Chapter IV: Book ONE: The Island (2)

There is no longer a place for him and his in Corsica. They are banished by popular decree, and declared outlaws. The mother, so proud of her descent; her two sons, her two daughters, and her brother—all have been rendered shelterless by Napoleon’s unsuccessful attack on Paoli. They must escape from the island at a few hours’ notice. Through the silent woods, in whose recesses twenty-four years earlier she had found safety from the French, Letizia has now to flee towards the coast under the protection of the French. All her possessions are in the hands of her enemies. Nothing is left to her beyond the clothes she wears.

The artillery officer, twenty-three years of age, stands on the deck of the sailing ship that is bearing him to Toulon. Throughout the long June evening, he watches the coast recede; every cape, every ridge, is familiar to him. Thrice he has tried to conquer the island, as its liberator. Now he has been driven out by the Corsicans as a Frenchman. He is full of rage and of a thirst for revenge. The victories of France will strengthen him, and in days to come he will, after all, be master of Corsica!

But as he sails westward, and as the French coast draws near, our adventurer enjoys the sense of freedom that comes to him who is everywhere at home. Such is the happy lot of the man who has no country.

X

“How shabby their dresses are!” thinks Letizia Buonaparte, when her two half-grown girls come home from the market with their poor purchases. The refugees are living on the fourth floor of a confiscated house in Marseilles (the owner, a nobleman, has been guillotined). The mother is in the early forties. The three children with her are earning bread for the family as best they can; the two youngest are still in Corsica, cared for by relatives. Since the Buonapartes are “persecuted patriots,” they receive a part of their rations from the commandant. Letizia, who is proud as ever, makes no complaints.

Soon Napoleon, who is travelling, has the chance of putting some lucrative opportunities in his brother’s way, affairs connected with the supply of munitions of war. Maternal Uncle Fesch lays aside the priestly habit and becomes a man of business, in the silk trade. Then Joseph, who is of fashionable exterior, resembling his father in appearance, and, as the eldest, following the father’s example in styling himself Count Buonaparte,—wins the hand of one of the two heiresses of a Marseilles silk merchant. Napoleon entertains thoughts of marrying his sister-in-law Désirée, the late silk merchant’s other daughter.

He is on the move throughout this summer; now at Nice, with his regiment; now on the Rhone; now at Toulon. All the time, his soldier’s eyes are on the look out; his artillerist’s brain is noting the actual and the potential fortifications along this strip of coast. Soon he will make good use of the knowledge now acquired. Meanwhile he writes political dialogues. One of them in conversational form, appears as a pamphlet, printed at the public expense.

In this conversation, the manufacturer is of a familiar type. The well-to-do folk of Toulon, like their brethren in Marseilles, are, in fact, under Robespierre’s rule, afraid of losing their heads or even their property. Concern for their money-bags tends to make them ever more solicitous for the welfare of the sometime royal house, now in exile. At length, in the hope of saving their capital, they call the enemies of France to their aid, handing over the remnants of the navy to the English, who in return promise them protection.

This is a fearful blow for the young republic. On all fronts, France is at grips with the forces of reaction. Belgium has been lost; the Spaniards are advancing over the mountains; in Vendée, the Bourbon cause is gaining ground. Then comes the crowning disaster of Toulon. The republic calls up its last man for active service, enlists women, transforms the whole of France into an armed camp. Experts are doubly welcome.

Before Toulon, preparations are being made to drive out the English. As to how this is to be done, the Convention leaves that to the commander of the forces, originally a painter of pictures, in whom revolutionary enthusiasm is to make up for the lack of technical knowledge of the art of war.

Then it came to pass that young Captain Buonaparte, returning from Avignon whither he had been sent for a consignment of gunpowder, paid a visit to his fellow-countryman Saliceti, who introduced the young artillerist to the painter-general. After dinner, the dilettantes went for a stroll, and happened upon a 24-pounder, several miles from the sea. They began to boast of all that the gun would do. The expert assured them that, in its present position, it would be useless. He fired four shots to show them that the sea was quite out of range. Dumbfounded, they kept Buonaparte at Toulon, and set him to work.

“At last, one end of the rope is in my hands. Grip and hold fast!” thinks the lonely man with the strong will. With amazing activity, our captain has heavy guns brought from all possible places along the coast. In six weeks, he has more than a hundred pieces of ordnance at his disposal.

Now he will give a display of his talents as military commander. What is his plan? He will mount batteries on the tongue of land which divides the bay into twin harbours, and will thus cut off the hostile fleet from access to the sea. The British commander will not stay to be shot at in a mousehole with no outlet. He will set light to the arsenal and withdraw his forces from the town.

