Читать книгу The Life and Legacy of Napoleon Bonaparte: All 4 Volumes - William Milligan Sloane - Страница 18

Table of Contents

A Dark Period—Buonaparte, First Lieutenant—Second Sojourn in Valence—Books and Reading—The National Assembly of France—The King Returns from Versailles—Administrative Reforms in France—Passing of the Old Order—Flight of the King—Buonaparte's Oath to Sustain the Constitution—His View of the Situation—His Revolutionary Zeal—Insubordination—Impatience with Delay—A Serious Blunder Avoided—Return to Corsica.

1791.

The tortuous course of Napoleon's life for the years from 1791 to 1795 has been neither described nor understood by those who have written in his interest. It was his own desire that his biographies, in spite of the fact that his public life began after Rivoli, should commence with the recovery of Toulon for the Convention. His detractors, on the other hand, have studied this prefatory period with such evident bias that dispassionate readers have been repelled from its consideration. And yet the sordid tale well repays perusal; for in this epoch of his life many of his characteristic qualities were tempered and ground to the keen edge they retained throughout. Swept onward toward the trackless ocean of political chaos, the youth seemed afloat without oars or compass: in reality, his craft was well under control, and his chart correct. Whether we attribute his conduct to accident or to design, from an adventurer's point of view the instinct which made him spread his sails to the breezes of Jacobin favor was quite as sound as that which later, when Jacobinism came to be abhorred, made him anxious that the fact should be forgotten.

In the earlier stages of army reorganization, changes were made without much regard to personal merit, the dearth of efficient officers being such that even the most indifferent had some value. About the first of June, 1791, Buonaparte was promoted to the rank of first lieutenant, with a salary of thirteen hundred livres, and transferred to the Fourth Regiment, which was in Valence. He heard the news with mingled feelings: promotion was, of course, welcome, but he shrank from returning to his former station, and from leaving the three or four warm friends he had among his comrades in the old regiment. On the ground that the arrangements he had made for educating Louis would be disturbed by the transfer, he besought the war office for permission to remain at Auxonne with the regiment, now known as the First. Probably the real ground of his disinclination was the fear that a residence at Valence might revive the painful emotions which time had somewhat withered. He may also have felt how discordant the radical opinions he was beginning to hold would be with those still cherished by his former friends. But the authorities were inexorable, and on June fourteenth the brothers departed, Napoleon for the first time leaving debts which he could not discharge: for the new uniform of a first lieutenant, a sword, and some wood, he owed about a hundred and fifteen livres. This sum he was careful to pay within a few years and as soon as his affairs permitted.

Arrived at Valence, he found that the old society had vanished. Both the bishop and the Abbé Saint-Ruf were dead. Mme. du Colombier had withdrawn with her daughter to her country-seat. The brothers were able, therefore, to take up their lives just where they had made the break at Auxonne: Louis pursuing the studies necessary for entrance to the corps of officers, Napoleon teaching him, and frequenting the political club; both destitute and probably suffering, for the officer's pay was soon far in arrears. In such desperate straits it was a relief for the elder brother that the allurements of his former associations were dissipated; such companionship as he now had was among the middle and lower classes, whose estates were more proportionate to his own, and whose sentiments were virtually identical with those which he professed.

The list of books which he read is significant: Coxe's "Travels in Switzerland," Duclos's "Memoirs of the Reigns of Louis XIV and Louis XV," Machiavelli's "History of Florence," Voltaire's "Essay on Manners," Duvernet's "History of the Sorbonne," Le Noble's "Spirit of Gerson," and Dulaure's "History of the Nobility." There exist among his papers outlines more or less complete of all these books. They prove that he understood what he read, but unlike other similar jottings by him they give little evidence of critical power. Aside from such historical studies as would explain the events preliminary to that revolutionary age upon which he saw that France was entering, he was carefully examining the attitude of the Gallican Church toward the claims of the papacy, and considering the rôle of the aristocracy in society. It is clear that he had no intention of being merely a curious onlooker at the successive phases of the political and social transmutation already beginning; he was bent on examining causes, comprehending reasons, and sharing in the movement itself.

