in-chief, with ten thousand men, was to assail the enemy in front. Napoleon, with ten thousand men, marching nearer to the Mediterranean coast, was to seize the important posts there, and cut off, from the fertile plains of the south, the retreat of the enemy. Thus, in three weeks after Napoleon had made his appearance at the head-quarters of the army in Nice, the whole force of the French was in motion. The energy of the youthful general was immediately communicated to the entire army. Desperate and sanguinary conflicts ensued, but the plan was triumphantly successful. The Piedmontese troops, twenty thousand strong, amazed at the storm thus suddenly bursting upon them, precipitately fled. Saorgia, the principal dépôt of the allied forces, and well stored with provisions and ammunition of every kind, was taken by the French. Before the end of May the French were masters of all the passes of the Maritime Alps, and their flags were waving in the breeze from the summits of Mt. Cenis, Mt. Tende, and Mt. Finisterre. The news of these sudden and unexpected victories went with electric speed through France. With the nation in general the honor redounded to Dumerbion alone, the commander-in-chief. But in the army it was well understood to whose exertions and genius the achievements were to be attributed. Though as yet the name of Napoleon had hardly been pronounced in public, the officers and soldiers in the army were daily contemplating, with increasing interest, his rising fame. Indeed General Dumerbion was so deeply impressed by the sagacity and military science displayed by his brigadier-general, that he unresistingly surrendered himself to the guidance of the mind of Napoleon.

An incident occurred, during this brief campaign, which strikingly illustrates the criminal disregard which Napoleon entertained for human life. It was then the custom with the Convention at Paris always to have representatives in the army to report proceedings. The wife of one of these representatives, a virtuous and beautiful woman, fully appreciated the intellectual superiority of Napoleon, and paid him very marked attention. Napoleon, naturally of a grateful disposition, became strongly but fraternally attached to her. One day walking out with her to inspect some of the positions of the army, merely to give her some idea of an engagement he ordered an attack upon one of the advanced posts of the enemy. A brisk skirmish immediately ensued, and the roar of artillery and the crackling of musketry reverberated sublimely through the Alps. The lady, from a safe eminence, looked down with intensest interest upon the novel scene. Many lives were lost on both sides, though the French were entirely victorious. It was, however, a conflict which led to no possible advantage, and which was got up merely for the entertainment of the lady. Napoleon subsequently often alluded to this wanton exposure of life as one of his most inexcusable acts. He never ceased to regret it.

Some years after, when Napoleon was First Consul, this lady, then a widow, friendless, and reduced to poverty, made her appearance at St. Cloud, and tried to gain access to Napoleon. He was, however, so hedged in by the etiquette of royalty, that all her exertions were unavailing. One day he was riding on horseback in the park, conversing with some members of his court, when he alluded to this event, which he so deeply deplored. He was informed that the lady was then at St. Cloud. He immediately sent for her, and inquired with most brotherly interest into all of her history during the years which had elapsed since they parted. When he heard her sad tale of misfortune, he said, "But why did you not sooner make your wants known to me." "Sire," she replied, "I have for many weeks been in vain seeking to obtain an audience." "Alas!" he exclaimed, "such is the misfortune of those who are in power." He immediately made ample provision for her future comfort.

The summer months rapidly passed away, while the French, upon the summits of the mountains, were fortifying their positions, to resist the attacks of a formidable army of Austrians and Piedmontese combining to displace them. Napoleon was still indefatigable in obtaining a familiar acquaintance with all the natural features of the country, in studying the modes of moving, governing, and provisioning armies, and eagerly watching for opportunities to work out his destiny of renown, for which he now began to believe that he was created.

But suddenly he was arrested on the following extraordinary charge, and narrowly escaped losing his head on the guillotine. When Napoleon, during the preceding winter, was engaged in the fortification of the maritime frontier, he proposed repairing an old state prison at Marseilles, that it might serve as a powder magazine. His successor on that station, proceeded to the execution of this plan, so evidently judicious. Some disaffected persons represented this officer to the Committee of Public Safety, as building a second Bastile, in which to imprison patriotic citizens. He was accordingly at once arrested and brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal. Here he so clearly proved that the plan was not his own, but that he was merely carrying out the suggestions of his predecessor, that he was released, and orders were sent for the arrest of Napoleon. He was seized, and for fifteen days held under arrest. An order, however, soon came from Paris for his release. An officer entering his room, a couple of hours after midnight, to communicate the tidings, found, much to his astonishment, Napoleon dressed and seated before his table, with maps, books, and charts spread out before him.