“Fantastical nonsense!” say the amateurs, mockingly. But Buonaparte, who has friends in the Convention, has a complaint lodged there against his chief. He also sends to Paris his scheme for the bombardment of Toulon, many pages of manuscript, containing, in addition, counsel of a more general nature: “Our fire must always be concentrated. If we can breach the wall, the balance will incline to our side, resistance will be fruitless, the place will be won. To live, we must divide; to strike, we must unite. Victory is impossible without unity of command. Time is everything!” Thus does a captain of twenty-four write to the central authorities.

He has a powerful ally in Paris, the younger Robespierre, who has the reputation of a man of talent, and is not completely overshadowed by his all-powerful brother. “Should you ever need a man of iron for street fighting,” said Joseph Robespierre to Maximilien, “a young man, a new man—then it must be this Buonaparte.” Indeed, the Corsican adventurer had already been asked whether he would become military guardian of the terrorists, but considerations of caution had led him to decline. Now his plan was approved, and the painter-general was recalled. Who would replace him?

Buonaparte gnashes his teeth. Another dilettante! The new general is a medical man. He spends his time nosing out conspiracies hatched by the nobility—and meanwhile the enemy occupies the precious tongue of land. From Paris there had come State carriages filled with “men of genius,” clad in brilliant uniforms, and resolved to end the siege of Toulon, to take the place out of hand. Buonaparte led them to an unprotected battery. When the enemy opened fire, and they looked round vainly for cover, their guide said gravely: “We do without cover, nowadays; we have patriotism instead.” This young man with blue-grey eyes is more interested in actions than in intentions. Further complaints, and a new change in command. This time the chief is a tried warrior, who is prompt to appoint Napoleon battalion commander, and to adopt the young artillerist’s plan for driving the enemy from the tongue of land.

When, finally, Toulon is stormed (still in accordance with Buonaparte’s designs), his horse is shot under him; and he is wounded in the calf by an English lance—this being his first and almost his last wound. Moreover, it is his first victory, although he is not the official commander; and it is a victory over England. The enemy retreats to the ships, fires the arsenal, and withdraws, all in one night, just as Napoleon had foretold.

Conflagration and death, battle and the terrors of a naval port in which thousands of treasonable burghers are trying to escape the avengers; amid all the fierce passions of this December night, through the reek and the cries, across heaps of corpses, and to the accompaniment of the agonised curses of drowning civilians and the exultant shouts of looting soldiers, a new star rises in the firmament—Napoleon’s fame.

XI

The popular festival held in Paris to celebrate the liberation of Toulon and fresh victories on the northern and eastern fronts, spreads Napoleon’s name among the masses. He is raised to the rank of brigadier general, and his chief, sending in a report in which the subordinate is given due credit as the originator of the plan of siege, adds (betwixt fear and admiration) the amazing sentence: “Even though the Convention were to slight him, he would still force his way to the front.” But five other young officers are likewise mentioned in despatches, and when for the first time Napoleon sees his own name in the “Moniteur” there can be no doubt that he is vexed at being merely one among so many. How hard it is to climb!

Already, however, there are some young fellows who have noted the rising of the new star. Marmont and Junot, unknown officers, want to join their fortunes to his. He appoints them his adjutants; Brother Louis, too, now sixteen years of age. He has a group!

Big guns! The Convention commissions him to fortify the whole stretch of coast from Toulon to Nice. Is not Genoa, Corsica’s ancient enemy, farther along the coast? He who takes Genoa, has the island in his hands. Is not Genoa full of diplomats and agents? This is the place for weather-breeding among the neutrals; here, any one with sharp eyes and keen ears can learn a great deal, and keep his information to himself. He gets himself appointed people’s commissary, which gives him precedence over the chiefs in Genoa. Ostensibly the appointment is made that he may help in the settlement of frontier questions.

In reality, this is the first step of Buonaparte the diplomatist. He intrigues with agents of various kinds, while taking note whether the representatives of France in that part of the world are genuinely revolutionary or only making a pretence of revolutionary fervour. At the same time, he keeps his eyes open to see where the cannons are. He comes back to Nice to write his report, and, without warning, he is arrested.

For, meanwhile, Robespierre had fallen, and had perished by the guillotine. There is a general movement of repudiation. Every one wishes to make out that only under compulsion did he hold converse with the tyrant. Those who wish to prove themselves guiltless, look round for victims. The best victims will be those who are not in Paris to make a fight for it. Quick, quick, lest we should be suspected of having belonged to Robespierre’s faction! General Buonaparte! He has just been on a secret mission to hostile Genoa. Lay the traitor by the heels! He was colloguing with Robespierre to bring about the destruction of our southern army. Hale him to Paris for trial!

