Napoleon's Wars_ An International History, 1803-1815 - Charles Esdaile [20]
Set against this is the fact that he had been espousing radical political views since his days as an officer cadet. Yet, as we have seen, those closest to him never trusted his sincerity in this respect, whilst to the very end he seems to have believed that he could win over Paoli to his way of thinking. One is left then with a picture of the most cynical calculation: love of Corsica was replaced not by love of France but love of Napoleon. For the moment that meant there must be much play-acting. Like most other works of their sort, the memoirs of Paul de Barras are not wholly to be trusted. Even so the picture that he paints of his first meeting with Napoleon is certainly plausible:
Bonaparte offered me a few copies of a pamphlet recently written by him, which he had had printed at Avignon, at the same time begging my permission to distribute it among the officers and privates of the Republican army. Carrying a huge bundle of them, he remarked while handing them round, ‘This will show you whether or not I am a patriot! Can any man be too much of a revolutionist? Marat and Robespierre are my saints!’15
Whatever the truth of this story, there is no doubt that Napoleon’s tactics worked. Fortunately for him, one of the three représentants en mission whom the Convention had elected to send to the Marseilles area in the summer of 1793 was Antoine-Christophe Saliceti. An old friend of Joseph who had represented Corsica in the National Assembly, he had become the de facto leader of the island’s Jacobins. Operating very much in the spirit of Corsican clan loyalty, he now befriended the Bonapartes. At his urging the Convention voted the family substantial financial compensation, while Joseph was found a post as an assistant commissary on the staff of the army that had been sent to subdue the Midi under General Carteaux. As for Napoleon, his efforts as a propagandist were lauded to the skies in Saliceti’s dispatches to Paris and on 16 September he was given command of the guns supporting the army besieging Toulon. Of the famous episode that followed, it is necessary to say very little in so far as the actual fighting is concerned, though Napoleon undoubtedly not only showed both courage and decision, but also considerably hastened the fall of the city. What does deserve comment is the egocentrism that he displayed in the course of the affair. Napoleon, it seems, knew best, and lost no time in letting his opinions be known. Thanks to his complaints, the first commander of the besieging army, General Carteaux, was replaced and imprisoned, while his successor, General Dugommier, eventually became so irritated by his constant interventions that he had to order him to mind his own business and confine his attention to the artillery. Coupled with all this were clear signs of a desire to play to the gallery. Napoleon appeared amidst his gunners to direct their fire in person, slept on the ground wrapped up in a cloak, made a particularly gallant sergeant an officer on the spot (the man in question was the future General Junot), cultivated the friendship of a small ‘band of brothers’ that included such men as Victor, Marmont and Duroc, and finally proved his physical courage by taking part in the final assault on horseback, when his place as commander of the artillery was rather in the rear. Whether he deserved the renown that he won in the course of the fighting is debatable, but the truth hardly mattered. Hero or not, he had made his name.
It was at Toulon that my reputation began. All the generals, representatives and soldiers who had heard me give