"What!" inquired his friend, "are you not in bed yet?"

"In bed!" Napoleon replied. "I have had my sleep and am already risen."

"What, so early'!" the other rejoined.

"Yes," continued Napoleon, "so early. Two or three hours of sleep are enough for any man."

Though the representatives of the government, conscious of the value of Napoleon's services, had written to the Convention, making such an explanation of the facts that he was immediately set at liberty, still they saw fit, in an ungenerous attempt at self-justification, to deprive him of his rank as general of artillery, and to assign him a post in the infantry in its stead. Napoleon, regarding this transfer as an insult, threw up his commission in disgust, and retired, in comparative indigence, to join his mother and the rest of the family, who were now residing at Marseilles. This was in the autumn of 1794, Napoleon being then 24 years of age. He spent the winter in comparative inaction, but carefully studying the convulsions of the times, the history of past revolutions, and the science of government. Tired of inactivity, early in May he proceeded to Paris, to seek employment. He was, however, unsuccessful. The government had its favorites to reward and promote, and Napoleon, deeply chagrined and mortified, found all his offers of service rejected. An old officer of artillery, who had seen but little active service, was president of the military committee. Rather superciliously he remarked to Napoleon, whose feminine and youthful appearance did not indicate that he was born to command, "You are too young to occupy stations of such responsibility as you seek." Napoleon imprudently retorted, "Presence in the field of battle, sir, ought to anticipate the claim of years." This personal reflection so annoyed the president that he sought rather to obstruct than to aid the aspirations of the young officer. His situation became daily more painful, as his scanty funds were rapidly failing. He even formed the plan of going to Turkey to offer his services to the Grand Seignior. "How singular it would be," said he, at this time, to a companion, "if a little Corsican officer were to become king of Jerusalem!"

One gloomy night at St. Helena, when Napoleon, unable to sleep, was endeavoring to beguile the weary hours by conversation, he narrated the following anecdote, illustrative of his destitution and his distress in these early days of adversity. "I was, at this period, on one occasion suffering from that extreme depression of spirits which suspend the faculties of the brain, and render life a burden too heavy to be borne. I had just received a letter from my mother, revealing to me the utter destitution into which she was plunged. She had been compelled to flee from the war with which Corsica was desolated, and was then at Marseilles, with no means of subsistence, and having naught but her heroic virtues to defend the honor of her daughters against the misery and the corruption of all kinds existing in the manners of that epoch of social chaos. I also, deprived of my salary and with exhausted resources, had but one single dollar in my pocket. Urged by animal instinct to escape from prospects so gloomy and from sorrows so unendurable, I wandered along the banks of the river, feeling that it was unmanly to commit suicide, and yet unable to resist the temptation to do so. In a few more moments I should have thrown myself into the water, when I ran against an individual, dressed like a simple mechanic, who, recognizing me, threw himself upon my neck, and cried, 'Is it you, Napoleon? How glad I am to see you again!' It was Démasis, an old friend and former comrade of mine in the artillery regiment. He had emigrated, and had afterward returned to France, in disguise, to see his aged mother.

"He was about to leave me, when stopping, he exclaimed, 'But what is the matter, Napoleon? You do not listen to me! You do not seem glad to see me! What misfortune threatens you? You look to me like a madman about to kill himself.' This direct appeal to the feelings which had seized upon me, produced such an effect upon my mind, that, without hesitation, I revealed to him every thing. 'Is that all?' said he, unbuttoning his coarse waistcoat, and detaching a belt which he placed in my hands. 'Here are six thousand dollars in gold, which I can spare without any inconvenience. Take them and relieve your mother.' I can not to this day explain to myself how I could have been willing to receive the money, but I seized the gold as by a convulsive movement, and, almost frantic with excitement, ran to send it to my distressed mother. It was not until the money had left my hands and was on its way to Marseilles that I reflected upon what I had done. I hastened back to the spot where I had left Démasis, but he was no longer there. For several days continuously, I went out in the morning and returned not till evening, searching every place in Paris where I could hope to find him. All the researches I then made, as well as those I made after my accession to power, were in vain. It was not till the Empire was approaching its fall that I again discovered Démasis. It was now my turn to question him, and to ask him what he had thought of my strange conduct, and why I had never heard even his name for fifteen years. He replied that as he had been in no need of money he had not asked me to repay the loan, although he was well assured that I should find no difficulty in reimbursing him. But he feared that if he made himself known, that I should force him to quit the retirement in which he lived happily, occupying himself with horticulture. I had very great difficulty in making him accept sixty thousand dollars as an imperial reimbursement for the six thousand lent to his comrade in distress. I also made him accept the office of director-general of the crown gardens, with a salary of six thousand dollars a year, and the honors of an officer of the household. I also provided a good situation for his brother.