Napoleon is in Fort Carrée near Nice. All his papers have been seized. It is his birthday. “To-day I am twenty-five,” he thinks, as he glances seaward through the grating. If he could lean out of the window, he would catch a glimpse of Corsica. How many attempts he has made there, only to be defeated! Was the destiny of a young aspiring soul ever before built upon such a series of catastrophes? What has Plutarch to say on this matter? Cashiered, banished, outlawed—as far as Corsica is concerned. Now, after all his plans, he is a prisoner of France. Next week, perhaps, he will be standing in the barrack yard, with his back against the wall, awaiting a score of bullets. What is to be done?

His faithful followers advise him to flee. He answers in an impassioned tone such as we rarely encounter in the sixty thousand of Napoleon’s letters. He thanks them for their friendly counsel, but says: “Men may treat me unjustly; no matter, so long as I am innocent. My conscience is the tribunal before which I judge my own conduct, and my conscience is untroubled. Do nothing, for you would only compromise me.” The one genuine phrase in this letter wherein he poses as a martyr, is the last. To Junot, the enthusiastic admirer, he speaks of motives which Junot will understand. In reality, since he knows that there is not a jot of evidence of complicity with Robespierre, he does not wish to compromise himself. Flight would be an admission of guilt.

Writing from prison to an influential diplomat, he says: “I am somewhat affected by the tragical death of the younger Robespierre, for I loved the man and believed him genuine. Nevertheless, had he been my own father I would have stabbed him had he wished to become a tyrant.” Is not that spoken like a true Roman? With even more circumspection, he writes to the Convention: “Although innocent of the charge, I shall never make any complaint against the committee, whatever it may decide.... But now hear me! Strike off my chains, and restore to me the respect of patriots! An hour afterwards, if the wicked clamour for my corpse, I shall be ready. I hold my life at little account, for I have risked it in the trenches too often. Nothing but the thought that I can serve my country enables me to endure my burdens cheerfully.”

A week later, he is free. Saliceti, his fellow-countryman in the Convention, had been his accuser. Now, when the Corsican deputy has got over his first fright and feels that his own neck is safe, he pledges his word that Buonaparte is innocent. But at the close of his statement, he adds a phrase which is an unconscious prediction of the young officer’s triumphs: “Besides, we need him in the army.”

XII

How he is shunned! Powerful friends, to whom he sends letter after letter, long epistles, make no answer. He writes beseechingly for little things, such as “a good surveying outfit for the army,” when he wishes to force an influential comrade to reply. All at once comes a signal from the island. Old Paoli has summoned the English to his aid. Corsica must be saved for France! Back to Paris, in order to fan the flames. The expedition is actually decided on, and he eagerly hopes to secure the command. In a fortnight the fleet is back at Toulon, having sustained a reverse. Fresh disappointment! Why did they not put him in charge? Had he not conquered Toulon, fortified the coast—all with an eye towards the campaign against Corsica?

Reaction is in full swing. Napoleon is suspect. The authorities offer him high command in Vendée, for this will separate him from his adherents. At the same time he is transferred to the infantry, as a “supernumerary.” How mortifying to a highly skilled artillerist!

The pale young man grew paler than ever, for he had made up his mind to refuse. He expostulated with the People’s Commissary for War, who, in reply, twitted him with his youth. Napoleon looked the commissary, who knew little of active service, straight in the eyes, and said: “A man matures quickly on the battle-field, and it is from the battle-field that I come.” Refusal to obey orders; expectation of dire consequences; just as it had been three years before.

(From the “Corpus Imaginum” of the Photographic Society, Charlottenburg.)]

What had I better do? Report sick? Apply for leave? The out-of-work general turns the possibilities over in his mind. Better stay where I am. Paris is the world’s navel. True, Marmont and Junot, who have joined him without leave, are also penniless. What’s Bourrienne doing? Speculating? Well, I can try that too, but assignats are falling. How badly you staged the last affair. Did you think you could make a coup d’état without cannon? But to Saliceti, who in his turn has had serious charges brought against him, and is being sheltered by a fellow-countrywoman, he writes: “You see, I might have paid you back in your own coin.... Who has played the better part, you or I? I might have taken vengeance on you, but have not done so.... Go in peace, to seek a refuge where you can, and meditate upon your country to better advantage. My lips will always be sealed about you. Take counsel with yourself, appreciate my motives ... they are noble and magnanimous.”

