Saliceti and Gasparin arrived after the fighting to confer their political 'imprimatur'.

They found
their favourite, Major Bonaparte, lying wounded on the ground, having taken an English
sergeant's pike in his inner left thigh just above the knee. At first there was panic, and it was
thought amputation would be necessary to prevent gangrene. But a military surgeon was brought
in for a second opinion and pronounced the wound not serious. Ever after, however, Napoleon
bore a deep scar. More seriously wounded in the final assault was a man who would loom large
in Napoleon's later life: Claude-Victor Perrin, the future Marshal Victor. At that time, the
twenty-nine-year-old Victor outranked Napoleon, being a lieutenant-colonel, but after Toulon
both men were promoted together to the same rank of brigadier-general. Other future marshals to
make their mark at Toulon were Marmont, then a nineteenyear-old captain, and a twenty-three-
year-old lieutenant, Louis-Gabriel Suchet. It was at Toulon also that Napoleon first met the
greatest of all soldiers whom ever commanded his armies, twenty-five-year-old Louis Charles
Desaix, and the man who would be his greatest friend, twentyone-year-old Geraud Christophe
Duroc. But not all Napoleon's new acquaintances were of high calibre: one, who would soon
marry into his family, was the stupid and pretentious blond-haired Victor Emmanuel Leclerc.
Napoleon's prediction about L'Eguillette was soon borne out: on the r 8th the British took the
decision to abandon Toulon. The twenty-nineyear-old English sailor Sidney Smith, already
knighted for feats of gallantry, and Hood's right-hand man in Toulon, remarked that troops
'crowded to the water like the herd of swine that ran furiously into the sea possessed of the devil'.
Hood and Smith set fire to the military arsenal and gutted all the ships they could not use, then
put to sea under cover of darkness. The terrific explosion when the arsenal finally blew up at 9
p.m. 76 that evening made a great impression on Napoleon's romantic soul. The French began to
enter Toulon next day. Toulon was a great triumph for Napoleon's nascent military genius, but it
was marred by wholesale massacre once the French armies got inside the city. The surrender of
Toulon to the British had given the Committee of Public Safety a terrible fright, and they reacted
with the vengeful reflex common on such occasions. The mass executions began on 20
December: two hundred officers and men of the naval artillery, then another two hundred
'collaborators' the next day. A Jacobin official named Fouche, later to be heard from, put forward
a pilot version of General Franco's infamous twentieth-century credo of redemption through
bloodshed: 'We are shedding much blood, but for humanity and duty.' Napoleon, anxious that his
great moment should not be besmirched by hecatombs of blood, and anyway unable to do more
than stumble about, largely shut his eyes to what was going on around him. It was anyway
inexpedient to take notice. Dugommier did so, and was immediately suspected of being an
enemy of the people. But black propaganda linking Napoleon with the Toulon massacres can be
disregarded. Even if Napoleon's later claim that 'only the ringleaders' were shot is humbug, so
too is Sidney Smith's assertion that Bonaparte personally mowed down the innocent in hundreds.
Toulon was a significant milestone in Napoleon's career and he always looked back on it with
romantic nostalgia. Anyone who was with him at Toulon could, in later years, be certain of
promotions and rewards, even the useless Carteaux. It is interesting to note that he had already
met many of the people who would loom large in the consular and imperial periods: Desaix,
Duroc, Junot, Marmont, Victor, Suchet. Napoleon had now made his reputation among elite
circles, even if he was still a long way from being a household name. The political commissars
hastened to promote him to brigadier-general on 22 December, and this was ratified by the
Committee of Public Safety on 16 February 1794. Du Teil reported to the Ministry of War: 'I
lack words to convey Bonaparte's merit to you; much knowledge, equal intelligence and too
much bravery; that is but a feeble sketch of this rare officer's virtues.' Yet Toulon was no
guarantee of a glittering future for Napoleon. The political situation was still too uncertain, and
too many revolutionary generals had been sacked, shot or guillotined to make Toulon the
inevitable prelude to his nse. After recovering from his wounds, Napoleon was in Marseilles
until the end of the year and was then given command of the artillery arm of the 77 Army of
Italy, with headquarters at Nice. With his general's pay of r s,ooo livres a year - a twelvefold
increase in income since joining the La Fere regiment seven years earlier - he was able to instal
Letizia at the Chateau Salle, a pretty country house near Antibes set in groves of palm,
eucalyptus, mimosa and orange trees. Always down-to-earth and practical, Letizia impressed the
locals by doing her own laundry in a stream that ran through the garden, even though funds were
plentiful enough. Napoleon now took stock of his family. Of the younger brothers, so far his
favourite was Louis, a bookish fifteen-year-old. 'Louis has just the qualities I like,' Napoleon
wrote, 'warmth, good health, talent, precision in his dealings, and kindness.' Lucien was mainly
antagonistic. He was annoyed that Napoleon had secured Joseph a sinecure with Saliceti but had
left him (Lucien) to rot as a commissariat storekeeper in the village of St-Maximin (where he
was also president of the Revolutionary Committee) on a pittance of r ,zoo francs a year. Partly
out of pique, and to show his independence, Lucien married an illiterate and penniless
innkeeper's daughter without even consulting Letizia: so much, he seemed to say, for the
Bonaparte pretensions to nobility. Another looming cloud on the family horizon was Napoleon's
favourite sister, Pauline, rising fourteen. Already a stunning creature, who combined beauty with
magnetic sex-appeal (not actually all that common a combination), she was already turning heads
and inviting unwelcome attention. Androche Junot, promoted to lieutenant for his feats at
Toulon, was one of those bowled over when he accompanied his general on a visit to Chateau
