Читать книгу The Life and Legacy of Napoleon Bonaparte: All 4 Volumes - William Milligan Sloane - Страница 19

Table of Contents

Buonaparte's Corsican Patriotism—His Position in His Family—The Situation of Joseph—Corsican Politics—Napoleon's Power in the Jacobin Club of Ajaccio—His Failure as a Contestant for Literary Honors—Appointed Adjutant-General—His Attitude Toward France—His New Ambitions—Use of Violence—Lieutenant-Colonel of Volunteers—Politics in Ajaccio—His First Experience of Street Warfare—His Manifesto—Dismissed to Paris—His Plans—The Position of Louis XVI—Buonaparte's Delinquencies—Disorganization in the Army—Petition for Reinstatement—The Marseillais—Buonaparte a Spectator—His Estimate of France—His Presence at the Scenes of August Tenth—State of Paris—Flight of Lafayette.

1791–92.

This was the third time in four years that Buonaparte had revisited his home.[26] On the plea of ill health he had been able the first time to remain a year and two months, giving full play to his Corsican patriotism and his own ambitions by attendance at Orezza, and by political agitation among the people. The second time he had remained a year and four months, retaining his hold on his commission by subterfuges and irregularities which, though condoned, had strained his relations with the ministry of war in Paris. He had openly defied the royal authority, relying on the coming storm for the concealment of his conduct if it should prove reprehensible, or for preferment in his own country if Corsica should secure her liberties. There is no reason, therefore, to suppose that his intentions for the third visit were different from those displayed in the other two, although again solicitude for his family was doubtless one of many considerations.

During Napoleon's absence from Corsica the condition of his family had not materially changed. Soon after his arrival the old archdeacon died, and his little fortune fell to the Buonapartes. Joseph, failing shortly afterward in his plan of being elected deputy to the French legislature, was chosen a member of the Corsican directory. He was, therefore, forced to occupy himself entirely with his new duties and to live at Corte. Fesch, as the eldest male, the mother's brother, and a priest at that, expected to assume the direction of the family affairs. But he was doomed to speedy disenchantment: thenceforward Napoleon was the family dictator. In conjunction with his uncle he used the whole or a considerable portion of the archdeacon's savings for the purchase of several estates from the national domain, as the sequestrated lands of the monasteries were called. Rendered thus more self-important, he talked much in the home circle concerning the greatness of classical antiquity, and wondered "who would not willingly have been stabbed, if only he could have been Cæsar? One feeble ray of his glory would be an ample recompense for sudden death." Such chances for Cæsarism as the island of Corsica afforded were very rapidly becoming better.

The Buonapartes had no influence whatever in these elections. Joseph was not even nominated. The choice fell upon two men selected by Paoli: one of them, Peraldi, was already embittered against the family; the other, Pozzo di Borgo, though so far friendly enough, thereafter became a relentless foe. Rising to eminence as a diplomat, accepting service in one and another country of Europe, the latter thwarted Napoleon at several important conjunctures. Paoli is thought by some to have been wounded by the frank criticism of his strategy by Napoleon: more likely he distrusted youths educated in France, and who, though noisy Corsicans, were, he shrewdly guessed, impregnated with French idealism. He himself cared for France only as by her help the largest possible autonomy for Corsica could be secured. In the directory of the department of Corsica, Joseph, and with him the Buonaparte influence, was reduced to impotence, while gratified with high position. The ignorance of the administrators was only paralleled by the difficulties of their work.

During the last few months religious agitation had been steadily increasing. Pious Catholics were embittered by the virtual expulsion of the old clergy, and the induction to office of new priests who had sworn to uphold the constitution. Amid the disorders of administration the people in ever larger numbers had secured arms; as of yore, they appeared at their assemblies under the guidance of their chiefs, ready to fight at a moment's notice. It was but a step to violence, and without any other provocation than religious exasperation the townsfolk of Bastia had lately sought to kill their new bishop. Even Arena, who had so recently seized the place in Paoli's interest, was now regarded as a French radical, maltreated, and banished with his supporters to Italy. The new election was at hand; the contest between the Paolists and the extreme French party grew hotter and hotter. Not only deputies to the new assembly, but likewise the superior officers of the new guard, were to be elected. Buonaparte, being only a lieutenant of the regulars, could according to the law aspire no higher than an appointment as adjutant-major with the title and pay of captain. It was not worth while to lose his place in France for this, so he determined to stand for one of the higher elective offices, that of lieutenant-colonel, a position which would give him more power, and, under the latest legislation, entitle him to retain his grade in the regular army.

