Napoleon's Wars_ An International History, 1803-1815 - Charles Esdaile [23]
Not for the first time in his career, Napoleon was soon contemplating suicide. Something of his misery comes across in the account of Bourrienne, with whom he now took up once again.
It was with pain that he resolved to wait patiently the removal of the prejudices which men in power had entertained against him, and he hoped that in the perpetual changes that were taking place power would at length pass into the hands of those who would be disposed to consider him with favour . . . He now became thoughtful, frequently melancholy and disturbed, and he . . . envied the good fortune of his brother, Joseph, who had just married Mademoiselle Clery, the daughter of a rich and respectable merchant at Marseilles . . . Meanwhile, time passed away, but nothing was done: his projects were unsuccessful, and his applications unattended to. This injustice embittered his spirit, and he was tormented with the desire to do something. To remain in the crowd was intolerable. He resolved to leave France, and the favourite idea . . . that the east was the most certain path to glory, inspired him with the desire to proceed to Constantinople, and to make a tender of his services to the [sultan].22
All this produced growing levels of resentment. On the one hand Napoleon reminisced fondly about Toulon and talked wildly of his ‘star’, while on the other he broke out in tirades against Saliceti, whom he held to be the cause of all his ills, and muttered about the posturing dandies known as incroyables who filled the streets. To all the other stimuli driving Napoleon forward there was therefore now added the desire for revenge, whether it was on the civilian politicians who had held back his career or on the society that had seemed so fickle in its appreciation of him. The urge was not necessarily personal: Saliceti, for example, was later treated with great generosity by Napoleon, who not only intervened to save him from imprisonment after the coup of 18 Brumaire, but gave him a series of important political and diplomatic appointments in Italy. But of his desire for vindication, there was no doubt: one day, he swore, he would command the streets of Paris, streets that were meanwhile quickly killing off what little was left of his youthful idealism. In the wake of the fall of puritanical Robespierre, monied society had been gripped by a wave of relief that manifested itself in hedonism, ostentation and a visible loosening of sexual mores. Costume became extravagant in the extreme, while men and women alike positively gloried in their promiscuity. ‘At this time,’ wrote a young army officer, ‘the disorganization of society reached its height. Rank had disappeared; wealth had changed hands. As it was still dangerous to boast of one’s birth . . . the new-rich . . . set the fashion, and to all the oddities of a faulty upbringing these people joined the absurdities of a patronage devoid of dignity . . . This taste for the arts . . . had the result of affecting the fashions, and even the habits, of the capital with the most bare-faced licence . . . One would not have believed it, unless one had seen it oneself, but charming women of good education and birth wore flesh-coloured trousers and . . . dresses of transparent muslin with their bosoms bare and their arms naked to the shoulder, and so appeared in public places.’23 Meanwhile, with the defence of property the chief order of the day, its acquisition became a matter that was only slightly less pressing: speculation and corruption knew no bounds. With all this going on against a background of the most utter misery, the effect was to promote the most far-reaching cynicism: liberty, fraternity and equality might still be paid lip service, but it was clear that, at best, they had become mere slogans. Nor was any of this lost on Napoleon. To quote a letter