"Two of my comrades in the military school, and the two to whom I was most closely united by the sympathies of early friendship, had, by one of those mysteries of Providence which we often witness, an immense influence upon my destiny. Démasis arrested me at the moment when I was about to commit suicide; and Philippeau prevented my conquest of St. Jean d'Acre. Had it not been for him I should have been master of this key of the East. I should have marched upon Constantinople, and have established an empire in Asia."

But reverses began now to attend the army in Italy. Defeat followed defeat. They were driven by the Austrians from the posts to which Napoleon had conducted them, and were retreating before their foes. The Committee of Public Safety were in great trepidation. In their ignorance they knew not what orders to issue. Some one who had heard of Napoleon's achievements among the Alps suggested his name. He was called into the meetings of the committee for advice. The local and technical information he had acquired, his military science, and the vast resources of his highly cultivated mind, placed him immediately at the head of the committee. Though young in years, and still more youthful in appearance, his gravity, his serious and pensive thoughtfulness, gave oracular weight to his counsels, and his plans were unhesitatingly adopted. He had studied the topography of the Maritime Alps with the most enthusiastic assiduity, and was familiar with the windings and characteristics of every stream, and the course of mountain ranges, and with the military capabilities of the ravines and glens. The judicious dispositions which he proposed of the various divisions of the army arrested the tide of Austrian conquest, and enabled the French, though much inferior in number to their allied foes, to defend the positions they had been directed to occupy. During all this time, however, while Napoleon, in the committee-room in Paris, was guiding the movements of the army in Italy, he was studying in the public libraries, during every leisure moment, with an assiduity so intense and inexhaustible that it could not have been surpassed had he been inspired with the highest ambition for literary and scientific honors.

In his occasional evening saunterings along the boulevards, as he saw the effeminate young men of that metropolis, rolling in luxury, and, in affected speech, criticising the tones of an opera singer, or the exquisite moulding of a dancer's limbs, he could not refrain from giving utterance to his contempt. When he was thus one evening treading the dusty thoroughfares and looking upon such a spectacle, he impatiently exclaimed, "Can it be, that upon such creatures fortune is willing to lavish her favors! How contemptible is human nature." Though Napoleon secluded himself entirely from haunts of revelry and scenes of dissipation, and from all those dissolute courses into which the young men of those days so recklessly plunged, he adopted this course, not apparently from any conscientious desire to do that which was right in the sight of God, but from what has been called "the expulsive power of new affection." Ambition seemed to expel from his mind every other passion. The craving to obtain renown by the performance of great and glorious deeds; the desire to immortalize his name, as one of the distinguished men and illustrious benefactors of the human race, had infused itself so intensely throughout his whole nature, that animal passion even was repressed, and all the ordinary pursuits of worldly pleasure became in his view frivolous and contemptible. His ambition needed but the spirit of religion to sanctify it, to make it as noble an ambition as ever glowed in a human bosom. But alas! it all centred in himself. He wished to benefit the human race, not because he loved his fellow man, but that he might immortalize his own name.

At this time it can hardly be said that there was any religion in France. Christianity had been all but universally discarded. The priests had been banished; the churches demolished or converted into temples of science or haunts of merriment; the immortality of the soul was denied, and upon the gateways of the grave-yards there was inscribed, "Death is an eternal sleep." Napoleon was consequently deprived of all the influences of religion in the formation of his character. And yet his mind was naturally, if it be proper so to speak, a devotional mind. His temperament was serious, thoughtful, and pensive. The grand and the mysterious engrossed and overawed him. Even his ambition was not exulting and exhilarating, but sombre, majestic, and sublime. He thought of Herculean toil and sleepless labor, and heroic deeds. For ease, and luxury, and self-indulgence, he had no desire, but he wished to be the greatest of men by accomplishing more than any other mortal had ever accomplished. Even in youth life had but few charms for him, and he took a melancholy view of man's earthly pilgrimage, after asserting that existence was not a blessing. And when drawing near to the close of life he asserted that he had known but few happy moments upon earth, and that for those few he was indebted to the love of Josephine.

