Finally, on December seventeenth, after careful preparation, a concerted attack was made at all three points. Officers and men were daring and efficient everywhere. Buonaparte, assuming responsibility for the batteries, was ubiquitous and reckless. The movement on which he had set his heart was successful in every portion; the enemy was not only driven within the interior works, but by the fall of Little Gibraltar his communication with the sea was endangered. The whole peninsula, the fort itself, the point and the neighboring heights were captured. Victor, Muiron, Buonaparte, and Dugommier led the storming columns. The Allies were utterly demoralized by the fierce and bloody struggle. Since, therefore, the supporting fleets could no longer remain in a situation so precarious, the besieged at once made ready for departure, embarking with precipitate haste the troops and many of the inhabitants. The Spaniards fired two frigates loaded with powder and the explosion of the magazines shook the city and its suburbs like an earthquake. In that moment the young Sidney Smith landed from the British ships and laid the trains which kindled an awful conflagration. The captured French fleet lying at anchor, the magazines and shops of the arsenal, all its enclosures burst into flames, and one explosion followed another in an awe-inspiring volcanic eruption. The besiegers were stupefied as they gazed, and stopped their ears. In a few hours the city was completely evacuated, and the foreign war vessels sailed away from the offing. The news of this decisive victory was despatched without a moment's delay to the Convention. The names of Salicetti, Robespierre, Ricord, Fréron, and Barras are mentioned in Dugommier's letters as those of men who had won distinction in various posts; that of Buonaparte does not occur.
There was either jealousy of his merits, which are declared by his enemies to have been unduly vaunted, or else his share had been more insignificant than is generally supposed. He related at St. Helena that during the operations before Toulon he had had three horses killed under him, and showed Las Cases a great scar on his thigh which he said had been received in a bayonet charge at Toulon. "Men wondered at the fortune which kept me invulnerable; I always concealed my dangers in mystery." The hypothesis of his insignificance appears unlikely when we examine the memoirs written by his contemporaries, and consider the precise traditions of a later generation; it becomes untenable in view of what happened on the next day, when the commissioners nominated him for the office of general of brigade, a rank which in the exchange of prisoners with the English was reckoned as equal to that of lieutenant-general. In a report written on the nineteenth to the minister of war, Duteil speaks in the highest terms of Buonaparte. "A great deal of science, as much intelligence, and too much bravery; such is a faint sketch of the virtues of this rare officer. It rests with you, minister, to retain them for the glory of the republic."
On December twenty-fourth the Convention received the news of victory. It was really their reprieve, for news of disaster would have cut short their career. Jubilant over a prompt success, their joy was savage and infernal. With the eagerness of vampires they at once sent two commissioners to wipe the name of Toulon from the map, and its inhabitants from the earth. Fouché, later chief of police and Duke of Otranto under Napoleon, went down from Lyons to see the sport, and wrote to his friend the arch-murderer Collot d'Herbois that they were celebrating the victory in but one way. "This night we send two hundred and thirteen rebels into hell-fire." The fact is, no one ever knew how many hundreds or thousands of the Toulon Girondists were swept together and destroyed by the fire of cannon and musketry. Fréron, one of the commissioners, desired to leave not a single rebel alive. Dugommier would listen to no such proposition for a holocaust. Marmont declares that Buonaparte and his artillerymen pleaded for mercy, but in vain.
Running like a thread through all these events was a little counterplot. The Corsicans at Toulon were persons of importance, and had shown their mettle. Salicetti, Buonaparte, Arena, and Cervoni were now men of mark; the two latter had, like Buonaparte, been promoted, though to much lower rank. As Salicetti declared in a letter written on December twenty-eighth, they were scheming to secure vessels and arm them for an expedition to Corsica. But for the time their efforts came to naught; and thenceforward Salicetti seemed to lose all interest in Corsican affairs, becoming more and more involved in the ever madder rush of events in France.
