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

by Thomas E. Watson

Ostensibly, therefore, Napoleon’s mission was about the stores which Genoa withheld, and about the neutrality which she was allowing to be violated. But within this purpose lay another. Genoa, and her neutrality was an obstacle to French military plans; she was weak, and the temptation to seize upon her was strong. Napoleon while at Genoa was to look about him with the keen eyes of a military expert, and to form an opinion as to the ease with which the little republic could be made the victim of a sudden spring.

This mission, which bears an unpleasant resemblance to that of a spy, was undertaken at the instance of the younger Robespierre. Salicetti and Albitte had not been consulted, and knew nothing of the secret instructions given to Napoleon. Suddenly recalled to Paris by his brother, Robespierre wished to take with him the young officer whose “transcendent merit” he had applauded. With Napoleon to command the Paris troops, instead of Henriot, the Robespierres might confidently expect victory in the crisis they saw coming. But it was a part of Napoleon’s “transcendent merit” to possess excellent judgment, and he declined to go to Paris. So the friends parted: the one to visit little Genoa and bully its feeble Doge, the other to return to the raging capital and to meet sudden death there in generous devotion to his brother.

Napoleon reached Nice again, July 21, 1794, after his successful mission to Genoa, and in a few days later came the crash. The Robespierres were overthrown, and the Bonapartes, classed with that faction, fell with it. Napoleon was put under arrest; his brothers thrown out of employment. For some reason Salicetti and Albitte, previously so friendly to Napoleon, had turned upon him, had denounced him to the Convention, and had signed the order of arrest—an order almost equivalent to a death warrant.

It was a stunning, unexpected blow. Madame Junot, in her Memoirs, hints that the traditional woman was at the bottom of it; that the younger man, Napoleon, had found favor in the eyes of a lady who looked coldly upon the suit of Salicetti. But this explanation does not explain the hostility of other commissioners, for members of two separate commissioners signed against Napoleon. Surely he had not cut them all off from the smiles of their ladies. No; it would seem that Napoleon owed his tumble to the fact that he was standing upon the Robespierre scaffolding when it fell. He merely fell with it.

He was known as a Robespierre man, and to a very great extent he was. He had been put under heavy obligations by the younger brother whom he liked, and he did not believe that the elder was at heart a bad man. He had seen private letters which the elder brother had written to the younger, in which letters the crimes of the more rabid and corrupt revolutionists were deplored, and the necessity for moderation and purity expressed. Among those who befouled the names of the Robespierres, either then or afterward, Napoleon is not to be found. He understood well enough that the convulsion of July 27, 1794 (Thermidor), was the work of a gang of scoundrels (Barras, Fouché, Carrier, Tallien, Billaud, Collot), who took advantage of circumstances to pull down a man who had threatened to punish them for their crimes. Napoleon believed then and afterward that Robespierre had been a scapegoat, and that he had not been responsible for the awful days of the Terror in June and July 1794. The manly constancy with which he always clung to his own estimates of men and events is shown by the way in which he spoke well of the Robespierre brothers when all others damned them, and by his granting Charlotte Robespierre a pension at a time when the act could not have been one of policy. Marvellous was the complexity of Napoleon’s character; but like a thread of gold runs through all the tangled warp and woof of his life the splendid loyalty with which he remembered those who had ever been kind to him. Not once did he ever pursue a foe and take revenge so far as I can discover; not once did he ever fail to reward a friend, so far as the record is known.

Napoleon’s arrest created such indignation among the young officers of the army of Italy that a scheme for his forcible release was broached. Junot, Marmont, and other ardent friends were to take him out of prison and flee with him into Genoese territory. Napoleon would not hear of it. “Do nothing,” he wrote Junot. “You would only compromise me.”

Junot the hot-headed, Junot the tender-hearted, was beside himself with grief; and he wept like a child as he told the bad news to Madame Letitia.

But Napoleon himself was not idle. He knew that to be sent to Paris for trial at that time was almost like going to the scaffold, and he made his appeal directly to the Commissioners. By name he addressed Salicetti and Albitte, in words manly, bold, and passionate, protesting against the wrong done him, demanding that they investigate the case, and appealing to his past record and services for proofs of his republican loyalty. This protest had its effect. Salicetti himself examined Napoleon’s papers, and found nothing against him. The suspicious trip to Genoa was no longer suspicious, for his official instructions for that trip were found.

After an imprisonment of about two weeks, he was released, but his employment was gone. He still held his rank in the army, but he was not on duty. It was only as an adviser and spectator that he remained, and, at the request of Dumerbion, furnished a plan of campaign, which was successful to the extent that Dumerbion pushed it. He did not push it far enough to gain any very solid advantages, much to Napoleon’s disgust.

It was at this time that the incident occurred which he related at St. Helena. He was taking a stroll with the wife of the influential Commissioner Turreau, when it occurred to him to divert and interest her by giving her an illustration of what war was like. Accordingly he gave orders to a French outpost to attack the Austrian pickets. It was a mere whim; the attack could not lead to anything. It was done merely to entertain a lady friend. The soldiers could but obey orders. The attack was made and resisted. There was a little battle, and there were soldiers wounded, there were soldiers killed. And the entertainment which the lady got out of it was the sole other result of the attack.