There were now two political clubs in Ajaccio: that of the Corsican Jacobins, country people for the most part; and that of the Corsican Feuillants, composed of the officials and townsfolk. Buonaparte became a moving spirit in the former, and determined at any cost to destroy the influence of the latter. The two previous attempts to secure Ajaccio for the radicals had failed; a third was already under consideration. The new leader began to garnish his language with those fine and specious phrases which thenceforth were never wanting in his utterances at revolutionary crises. "Law," he wrote about this time, "is like those statues of some of the gods which are veiled under certain circumstances." For a few weeks there was little or nothing to do in the way of electioneering at home; he therefore obtained permission to travel with the famous Volney, who desired a philosopher's retreat from Paris storms and had been chosen director of commerce and manufactures in the island. This journey was for a candidate like Buonaparte invaluable as a means of observation and of winning friends for his cause.

Before the close of this trip his furlough had expired, his regiment had been put on a war footing, and orders had been issued for the return of every officer to his post by Christmas day. But in the execution of his fixed purpose the young Corsican patriot was heedless of military obligations to France, and wilfully remained absent from duty. Once more the spell of a wild, free life was upon him; he was enlisted for the campaign, though without position or money to back him. The essay on happiness which he had presented to the Academy of Lyons had failed, as a matter of course, to win the prize, one of the judges pronouncing it "too badly arranged, too uneven, too disconnected, and too badly written to deserve attention." This decision was a double blow, for it was announced about this time, at a moment when fame and money would both have been most welcome. The scanty income from the lands purchased with the legacy of the old archdeacon remained the only resource of the family for the lavish hospitality which, according to immemorial, semi-barbarous tradition, was required of a Corsican candidate.

A peremptory order was now issued from Paris that those officers of the line who had been serving in the National Guard with a grade lower than that of lieutenant-colonel should return to regular service before April first, 1792. Here was an implication which might be turned to account. As a lieutenant on leave, Buonaparte should of course have returned on December twenty-fifth; if, however, he were an officer of volunteers he could plead the new order. Though as yet the recruits had not come in, and no companies had been formed, the mere idea was sufficient to suggest a means for saving appearances. An appointment as adjutant-major was solicited from the major-general in command of the department, and he, under authorization obtained in due time from Paris, granted it. Safe from the charge of desertion thus far, it was essential for his reputation and for his ambition that Buonaparte should be elected lieutenant-colonel. Success would enable him to plead that his first lapse in discipline was due to irregular orders from his superior, that anyhow he had been an adjutant-major, and that finally the position of lieutenant-colonel gave him immunity from punishment, and left him blameless.

He nevertheless was uneasy, and wrote two letters of a curious character to his friend Sucy, the commissioner-general at Valence. In the first, written five weeks after the expiration of his leave, he calmly reports himself, and gives an account of his occupations, mentioning incidentally that unforeseen circumstances, duties the dearest and most sacred, had prevented his return. His correspondent would be so kind as not to mention the letter to the "gentlemen of the regiment," but the writer would immediately return if his friend in his unassisted judgment thought best. In the second he plumply declares that in perilous times the post of a good Corsican is at home, that therefore he had thought of resigning, but his friends had arranged the middle course of appointing him adjutant-major in the volunteers so that he could make his duty as a soldier conform to his duty as a patriot. Asking for news of what is going on in France, he says, writing like an outsider, "If your nation loses courage at this moment, it is done with forever."