Salle. The one success in the family, Napoleon apart, seemed to be Joseph. In Marseilles lived a
rich merchant in the silk, soap and textiles trade named Franc,;ois Clary, a man with royalist
sympathies. In the troubles of 1793 Clary backed the wrong horse and, when Marseilles fell to
government troops, had the Jacobin firebrand Stanislas Freron on his neck. One of Clary's sons
was thrown into jail and the other committed suicide to avoid a firing squad. Broken by grief and
anxiety, Franc,;ois Clary pined away and died. His widow came to Saliceti to petition for her son
Etienne's release and to lift the anathema of 'counter-revolutionary running dogs' that had fallen
on the family. At Saliceti's she met Joseph, charmed him and invited him to dine. There he met
the elder daughter Julie Clary, aged twenty-two, and, learning that she was to inherit 8o,ooo
francs once her father's will was settled, promptly issued a certificate, exonerating the family of
all royalist sympathies. Out of gratitude, Julie agreed to be his wife, and a wedding date was
fixed for August 1794. After a short spell as inspector of coastal fortifications between 78
Marseilles and Toulon, while he waited for the ratification of his new appointment to come
through, Napoleon moved to Nice, with the faithful Junot in tow, to take up his post as senior
gunner in the Army of Italy. Until mid-July 1794 he was to be found commuting from Nice
westwards to Antibes and Frejus and eastward to San Remo and Vintimiglia, tirelessly working
on new military schemes and confirming the battlereadiness of his units. After two years of
warfare against Austria, the Army of Italy was stalemated in a fruitless campaign against
Piedmont, which was being constantly rearmed, reinforced, supplied and sustained by the British
Navy operating through Genoa. Napoleon began by writing up a stratagem for capturing
Oneglia. When this fell, on 9 April 1 794, his reputation was sky high and he was asked to write
a general memorandum on grand strategy. Basing his strategy on the writings of Guibert de
Bourcet, Napoleon devised a plan that enabled the Army ofltaly to advance to the watershed of
the Maritime Alps, having secured control of the passes of Col d' Argentiere, Tende and St-
Bernard. With the enthusiastic support of Augustin Robespierre, who took Bonaparte's
memorandum to Paris with him, Napoleon argued that if the French attacked in Piedmont,
Austria would be forced to come to the aid of her Austrian possessions and thus weaken her
position on the Rhine, allowing the French to strike a knockout blow there. Napoleon's chances
of getting the plan accepted looked good, for his new commander-in-chief, General Dumerbion,
deferred in all things to the political commissars; Saliceti and Augustin Robespierre, in turn,
nodded through anything military that came from the pen of Napoleon. The one obstacle to the
implementation of Napoleon's plans was Carnot in Paris. Carnot argued instead for an invasion
of Spain, in the teeth of the explicit advice in the Bonaparte memorandum that Spain was too
tough a nut to crack - ironically advice Napoleon himself was to ignore later in his career. But
Carnot was adamant that the Piedmont venture would not proceed. There are even some
historians who argue that the fervent advocacy of the Italian invasion by the Robespierre brothers
was what turned Carnot against them and sealed their fate. The famous 'Thermidorean reaction'
of 27 July 1 794 (9 Thermidor), which brought the Robespierre brothers and the Jacobin leaders
to the guillotine, was the end of the French Revolution in all but name. After three years in which
the Left had ruled the roost in Paris, it was now the turn of the Right. As a committed Jacobin
and friend of Augustin Robespierre, Napoleon was in danger. It has sometimes been suggested
that he was not really in deadly peril from the ideological point of view, 79 for he was perceived
in Paris as a military technician par excellence and in the very month of Thermidor had become a
general-elect and sworn an oath to the Revolution itself. That may be true in a general sense, but
unfortunately for him, at the very moment of Thermidor, Napoleon found himself in a
compromising situation through having undertaken a secret mission to Genoa. There was really
no great mystery about this visit. Napoleon was authorized to go to Genoa by Ricord, one of the
political commissars, as part of the general scheme for preparing a counter-stroke against Austria
in Piedmont. But it was unfortunate that just before he went he fell out with Saliceti. The reasons
are obscure, but there was a persistent rumour that they had been rivals for the favours of the
same girl in Nice. Annoyed by Napoleon's refusal to leave the amatory field clear for him, after
all he had done for the Bonapartes, Saliceti also had to save his own skin after Thermidor, so
came forward to denounce the chief of artillery. Saliceti now claimed that Napoleon had gone to
Genoa on secret instructions from the Robespierres, to hatch a contingency plan with the enemy,
to be activated in case the brothers fell from power; in his letter to the Committee of Public
Safety on 6 August, Saliceti spoke of dark deeds, including the deposit of French gold in a
Genoese bank account. The accusation was preposterous, but in the feverish, paranoid
atmosphere after Thermidor anything was believed possible. On 10 August Napoleon was placed
under house arrest at his residence in the rue de Villefranche in Nice and later lodged either in
the prison of Fort Carre in Antibes or under house arrest with Comte Laurenti in Nice -
incredibly the record is confused, with evidence pointing either way and partisans for one or
other view claiming that the documentation supporting the rival view is 'forged'. His papers were
seized and sent to Saliceti for examination, and Lucien Bonaparte was arrested as an accomplice.
The different attitudes of the two brothers are instructive. Lucien grovelled, debased himself and
asked for mercy. Napoleon wrote a dignified rebuttal, rehearsing his services to the Republic and
his exploits at Toulon. In confinement he showed himself an optimist by reading and taking
notes on Marshal Maillebois's account of his campaign in Piedmont in 1745. But in his heart he
thought his number was up, and discussed with Junot plots to spring him from captivity.