LITMIR.BIZ

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the theatre Napoleon walked to the public gallery of the Convention. Frightened members had just appointed Barras commander-in-chief of the Army of the Interior, and sat listening to a vigorous speech from Stanislas Fréron. Fréron knew that Barras was not much of a soldier – in seven years he had never risen above second lieutenant – and would need an expert to help him. After his speech Fréron had a few words with Napoleon and, perhaps recalling his energy at Toulon, asked him to come to Barras’s headquarters at the Carrousel.

      Napoleon went. It was around midnight, still windy and wet. Barras was in uniform, a tall handsome man of thirty-nine, with greenish eyes and a sensual, somewhat uncertain mouth. Fréron presented Napoleon and Barras greeted him in his usual brusque manner. ‘Will you serve under me? You have three minutes to decide.’

      To Napoleon the issue presented itself in clear terms. Barras stood for the Convention, the Convention for the Constitution, and the Constitution for the principles of the Revolution. On the other side were royalists and anarchists, men who defied a Constitution freely voted for by an overwhelming majority of Frenchmen. He disliked civil strife and had tried to avoid it. But this was different: this was a clear case of saving the endangered Revolution. ‘Yes,’ he answered Barras.

      ‘Where are the guns?’ was Napoleon’s first question. At the plain of Sablons, he was told, six miles away, but it would be too late to get them – the rebels had already sent a column. Napoleon called Murat, a dashing young cavalry officer of proved loyalty – he had even tried to change his name to Marat. ‘Take 200 horsemen, gallop to the plain of Sablons, bring back the forty guns you find there, and ammunition. Use your sabres if you have to, but get the guns.’

      At six in the morning Napoleon had his forty guns: Murat reached them minutes before the rebels. His task was to defend the seat of government – the Tuileries – from attacks expected to come from the north. The rebels numbered 30,000, the Government 5,000 regular troops, plus 3,000 militiamen. So everything depended on the guns. Napoleon took eight of them and disposed them carefully north of the Tuileries. Two 8-pounders he positioned at the end of Rue Neuve Saint-Roch, pointing up the street towards the church of Saint-Roch. Loading these guns with case-shot, Napoleon took up his post beside them. He was on foot, Barras on horseback.

      All morning Napoleon waited for an attack which did not come. Light rain began to fall. Then came the sound of drums, shouts and musket-fire. At three in the afternoon the rebels attacked. Muskets blazing, bayonets fixed, they broke through the barricades erected by Barras to protect the Rue Saint-Honoré. Government troops fired on them. To Napoleon, watching, it doubtless seemed Ajaccio all over again. For an hour the battle swayed, then the rebels broke through by force of numbers. They swept up the Rue Saint-Honoré into the Rue Neuve Saint-Roch, and past the church. Barras gave the order to fire.

      Napoleon’s two 8-pounders blazed. Accurately aimed, their case-shot blasted into the rebels, round after round, some of it cutting into the stone of the church façade. Men fell, but more came on. Napoleon kept on firing. The rebels fell back and tried other routes, only to be met by case-shot from Napoleon’s six other guns. The whole action lasted only a few minutes. Then the rebels began to retreat towards the Place Vendôme and Palais Royal, pursued by 1,000 Government troops. Half an hour later, with losses of 200 killed or wounded on each side, the rebellion was over.

      ‘The Republic has been saved,’ Barras reported proudly to the Convention, and Fréron made a speech. ‘Citizen Representatives, don’t forget that General Buonaparte … who had only the morning of the thirteenth to make his clever and highly successful arrangements, had been posted from the artillery to the infantry. Founders of the Republic, will you delay any longer to right the wrongs to which, in your name, many of its defenders have been subjected?’ The representatives cheered Napoleon and some tried to edge him up on to the platform. But Napoleon was still a believer in principles, not persons, and according to a young lawyer named Lavalette, who was in the hall: ‘He pushed them aside with a look of annoyance and diffidence which pleased me.’

