When the members were not reading the Paris papers they were engaged in heated debate around the tables of the inn, whose owner looked on benignly as he grew steadily wealthier from the massively increased trade. Napoleon soon became one of the most outspoken members of the club. At last there was a vehicle for all the reading and note-taking and essay writing that had occupied much of the lonely life he had led in his off-duty hours. The long rehearsed arguments that he had nurtured in his breast now gushed out in a torrent of irresistible logic and moral principle, and his audience followed him with an intensity that was only relieved by their roars of approval and thunderous applause.
Early in the new year his local reputation had become so established that he was elected as an officer of Ajaccio’s newly formed unit of the National Guard. The French authorities, still only partially accommodated to the new regime that was establishing itself in Paris, viewed the links between the fiery members of the Jacobin Club and the volunteers of the National Guard unit with growing concern, and in the spring they made their move.The Swiss troops garrisoning the citadel disarmed and disbanded the volunteers and closed down the Jacobin Club.
From the long table in the salon of his mother’s home, Napoleon penned a bitter letter of complaint about this suppression to deputies Saliceti and Rocca in Paris. While he waited for a reply he travelled north to Bastia and distributed revolutionary cockades to people in the streets, even as he established links with local patriots and tried to determine if the French garrison might be incited to mutiny.
There was bad news when he returned to Ajaccio. The papers reported that Saliceti was trying to persuade the National Assembly to press on with the integration of Corsica into the French state, and declare the island to be one of the new departments that France had been divided into. Napoleon’s mood was black. The liberation of his homeland seemed more unlikely than ever with the Corsican deputies working so assiduously to bind the island into the French nation. Everything now depended on Paoli and building up support for the overthrow of French rule by force.
Chapter 58
Pasquale Paoli made his triumphant return from exile in the spring of 1790. Joseph and Napoleon were amongst the delegation from Corsica that met the great man in Marseilles. At sixty-six he still stood tall and erect, and had the remains of the commanding features that had so inspired his countrymen in earlier years. Even Napoleon sensed the spell of the man when he was introduced. Paoli held him by the shoulders and gazed into his eyes.
‘Citizen Buona Parte, I had the privilege of knowing your father. Carlos was a good man. I grieved when I heard of his death, far too early for a young man of his promise. At least he has good sons to carry on his work.’
Napoleon bowed his head in gratitude and replied, ‘Yes, sir. We will not rest until Corsica has won its freedom.’
‘Freedom …’ Paoli’s brow tightened slightly as he continued to stare in Napoleon’s eyes. ‘Yes, we will enjoy all the freedoms that the new France has to offer.’
He squeezed Napoleon’s shoulder and moved on to the next member of the delegation.
A huge crowd had gathered to greet Paoli as he stepped ashore in Bastia. A path had been cleared for him by the Swiss mercenaries of the Bastia garrison. He descended from the gangway, and raised his hat in salute to the cheering people. A large revolutionary cockade was pinned to the crown of the hat and Paoli waved it slowly from side to side as he strode along the quay, followed by the men of the delegation who smiled and waved to the crowd.
The Buona Parte brothers accompanied Paoli as far as Corte, the ancient capital in the centre of the island. There Joseph remained, having been promised a minor post in Paoli’s new administration. Napoleon made it known that he would be honoured to accept any military command under Paoli before he returned to Ajaccio alone. He reflected upon the delicacy of his situation.The Paolists wanted independence. Most of the Jacobins wanted radical democracy, and Napoleon wanted both. In pursuing that aim, he risked enmity from both sides.
In the late summer he returned to the newly reopened Jacobin Club and began to speak again. This time he kept his arguments focused on events in Corsica, rather than putting the case for the broader philosophical themes of the revolution. He argued that any true revolutionary would start the revolution where he stood. They should not wait on the politicians in Paris a moment longer. The Jacobins of Ajaccio should work towards seizing the citadel that loomed over the town and turn Ajaccio into a revolutionary commune. Napoleon added that the Catholic Church must be deprived of its tax rights and legal privileges. Even as he argued this, he knew that the Paolists would disapprove. They were nationalists, not atheists, and sure enough several members of the audience sprang to their feet to denounce Napoleon and condemn his heresies. He recognised one of them as Pozzo di Borgo, a former friend from his childhood. Napoleon pointed to him.