It was toward the end of March that the volunteers from the mountains began to appear in Ajaccio for the election of their officers. Napoleon had bitter and powerful rivals, but his recent trip had apparently enabled him to win many friends among the men. While, therefore, success was possible by that means, there was another influence almost as powerful—that of three commissioners appointed by the directory of the island to organize and equip the battalion. These were Morati, a friend of Peraldi, the Paolist deputy; Quenza, more or less neutral, and Grimaldi, a devoted partisan of the Buonapartes. With skilful diplomacy Napoleon agreed that he would not presume to be a candidate for the office of first lieutenant-colonel, which was desired by Peretti, a near friend of Paoli, for his brother-in-law, Quenza, but would seek the position of second lieutenant-colonel. In this way he was assured of good will from two of the three commissioners; the other was of course hostile, being a partizan of Peraldi.

The election, as usual in Corsica, seems to have passed in turbulence and noisy violence. His enemies attacked Buonaparte with every weapon: their money, their influence, and in particular with ridicule. His stature, his poverty, and his absurd ambitions were held up to contempt and scorn. The young hotspur was cut to the quick, and, forgetting Corsican ways, made the witless blunder of challenging Peraldi to a duel, an institution scorned by the Corsican devotees of the vendetta. The climax of contempt was Peraldi's failure even to notice the challenge. At the crisis, Salicetti, a warm friend of the Buonapartes and a high official of the department, appeared with a considerable armed force to maintain order. This cowed the conservatives. The third commissioner, living as a guest with Peraldi, was seized during the night preceding the election by a body of Buonaparte's friends, and put under lock and key in their candidate's house—"to make you entirely free; you were not free where you were," said the instigator of the stroke, when called to explain. To the use of fine phrases was now added a facility in employing violence at a pinch which likewise remained characteristic of Buonaparte's career down to the end. Nasica, who alone records the tale, sees in this event the precursor of the long series of state-strokes which culminated on the eighteenth Brumaire. There is a story that in one of the scuffles incident to this brawl a member of Pozzo di Borgo's family was thrown down and trampled on. Be that as it may, Buonaparte was successful. This of course intensified the hatred already existing, and from that moment the families of Peraldi and of Pozzo di Borgo were his deadly enemies.

Quenza, who was chosen first lieutenant-colonel, was a man of no character whatever, a nobody. He was moreover absorbed in the duties of a place in the departmental administration. Buonaparte, therefore, was in virtual command of a sturdy, well-armed, legal force. Having been adjutant-major, and being now a regularly elected lieutenant-colonel according to statute, he applied, with a well-calculated effrontery, to his regimental paymaster for the pay which had accrued during his absence. It was at first refused, for in the interval he had been cashiered for remaining at home in disobedience to orders; but such were the irregularities of that revolutionary time that later, virtual deserter as he had been, it was actually paid and he was restored to his place. He sought and obtained from the military authorities of the island certificates of his regular standing and leave to present them in Paris if needed to maintain his rank as a French officer, but in the final event there was no necessity for their use. No one was more adroit than Buonaparte in taking advantage of possibilities. He was a pluralist without conscience. A French regular if the emergency should demand it, he was likewise a Corsican patriot and commander in the volunteer guard of the island, fully equipped for another move. Perhaps, at last, he could assume with success the liberator's rôle of Sampiero. But an opportunity must occur or be created. One was easily arranged.

Ajaccio had gradually become a resort for many ardent Roman Catholics who had refused to accept the new order. The town authorities, although there were some extreme radicals among them, were, on the whole, in sympathy with these conservatives. Through the devices of his friends in the city government, Buonaparte's battalion, the second, was on one pretext or another assembled in and around the town. Thereupon, following the most probable account, which, too, is supported by Buonaparte's own story, a demand was made that according to the recent ecclesiastical legislation of the National Assembly, the Capuchin monks, who had been so far undisturbed, should evacuate their friary. Feeling ran so high that the other volunteer companies were summoned; they arrived on April first. At once the public order was jeopardized: on one extreme were the religious fanatics, on the other the political agitators, both of whom were loud with threats and ready for violence. In the middle, between two fires, was the mass of the people, who sympathized with the ecclesiastics, but wanted peace at any hazard. Quarreling began first between individuals of the various factions, but it soon resulted in conflicts between civilians and the volunteer guard. The first step taken by the military was to seize and occupy the cloister, which lay just below the citadel, the final goal of their leader, whoever he was, and the townsfolk believed it was Buonaparte. Once inside the citadel walls, the Corsicans in the regular French service would, it was hoped, fraternize with their kin; with such a beginning, all the garrison might in time be won over.

