Young bloods

Chapter 57

Corsica, 1789

When Napoleon landed in Ajaccio late in September he was astonished to find the island almost as he had left it over a year earlier, before the momentous events that had followed the summoning of the Estates General by King Louis. Among the sailors and townspeople on the harbour quay were soldiers from the garrison, still wearing the white cockade of the Bourbons in their hats when the rest of the French Army had adopted the red and blue cockade of Paris. As he walked up the streets to the family house Napoleon stared about his surroundings curiously. There were no posters on street corners proclaiming the latest news from the National Assembly, no impassioned debates outside the cafes and drinking holes of the town, no sense that the world was rapidly changing and that the vestiges of an old regime were being swept aside to clear the way for the new France.

Entering the house, he found his mother upstairs in the laundry room, standing by the window as she pulled the cord that stretched the dripping clothes along the line that hung across the courtyard at the back of the house. She turned and saw him. Napoleon set his hat down on a stool and went to embrace her.

'When you wrote to say the army had taken you back, I feared I wouldn't be seeing you for years.' She stroked his cheek. 'How long will you stay this time, Naboleone?'

He smiled. 'I really don't know. It could be many more months.'

'Good.That's good. Giuseppe came home from Italy last week. He's down at the court watching a trial today. He's missed you. So have I. I'll have you all together under one roof. Just as well, the way things are going.' She looked at him sharply. 'So what exactly is happening in Paris?'

'You must have heard the news, Mother. The whole world must have heard the news by now.'

'It's different here.You have the royalists saying that the King is biding his time, waiting for the chance to seize back his power. Then there's those hothead radicals at the Jacobin Club telling us that the old order is gone and we live in a democracy. And there's Paoli's followers claiming that the chaos in France is the best chance we'll have to win independence for Corsica.' She shrugged. 'But most people don't really care. Life goes on.'

'So I noticed.'

That evening, after dinner when all the younger siblings had been sent to bed with a promise that they would have Napoleon's attention the next day, he sat with his older brother and opened a bottle of wine.

'Well?' Joseph filled their glasses. 'What are you really doing back in Corsica?'

'Besides enjoying the company of my family and dear brother?'

Joseph smiled. 'Besides that.'

'France does not want my services at present. So it's time I took a more active role in Corsica.You've been here for a while. What is the feeling among the people?'

Joseph looked at his brother shrewdly.'You mean, what are the chances of the Paolists? It's hard to say. In the National Assembly the deputy chosen to represent Corsica's nobles is Buttafuoco. He says the French Government can keep the island by bribing some Corsicans and having no mercy on the rest. The deputies for the third estate are Antoine Cristoforo Saliceti and Cesari Rocca. They want nothing to do with Corsican independence and argue that Corsica's best interests are served by staying with France. So you see, there's no one to present the case for Corsican liberty in Paris.'

Napoleon thought for a moment before he spoke. 'Then it must be decided here.'

His brother chuckled. 'That's what I thought you'd say.'

The Jacobin Club met in one of the inns on the streets dominated by the walls of the citadel.The members were delighted to recruit Napoleon. If the King's officers had become interested in radical politics then there was no hope of returning to the dark days of the old regime. The club subscribed to as many of the Paris newspapers as they could afford.The most avid attention was paid to the reports of the proceedings of the Jacobin Club in Paris. Napoleon read these items with as keen an eye as the other members and was particularly taken by the arguments put forward by a deputy called Robespierre, formerly a lawyer from Arras. There was something familiar about his rhetorical style, though Napoleon could not place it.

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.