      Why was Napoleon, who had been a failure in Corsica, a success now? The answer lies in his technical skill. In the alleys of Ajaccio Napoleon had been just another officer; in Paris he was a rare specialist at a time when a majority of artillery officers had emigrated: a man who could make every precious shot count. In Corsica he had been just another ardent patriot; in Paris – as at Toulon – he had filled a specific need. He could dominate a situation through his knowledge of guns.

      Napoleon’s energy and skill on 13 Vendémiaire had a more distant effect. The Comte d’Artois, instead of stepping ashore to lead the Chouans, decided to sit tight in the Ile d’Yeu – a piece of cowardice which Napoleon found inexcusable and which confirmed his disgust with the Bourbons.

      On 26 October 1795 the Convention held its last sitting and next day the Directory began. Barras had been chosen one of the Directors. In donning his Henri IV dress, with three-plumed hat, silk stockings and gold-fringed sash, he had to lay down his Army command. He and his fellow Directors decided that Napoleon, the expert with guns, should succeed him. And so, at twenty-six, Napoleon put on the gold-laced uniform of a full general and assumed command of the Army of the Interior.

      From his sordid Left Bank hotel Napoleon moved into a decent house in Rue des Capucines, which went with his new job. Forgotten were his disappointments and plans for Turkey. ‘Now our family shall lack nothing,’ he wrote home. To Letizia he sent 50,000 louis in coin and paper. For Joseph he got an appointment as consul in Italy, for Lucien a post as commissioner with the Army of the North. Louis became a lieutenant in Napoleon’s old regiment and a month later his aide-de-camp. Jerome was sent to a good boarding-school. ‘You know,’ Napoleon wrote to Joseph with pardonable exaggeration, ‘I live only for the pleasure I can give my family.’

      In fact he had two equally great pleasures. First, he was beginning to fulfil his abilities – his own definition of happiness. Secondly, the course of the Revolution had been turned from its bloody aberration: indeed, one of the Convention’s last acts had been to abolish the death penalty and to change the name of the square where so many had been guillotined from Place de la Révolution to Place de la Concorde. Napoleon summed up his new hopes in a letter to Joseph: ‘People are very satisfied with the new Constitution, which promises happiness, tranquillity and a long future for France … No doubt there will gradually be a complete recovery; only a few years are needed for that.’

       CHAPTER 6 In Love

      IN an age which tended to see in the other sex merely an occasion of physical pleasure or financial gain, the Buonapartes believed in love and were all, to a greater or less, degree, passionate lovers. Carlo and Letizia had married for love and, after Carlo’s death, Letizia had remained true to his memory. The example of that happy marriage, and the temperament that fired it, passed to the children. Lucien married his inn-keeper’s daughter for love, and when she died was to marry a second time for love – at the cost of his political career. Louis spent much of his youth penning reams of introspective love poetry, and it was for love that the youngest son, Jerome, would eventually marry Elizabeth Patterson of Baltimore. As for Pauline, the one nearest Napoleon in temperament, at sixteen she was in love with Stanislas Fréron, and writing him letters like this: ‘Ti amo sempre passionatissimamente, per sempre ti amo, ti amo, stell’ idol mio, set cuore mio, tenero amico, ti amo, ti amo, amo, si amatissimo amante.’ Napoleon also was to love passionatissimamente, but not yet.

      The first thing Napoleon noticed in a woman was her hands and feet. If her hands and feet were small, he was prepared to find her attractive, but not otherwise. The second quality he sought was femininity. He liked a woman with a giving, tender nature and a soft voice: someone he could protect. Finally, he looked for sincerity and depth of feeling.

      Napoleon, brought up in the man’s world of Corsica, did not believe in equality of the sexes. In taking notes on English history, when Barrow says, ‘the Druidesses shared equally in the priesthood,’ Napoleon, in one of his rare emendations, wrote, ‘they assisted the Druids in their functions.’ He considered a woman’s role

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