By the summer of 1791 the first stage in the transformation of France had almost passed. The reign of moderation in reform was nearly over. The National Assembly had apprehended the magnitude but not the nature of its task, and was unable to grasp the consequences of the new constitution it had outlined. The nation was sufficiently familiar with the idea of the crown as an executive, but hitherto the executive had been at the same time legislator; neither King nor people quite knew how the King was to obey the nation when the former, trained in the school of the strictest absolutism, was deprived of all volition, and the latter gave its orders through a single chamber, responsive to the levity of the masses, and controlled neither by an absolute veto power, nor by any feeling of responsibility to a calm public opinion. This was the urgent problem which had to be solved under conditions the most unfavorable that could be conceived.

During the autumn of 1789 famine was actually stalking abroad. The Parisian populace grew gaunt and dismal, but the King and aristocracy at Versailles had food in plenty, and the contrast was heightened by a lavish display in the palace. The royal family was betrayed by one of its own house, the despicable Philip "Égalité," who sought to stir up the basest dregs of society, that in the ferment he might rise to the top; hungry Paris, stung to action by rumors which he spread and by bribes which he lavished, put Lafayette at its head, and on October fifth marched out to the gates of the royal residence in order to make conspicuous the contrast between its own sufferings and the wasteful comfort of its servants, as the King and his ministers were now considered to be. Louis and the National Assembly yielded to the menace, the court returned to Paris, politics grew hotter and more bitter, the fickleness of the mob became a stronger influence. Soon the Jacobin Club began to wield the mightiest single influence, and as it did so it grew more and more radical.

Throughout the long and trying winter the masses remained, nevertheless, quietly expectant. There was much tumultuous talk, but action was suspended while the Assembly sat and struggled to solve its problem, elaborating a really fine paper constitution. Unfortunately, the provisions of the document had no relation to the political habits of the French nation, or to the experience of England and the United States, the only free governments then in existence. Feudal privilege, feudal provinces, feudal names having been obliterated, the whole of France was rearranged into administrative departments, with geographical in place of historical boundaries. It was felt that the ecclesiastical domains, the holders of which were considered as mere trustees, should be adapted to the same plan, and this was done. Ecclesiastical as well as aristocratic control was thus removed by the stroke of a pen. In other words, by the destruction of the mechanism through which the temporal and spiritual authorities exerted the remnants of their power, they were both completely paralyzed. The King was denied all initiative, being granted merely a suspensive veto, and in the reform of the judicial system the prestige of the lawyers was also destroyed. Royalty was turned into a function, and the courts were stripped of both the moral and physical force necessary to compel obedience to their decrees. Every form of the guardianship to which for centuries the people had been accustomed was thus removed—royal, aristocratic, ecclesiastical, and judicial. Untrained to self-control, they were as ready for mad excesses as were the German Anabaptists after the Reformation or the English sectaries after the execution of Charles.

Attention has been called to the disturbances which arose in Auxonne and elsewhere, to the emigration of the nobles from that quarter, to the utter break between the parish priests and the higher church functionaries in Dauphiny; this was but a sample of the whole. When, on July fourteenth, 1790, the King accepted a constitution which decreed a secular reorganization of the ecclesiastical hierarchy according to the terms of which both bishops and priests were to be elected by the taxpayers, two thirds of all the clergy in France refused to swear allegiance to it. All attempts to establish the new administrative and judicial systems were more or less futile; the disaffection of officials and lawyers became more intense. In Paris alone the changes were introduced with some success, the municipality being rearranged into forty-eight sections, each with a primary assembly. These were the bodies which later gave Buonaparte the opening whereby he entered his real career. The influence of the Jacobin Club increased, just in proportion as the majority of its members grew more radical. Necker trimmed to their demands, but lost popularity by his monotonous calls for money, and fell in September, reaching his home on Lake Leman only with the greatest difficulty. Mirabeau succeeded him as the sole possible prop to the tottering throne. Under his leadership the moderate monarchists, or Feuillants, as they were later called, from the convent of that order to which they withdrew, seceded from the Jacobins, and before the Assembly had ceased its work the nation was cleft in two, divided into opponents and adherents of monarchy. As if to insure the disasters of such an antagonism, the Assembly, which numbered among its members every man in France of ripe political experience, committed the incredible folly of self-effacement, voting that not one of its members should be eligible to the legislature about to be chosen.

