Straits of the Buonaparte Family — Napoleon's Efforts to Relieve Them — Home Studies — His History and Short Stories — Visit to Paris — Renewed Petitions to Government — More Authorship — Secures Extension of his Leave — The Family Fortunes Desperate — The History of Corsica Completed — Its Style, Opinions, and Value — Failure to Find a Publisher — Sentiments Expressed in his Short Stories — Napoleon's Irregularities as a French Officer — His Life at Auxonne — His Vain Appeal to Paoli — The History Dedicated to Necker.
1787-89.
When Napoleon arrived at Ajaccio, and, after an absence of eight years, was again with his family, he found their affairs in a serious condition. Not one of the old French officials remained; the diplomatic leniency of occupation was giving place to the official stringency of a permanent possession; proportionately the disaffection of the patriot remnant among the people was slowly developing into a wide-spread discontent. Joseph, the hereditary head of a family which had been thoroughly French in conduct, and was supposed to be so in sentiment, which at least looked to the King for further favors, was still a stanch royalist. Having been unsuccessful in every other direction, he was now seeking to establish a mercantile connection with Florence which would enable him to engage in the oil-trade. A modest beginning was, he hoped, about to be made. It was high time, for the only support of his mother and her children, in the failure to secure the promised subsidy for her mulberry plantations, was the income of the old archdeacon, who was now confined to his room, and growing feebler every day under attacks of gout. Unfortunately, Joseph's well-meant efforts again came to naught.
The behavior of the pale, feverish, masterful young lieutenant was not altogether praiseworthy. He filled the house with his new-fangled philosophy, and assumed a self-important air. Among his papers and in his own handwriting is a blank form for engaging and binding recruits. Clearly he had a tacit understanding either with himself or with others to secure some of the fine Corsican youth for the regiment of La Fère. But there is no record of any success in the enterprise. Among the letters which he wrote was one dated April first, 1787, to the renowned Dr. Tissot of Lausanne, referring to his correspondent's interest in Paoli, and asking advice concerning the treatment of the canon's gout. The physician never replied, and the epistle was found among his papers marked "unanswered and of little interest." The old ecclesiastic listened to his nephew's patriotic tirades, and even approved; Mme. de Buonaparte coldly disapproved. She would have preferred calmer, more efficient common sense. Not that her son was inactive in her behalf; on the contrary, he began a series of busy representations to the provincial officials which secured some good-will and even trifling favor to the family. But the results were otherwise unsatisfactory, for the mulberry money was not paid.
Napoleon's zeal for study was not in the least abated in the atmosphere of home. Joseph in his memoirs says the reunited family was happy in spite of troubles. There was reciprocal joy in their companionship and his long absent brother was glad in the pleasures both of home and of nature so congenial to his feelings and his tastes. The most important part of Napoleon's baggage appears to have been the books, documents, and papers he brought with him. That he had collections on Corsica has been told. Joseph says he had also the classics of both French and Latin literature as well as the philosophical writings of Plato; likewise, he thinks, Ossian and Homer. In the "Discourse" presented not many years later to the Lyons Academy and in the talks at St. Helena, Napoleon refers to his enjoyment of nature at this time; to the hours spent in the grotto, or under the majestic oak, or in the shade of the olive groves, all parts of the sadly neglected garden of Milleli some distance from the house and belonging to his mother; to his walks on the meadows among the lowing herds; to his wanderings on the shore at sunset, his return by moonlight, and the gentle melancholy which unbidden enveloped him in spite of himself. He savored the air of Corsica, the smell of its earth, the spicy breezes of its thickets, he would have known his home with his eyes shut, and with them open he found it the earthly paradise. Yet all the while he was busy, very busy, partly with good reading, partly in the study of history, and in large measure with the practical conduct of the family affairs.
As the time for return to service drew near it was clear that the mother with her family of four helpless little children, all a serious charge on her time and purse, could not be left without the support of one older son, at least; and Joseph was now about to seek his fortune in Pisa. Accordingly Napoleon with methodical care drew up two papers still existing, a memorandum of how an application for renewed leave on the ground of sickness was to be made and also the form of application itself, which no doubt he copied. At any rate he applied, on the ground of ill health, for a renewal of leave to last five and a half months. It was granted, and the regular round of family cares went on; but the days and weeks brought no relief. Ill health there was, and perhaps sufficient to justify that plea, but the physical fever was intensified by the checks which want set upon ambition. The passion for authorship reasserted itself with undiminished violence. The history of Corsica was resumed, recast, and vigorously continued, while at the same time the writer completed a short story entitled "The Count of Essex,"—with an English setting, of course,—and wrote a Corsican novel. The latter abounds in bitterness against France, the most potent force in the development of the plot being the dagger. The author's use of French, though easier, is still very imperfect. A slight essay, or rather story, in the style of Voltaire, entitled "The Masked Prophet," was also completed.
