LITMIR.BIZ

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a year – inflationary livres, it is true, but still a sizeable sum, and he at once set about looking after his family. He moved them from the poverty of Marseille to a pretty country house near Antibes called La Sallé, surrounded by palms, eucalyptus, mimosa and orange trees. Napoleon engaged servants, but Letizia with her high standards of cleanliness insisted on doing the washing herself in a little stream which ran near the end of the garden.

      Twenty-four-year-old Brigadier Buonaparte spent a few days’ leave at La Sallé. He introduced Louis, now aged fifteen, to Paul et Virginie, a mixture of love story and travel book about the tropical island of Mauritius. Louis, already showing a scrupulous concern for minutiæ, wrote to the author, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, enquiring which parts were fact, which fiction. Louis ‘has just the qualities I like,’ wrote Napoleon, ‘warmth, good health, talent, precision in his dealings, and kindness.’ Napoleon’s other favourite, Pauline, made charming little dresses: she also stole artichokes and ripe figs from the garden next door and was chased by the owner with loud oaths and a vine prop. She was already attractive to men and had turned the head of Andoche Junot, whom Napoleon had made his aide-de-camp.

      The one member of his family about whom Napoleon felt worried was Lucien, alias Brutus. Lucien was one of those angry Republicans who believe only in levelling down. To this end he had married an inn-keeper’s daughter, much beneath him socially, and though under age had not even bothered to ask Letizia’s permission. He could not brook authority, and resented the lead Napoleon took in organizing the family. To Joseph he confided, ‘I feel in myself the courage to be a tyrannicide … I have begun a song about Brutus, just a song after the manner of Young’s Night Thoughts … I write with astonishing speed, my pen flies and then I scratch it all out. I correct little; I do not like the rules that limit genius and do not observe any.’ In the same spirit he composed speeches full of rhetoric which were soon to get him into trouble. They were not to Napoleon’s taste. ‘Too many words and not enough ideas. You can’t speak like that to the ordinary man in the street. He has more common sense and tact than you think.’

      As he relaxed with his family in the garden at La Sallé, Napoleon could be well pleased with life. He had helped to drive the English out of France, thus wiping away the ‘stain of dishonour’ incurred at Maddalena. He felt a new confidence in himself, and his new job – Inspector General of Coastal Defences between Marseille and Nice – promised to be interesting. As for his family, he had got them out of Corsica just in time – a month later the English landed. They liked being in France, and he saw no reason why they should not settle there permanently.

      All this was highly satisfactory. But there was a dark side to the picture. Napoleon possessed authority – but that could be dangerous under a government resentful of all authority but its own. Napoleon was a moderate – but that could be dangerous in an age of extremists. Napoleon was a brigadier – but that could be dangerous if you got on the wrong side of the Government commissioners, as Dugommier had done, and now lay in a Paris prison. Like anyone in the public eye, from now on he would be walking a tightrope. Indeed, after the victory of Toulon, Napoleon’s luck turned. For the next twenty-one months almost everything was to go dismally wrong.

      Napoleon’s misfortunes began in Marseille. After the carnage in the Tuileries, the mutiny on the Fauvette, and the recent rebellion, Napoleon viewed the people of Marseille with considerable misgivings. He wanted to see a strong fortress there, and on 4 January sent to Paris a report asking for Vauban’s Fort Saint-Nicolas to be repaired against possible attack from within and without. In his report he used an unfortunate phrase: ‘I am going to position guns in order to curb the town.’

      This was like flame to a powder keg. Up stood Granet, the Marseilles’ representative in Paris: ‘There is a proposal afoot,’ he boomed, ‘to rebuild the bastilles put up by Louis XIV in order to tyrannize the South. The proposal comes from Buonaparte of the artillery and a ci-devant nobleman, General Lapoype … I demand that both be summoned before the bar.’ On orders from the Committee of Public Safety Napoleon was arrested and confined to his house. He spent a few days of intense anxiety; fortunately Saliceti, working behind the scenes, was able to explain that no offence had been meant and got Granet to drop the matter.

