Napoleon: A Sketch of His Life, Character, Struggles, and Achievements

by Thomas E. Watson

The Convention realized the crisis; the Great Committee realized it; and the measures taken were prompt. Commissioners hurried to the scene, and troops poured in. Barras, a really effective man in sudden emergencies, Fréron, Salicetti, Gasparin, Ricord, Albitte, and Robespierre the Younger were all on hand to inspirit the army and direct events. Some twenty odd thousand soldiers soon beleagured the town. They were full of courage, fire, and enthusiasm; but their commander was a painter, Carteaux, whose ideas of war were very primitive. To find where the enemy was, and then cannonade him vigorously, and then fall on him with muskets, was about the substance of Carteaux’ military plans. At Toulon, owing to peculiarities of the position, such a plan was not as excellent as it might have been at some other places. Besides, he had no just conception of the means needed for such a work as he had undertaken. Toulon, with its double harbor, the inner and the outer, its defences by land and by sea, to say nothing of the fortresses which Lord Mulgrave had constructed on the strip of land which separated and commanded the two harbors, presented difficulties which demanded a soldier. Carteaux was brave and energetic, but no soldier; and week after week wasted away without any material progress having been made in the siege.

Near the middle of September, 1793, Napoleon appeared at Toulon,—at just the right moment,—for the artillery service had well-nigh broken down. General Duteuil, who was to have directed it, had not arrived; and Dommartin had been disabled by a wound. How did Napoleon, of the army of Italy, happen to be at Toulon at this crisis? The question is one of lasting interest, because his entire career pivots on Toulon. Mr. Lanfrey states that, on his way from Avignon to Nice, Napoleon stopped at Toulon, was invited by the Commissioners to inspect the works, and so won upon them by his intelligent comments, criticisms, and suggestions, that they appointed him at once to a command.

Napoleon’s own account of the matter was that the Minister of War sent him to Toulon to take charge of the artillery, and that it was with written authority that he confronted Carteaux, who was not at all pleased to see him. “This was not necessary!” exclaimed Carteaux. “Nevertheless, you are welcome. You will share the glory of taking the town without having borne any of the toil!”

But the biographers are almost unanimous in refusing to credit this account. Why Napoleon should have falsified it, is not apparent. Mr. Lanfrey says that Napoleon’s reason for not wishing to admit that the Commissioners appointed him was that he was unwilling to own that he had been under obligations to Salicetti. But Salicetti was only one of the Commissioners; he alone could not appoint. So far was Napoleon from being ashamed to acknowledge debts of gratitude that he never wearied of adding to the list. In his will he admits what he owed to the protection of Gasparin at this very period, and left a legacy of $20,000 to that Commissioner’s son. Hence Mr. Lanfrey’s reasoning is not convincing. Napoleon surely ought to have known how he came to be at Toulon, and his narrative is natural, is seemingly truthful, and is most positive.

But these recent biographers who dig and delve, and turn things over, and find out more about them a century after the occurrences than the men who took part in them ever knew, assert most emphatically that both Mr. Lanfrey and Napoleon are wrong. They insist that the way it all happened was this: After Dommartin was wounded, Adjutant General Cervoni, a Corsican, was sent to Marseilles to hunt around and find a capable artillery officer. Apparently it was taken for granted by whoever sent Cervoni, that capable artillery officers were straggling about at random, and could be found by diligent searchers in the lanes and by-ways of towns and cities. We are told that Cervoni, arrived in Marseilles, was strolling the streets, his eyes ready for the capable artillery officer,—when, who should he see coming down the road, dusty and worn, but his fellow-Corsican, Napoleon Bonaparte! Here, indeed, was a capable artillery officer, one who had just been to Avignon, and was on his way back to Nice.

That Cervoni should at once invite the dusty Napoleon into a café to take a drink of punch was quite as natural as any other part of this supernatural yarn. While drinking punch, Cervoni tells Napoleon his business, and urges him to go to Toulon and take charge of the artillery. And this ardently ambitious young man, who is yearning for an opening, is represented as at first declining the brilliant opportunity Cervoni thrusts upon him! But at length punch, persuasion, and sober second thought soften Napoleon, and he consents to go.

All this you may read in some of the most recent works of the diggers and delvers; and you may believe it, if you are very, very credulous.

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The arrival on the scene of an educated artillery officer like Napoleon, one whose handling of his guns at Avignon had achieved notable success, was a welcome event. His friends, the Commissioners, took him over the field of operations to show him the placing and serving of the batteries. He was astonished at the crude manner in which all the arrangements had been made, and pointed out the errors to the Commissioners. First of all, the batteries were not in range of the enemy; the balls fell into the sea, far short of the mark. “Let us try a proof-shot,” said Napoleon; and luckily he used a technical term, coup d’épreuve. Favorably impressed with this scientific method of expression, the Commissioners and Carteaux consented. The proof-shot was fired, and the ball fell harmlessly into the sea, less than halfway to its mark. “Damn the aristocrats!” said Carteaux; “they have spoilt our powder.”

But the Commissioners had lost faith in Carteaux’ management of the artillery; they determined to put Napoleon in charge of it.