The National Convention now prepared another constitution for the adoption of the people of France. The executive power, instead of being placed in the hands of one king, or president, was intrusted to five chiefs, who were to be called Directors. The legislative powers were committed to two bodies, as in the United States. The first, corresponding to the United States Senate, was to be called the Council of Ancients. It was to consist of two hundred and fifty members, each of whom was to be at least forty years of age, and a married man or a widower. An unmarried man was not considered worthy of a post of such responsibility in the service of the state. The second body was called the Council of Five Hundred, from the number of members of which it was to be composed. It corresponded with our House of Representatives, and each of its members was to be at least thirty years of age.

This constitution was far superior to any other which had yet been formed. It was framed by the moderate republicans, who wished to establish a republican government, protecting France on the one hand from the royalists, who would reestablish the Bourbons upon the throne, and on the other hand from the misrule of the violent Jacobins, who wished to perpetuate the reign of terror. This constitution was sent down to the primary assemblies of the people, for their adoption or rejection. It was accepted promptly in nearly all the rural districts, and was adopted by acclamation in the army.

The city of Paris was divided into ninety-six sections, or wards, in each of which, as in our cities, the inhabitants of that particular ward assembled at the polls. When the constitution was tendered to these several sections of Paris, forty-eight of them voted in its favor, while forty-six rejected it. The royalists and the Jacobins, the two extremes, united in the opposition, each party hoping that by the overthrow of the Convention their own views might obtain the precedence. The Convention declared that the majority of the nation had every where pronounced in favor of the new constitution, and they prepared to carry its provisions into effect. The opposing sections, now thoroughly aroused, began to arm, resolved upon violent resistance. The Parisian mob, ever ready for an outbreak, joined most heartily with their more aristocratic leaders, and all Paris seemed to be rousing to attack the Convention. The National Guard, a body of soldiers corresponding with the American militia, though far better officered, equipped, and drilled, joined promptly the insurgents. The insurrection-gun was fired, the tocsin tolled, and the gloomy, threatening masses, marshaled under able leaders, swarmed through the streets. The Convention was in the utmost state of trepidation; for in those days of anarchy, blood flowed like water, and life had no sacredness. It was not a mob of a few hundred straggling men and boys who were to surround their hall with hootings and to break their windows; but a formidable army of forty thousand men, in battle array, with artillery and musketry, headed by veteran generals, who had fought the battles of the old monarchy, with gleaming banners and trumpet tones, were marching down from all quarters of the city, upon the Tuileries. To meet this foe the Convention had at its command but five thousand regular troops; and it was uncertain but that they, in the moment of peril, might fraternize with the insurgents. General Menou was appointed, by the Convention, to quell the insurrection. He marched to meet the enemy. Napoleon, intensely interested in the passing scenes, followed the solid columns of Menou. But the general, a mild and inefficient man, with no nerve to meet such a crisis, was alarmed in view of the numbers and the influence of his antagonists, and retired before them. Shouts of victory resounded from the National Guard, through all the streets of Paris. They were greatly emboldened by this triumph, and felt confident that the regular troops would not dare to fire upon the citizens. The shades of night were now settling down over the agitated city. Napoleon having witnessed the unsuccessful mission of Menou, ran through the streets to the Tuileries, and ascending the gallery where the Convention was assembled, contemplated, with a marble brow and a heart apparently unagitated, the scene of consternation there. It was now eleven o'clock at night, and the doom of the Convention seemed sealed. In the utmost alarm Menou was dismissed, and the unlimited command of the troops intrusted to Barras. The office was full of peril. Successful resistance seemed impossible, and unsuccessful was certain death. Barras hesitated, when suddenly he recollected Napoleon, whom he had known at Toulon, and whose military science and energy, and reckless disregard of his own life, and of the lives of all others, he well remembered. He immediately exclaimed, "I know the man who can defend us, if any one can. It is a young Corsican officer, Napoleon Bonaparte, whose military abilities I witnessed at Toulon. He is a man who will not stand upon ceremony." Napoleon was in the gallery at the time, and it is not impossible that the eye of Barras chancing to light upon him, caused the suggestion.