During these summer weeks, the flood of life is obscurely murmuring, is heavily pulsing against the shores. He is profoundly moved by _Ossian_, the book of melancholy passion; and he is stirred by the tragical end of plays he witnesses, hastening from the theatre that his mood may not be jarred by the subsequent farce. “How preposterous, in this new opera, to give a happy ending to _Paul and Virginie_ by having the girl rescued!”—“But what is happiness?” asks the lady to whom he says this.

“Happiness?” answers Buonaparte. “The highest possible development of my talents.”

Just now they are lying fallow, that is what troubles him. He is a prey to increasing dejection and dumb rancour. When a comedy is being played (the wife of one of his friends reports this), every one else is laughing, but Buonaparte sits there in frozen silence. Sometimes he vanishes, to reappear with gloomy aspect at the other side of the stalls. Often enough his lips are twisted in an unsuccessful attempt to smile. He is an irresistible raconteur of campaign stories, but his laughter on these occasions is rough. He is often to be seen wandering through the streets, short in the leg, thin, sallow, sickly, irritable of mien, “awkward, hesitant, wearing an old round hat, from beneath which two badly powdered ‘dog’s ears’ project, scurf upon his collar, his ungloved hands are long and lean and dark, ill-fitting boots.”

He now plans a book traffic with foreign lands; but his first attempt, with a consignment to Basle, miscarries.

Sometimes he visits drawing-rooms, for, as he writes to his brother, every one here seeks distraction.... There are women all over the place, at the theatre, in the Bois, at the Library. The prettiest of girls are to be found in the studies of the learned. Indeed, it is right that women should rule here, for the men are infatuated, living only through and for women.

When Buonaparte is in the salon of Barras, the tribune (who outdoes himself in splendour and extravagance, so that all Paris talks; who can never have enough women round him), when he stands there among women famous for their beauty like Tallien and Récamier, he, who is small and gloomy and angular, can only make an impression by cleverness and caprice. Even then he seems a freak.

Always the solitary, he only “lets himself go” in his long letters to his brothers. He is educating Louis, and writes: “The lad is a good soldier. What especially pleases me is that he combines so many excellent qualities: ardour, spirit, health, talent, trustworthiness, good-nature.... He will certainly be the best of us four. Of course, none of us have enjoyed his advantages in the matter of education.” He is thinking of having Jerome, the youngest, sent to Paris. He is at odds with Lucien. This talented brother is his rival. Indeed, Lucien vies with Napoleon in his knowledge of men, was the first to understand Napoleon, did so already when he was seventeen while his brother was twenty-three. “In Napoleon,” wrote young Lucien to Joseph, “I detect an ambition which is not wholly selfish, but is greater than his love for the public welfare. In a free State he would certainly be a dangerous man. He seems to me inclined to become a despot. I think he would become one, were he king. At any rate, his name would be a terror to posterity and to sensitive patriots.” In Lucien’s mouth, such grandiose vaticination is no mere playing with words. His own ambition is so intense that in this age and country he regards a development of the kind as quite possible for his brother, and he is mortified at the prospect that Napoleon is likely to outshine him.

For the nonce, Napoleon is in low spirits. He envies Joseph, whom money and happiness have made independent. He offers Joseph support in the way of introductions and papers; advises him to use the depreciated currency for the economical purchase of an estate. Yet we find him already writing to his elder brother, apropos of a letter on political questions: “Your letter was too dry; you must learn to write better than that.”

A home! He wants a home of his own, like Joseph. More eagerly in each successive letter he urges Joseph to make sure for him of the wealthy sister-in-law, with whom he has been in affectionate correspondence for more than a year. When she is slow to make up her mind, he presses for a decision. His brother and one of his intimate friends have married well; comrades of his own age occupy prominent positions. Only he, with his surging thoughts and imaginative schemes, remains lonely and does nothing.

“If you are going away for a long time,” he writes to Joseph, “send me your portrait. We have lived so long in close companionship that our hearts are intertwined. No one knows better than you how wholly I am yours. As I write these lines, I am more moved than almost ever before, feeling that it will be long before we meet again. I cannot write any more. Farewell, mon ami.”

He is in a melting mood, and at times he seems utterly discouraged. “To clamber upwards from step to step, this is rather like an adventurer, like a man who is trying to make happiness.” Finally he says: “Life is a trivial dream, which fades away....”