A new impulse to the revolutionary movement was given by the death of Mirabeau on April second, 1791. His obsequies were celebrated in many places, and, being a native of Provence, there were probably solemn ceremonies at Valence. There is a tradition that they occurred during Buonaparte's second residence in the city, and that it was he who superintended the draping of the choir in the principal church. It is said that the hangings were arranged to represent a funerary urn, and that beneath, in conspicuous letters, ran the legend: "Behold what remains of the French Lycurgus." Mirabeau had indeed displayed a genius for politics, his scheme for a strong ministry, chosen from the Assembly, standing in bold relief against the feebleness of Necker in persuading Louis to accept the suspensive veto, and to choose his cabinet without relation to the party in power. When the mad dissipation of the statesman's youth demanded its penalty at the hour so critical for France, the King and the moderates alike lost courage. In June the worried and worn-out monarch determined that the game was not worth the playing, and on the twenty-first he fled. Though he was captured, and brought back to act the impossible rôle of a democratic prince, the patriots who had wished to advance with experience and tradition as guides were utterly discredited. All the world could see how pusillanimous was the royalty they had wished to preserve, and the masses made up their mind that, real or nominal, the institution was not only useless, but dangerous. This feeling was strong in the Rhone valley and the adjoining districts, which have ever been the home of extreme radicalism. Sympathy with Corsica and the Corsicans had long been active in southeastern France. Neither the island nor its people were felt to be strange. When a society for the defense of the constitution was formed in Valence, Buonaparte, though a Corsican, was at first secretary, then president, of the association.

The "Friends of the Constitution" grew daily more numerous, more powerful, and more radical in that city; and when the great solemnity of swearing allegiance to the new order was to be celebrated, it was chosen as a convenient and suitable place for a convention of twenty-two similar associations from the neighboring districts. The meeting took place on July third, 1791; the official administration of the oath to the civil, military, judicial, and ecclesiastical authorities occurred on the fourteenth. Before a vast altar erected on the drill-ground, in the presence of all the dignitaries, with cannon booming and the air resounding with shouts and patriotic songs, the officials in groups, the people in mass, swore with uplifted hands to sustain the constitution, to obey the National Assembly, and to die, if need be, in defending French territory against invasion. Scenes as impressive and dramatic as this occurred all over France. They appealed powerfully to the imagination of the nation, and profoundly influenced public opinion. "Until then," said Buonaparte, referring to the solemnity, "I doubt not that if I had received orders to turn my guns against the people, habit, prejudice, education, and the King's name would have induced me to obey. With the taking of the national oath it became otherwise; my instincts and my duty were thenceforth in harmony."

But the position of liberal officers was still most trying. In the streets and among the people they were in a congenial atmosphere; behind the closed doors of the drawing-rooms, in the society of ladies, and among their fellows in the mess, there were constraint and suspicion. Out of doors all was exultation; in the houses of the hitherto privileged classes all was sadness and uncertainty. But everywhere, indoors or out, was spreading the fear of war, if not civil at least foreign war, with the French emigrants as the allies of the assailants. On this point Buonaparte was mistaken. As late as July twenty-seventh, 1791, he wrote to Naudin, an intimate friend who was chief of the military bureau at Auxonne: "Will there be war? No; Europe is divided between sovereigns who rule over men and those who rule over cattle and horses. The former understand the Revolution, and are terrified; they would gladly make personal sacrifices to annihilate it, but they dare not lift the mask for fear the fire should break out in their own houses. See the history of England, Holland, etc. Those who bear the rule over horses misunderstand and cannot grasp the bearing of the constitution. They think this chaos of incoherent ideas means an end of French power. You would suppose, to listen to them, that our brave patriots were about to cut one another's throats and with their blood purge the land of the crimes committed against kings." The news contained in this letter is most interesting. There are accounts of the zeal and spirit everywhere shown by the democratic patriots, of a petition for the trial of the King sent up from the recent meeting at Valence, and an assurance by the writer that his regiment is "sure," except as to half the officers. He adds in a postscript: "The southern blood courses in my veins as swiftly as the Rhone. Pardon me if you feel distressed in reading my scrawl."[25]