This further exasperated the ultramontanes, and on Easter day, April eighth, they made demonstrations so serious that the scheming commander—Buonaparte again, it was believed—found the much desired pretext to interfere; there was a mêlée, and one of the militia officers was killed. Next morning the burghers found their town beset by the volunteers. Good citizens kept to their houses, while the acting mayor and the council were assembled to authorize an attack on the citadel. The authorities could not agree, and dispersed; the following forenoon it was discovered that the acting mayor and his sympathizers had taken refuge in the citadel. From the vantage of this stronghold they proposed to settle the difficulty by the arbitration of a board composed of two from each side, under the presidency of the commandant. There was again no agreement.

Worn out at last by the haggling and delay, an officer of the garrison finally ordered the militia officers to withdraw their forces. By the advice of some determined radical—Buonaparte again, in all probability—the latter flatly refused, and the night was spent in preparation for a conflict which seemed inevitable. But early in the morning the commissioners of the department, who had been sent by Paoli to preserve the peace, arrived in a body. They were welcomed gladly by the majority of the people, and, after hearing the case, dismissed the battalion of volunteers to various posts in the surrounding country. Public opinion immediately turned against Buonaparte, convinced as the populace was that he was the author of the entire disturbance. The commander of the garrison was embittered, and sent a report to the war department displaying the young officer's behavior in the most unfavorable light. Buonaparte's defense was contained in a manifesto which made the citizens still more furious by its declaration that the whole civic structure of their town was worthless, and should have been overthrown.

The aged Paoli found his situation more trying with every day. Under a constitutional monarchy, such as he had admired and studied in England, such as he even yet hoped for and expected in France, he had believed his own land might find a virtual autonomy. With riot and disorder in every town, it would not be long before the absolute disqualification of his countrymen for self-government would be proved and the French administration restored. For his present purpose, therefore, the peace must be kept, and Buonaparte, upon whom, whether justly or not, the blame for these recent broils rested, must be removed elsewhere, if possible; but as the troublesome youth was the son of an old friend and the head of a still influential family, it must be done without offense. The government at Paris might be pacified if the absentee officer were restored to his post; with Quenza in command of the volunteers, there would be little danger of a second outbreak in Ajaccio.

It was more than easy, therefore, for the discredited revolutionary, on the implied condition and understanding that he should leave Corsica, to secure from the authorities the papers necessary to put himself and his actions in the most favorable light. Buonaparte armed himself accordingly with an authenticated certificate as to the posts he had held, and the period during which he had held them, and with another as to his "civism"—the phrase used at that time to designate the quality of friendliness to the Revolution. The former seems to have been framed according to his own statements, and was speciously deceptive; yet in form the commander-in-chief, the municipality of Ajaccio, and the authorities of the department were united in certifying to his unblemished character and regular standing. This was something. Whither should the scapegoat betake himself? Valence, where the royalist colonel regarded him as a deserter, was of course closed, and in Paris alone could the necessary steps be taken to secure restoration to rank with back pay, or rather the reversal of the whole record as it then stood on the regimental books. For this reason he likewise secured letters of introduction to the leading Corsicans in the French capital. His departure was so abrupt as to resemble flight. He hastened to Corte, and remained just long enough to understand the certainty of his overwhelming loss in public esteem throughout Corsica. On the way he is said to have seen Paoli for a short time and to have received some encouragement in a plan to raise another battalion of volunteers. Joseph claimed to have advised his brother to have nothing to do with the plan, but to leave immediately for France. In any case Napoleon's mind was clear. A career in Corsica on the grand scale was impossible for him. Borrowing money for the journey, he hurried away and sailed from Bastia on May second, 1792. The outlook might have disheartened a weaker man. Peraldi, the Corsican deputy, was a near relative of the defeated rival; Paoli's displeasure was only too manifest; the bitter hate of a large element in Ajaccio, including the royalist commander of the garrison, was unconcealed. Napoleon's energy, rashness, and ambition combined to make Pozzo di Borgo detest him. He was accused of being a traitor, the source of all trouble, of plotting a new St. Bartholomew, ready for any horror in order to secure power. Rejected by Corsica, would France receive him? Would not the few French friends he had be likewise alienated by these last escapades? Could the formal record of regimental offenses be expunged? In any event, how slight the prospect of success in the great mad capital, amid the convulsive throes of a nation's disorders!