XIII

Suddenly everything is in a flux. A new Minister for War has been appointed, and he is eager to effect changes on the Italian front. Does any one know of a new man to whom the command there can be entrusted? The enquiry passes from one to another, until some one recommends Buonaparte. He is summoned to the War Office. For years he has been making himself familiar with the Italian coast and the Italian frontier, and forthwith he expounds a detailed plan for a campaign in northern Italy, against Sardinia and Austria. It is substantiated by a display of intimate knowledge of the Alpine passes; of the weather and the snows; of seedtime and harvest; of the administration, the temperament, and the characteristics of the territories and the populations concerned. After the conquest of Lombardy, between February and July, the powerful position of Mantua must be wrested from the Austrians. Then the Army of Italy must move northward, and in Tyrol must effect a junction with the sister army, the Army of the Rhine. The joint forces will threaten Vienna and this will compel the emperor to accept a peace which will fulfil all that France has been expecting or imagining for years past.

Overwhelmed by the cataract that issues from this brain, the minister can only say: “Your ideas, General, are equally brilliant and bold. We must examine them closely. Write a report for the committee. You can take your time.”

“My plan is ready now. I can write it down in half an hour.”

“A notable design,” say the members of the Committee of Public Safety when the report has been read to them; “notable, even if impracticable.” In any case, such an intelligence as this must be utilised in the Operations Department. A few days afterwards he has a seat in this department, where everything is decided.

The great moment has come, the turning-point of his youth. At length he stands on the threshold of his career. The chance has come suddenly, for everything is sudden in this eruptive era. From now, when he is barely twenty-six, he will for twenty years, with unremitting vigour, move onwards towards his goal, drawing the chain of thought and action after him. Suddenly, twenty years hence, the chain will snap.

Napoleon’s work begins. With burning energy, attending carefully to little things because his aim is the greatest of things, he devotes himself to “affairs.” The veil is lifted, for here he finds the most secret reports concerning all the armies of the republic. At the same time, his daily association with the leading civilian figures in France gives him authority. The suggestive influence of his personality makes itself felt.

What is the first thing he aspires to gain for himself? Neither the command in Vendée nor the command of the Army of the Rhine. These are attainable, tangible magnitudes. Here, at the centre of all the real fronts, nothing allures him so much as the thought of a command which as yet lives only in his imagination; in a battle-ground which does not exist, but which he wants to create to-day, and which he will again want to create seventeen years hence. Asia! Directly he gets to work at the centre of things, he begins to emphasise the importance of galvanising Turkey into activity, of introducing artillery and the modern art of war on the Bosphorus, for in due time they can from that centre be used against the Russians and the Austrians. In fancy, he already sees himself conversing with the sultan, beyond reach of the eyes of these everlasting republicans, in an obscure and closed country into which the doctrine of liberty has never made its way—a land where a man can still do whatever he pleases. Twelve days after his entry into the ministry, he asks to be transferred to Turkey.

The application is refused. Powerful opponents are already beginning to be afraid of this man. They want to get him out of the War Office; to send him to the front. His protest takes a new tone. As if he were foreseeing all the successes that are still hidden in his own heart, he begins to dictate. “General Buonaparte, who commands the artillery under the most critical circumstances and has contributed to the greatest successes, expects from the justice of the members of the Committee that they shall reinstate him in his functions, and shall spare him the distress of seeing his position usurped by men who have always kept themselves in the background, ... but who now press forward to snatch the fruits of victories whose dangers they well knew how to avoid.”

In the third person, in the iron style of the historian. Roman.

It avails nothing. Once more the insubordinate officer’s name is struck from the lists, and for a second time he has to yield. But he feels that his hour draws nigh; nothing, now, can seriously shake his position. A fresh change of government is at hand. Announcing to his brother the impending transformation, he says that he himself is in the good graces of all the party leaders who will have military posts at their disposal. “The prospect is rosy. Even were it otherwise, a man must live in the present. He who has courage, despises the future.”

Because he despises it, it serves him. Henceforward, men will serve him for the same reason.

A fortnight after this letter had been written, a conflict broke out between the government and the moderates, who were backed by the royalists. Once more, there was fighting on the boulevards, as there had been three years earlier. The National Guard is four times as strong as the governmental forces. Either from caution or from cowardice, the general of the Convention parleys with the leaders of the Guard. He is declared a traitor, and placed under arrest. The Convention meets in a panic. It is defenceless, intimidated by the left-wing and right-wing revolutionaries, who, for various reasons, have joined forces.

In the evening, Buonaparte hastens to the Convention, for a successor to the arrested general is needed, and he learns that the name of one of his rivals has been proposed. The heart of the silent onlooker beats furiously. Will his name now be mentioned? If he is asked to take command, shall he accept a task which he had refused in the days when Robespierre was supreme? Does not every one who leads soldiers against the people make himself hated, precisely because of his success? “Appoint Buonaparte!” Yes, his name has come up. “I turned the matter over in my mind for nearly half an hour.” Such a mission will not bring renown, but it will bring power. He presents himself before the committee. It is past midnight; the tumult is expected to begin early next morning; everything must be ready within a few hours.

