therefore schemed to denude the island of Napoleon's volunteers while
secretly taking steps to ensure the ultimate failure of Truguet's project.
Because of the ill-feeling between regulars and volunteers, Paoli
persuaded Truguet to mount two attacks: the main assault under
Truguet would be at Cagliari, and a diversionary thrust would be made
against La Maddalena, the largest of the eleven Buccinari islands that lie
between Corsica and Sardinia. For the diversionary attack on La
Maddalena, with its two forts, Paoli successfully intrigued to have his
nephew Colonna Cesari named as colonel, with Napoleon as third-in
command (for Qu enza was also participating). After carrying out half
hearted artillery manoeuvres at Bonifacio, Napoleon embarked with 450
volunteers on r8 February I793· Altogether the assault force on
Maddalena comprised six hundred men (rso regulars) and four guns,
conveyed in sixteen transports escorted by a single corvette.
The omens for the expedition were inauspicious from the very
beginning. Heavy gales forced the ships back to Aj accio, so that it was the
evening of 22 February before they anchored off the western end of the
channel between La Maddalena and the neighbouring island of San
Stefano. A surprise attack at nightfall was the obvious ploy, but Cesari
ruled this out. Napoleon was already despondent: 'We had lost the
favourable moment, which in war is everything,' he wrote. But he stuck
to his task. On 23 February, after troops had landed, secured a beachhead
on San Stefano and captured the island's fort, he set up a battery of two
cannon and a single mortar within range of La Maddalena. 24 February
saw the bombardment commence, and Colonna Cesari promised that the
main assault would take place next day.
Dark deeds were afoot on the 25th and even today it is not easy to
follow the exact sequence of events. First the sailors on the corvette
appeared to have mutinied and forced Cesari to call off the entire venture,
even obliging him to send a formal letter to this effect to Qu enza. But
Napoleon, and many later analysts, believe there was no genuine mutiny
at all, that this was all part of a preconcerted stratagem between Paoli and
Cesari. Certainly the corvette departed with Cesari, leaving behind the
message that operations should be abandoned. Q!.Ienza's version of the
subsequent events was that he consulted with Napoleon and together
they laboriously broke off the shelling of La Maddalena. But on St
Helena Napoleon accused Qu enza of reembarking on the 25th without
telling him, with the consequence that he and his fellow artillerymen
were left dangerously exposed, vulnerable to a sortie from the Maddalena
garrison. The one certainty is that the bombardment was abandoned, and
that Napoleon and his platoon manhauled the one-ton guns through
marcin
(Marcin)
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