Adam Zamoyski - Napoleon - The Man Behind the Myth

From his essays and notes it is clear that he was already a republican, having, like Rousseau, come to the conclusion that existing systems of government were absurd and that kings had no right to rule. In the introduction to what was to be a dissertation on royal authority, he argued that this was entirely ‘usurped’, since sovereignty resided in the people, adding that ‘there are very few kings who have not deserved to be dethroned’. He also adopted Rousseau’s thesis that religion was destructive, since it was in competition with the state as it held out the promise of happiness in another world, when it was for the state to provide people with the means to achieve it in this.13

He continued to read, annotating and commenting as he went, on subjects as varied as ancient and modern history, geography, the fiscal systems of different states, the role of artillery and ballistics, Greek philosophy, Arab culture, biology, natural history, the possibility of digging a canal through the isthmus of Suez, and many more. That summer he read Richardson’s Clarissa and Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther , and himself wrote Le Comte d’Essex , a gothick novella about an imagined conspiracy against Charles I featuring ghosts, blood and daggers, and Le Masque Prophète , a short piece set in the Arab world which is a kind of parable about dictatorship. The plots are melodramatic, the prose bristles with adjectives and metaphors, not to mention spelling mistakes, the characterisation is non-existent.14

Auxonne lay in a marshy, misty part of the Burgundian plain, and Napoleone believed it was the insalubrious exhalations from the stagnant moat beyond the ramparts which brought him down with a fever that autumn, but it may in part have been a consequence of his lifestyle. He was economising on food in order to be able to send money home to his mother. He lived in barracks, in a small room with a bed, a table, six straw-seated chairs and one armchair. He messed with the other officers, but although his lodgings were free, he was still only on the pay of second lieutenant, so he had to be careful. But there was also a manic element to his life at this time. ‘I have no other resource here but work,’ he wrote to his great-uncle Luciano in March 1789. ‘I only get dressed once a week, I sleep very little since my illness. It is incredible. I go to bed at ten o’clock and get up at four in the morning. I only take one meal and dine at three; it suits my health very well.’ He would keep the shutters closed to help his concentration. He did in fact go out, for, as he proudly explained in the same letter, ‘I have gained quite a distinguished reputation in this little town with my speeches on various occasions.’15

The French monarchy was virtually bankrupt, and as a last resort to raise money the king called the Estates General. As this body, representing the clergy, the nobility and the non-noble ‘third estate’, had not been summoned for nearly two centuries, this opened up a Pandora’s box of questions about the nature of the government. All over the country people of every station aired their views and propounded solutions to the political crisis. This was accompanied by popular unrest, and on 1 April Napoleone was sent to the town of Seurre with 100 men to suppress riots. The rebellious spirit inspired bad behaviour, and one day he was sent to the monastery of Citeaux to quell a mutiny by the monks. Over dinner a grateful abbot served him ‘delicious wine’ from the Clos Vougeot in the monastery cellar, which the monks had tried to raid. In a letter to Letizia, he described the sumptuous Easter dinner he was given by a local nobleman. ‘But I would rather have been eating ravioli or lasagne in Ajaccio,’ he concluded.16

He was in high spirits. His health had recovered, the weather was glorious, and he bathed in the Saône (once he got a cramp and nearly drowned). ‘My friend, if my heart were susceptible to love, what a favourable moment this would be: fêted everywhere, treated with a respect that you could not imagine,’ he wrote to Joseph, boasting that ‘The prettiest women are delighted with our company.’17

Like most of his generation, he was in a state of excitement about political events. ‘This year heralds some beginnings which will be very welcome to all right-thinking people,’ he wrote to his proxy godfather Giubega from Auxonne in June, ‘and after so many centuries of feudal barbarism and political slavery, it is wonderful to see the word Liberty inflame hearts which seemed corrupted by luxury, weakness and the arts.’ But this raised questions closer to home. ‘While France is being reborn, what will become of us, unfortunate Corsicans?’ he asked. The moment seemed ripe for him to strike a blow for his island nation by publishing a history of Corsica, but he felt he needed the support or at least approval of Paoli, so he wrote to him in his London exile.18

‘I was born as the fatherland was perishing,’ he wrote. ‘My eyes opened to the odious sight of 30,000 French who had been vomited onto our shores drowning the throne of liberty in rivers of blood. The screams of the dying, the moans of the oppressed, tears of despair surrounded my cradle from the moment of my birth.’ There is some doubt as to the authenticity of this letter, as the original has never been found and there is no trace of a response from Paoli. But it would have been an odd one to forge, given Napoleone’s later career, and the melodramatic style is in tune with his contemporary writings, most notably his Nouvelle Corse . This is a confused rant against the French, represented as irredeemably cruel and corrupt, with a plot derived from Robinson Crusoe and Paul et Virginie so lurid and violent as to be incoherent, couched in a pornography of gore, rape and mutilation, punctuated by flights of sentimentality.19

The history he had been planning for the past few years was finally taking shape in the form of Lettres sur la Corse , an emotional account of events up to the beginning of the eighteenth century which anthropomorphises the Corsican ‘nation’ in the fashion of the day. When the first two letters were finished he sent them to his former French teacher at Brienne, the Abbé Dupuy, asking him to edit them. As well as rewriting whole passages, Dupuy delivered a withering verdict, suggesting in the politest terms that he cut out all the ‘metaphysical’ content.20

On 15 July, Napoleone was in the process of writing to his great-uncle Luciano when two brother officers came into the room with the news they had just received from Paris about a riot having got out of hand and the mob having stormed the Bastille. Whatever his feelings about the monarchy, he was alarmed at the disorders. Four days later, riots broke out in Auxonne, and in a letter to Joseph he expressed contempt for the ‘populace’ and the ‘assortment of brigands from outside who had come to pillage’ the customs house and the tax gatherer’s office. Nor was he impressed by the attitude of his own men, who showed reluctance to quell the riot. On the night of 21 July he acted as the general’s aide, marshalling troops against the rioters. While he claims to have brought matters under control with a forty-five-minute harangue (which sounds unlikely given his oratorical skills), he makes no bones about his frustration at not being allowed to fire on the mob, a profound distaste for which shines through his account.21

He was nevertheless excited by the developments. ‘All over France blood has flowed,’ he wrote to Joseph on 8 August, ‘but almost everywhere it was the impure blood of the enemies of Liberty and the Nation.’ His commander had put him in charge of a group of officers with the brief of studying the possibilities of firing bombs from siege pieces, and he wrote up its report diligently, but his thoughts were elsewhere. He had applied for long leave, meaning to go to Corsica and play a part in whatever might take place there. Both his feelings and his ambition drew him there: the ideal of the island nation he had nourished over the past few years beckoned, as did the fact that there he could play a more prominent part than in France.22