This was not strange, for even a common politician could not remain insensible to the course or the consequences of the malignant anarchy now raging throughout France. The massacres at Lyons, Marseilles, and Toulon were the reply to the horrors of like or worse nature perpetrated in Vendée by the royalists. Danton having used the Paris sections to overawe the Girondist majority of the Convention, Marat gathered his riotous band of sansculottes, and hounded the discredited remnant of the party to death, flight, or arrest. His bloody career was ended only by Charlotte Corday's dagger. Passions were thus inflamed until even Danton's conduct appeared calm, moderate, and inefficient when compared with the reckless bloodthirstiness of Hébert, now leader of the Exagérés. The latter prevailed, the Vendeans were defeated, and Citizen Carrier of Nantes in three months took fifteen thousand human lives by his fiendishly ingenious systems of drowning and shooting. In short, France was chaos, and the Salicettis of the time might hope for anything, or fear everything, in the throes of her disorder. Not so a man like Buonaparte. His instinct led him to stand in readiness at the parting of the ways. Others might choose and press forward; he gave no sign of being moved by current events, but stood with his eye still fixed, though now in a backward gaze, on Corsica, ready, if interest or self-preservation required it, for another effort to seize and hold it as his own. It was self-esteem, not Corsican patriotism, his French interest perhaps, which now prompted him. Determined and revengeful, he was again, through the confusion of affairs at Paris, to secure means for his enterprise, and this time on a scale proportionate to the difficulty. The influence of Toulon upon Buonaparte's fortunes was incalculable. Throughout life he spoke of the town, of the siege and his share therein, of the subsequent events and of the men whose acquaintance he made there, with lively and emphatic interest. To all associated with the capture he was in after years generous to a fault, except a few enemies like Auna whom he treated with harshness. In particular it must not be forgotten that among many men of minor importance he there began his relations with some of his greatest generals and marshals: Desaix, Marmont, Junot, Muiron, and Chauvet. The experience launched him on his grand career; the intimacies he formed proved a strong support when he forced himself to the front. Moreover, his respect for England was heightened. It was not in violation of a pledge to hold the place for the Bourbon pretender, but by right of sheer ability that they took precedence of the Allies in command. They were haughty and dictatorial because their associates were uncertain and divided. When the Comte de Provence was suggested as a colleague they refused to admit him because he was detested by the best men of his own party. In the garrison of nearly fifteen thousand not a third were British. Buonaparte and others charged them with perfidy in a desire to hold the great fort for themselves, but the charge was untrue and he did not disdain them, but rather admired and imitated their policy.[Back to Contents]
CHAPTER XVIII.
A Jacobin General.
Transformation in Buonaparte's Character — Confirmed as a French General — Conduct of His Brothers — Napoleon's Caution — His Report on Marseilles — The New French Army — Buonaparte the Jacobin Leader — Hostilities with Austria and Sardinia — Enthusiasm of the French Troops — Buonaparte in Society — His Plan for an Italian Campaign.
1793-94.
Hitherto prudence had not been characteristic of Buonaparte: his escapades and disobedience had savored rather of recklessness. Like scores of others in his class, he had fully exploited the looseness of royal and early republican administration; his madcap and hotspur versatility distinguished him from his comrades not in the kind but in the degree of his bold effrontery. The whole outlook having changed since his final flight to France, his conduct now began to reveal a definite plan—to be marked by punctilious obedience, sometimes even by an almost puerile caution. His family was homeless and penniless; their only hope for a livelihood was in coöperation with the Jacobins, who appeared to be growing more influential every hour. Through the powerful friends that Napoleon had made among the representatives of the Convention, men like the younger Robespierre, Fréron, and Barras, much had already been gained. If his nomination to the office of general of brigade were confirmed, as it was almost certain to be, the rest would follow, since, with his innate capacity for adapting himself to circumstances, he had during the last few weeks successfully cultivated his power of pleasing, captivating the hearts of Marmont, Junot, and many others.