He was immediately introduced to the Convention. They expected to see a man of gigantic frame and soldierly bearing, brusque and imperious. To their surprise there appeared before them a small, slender, pale-faced, smooth-cheeked young man, apparently about eighteen years of age. The president said, "Are you willing to undertake the defense of the Convention?" – "Yes!" was the calm, laconic reply. After a moment's hesitation, the president continued, "Are you aware of the magnitude of the undertaking?" Napoleon fixed that eagle glance upon him, which few could meet, and not quail before it, and replied, "Perfectly; and I am in the habit of accomplishing that which I undertake." There was something in the tone and the manner of this extraordinary man, which secured for him immediately the confidence of all the members of the House. His spirit so calm and imperturbable, in the midst of a scene so exciting, impressed them with the conviction that they were in the presence of one of no common powers. After the exchange of a few more words, Napoleon said, "One condition is indispensable. I must have the unlimited command, entirely untrammeled by any orders from the Convention." It was no time for debate, and there was unhesitating acquiescence in his demand.

The promptness, energy, and unfailing resources of Napoleon, were now most conspicuously displayed. At Sablons, about five miles from Paris, there was a powerful park of artillery, consisting of fifty heavy guns. Napoleon instantly dispatched Murat, with a party of dragoons to take those guns, and bring them to the Tuileries. They were seized by the mounted troops, but a few moments before a party of infantry arrived from the sections, for the same purpose. The insurgents, though more numerous, dared not attack the dragoons, and the guns were taken in safety to Napoleon; and he disposed them, heavily charged with grape shot, in such a way as to sweep all the avenues leading to the Convention. The activity of the young general knew not a moment's intermission. He was every where during the night, giving directions, infusing energy, and inspiring courage. He was well aware of the fearful odds against him; for with five thousand troops he was to encounter forty thousand men, well armed, well disciplined, and under experienced officers. They could easily besiege him, and starve him into surrender. They could, from behind barricades, and from housetops and chamber windows, soon so thin out his ranks, that resistance would be hopeless. The officers of the National Guard, however, had no conception of the firm, indomitable, unflinching spirit which they were to encounter. They did not believe that any one would dare to fire upon the citizens of Paris. The Convention were aroused to a most lively sense of the serious aspect of affairs, when in the gloom of night eight hundred muskets were brought in with an abundant supply of cartridges, by order of Napoleon, to arm the members as a corps of reserve. This precaution indicated to them the full extent of the danger, and also the unwavering determination of the one who was intrusted with their defense. As the light of morning dawned upon the city, the Tuileries presented the aspect of an intrenched camp. Napoleon had posted his guns so as to sweep all the bridges and all the avenues, through which an opposing force could approach the capital. His own imperturbable calmness and firmness and confidence, communicated itself to the troops he commanded. The few laconic words with which he addressed them, like electric fire penetrated their hearts, and secured devotion, even to death, to his service.

The alarm bells were now ringing, and the générale beating in all parts of the city. The armed hosts, in dense black masses, were mustering at their appointed rendezvous, and preparing to march in solid columns upon the Convention. The members in their seats, in silence and awe, awaited the fearful assault, upon whose issue their lives were suspended. Napoleon, pale and solemn, and perfectly calm, imperturbable and determined, had completed all his arrangements, and was waiting, resolved that the responsibility of the first blow should fall upon his assailants, and that he would take the responsibility of the second. Soon the enemy were seen advancing from every direction, in masses which perfectly filled the narrow streets of the city. With exultant music and waving banners, they marched proudly on to attack the besieged band upon every side, and confident, from their overpowering numbers, of an easy victory. They did not believe that the few and feeble troops of the Convention would dare to resist the people, but cherished the delusion that a very few shots, from their own side, would put all opposition to flight. Thus, unhesitatingly, they came within the sweep of the grape-shot, with which Napoleon had charged his guns to the muzzle. But seeing that the troops of the Convention stood firm, awaiting their approach, the head of one of the advancing columns leveled their muskets and discharged a volley of bullets at their enemies. It was the signal for an instantaneous discharge, direct, sanguinary, merciless from every battery. In quick succession explosion followed explosion, and a perfect storm of grape-shot swept the thronged streets. The pavements were covered with the mangled and the dead. The columns wavered – the storm still continued; they turned – the storm still raged unabated; they fled in utter dismay in every direction; the storm still pursued them. Then Napoleon commanded his little division impetuously to follow the fugitives, and to continue the discharge, but with blank cartridges. As the thunder of these heavy guns reverberated along the streets, the insurgents dispersed through every available lane and alley, and in less than an hour the foe was nowhere to be found. Napoleon sent his division into every section and disarmed the inhabitants, that there could be no re-gathering. He then ordered the dead to be buried, and the wounded to be conveyed to the hospitals, and then, with his pale and marble brow as unmoved as if no event of any great importance had occurred, he returned to his head-quarters at the Tuileries.