In this situation, he demands that he shall be absolutely free from civilian supervision. This seems a monstrous request to make of the revolution, one of whose new principles it is to lay especial stress upon supervision of the dreaded military arm. “If you appoint me, I shall be responsible, and must have a free hand. To-day, it was the fault of the people’s commissaries that the general found himself in so precarious a position. Do you expect that the people will give us permission to open fire upon the people?” The only man he will share the command with is Barras, who is the most powerful among the leaders, but is in his hands. The minutes are passing. There is no choice.—Buonaparte was entrusted with the defence of the government, a fortnight after his name had been erased from the list of general officers.

For seven years the Parisian populace, when roused to action, has had to encounter nothing more than extemporised opposition. That is why the revolution has always made headway. Buonaparte is the first to prepare for the struggle. In one night, he transforms the Convention into a fortress. Even the alarmed deputies are supplied with weapons. They are still more frightened when they hear talk of cannon.

A young cavalry officer, Murat by name, undertakes to bring forty big guns from the suburbs. Murat thus opens a great career on the same day as his chief. Out in the streets he finds the masses, who are likewise on the prowl for artillery. Buonaparte cannot protect the Convention without ordnance. There are hours of tension, during which he must tranquilly devote himself to the disposition of his slender forces. At length, at five in the morning, he hears the rattling wheels of his old friends the big guns. Murat’s men were mounted, and they have won the prize. Forward! Within two hours, everything must be ready.

In well-armed companies, the crowd advances threateningly. The lawyers in the Convention are shaking in their shoes. Speech after speech is made from the tribune, urging a parley, advocating the withdrawal of the troops. In the daylight, the situation is so menacing that the civilians utterly lose heart. They weaken; towards noon, some of the troops want to fraternise with the people. Night is falling. Now or never! Is the commander to allow the mob to triumph? In like circumstances, he had laughed at the weakness of King Louis. Shall he himself play the weakling, when he is in command of the guns?

It is probable that Buonaparte ordered the firing of the first shot, or perhaps extorted the order from Barras, although in his report, and subsequently, he declared that his opponents had this “crime against the French people” on their consciences. Anyhow, the firing begins. The big guns win the day; blood besprinkles the pavements; the crowd scatters; in two hours the streets are clear. That night, Napoleon writes to his brother: “At length it is over; my first wish is to send you news.... We posted our troops, the enemy attacked us in the Tuileries. We killed a lot of them, our own casualties being thirty killed and sixty wounded. We have disarmed the companies of the National Guard, and everything is quiet. As usual, I have escaped without a scratch. Brigadier General Buonaparte. Postscript. Luck is on my side. My compliments to Désirée and Julie.”

This is Napoleon’s first bulletin of victory. The enemy are Frenchmen; the battle-field is Paris; the offenders are revolutionists; most of the fatalities are on the opposing side; the signature, which in earlier and subsequent letters consists of nothing but the name, includes, to-day, the writer’s military title. Everything is calculated for effect. But his feelings break through, and in the postscript he discloses to his brother the two things he has most at heart: Luck and Woman.

At a later date he said: “I have two men within me, the man of the head and the man of the heart.”

XIV

On the tribune of the Convention stands Buonaparte with his officers, hailed by the acclamations of the assembly, to whom the youthful saviour is being presented. He scarcely notices the applause, for such triumphs of the moment seem of little value to him. Coldly surveying the hall, he thinks: “So you are the leaders of the nation. You trembled with fear when you heard the thunder of the guns! You shall not forget how to tremble! I have become your protector. I shall go on protecting you until you have become my humble servants.”

As a matter of course, he is appointed to the command of the Army of the Interior. He now has a great following: cashiered officers, who hope to climb in the footsteps of the cashiered general; officials who have dreaded the reaction; all who feel that they have been rescued. But the crowd must be learning to hate him; for, in that darkling hour, hundreds of unarmed citizens, idle spectators, women have perished. What is that to him? It is not his aim to be loved.

Now, when he suddenly has money and servants and carriages at his disposal, he wants nothing for himself, everything for his kin. His younger brothers are given good positions; his mother can once more live a life after her own heart, and gratify her taste for saving; Joseph has the offer of several posts; there are places for the most distant relatives. But the letters become rarer, and the very first of them sounds a new note: “I shall do everything I can to help you, shall spare no effort which can contribute to your happiness.” From brother, he has become protector, head of the family.

