“If three men were to declare that I have committed a crime, I could not complain if the jury should declare me guilty.
“Salicetti, you know me. Have you, during the five years of our acquaintance, found in my conduct any thing which could be suspected as against the revolution?
“Albitte, you know me not. No one can have given you convincing evidence against me. You have not heard me; you know, however, with what smoothness calumny oftentimes whispers.
“Must I then be taken for an enemy of my country? Must the patriots ruin, without any regard, a general who has not been entirely useless to the republic? Must the representatives place the government under the necessity of acting unjustly and impolitically?
“Mark my words; destroy the oppression which binds me down, and re-establish me in the esteem of the patriots.
“If, then, at some future hour, the wicked shall still long for my life, well, then I consider it of so little importance—I have so often despised it—yes, the mere thought that it can be useful to the country, enables me to bear its burden with courage.” [Footnote: Bourienne, “Memoires sur Napoleon,” etc., vol. i., p. 63.]
Whether these energetic protestations of Bonaparte, or whether some other motives, conduced to the result, Salicetti thought that with Napoleon’s arrest he had furnished sufficient proof of his patriotic sentiments; it seemed to him enough to have obscured the growing fame of the young general, and to have plunged back into obscurity and forgetfulness him whose first steps in life’s career promised such a radiant and glorious course!
It matters not, however, what circumstances may have wrought out; the representatives Salicetti and Albitte issued a decree in virtue of which General Bonaparte was, after mature consideration and thorough examination of his papers, declared innocent and free from all suspicion. Consequently, Bonaparte was temporarily set at liberty; but he was suspended from his command in the Italian army, and was recalled to Paris, there to be made acquainted with his future destination.
This destination was pointed out to him in a commission as brigadier-general of infantry in the province of Vendee, there to lead on the fratricidal strife against the fanatical Chouans, the faithful adherents of the king.
Bonaparte refused this offer—first, because it seemed to him an insulting request to ask him to fight against his own countrymen; and secondly, because he did not wish to enter the infantry service, but to remain in the artillery.