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

by Thomas E. Watson

It was at Toulon that fame first took up that young dare-devil, Junot, whom Napoleon afterward spoiled by lifting him too high.

Supping with some brother officers near the batteries, a shell from the enemy fell into the tent, and was about to burst, when Junot rose, glass in hand, and exclaimed, “I drink to those who are about to die!” The shell burst, one poor fellow was killed, and Junot drank, “To the memory of a hero!”

Some days after this incident Junot volunteered to make for Napoleon a very dangerous reconnoissance. “Go in civilian’s dress; your uniform will expose you to too much risk.”—“No,” replied Junot, “I will not shrink from the chance of being shot like a soldier; but I will not risk being hanged like a spy.” The reconnoissance made, Junot came to Napoleon to report. “Put it in writing,” said Napoleon; and Junot, using the parapet of the battery as a desk, began to write. As he finished the first page, a shot meant for him struck the parapet, covering him and the paper with earth. “Polite of these English,” he cried, laughing, “to send me some sand just when I wanted it.” Before very long Napoleon was a general, and Junot was his aide-de-camp.

On December 17 everything was ready for the grand assault on the English works. Between midnight and day, and while a rainstorm was raging, the forts, which for twenty-four hours had been bombarded by five batteries, were attacked by the French. Repulsed at the first onset, Dugommier’s nerve failed him, and he cried, “I am a lost man,” thinking of that terrible committee in Paris which would cut off his head. Fresh troops were hurried up, the attack renewed, and Little Gibraltar taken. Thus Napoleon’s first great military success was won in a fair square fight with the English.

LETTER FROM BONAPARTE, COMMANDANT OF ARTILLERY, TO GENERAL CARTEAUX.

Assaults on other points in the line of defence had also been made, and had succeeded; and Toulon was at the mercy of Napoleon’s batteries. The night that followed was one of the most frightful in the annals of war. The English fleet was no longer safe in the harbor, and was preparing to sail away. Toulon was frantic with terror. The royalists, the Girondins, the refugees from Lyons and Marseilles, rushed from their homes, crowded the quays, making every effort to reach the English ships. The Jacobins of the town, now that their turn had come, made the most of it, and pursued the royalists, committing every outrage which hate and lust could prompt. Prisoners broke loose, to rob, to murder, to ravish. The town became a pandemonium. Fathers, mothers, children, rushed wildly for safety to the quays, screaming with terror, and plunging into the boats in the maddest disorder. And all this while the guns, the terrible guns of Napoleon, were playing on the harbor and on the town, the balls crashing through dwellings, or cutting lanes through the shrieking fugitives on the quays, or sinking the boats which were carrying the wretched outcasts away. The English set fire to the arsenal, dockyard, and such ships as could not be carried off, and the glare shone far and wide over the ghastly tumult. Intensifying the horror of this hideous night came the deafening explosion of the magazine ships, and the rain of the fragments they scattered over all the surrounding water.

Some fourteen thousand of the inhabitants of Toulon fled with the English; some other thousands must have perished in the bombardment and in the butcheries of the days that followed. Toulon’s baseness had aroused the ire, the diabolism of the Revolution, and the vilest men of all her ravening pack were sent to wreak revenge. There was Barras, the renegade noble; Fréron, the Marat in ferocity without Marat’s honesty or capacity; Fouché, the renegade priest. And the other Commissioners were almost as ferocious; while from the Convention itself came the voice of Barère demanding the total destruction of Toulon. Great was the sin of the doomed city; ghastly was its punishment. Almost indiscriminately people were herded and mown down with musketry.

On one of the days which ensued, Fouché wrote to his friend, Collot d’Herbois: “We have sent to-day 213 rebels to hell fire. Tears of joy run down my cheeks and flood my soul.” Royalist writers do not fail to remind the reader that this miscreant, Fouché, became minister of police to Napoleon. They omit the statement that he was used by Louis XVIII. in the same capacity.

Napoleon exerted himself to put a stop to these atrocities, but he was as yet without political influence, and he could do nothing. Some unfortunates he rescued from his own soldiers, and secretly sent away. He was forced to witness the execution of one old man of eighty-four, whose crime was that he was a millionnaire. “When I saw this,” said Napoleon afterward, “it seemed to me that the end of the world had come.”