During these weeks, when he is tasting the joys of fulfilment, he becomes involved in the only passion of his life.

Désirée has missed her chance. Only a few weeks before, writing from the office of the general staff, he had implored Joseph to intervene on his behalf, to demand a prompt answer. “I am burning with desire to have a home of my own.” At the same time, in several of his letters, we find more frequent references to charming women, allusions which betray a happy prospect of success. He has come to know la femme de trente ans, in her power and her beauty. He has made advances to two such women, in quick succession: one of them a Corsican of noble birth, a friend of his mother’s; the other, a pretty cocotte, Chénier’s mistress. Both of them are considerably older than he, and neither of them favours his suit. But the atmosphere surrounding these practitioners of the art of love, the electric atmosphere of the new salon, has exercised its influence on him: “A kiss for the two ladies: for the first, on the lips; for the second, on the cheek.” Since he has hitherto known almost nothing of women, his lonely heart is susceptible.

Immediately after his appointment, the new generalissimo issues a decree against bearing arms. A search is made, and all weapons in civilian hands are confiscated. Now a boy of twelve, with engaging manners, turns up at the general’s office with a plea for the return of his dead father’s sword, which has been taken away from his mother. Napoleon concedes the point, and shortly afterwards the mother comes to thank him. What an elegant woman—wayward, gracious, captivating! Thirty or more; who can say? Not so much beautiful, as enthralling; slender; distinguished, but with a slightly foreign air; the dark skin of the Creole, for she was born in Martinique, though brought up in Paris; and during the days of the Terror she has learned to conquer by her charms.

When the general pays her a visit at the little house in an out-of-the-way suburb, his eyes, sharpened by his own experience of poverty, detect evidence of an endeavour to put a good face upon poor circumstances. This does not trouble him. An army officer, who now, at the age of twenty-seven, can for the first time dispose of means which enable him to live as he pleases, he prizes money, but he does not prize rich people. Just as in the life of affairs, men can only move him by their capacity, by what they can do; so women can only please him by their capacity—by their personal appearance, their nature, and what they can make of these.

Josephine makes a great deal, as she needs to do. From Martinique, her tropical home, she was able to save nothing when she lost her husband, Vicomte de Beauharnais. For years she was separated from him, but was reunited with him after her return to Paris from a prolonged visit to her native island. During the Terror, he was executed as a royalist; and she spent three terrible months in gaol, to be liberated after Robespierre’s fall on the very day when Buonaparte was imprisoned. Friends came to her assistance in her difficulties; but her position and that of her two lovely young children, Hortense and Eugene, was precarious.

In this genteel poverty, it is expedient for her to make the best use of her charms. In any case, she is a born coquette, and is urged towards amorous adventures by the spur of her own love of pleasure. At this time, she is Barras’ mistress, her handsome friend Tallien having taken up with a wealthy banker, handing over the man of might to Josephine. However, the two women hold Barras in joint control. The Committee of Public Safety supplies them with horses and carriages. But Beauharnais, being of gentle birth, knows how to give attractive dinner parties, and associates with members of both factions, although the counts and marquises who frequent her house leave their wives at home. She has become an adventuress of the revolution.

Well, what about Buonaparte himself? Any change in the political situation may cost him his position. What more is he, as yet, than an adventurer of the revolution? If Murat had failed to shark up those guns the other night, the general would have been shot. Life is insecure, both for him and for Josephine.

What can be easier than to befool this misanthropic and misogynistic man in whose dumb soul the schoolmaster at Brienne had long ago discovered the hidden volcano? For the first time in his life he is in the toils of a woman, an expert in love; he is consumed by his passion for the Creole beauty. To Josephine, it seems a stroke of luck, and in cold blood she decides on marriage.

“You have seen General Buonaparte at my house. He is to become a father to my orphaned children, a husband to my widowed self.... I admire the general’s courage, and I wonder how much he knows.... But, I must confess, I am alarmed at the energy which animates all his doings. In his questing glance there is something inexplicable, which intimidates even our Directors. What ought to please me most, the passionate ardour he displays, is the very thing which makes me hesitate. Now that I am past my first youth, can I hope that I shall be able to keep alive in him an affection so stormy that it borders on madness?”

This lady of refinement does not fully understand what threatens her, and yet in the depths of her soul she shudders at the foreboding that she is to become the play of elemental forces. For, if this man who covets all or nothing and cannot rest until he has all, this man who has never given himself up to any one person or any one thing because it has been his unceasing wish to gain every one and everything, if Napoleon now gives himself for the first and only time in his life, he will stake his whole being, and will fetter it to the personality of the woman whom he clasps in his arms.