‘By what right does the Church enforce these taxes?’
‘By divine right!’ di Borgo shouted back.‘It is the Will of God.’
‘And where exactly is this Will of God set down? Not in the Bible. Not in any of the Scriptures.The truth is, men made those taxes. And men can unmake them without offending the Almighty.’
Di Borgo glared back at him. ‘The Church is the embodiment of God’s Will. If the Church requires taxes, it is because God requires taxes.’
‘God requires taxes?’ Napoleon laughed.‘What does God need taxes for? Are there bills to be paid in Heaven?’
Several of the younger members laughed with him, but di Borgo flushed with anger.‘Be careful, Buona Parte, or you will be judged sooner than you think.’ With that he turned and left the room, followed by several others and the jeers of the more radical amongst the Jacobins.
When Napoleon left the club late that night, a handful of the younger members walked home with him, in order to continue discussing some of the points made by that evening’s speakers. As the party turned into the street that led towards Napoleon’s home, several shadowy figures emerged from a side alley and quickly spread out across the road. Each carried a club.
‘What’s this?’ one of Napoleon’s companions laughed nervously.‘There aren’t this many thieves in the whole of Ajaccio.’
‘Quiet!’ Napoleon snapped. The thud of boots from behind made him turn and he saw more dark shapes emerge from the direction of the Jacobin Club to close the trap. ‘Shit …’
For a moment, all was still in the street. Napoleon crouched down and clenched his fists. He drew a breath and cried out at the top of his voice, ‘Follow me!’
He threw himself towards the men blocking the street ahead, as his comrades came after him. Gritting his teeth, he ran into one of their attackers before the man could swing his club. They tumbled on to the cobblestones, Napoleon’s knee driving the wind from the man’s lungs as they landed. He smashed his fists into the man’s face, hearing the soft crunch of the nose breaking as the man gasped in pain. Napoleon glanced round, and saw a tangle of dark shapes fighting. It was impossible to tell who was on which side, just as he had hoped when he launched his attack. He felt the shaft of a club and he wrenched it from the man’s loose hand. Staying low, he backed towards the wall of a building facing the street. Before him the fight continued in a heaving mass of shadows accompanied by grunts and cries of pain. Suddenly a figure confronted him, club raised.
‘Come on,’ Napoleon growled. ‘Let’s get the bastards!’
‘Right!’ The man laughed and turned back towards the fight. At once Napoleon swung the club he had taken in a scything arc and smashed it into the other man’s knee with a loud crack. A shrill cry of agony split the air and the man sprawled to the ground. Napoleon filled his lungs and shouted. ‘Jacobins! With me!’ He turned and ran up the street towards his house. ‘Follow me!’
Footsteps scraped over the cobblestones and thudded after him as Napoleon ran on. Ahead he saw the dull glow of the lantern his mother had lit above the front door for his late return and he glanced back over his shoulder. The street behind him was filled with figures running in the same direction.
‘Come on! This way!’
He reached the door, lifted the latch and threw himself inside. Right behind him came two of his comrades, then another, blood gushing from his scalp. Napoleon wrenched open the cupboard where his father had kept his fowling piece. He grabbed the gun, drawing back the flintlock as he crossed back to the door and stood on the threshold. The first of the attackers came running up: a tall man with a scarf tied across his mouth and nose to conceal his identity.As he saw the muzzle of the gun he scrambled to a halt.
‘Get out of here!’ Napoleon yelled. ‘All of you! Or I swear I’ll shoot the first man to come a step nearer my house!’
‘Stand your ground!’ a voice called out from further down the street. Napoleon recognised it instantly.
‘Di Borgo! Tell your men to go, or I swear to God I’ll shoot.’
There was a tense moment of silence, before Napoleon heard a chuckle from the darkness.
‘So this is what it takes to make you a believer … There must be no more disrespect for the Church.You’ve had your warning, Buona Parte.There won’t be another. Come on, men, leave them.’