It was reported early in the autumn that many regiments were to be mobilized for special service, among them that of La Fère. This gave Napoleon exactly the opening he desired, and he left Corsica at once, without reference to the end of his furlough. He reached Paris in October, a fortnight before he was due. His regiment was still at Douay: he may have spent a few days with it in that city. But this is not certain, and soon after it was transferred to St. Denis, now almost a suburb of Paris; it was destined for service in western France, where incipient tumults were presaging the coming storm. Eventually its destination was changed and it was ordered to Auxonne. The Estates-General of France were about to meet for the first time in one hundred and seventy-five years; they had last met in 1614, and had broken up in disorder. They were now called as a desperate remedy, not understood, but at least untried, for ever-increasing embarrassments; and the government, fearing still greater disorders, was making ready to repress any that might break out in districts known to be specially disaffected. All this was apparently of secondary importance to young Buonaparte; he had a scheme to use the crisis for the benefit of his family. Compelled by their utter destitution at the time of his father's death, he had temporarily and for that occasion assumed his father's rôle of suppliant. Now for a second time he sent in a petition. It was written in Paris, dated November ninth, 1787, and addressed, in his mother's behalf, to the intendant for Corsica resident at the French capital. His name and position must have carried some weight, it could not have been the mere effrontery of an adventurer which secured him a hearing at Versailles, an interview with the prime minister, Loménie de Brienne, and admission to all the minor officials who might deal with his mother's claim. All these privileges he declares that he had enjoyed and the statements must have been true. The petition was prefaced by a personal letter containing them. Though a supplication in form, the request is unlike his father's humble and almost cringing papers, being rather a demand for justice than a petition for favor; it is unlike them in another respect, because it contains a falsehood, or at least an utterly misleading half-truth: a statement that he had shortened his leave because of his mother's urgent necessities.
The paper was not handed in until after the expiration of his leave, and his true object was not to rejoin his regiment, as was hinted in it, but to secure a second extension of leave. Such was the slackness of discipline that he spent all of November and the first half of December in Paris. During this period he made acquaintance with the darker side of Paris life. The papers numbered four, five, and six in the Fesch collection give a fairly detailed account of one adventure and his bitter repentance. The second suggests the writing of history as an antidote for unhappiness, and the last is a long, rambling effusion in denunciation of pleasure, passion, and license; of gallantry as utterly incompatible with patriotism. His acquaintance with history is ransacked for examples. Still another short effusion which may belong to the same period is in the form of an imaginary letter, saturated likewise with the Corsican spirit, addressed by King Theodore to Walpole. It has little value or meaning, except as it may possibly foreshadow the influence on Napoleon's imagination of England's boundless hospitality to political fugitives like Theodore and Paoli.
Lieutenant Buonaparte remained in Paris until he succeeded in procuring permission to spend the next six months in Corsica, at his own charges. He was quite as disingenuous in his request to the Minister of War as in his memorial to the intendant for Corsica, representing that the estates of Corsica were about to meet, and that his presence was essential to safeguard important interests which in his absence would be seriously compromised. Whatever such a plea may have meant, his serious cares as the real head of the family were ever uppermost, and never neglected. Louis had, as was feared, lost his appointment, and though not past the legal age, was really too old to await another vacancy; Lucien was determined to leave Brienne in any case, and to stay at Aix in order to seize the first chance which might arise of entering the seminary. Napoleon made some provision—what it was is not known—for Louis's further temporary stay at Brienne, and then took Lucien with him as far as their route lay together. He reached his home again on the first of January, 1788.
The affairs of the family were at last utterly desperate, and were likely, moreover, to grow worse before they grew better. The old archdeacon was failing daily, and, although known to have means, he declared himself destitute of ready money. With his death would disappear a portion of his income; his patrimony and savings, which the Buonapartes hoped of course to inherit, were an uncertain quantity, probably insufficient for the needs of such a family. The mulberry money was still unpaid; all hope of wresting the ancestral estates from the government authorities was buried; Joseph was without employment, and, as a last expedient, was studying in Pisa for admission to the bar. Louis and Lucien were each a heavy charge; Napoleon's income was insufficient even for his own modest wants, regulated though they were by the strictest economy. Who shall cast a stone at the shiftiness of a boy not yet nineteen, charged with such cares, yet consumed with ambition, and saturated with the romantic sentimentalism of his times? Some notion of his embarrassments and despair can be obtained from a rapid survey of his mental states and the corresponding facts. An ardent republican and revolutionary, he was tied by the strongest bonds to the most despotic monarchy in Europe. A patriotic Corsican, he was the servant of his country's oppressor. Conscious of great ability, he was seeking an outlet in the pursuit of literature, a line of work entirely unsuited to his powers. The head and support of a large family, he was almost penniless; if he should follow his convictions, he and they might be altogether so. In the period of choice and requiring room for experiment, he saw himself doomed to a fixed, inglorious career, and caged in a framework of unpropitious circumstance. Whatever the moral obliquity in his feeble expedients, there is the pathos of human limitations in their character.