But in the last consideration lay his only chance: the nation's disorder was to supply the remedy for Buonaparte's irregularities. The King had refused his sanction to the secularization of the estates which had once been held by the emigrants and recusant ecclesiastics; the Jacobins retorted by open hostility to the monarchy. The plotting of noble and princely refugees with various royal and other schemers two years before had been a crime against the King and the constitutionalists, for it jeopardized their last chance for existence, even their very lives. Within so short a time what had been criminal in the emigrants had seemingly become the only means of self-preservation for their intended victim. His constitutional supporters recognized that, in the adoption of this course by the King, the last hope of a peaceful solution to their awful problem had disappeared. It was now almost certain and generally believed that Louis himself was in negotiation with the foreign sovereigns; to thwart his plans and avert the consequences it was essential that open hostilities against his secret allies should be begun. Consequently, on April twentieth, 1792, by the influence of the King's friends war had been declared against Austria. The populace, awed by the armies thus called out, were at first silently defiant, an attitude which changed to open fury when the defeat of the French troops in the Austrian Netherlands was announced.

The moderate republicans, or Girondists, as they were called from the district where they were strongest, were now the mediating party; their leader, Roland, was summoned to form a ministry and appease this popular rage. It was one of his colleagues who had examined the complaint against Buonaparte received from the commander of the garrison at Ajaccio. According to a strict interpretation of the military code there was scarcely a crime which Buonaparte had not committed: desertion, disobedience, tampering, attack on constituted authority, and abuse of official power. The minister reported the conduct of both Quenza and Buonaparte as most reprehensible, and declared that if their offense had been purely military he would have court-martialed them.

Learning first at Marseilles that war had broken out, and that the companies of his regiment were dispersed to various camps for active service, Buonaparte hastened northward. A new passion, which was indicative of the freshly awakened patriotism, had taken possession of the popular fancy. Where the year before the current and universal phrase had been "federation," the talk was now all for the "nation." It might well be so. Before the traveler arrived at his destination further disaster had overtaken the French army, one whole regiment had deserted under arms to the enemy, and individual soldiers were escaping by hundreds. The officers of the Fourth Artillery were resigning and running away in about equal numbers. Consternation ruled supreme, treason and imbecility were everywhere charged against the authorities. War within, war without, and the army in a state of collapse! The emigrant princes would return, and France be sold to a bondage tenfold more galling than that from which she was struggling to free herself.

When Buonaparte reached Paris on May twenty-eighth, 1792, the outlook was poor for a suppliant, bankrupt in funds and nearly so in reputation; but he was undaunted, and his application for reinstatement in the artillery was made without the loss of a moment. A new minister of war had been appointed but a few days before—there were six changes in that office during as many months—and the assistant now in charge of the artillery seemed favorable to the request. For a moment he thought of restoring the suppliant to his position, but events were marching too swiftly, and demands more urgent jostled aside the claims of an obscure lieutenant with a shady character. Buonaparte at once grasped the fact that he could win his cause only by patience or by importunity, and began to consider how he should arrange for a prolonged stay in the capital. His scanty resources were already exhausted, but he found Bourrienne, a former school-fellow at Brienne, in equal straits, waiting like himself for something to turn up. Over their meals in a cheap restaurant on the Rue St. Honoré they discussed various means of gaining a livelihood, and seriously contemplated a partnership in subletting furnished rooms. But Bourrienne very quickly obtained the post of secretary in the embassy at Stuttgart, so that his comrade was left to make his struggle alone by pawning what few articles of value he possessed.