The shadows drew off and Napoleon waited until they were some distance away from the door before he lowered the gun and closed the door to the street. He glanced round at his companions and saw that they were all with him. Besides the youth with the head wound, one was nursing his jaw and another was clutching a broken wrist to his chest.All were panting and looked wild-eyed with excitement and fear. Napoleon saw that his own hands were trembling as they clutched the gun.
‘Hey,’ one of his comrades muttered, ‘would you really have shot at them?’
Napoleon smiled and raised the barrel towards the ceiling. ‘I don’t think anyone’s loaded it in years.’
He pulled the trigger. At once there was a fizz and a deafening explosion as a chunk of plaster exploded from the ceiling. The others jumped back in alarm and then stared at Napoleon in shock.
Moments later a door was wrenched open, feet pattered across the landing and his mother screamed out,‘What on earth is going on? Who’s firing guns in my house at this time of night?’
Napoleon exchanged an anxious glance with his comrades, before they dissolved into laughter.
Napoleon took the warning seriously enough to make sure that he never entered the streets of Ajaccio alone. For the protection of himself and his family, he persuaded the members of the Jacobin Club to elect him lieutenant colonel of the town’s volunteer battalion of the National Guard. It was easily arranged, since he was one of the few men in Ajaccio with professional military training, and as autumn arrived Napoleon took up the post. Since the commander of the unit, Colonel Quenza, was an ageing merchant, another member of the Jacobin Club who had never fired a weapon in anger, let alone taken part in any training exercises, this left Napoleon in effective command of the unit. With a force of five hundred men behind him he had no further trouble from di Borgo and his Paolist friends. Napoleon was free to continue developing his political base in Ajaccio. At the same time he trained the men of the National Guard as thoroughly as possible, under the amused eyes of the off-duty soldiers of the garrison, who were inclined to neglect their training drills in this generally quiet backwater.
The only excitement the following summer was the news of the royal family’s attempt to escape from Paris and join up with an army of émigrés and foreign mercenaries to seize power back from the National Assembly. Napoleon joined the other members in the Jacobin Club as they crowded round the copies of the
Moniteur
and the
Mercure
to read the first accounts of the King’s arrest at Varennes. No one was in any doubt that he was little more than a prisoner of the new regime in Paris. The very last vestige of his authority had dissolved in his failed escape attempt.
‘It’s over then,’ Napoleon decided as he finished reading the reports.
‘What’s over?’ one of the younger members of the club asked.
‘The monarchy. It’s finished.’ Napoleon tapped the newspaper with his finger. ‘The King and that fool of a Queen have been caught out.They’ve been pretending to go along with the reforms ever since the Estates General first met. And all the time they have been plotting against the French people. Now they’ll be seen for what they are - traitors.’
Several faces turned in Napoleon’s direction and he was aware that he had said too much. Even now, even here in the Jacobin Club, there were some who clung to a tradition of respect for the Crown. France was not quite ready to dispense with the monarchy, at least not without causing bitter divisions. But given that there was no longer any way of hiding from the venality of King Louis, the National Assembly would be forced to act, to save France as much as to save itself. Napoleon reflected a moment. If the King was deposed, and that led to a breakdown in order and maybe even civil war, then it was imperative that Corsica did not get embroiled.The island had suffered enough already in its thirst for freedom.
Chapter 59
As the year came to an end, Napoleon received a letter from the War Office in Paris, ordering him to return to the artillery regiment in Auxonne. He still bitterly resented the conditions under which he had been sent on leave - been sent into exile it felt more like - so he simply ignored the letter and carried on drilling his men, and drawing up his plans. Christmas passed with all the usual religious festivals, and Napoleon kept out of sight rather than risk any further trouble over his opinions about the Church. His reputation at the Jacobin Club had won him little affection amongst many of the people of Ajaccio and his family feared for his life.
Early in the new year Napoleon took the volunteer battalion into the country to train them in battle tactics. On a wet, windy February afternoon he put in place the first step of his scheme. He was standing on a hillside beside Colonel Quenza, both men hunched inside their greatcoats as the rain dripped from the brims of their hats. Below them, spread across the rocky floor of a narrow valley, the men of the battalion were manoeuvring into a line of battle to take on an imaginary fortification that had been marked out with stakes some distance ahead. Napoleon was giving a running commentary to his superior, and explaining the new formation he was experimenting with.