      Napoleon’s second misfortune arose from political changes in the month of Thermidor – July, 1794. At Toulon he had become friendly with one of the Government commissioners, Augustin Robespierre, younger brother of Maximilien, but quite different in character: Augustin was affable, nicknamed ‘Bonbon’ and travelled around with his pretty mistress. Augustin Robespierre informed Maximilien that Napoleon was an officer of ‘transcendent merit’ and in the summer of 1794, when Napoleon was attached to the Army of the Alps, sent him on a secret mission to Genoa, to report on Genoese fortifications and on the strength of their army. This job Napoleon carried out with his usual thoroughness.

      Meanwhile the Terror had reached a climax. Sitting on Paris’s dreaded Committee of General Security, the painter Louis David had said, ‘Let us grind plenty of red,’ and his wish was granted in full. One thousand three hundred people went to the guillotine in two months, one-third of them without even the semblance of a trial; ‘heads fell like slates from the roofs.’ At last in the month of Thermidor a group of Conventionnels, partly sickened by the carnage, partly in self-defence, accused Maximilien Robespierre of conspiring against the Revolution, whereupon Augustin leapt to his feet: ‘I have shared his virtues, and I intend to share his fate.’ Next day both Robespierres were guillotined.

      Everyone close to either of the brothers was now suspect, among them Saliceti, a former fellow-commissioner of Augustin Robespierre and the protector of Buonaparte, himself a friend of Augustin Robespierre. From motives that are unknown, perhaps because he was genuinely doubtful about Napoleon’s ‘purity’, Saliceti, with the two other commissioners for the Army of the Alps, signed a letter to the Committee of Public Safety on 6 August declaring that Napoleon had gone on a ‘highly suspicious’ journey to Genoa. ‘What was this general doing in a foreign country?’ they asked – there were rumours of precious French gold being placed in a Genoese bank account – and then issued a warrant: ‘Considering that General Buonaparte has totally lost their confidence by his highly suspicious behaviour … they decree that Brigadier-General Buonaparte be provisionally relieved of his duties; he will be placed under arrest by his commanding general.’

      On 10 August Napoleon found himself under house arrest at his billet, 1 Rue de Villefranche, Nice, guarded by ten gendarmes. His papers were seized, sealed and forwarded for examination to Saliceti. Almost any phrase at this time was enough to send a suspect to the guillotine, and Napoleon was in grave danger. But he remained calm, doubtless applying his battlefield philosophy: ‘If your number’s up, there’s no point in worrying.’ The letter he wrote under arrest is in marked contrast to one written by Lucien, who was imprisoned not long afterwards. ‘I abandoned my belongings,’ Napoleon wrote to Saliceti, ‘I lost everything for the sake of the Republic. Since then, I have served at Toulon with some distinction … Since Robespierre’s conspiracy was discovered, my conduct has been that of a man accustomed to judge according to principles [not persons]. No one can deny me the title of patriot.’ Lucien’s letter was in quite a different vein: ‘Save me from death! Save a citizen, a father, a husband, an unfortunate son, and one who is not guilty! In the silence of night, may my pale shadow wander around you and melt you to pity!’

      Saliceti and his colleagues examined Napoleon’s papers and found them in order, including his expenditure in Genoa. But Napoleon was still the friend of Augustin Robespierre, a declared enemy of the State; he bore an Italian name when France was at war with much of Italy. The commissioners turned their eyes to Paris. And there, doubtless to their surprise, they found that the Thermidoreans were not demanding further blood sacrifice; for the moment no further victims were required. On 20 August the commissioners wrote that ‘having found nothing to justify their suspicions … they decreed that citizen Buonaparte be provisionally released.’ And so, after a fortnight’s arrest, citizen Buonaparte, doubtless with intense relief, stepped out into the Mediterranean sunshine. Shortly afterwards his rank was restored.

      After five months preparing an expedition against Corsica, which the English navy foiled, Napoleon, at the end of April 1795, received a letter from the War Office appointing

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