The days and weeks were full of incidents terrible and suggestive in their nature. The Assembly dismissed the King's body-guard on May twenty-ninth; on June thirteenth, the Girondists were removed from the ministry; within a few days it was known at court that Prussia had taken the field as an ally of Austria, and on the seventeenth a conservative, Feuillant cabinet was formed. Three days later the popular insurrection began, on the twenty-sixth the news of the coalition was announced, and on the twenty-eighth Lafayette endeavored to stay the tide of furious discontent which was now rising in the Assembly. But it was as ruthless as that of the ocean, and on July eleventh the country was declared in danger. There was, however, a temporary check to the rush, a moment of repose in which the King, on the fourteenth, celebrated among his people the fall of the Bastille. But an address from the local assembly at Marseilles had arrived, demanding the dethronement of Louis and the abolition of the monarchy. Such was the impatience of the great southern city that, without waiting for the logical effect of their declaration, its inhabitants determined to make a demonstration in Paris. On the thirtieth a deputation five hundred strong arrived before the capital. On August third, they entered the city singing the immortal song which bears their name, but which was written at Strasburg by an officer of engineers, Rouget de Lisle. The southern fire of the newcomers kindled again the flame of Parisian sedition, and the radicals fanned it. At last, on August tenth, the conflagration burst forth in an uprising such as had not yet been seen of all that was outcast and lawless in the great town; with them consorted the discontented and the envious, the giddy and the frivolous, the curious and the fickle, all the unstable elements of society. This time the King was unnerved; in despair he fled for asylum to the chamber of the Assembly. That body, unsympathetic for him, but sensitive to the ragings of the mob without, found the fugitive unworthy of his office. Before night the kingship was abolished, and the royal family were imprisoned in the Temple.

There is no proof that the young Corsican was at this time other than an interested spectator. In a hurried letter written to Joseph on May twenty-ninth he notes the extreme confusion of affairs, remarks that Pozzo di Borgo is on good terms with the minister of war, and recommends his brother to keep on good terms with Paoli. There is a characteristic little paragraph on the uniform of the national guard. Though he makes no reference to the purpose of his journey, it is clear that he is calm, assured that in the wholesale flight of officers a man like himself is assured of restoration to rank and duty. Two others dated June fourteenth and eighteenth respectively are scarcely more valuable. He gives a crude and superficial account of French affairs internal and external, of no value as history. He had made unsuccessful efforts to revive the plea for their mother's mulberry subsidies, had dined with Mme. Permon, had visited their sister Marianna at St. Cyr, where she had been called Elisa to distinguish her from another Marianna. He speculates on the chance of her marrying without a dot. In quiet times, the wards of St. Cyr received, on leaving, a dowry of three thousand livres, with three hundred more for an outfit; but as matters then were, the establishment was breaking up and there were no funds for that purpose. Like the rest, the Corsican girl was soon to be stripped of her pretty uniform, the neat silk gown, the black gloves, and the dainty bronze slippers which Mme. de Maintenon had prescribed for the noble damsels at that royal school. In another letter written four days later there is a graphic account of the threatening demonstrations made by the rabble and a vivid description which indicates Napoleon's being present when the mob recoiled at the very door of the Tuileries before the calm and dignified courage of the King. There is even a story, told as of the time, by Bourrienne, a very doubtful authority, but probably invented later, of Buonaparte's openly expressing contempt for riots. "How could the King let the rascals in! He should have shot down a few hundred, and the rest would have run." This statement, like others made by Bourrienne, is to be received with the utmost caution.

From the collection of W. C. Crane.

Bonaparte,

General in Chief of the Army of Italy.