Restlessness is the habit of the agitator, and Buonaparte's temperament was not exceptional. His movements and purposes during the months of July and August are very uncertain in the absence of documentary evidence sufficient to determine them. But his earliest biographers, following what was in their time a comparatively short tradition, enable us to fix some things with a high degree of probability. The young radical had been but two months with his new command when he began to long for change; the fever of excitement and the discomfort of his life, with probably some inkling that a Corsican national guard would ere long be organized, awakened in him a purpose to be off once more, and accordingly he applied for leave of absence. His colonel, a very lukewarm constitutionalist, angry at the notoriety which his lieutenant was acquiring, had already sent in a complaint of Buonaparte's insubordinate spirit and of his inattention to duty. Standing on a formal right, he therefore refused the application. With the quick resource of a schemer, Buonaparte turned to a higher authority, his friend Duteil, who was inspector-general of artillery in the department and not unfavorable. Something, however, must have occurred to cause delay, for weeks passed and the desired leave was not granted.

While awaiting a decision the applicant was very uneasy. To friends he said that he would soon be in Paris; to his great-uncle he wrote, "Send me three hundred livres; that sum would take me to Paris. There, at least, a person can show himself, overcome obstacles. Everything tells me that I shall succeed there. Will you stop me for lack of a hundred crowns?" And again: "I am waiting impatiently for the six crowns my mother owes me; I need them sadly." These demands for money met with no response. The explanation of Buonaparte's impatience is simple enough. One by one the provincial societies which had been formed to support the constitution were affiliating themselves with the influential Jacobins at Paris, who were now the strongest single political power in the country. He was the recognized leader of their sympathizers in the Rhone valley. He evidently intended to go to headquarters and see for himself what the outlook was. With backers such as he thus hoped to find, some advantage, perhaps even the long-desired command in Corsica, might be secured.

It was rare good fortune that the young hotspur was not yet to be cast into the seething caldron of French politics. The time was not yet ripe for the exercise of his powers. The storming of the Bastille had symbolized the overthrow of privilege and absolute monarchy; the flight of the King presaged the overthrow of monarchy, absolute or otherwise. The executive gone, the legislature popular and democratic but ignorant how to administer or conduct affairs, the judiciary equally disorganized, and the army transforming itself into a patriotic organization—was there more to come? Yes. Thus far, in spite of well-meant attempts to substitute new constructions for the old, all had been disintegration. French society was to be reorganized only after further pulverizing; cohesion would begin only under pressure from without—a pressure applied by the threats of erratic royalists that they would bring in the foreign powers to coerce and arbitrate, by the active demonstrations of the emigrants, by the outbreak of foreign wars. These were the events about to take place; they would in the end evolve from the chaos of mob rule first the irregular and temporary dictatorship of the Convention, then the tyranny of the Directory; at the same time they would infuse a fervor of patriotism, into the whole mass of the French nation, stunned, helpless, and leaderless, but loyal, brave, and vigorous. In such a crisis the people would tolerate, if not demand, a leader strong to exact respect for France and to enforce his commands; would prefer the vigorous mastery of one to the feeble misrule of the many or the few. Still further, the man was as unready as the time; for it was, in all probability, not as a Frenchman but as an ever true Corsican patriot that Buonaparte wished to "show himself, overcome obstacles" at this conjuncture.

On August fourth, 1791, the National Assembly at last decided to form a paid volunteer national guard of a hundred thousand men, and their decision became a law on August twelfth. The term of enlistment was a year; four battalions were to be raised in Corsica. Buonaparte heard of the decision on August tenth, and was convinced that the hour for realizing his long-cherished aspirations had finally struck. He could certainly have done much in Paris to secure office in a French-Corsican national guard, and with this in mind he immediately wrote a memorandum on the armament of the new force, addressing it, with characteristic assurance, to the minister of war. When, however, three weeks later, on August thirtieth, 1791, a leave of absence arrived, to which he was entitled in the course of routine, and which was not granted by the favor of any one, he had abandoned all idea of service under France in the Corsican guard. The disorder of the times was such that while retaining office in the French army he could test in an independent Corsican command the possibility of climbing to leadership there before abandoning his present subordinate place in France. In view, apparently, of this new venture, he had for some time been taking advances from the regimental paymaster, until he had now in hand a considerable sum—two hundred and ninety livres. A formal announcement to the authorities might have elicited embarrassing questions from them, so he and Louis quietly departed without explanations, leaving for the second time debts of considerable amount. They reached Ajaccio on September sixth, 1791. Napoleon was not actually a deserter, but he had in contemplation a step toward the defiance of French authority—the acceptance of service in a Corsican military force.