"How could you," said a lady, "thus mercilessly fire upon your own countrymen?" "A soldier," he coolly replied, "is but a machine to obey orders. This is my seal, which I have impressed upon Paris." Subsequently Napoleon never ceased to regret the occurrence; and tried to forget, and to have others forget that he had ever deluged the streets of Paris with the blood of Frenchmen.

Thus Napoleon established the new government of France called the Directory, from the five Directors, who composed its executive. But a few months passed away before Napoleon, by moral power, without the shedding of a drop of blood, overthrew the constitution which his unpitying artillery had thus established. Immediately after the quelling of the sections, Napoleon was triumphantly received by the Convention. It was declared, by unanimous resolve, that his energy had saved the Republic. His friend Barras, became one of the Directors, and Napoleon was appointed Commander-in-chief of the Army of the Interior, and intrusted with the military defense and government of the metropolis. The defeat of the insurgents was the death-blow to all the hopes of the Royalists, and seemed to establish the Republic upon a permanent foundation. Napoleon manifested the natural clemency of his disposition very strongly in this hour of triumph. When the Convention would have executed Menou as a traitor, he pleaded his cause and obtained his acquittal. He urged, and successfully, that as the insurgents were now harmless, they should not be punished, but that a vail of oblivion should be thrown over all their deeds. The Convention, influenced not a little by the spirit of Napoleon, now honorably dissolved itself, by passing an act of general amnesty for all past offenses, and surrendering the government to the Directory.

The situation of Napoleon was now flattering in the extreme. He was but twenty-five years of age. The distinguished services he had rendered; the high rank he had attained, and the ample income at his disposal, gave him a very elevated position in the public view. The eminence he had now attained was not a sudden and accidental outbreak of celebrity. It was the result of long years of previous toil. He was now reaping the fruit of the seed which he had sown in his incessant application to study in the military school; in his continued devotion to literary and scientific pursuits, after he became an officer; in his energy, and fearlessness, and untiring assiduity at Toulon; in his days of wintry exposure, and nights of sleeplessness in fortifying the coast of France, and in his untiring toil among the fastnesses of the Alps. Never was reputation earned and celebrity attained by more Herculean labor. If Napoleon had extraordinary genius, as unquestionably he had, this genius stimulated him to extraordinary exertions.

Immediately upon the attainment of this high dignity and authority, with the ample pecuniary resources accompanying it, Napoleon hastened to Marseilles, to place his mother in a position of perfect comfort. And he continued to watch over her with most filial assiduity, proving himself an affectionate and dutiful son. From this hour the whole family, mother, brothers, and sisters were taken under his protection, and all their interests blended with his own.

The post which Napoleon now occupied was one of vast responsibility, demanding incessant care, and moral courage, and tact. The Royalists and the Jacobins were exceedingly exasperated. The government was not consolidated, and had obtained no command over the public mind. Paris was filled with tumult and disorder. The ravages of the revolution had thrown hundreds of thousands out of employment, and starvation was stalking through the streets of the metropolis. It became necessary for the government, almost without means or credit, to feed the famishing. Napoleon manifested great skill and humanity, combined with unflinching firmness in repressing disorders. It was not unfrequently necessary to appeal to the strong arm of military power to arrest the rising array of lawless passion. Often his apt and pithy speeches would promote good-nature and disperse the crowd. On one occasion a fish-woman of enormous rotundity of person, exhorted the mob, with most vehement volubility, not to disperse, exclaiming, "Never mind these coxcombs with epaulets upon their shoulders; they care not if we poor people all starve, if they can but feed well and grow fat." Napoleon, who was as thin and meagre as a shadow, turned to her and said, "Look at me, my good woman, and tell me which of us two is the fatter." The Amazon was completely disconcerted by this happy repartee; and the crowd in good-humor dispersed.