Italian Yesterdays, vol. 2

by Mrs. Hugh Fraser

From his hiding-place, he wrote again to Fouché, but that adaptable gentleman was now Minister to Louis XVIII, and vouchsafed no answer. Fouché was one of those human chameleons that fit themselves into any colour-scheme, and all the wars, plots, revolutions, and Armageddons of the past years had passed him by. He had just succeeded in betraying Wellington, to whom he had promised Napoleon’s plan of campaign, by sending the plans and then taking steps to see that the messenger was delayed long enough on the frontier to make the delivery of them useless; and now he was more monarchist than the poor old monarch himself, hunting out his late associates mercilessly. Murat begged for a passport to England, but no notice was taken of his appeal. In despair and having escaped, by what seemed to be a miracle, from the hands of the Marquis de la Rivière, who owed his life to Joachim’s favour, he wrote to Louis himself, requesting Fouché to deliver his letter. But Fouché sent no word, and no answer came from Louis, who probably never saw the letter at all; and, seeing no other hope for him, Murat resolved to go to Paris and place himself in the hands of the Allied Sovereigns. They could not, in reason, blame him for doing to them that which they had all, at various periods during the past twenty years, done to one another. He had been a great figure—a greater figure than any of them. They had now no reason for betraying his confidence; and they were neither vengeful nor bloodthirsty. He would be safer with them than among his own countrymen. His idea was to travel by sea—for to attempt a land journey would have been something not far removed from suicide—to Havre de Grâce, whence he could make his way to Paris with little risk. So, having made arrangements for a vessel, and chosen a wild and unfrequented part of the coast and a dark night for his embarkation, he set out.

But the vessel, for some reason or other, did not arrive at the spot that night and Murat was compelled to retire among the rocks and vineyards for shelter, and here he remained, hoping against hope, until the darkness gave way to the summer dawn, and the light from the faint topaz-coloured east on the waters showed nothing that looked like the craft he had bargained for.

Perhaps it was meant, that crushing disappointment, for there is no saying, in the light of the conditions which reigned at the Capital, whether he would ever have reached the Sanctuary of the Allies at all. The White Terror, a plague as fierce and irresponsible as the Red one of a quarter of a century earlier, was raging uncontrolled and uncontrollable, and the deeds of Murat, as King of Naples in 1814, would not have counted then, for the Emperor’s broken Marshal. Fouché’s agents very nearly caught him that time, and he had to fly from cover to cover like a hunted hare; but he escaped from them, and a while later slipped away in a little ship that was bound for Corsica.

Even now the demon of his ill-luck, still unsatiated, continued to pursue him, for after two days a storm overtook them which forced them to lower their single, three-cornered sail, and let the boat run under bare poles for a day and a half, at the end of which time, when the little ship was filling rapidly, they were picked up by the Corriera, on her way to Bastia. A large French vessel which they had spoken a few hours earlier had refused to have anything to do with them, and when this other one, more charitable, came alongside, Murat, uncovering his face, told the Captain his name.

“A Frenchman,” he said. “I speak to Frenchmen, and, nearly shipwrecked, I ask aid from those who are themselves out of danger.”

Greatly to his surprise and his gratification, he was treated with every honour and welcomed on board as a king, and, the next day, he landed at Bastia.

He had come at a moment when Corsica was in the throes of a civil war of its own, between the followers of the Bourbons, the adherents of Napoleon, and a party who, sitting on the fence between, called themselves Independents. Many of Murat’s old-time companions-in-arms had been natives of Corsica, and, the Napoleonists and Independents being in the majority, they called upon Joachim to help them crush the remainder and rule over the island afterwards. This was the sort of invitation which the fiery cavalryman was always only too ready to accept, and his heart soared into the heavens!

One begins to understand the reason why Napoleon could hold all Europe down, when one reads the adventures of Murat and Ney and Soult. Even when the Great Force behind them was removed, and they were struggling single-handed, while the least and weakest chance remained to continue fighting, they would fight. They never counted the odds, they never parleyed with a compromise, repeated defeats never cooled their courage; they would follow as hard upon the faintest ray of hope as they had galloped into the blazing sunlight of an assured victory.

It was not long before Joachim became the object of the deepest suspicion to such authorities as still remained in Corsica and he removed himself to Vescovado, and thence to Ajaccio, with the enthusiastic assistance of the discontented element in the island. Once more, under the action of the popular support, he began to feel a king, and frequently remarked that, if strangers rallied to him in this fashion, the Neapolitans might be expected to rise en masse at his appearance. “I accept it as a happy augury!” he exclaimed.

It seems incredible that, after his experience among them, Joachim should have an illusion left about his late subjects. But he evidently had, and he determined to descend upon Salerno, where three thousand of his former troops were quartered. They were, he was sure, discontented with the Bourbons—being what they were, they were bound to be discontented with any sort of established authority—and with these he expected to march towards Avellino, increasing his following as he went, throwing a panic into the capital before him; in fine, repeating the Napoleonic performance, and seating himself firmly upon the throne before the Austrians could descend upon him.