“I am waiting for you; I am wholly filled with you; your picture and the intoxicating evening leave my senses no peace. Sweet, incomparable Josephine, what have you done to my heart? Are you angry with me? Do you look sad? Are you ill at ease?... But I find calm when I give myself up to my passion, that on your lips, at your heart, I may fan the flames which burn me. How plain it was to me last night that your picture can never replace the real you. At noon you will start; in three hours I shall see you; till then, mio dolce amor, a thousand kisses! But you must not give me kisses, for they burn my blood!”

He does not tell her his plans, and yet he tells her something more. “These Directors fancy that I need their protection. They will consider themselves happy, some day, to secure mine. I shall make my way with the sword.”—“What do you think,” writes Josephine, “of this faith in success? Can such self-confidence be based on anything else than immeasurable conceit? A brigadier general is to protect the heads of the government! I don’t know what to make of it; and yet, often enough, this ludicrous self-assurance makes me believe that anything is possible which the strange man wants to achieve.”

We feel as if we were standing in front of the iron door which guards a glowing human heart, and looking through the key-hole into the fiery furnace of a soul.

But this woman, whom he possesses, why does he take her to wife? That he may possess her for himself alone? His egotism is against it, and, besides, he would be deluding himself. To gain advantages? In respect of money, and in respect of influence with the powerful, she can offer him nothing that he does not already enjoy. Of course she might prove useful to him; he is certainly flattered that she is of noble birth; and beyond doubt he has taken into consideration the fact that if she, who had a place in the days of the old regime, becomes his wife, this will put an end to the whispers that he is “only a Corsican.” Yet it is as a Corsican, with the family feeling of an Italian (a feeling that has come down to him through the generations, and masters even him), that he desires marriage with a woman of birth. Finally, is it not obvious that this man who is so utterly self-centred must passionately long for a perpetuation of his own ego?

The one thing in the world which Napoleon cannot make without another’s aid is an heir, and this heir must be made out of good materials. He is no man of the people. He has come into being amid the struggles of old families, and beneath a coat-of-arms bearing two stars which he now wishes to fuse into one. If he has helped to break down the prejudices against the masses, he has been moved along this course by delight in the elemental energy of action, and never by humanist feelings. Why should he wish to mix his blood with that of the people? When he marries the woman who long ere this has granted him all, he does so because, in both branches of her ancestry, she is the offspring of a long line of noble forebears. It is her birth, in addition to her charms, which makes her a welcome figure in a drawing-room, despite her reputation and her position. Since the Thirteenth Vendémiaire, Barras, the most powerful of the Directors, has regarded Buonaparte as his main prop—and he wishes to bind the general to his service by handing over Josephine. In this realm of erotic freedoms, a man who should wish, of a sudden, to insist on points of honour would simply make himself ridiculous. There are no knights and ladies now, but only citizens and citizenesses, who pair and separate as they please.

Barras has long since decided that Napoleon shall command the Army of Italy; and when Josephine, womanlike, is unable to make up her mind, Barras gives her a definite pledge to this effect. There are good reasons, too, why he should send the dangerous man to the most difficult front. Napoleon’s great plan, the one which has procured him his position on the general staff, is now sent to Nice, and comes back with annotations by the commander-in-chief there. The man who has drafted the plan, says that worthy, must have been a lunatic. He had better come and try his own hand at the job. That is exactly what the Directory has been angling for. The writer of the criticism is recalled, and the “lunatic” is sent to take his place.

The position is assured; the prudent Josephine hesitates no longer. A legal friend has to certify that no birth certificate is now obtainable from the blockaded island in the West Indies, and that the authorities must therefore take the lady’s word for the statement that she is twenty-eight. Since this knocks five years off her age, the bridegroom is gallant enough to add a year to his own. Thus the marriage begins with a twofold falsification of dates. A marriage settlement arranging for the division of property is signed, although the vicomtesse owns nothing but debts, and the warrior declares that his only possessions are his clothes, his uniform.

In the wedding ring, the words “To Destiny!” are engraved.

Two days later, he leaves Paris. Eleven crazy love letters are sent to her from eleven halting places. In Nice he joins his army, and takes over a command which will lead him beyond the frontiers of Europe.

It is the season of the equinoctial gales. From a turret he looks across at the enemy coast, and thinks: “This is the place I have always coveted as a starting-point. Behind me lies Paris; and her bedchamber, hung with mirrors. That is happiness. It is mine. Over there, across the mountains, in that hostile land, is fame. The goal of my desire.”

As he turns away, he catches sight of a familiar line of mountains shimmering in the distant blue. No longer does this hold his attention.

It is his lost homeland. The island.