In a letter written about the beginning of July, probably to Lucien or possibly to Joseph, and evidently intended to be read in the Jacobin Club of Ajaccio, there are clear indications of its writer's temper. He speaks with judicious calmness of the project for educational reform; of Lafayette's appearance before the Assembly, which had pronounced the country in danger and was now sitting in permanence, as perhaps necessary to prevent its taking an extreme and dangerous course; of the French as no longer deserving the pains men took for them, since they were a people old and without continuity or coherence;[27] of their leaders as poor creatures engaged on low plots; and of the damper which such a spectacle puts on ambition. Clearly the lesson of moderation which he inculcates is for the first time sincerely given. The preacher, according to his own judgment for the time being, is no Frenchman, no demagogue, nothing but a simple Corsican anxious to live far from the madness of mobs and the emptiness of so-called glory.

It has been asserted that on the dreadful day of August tenth Buonaparte's assumed philosophy was laid aside, and that he was a mob leader at the barricades. His own account of the matter as given at St. Helena does not bear this out. "I felt," said he, "as if I should have defended the King if called to do so. I was opposed to those who would found the republic by means of the populace. Besides, I saw civilians attacking men in uniforms; that gave me a shock." He said further in his reminiscences that he viewed the entire scene from the windows of a furniture shop kept by Fauvelet de Bourrienne, brother of his old school friend. The impression left after reading his narrative of the frightful carnage before the Tuileries, of the indecencies committed by frenzied women at the close of the fight, of the mad excitement in the neighboring cafés, and of his own calmness throughout, is that he was in no way connected either with the actors or their deeds, except to shout, "Hurrah for the nation!" when summoned to do so by a gang of ruffians who were parading the streets under the banner of a gory head elevated on a pike.[28] The truth of his statements cannot be established by any collateral evidence.

It is not likely that an ardent radical leader like Buonaparte, well known and influential in the Rhone valley, had remained a stranger to the Marseilles deputation. If the Duchesse d'Abrantès be worthy of any credence, he was very influential, and displayed great activity with the authorities during the seventh and eighth, running hither, thither, everywhere, to secure redress for an illegal domiciliary visit which her mother, Mme. Permon, had received on the seventh. But her testimony is of very little value, such is her anxiety to establish an early intimacy with the great man of her time. Joseph, in his memoirs,[29] declares that his brother was present at the conflict of August tenth, and that Napoleon wrote him at the time, "If Louis XVI had appeared on horseback, he would have conquered." "After the victory of the Marseillais," continues the passage quoted from the letter, "I saw a man about to kill a soldier of the guard. I said to him, 'Southron, let us spare the unfortunate!' 'Art thou from the South?' 'Yes.' 'Well, then, we will spare him.'" Moreover, it is a fact that Santerre, the notorious leader of the mob on that day, was three years later, on the thirteenth of Vendémiaire, most useful to Buonaparte; that though degraded from the office of general to which he was appointed in the revolutionary army, he was in 1800 restored to his rank by the First Consul. All this is consistent with Napoleon's assertion, but it proves nothing conclusively; and there is certainly ground for suspicion when we reflect that these events were ultimately decisive of Buonaparte's fortunes.

The Feuillant ministry fell with the King, and an executive council composed of radicals took its place. For one single day Paris reeled like a drunkard, but on the next the shops were open again. On the following Sunday the opera was packed at a benefit performance for the widows and orphans of those who had fallen in victory. A few days later Lafayette, as commander of the armies in the North, issued a pronunciamento against the popular excesses. He even arrested the commissioners of the Assembly who were sent to supplant him and take the ultimate direction of the campaign. But he quickly found that his old prestige was gone; he had not kept pace with the mad rush of popular opinion; neither in person nor as the sometime commander of the National Guard had he any longer the slightest influence. Impeached and declared an outlaw, he, like the King, lost his balance, and fled for refuge into the possessions of Liège. The Austrians violated the sanctuary of neutral territory, and captured him, exactly as Napoleon at a later day violated the neutrality of Baden in the case of the Duc d'Enghien. On August twenty-third the strong place of Longwy was delivered into the hands of the Prussians, the capitulation being due, as was claimed, to treachery among the French officers.