of the La Fere regiment stood idly by and, a little later, caught the spirit
of mutiny themselves. They marched to du Teil's house, demanded
money with menaces, got drunk and compelled some officers to drink
with them and dance the farandole. Order was eventually restored, but
du Teil thought it best to break up the regiment and canton it in
different locations along the banks of the Saone. Napoleon, who on 23
August took an oath of fidelity to Nation, King and the Law, apparently
confessed that he would have obeyed du Teil and turned his guns on the
mutineers, even though his ideological sympathies were with the
Revolution.
For some time Napoleon had been requesting another period of
furlough, and this was eventually granted on 2 r August, but after the
trouble with his regiment, du Teil thought that no leave at all should be
granted. He was, however, overruled by the provincial governor who
sensibly thought that such punitive action would simply increase the sum
total of resentment. Napoleon's leave was granted from rs October but,
given the usual month's 'long-distance' travelling time, he left for Corsica
on 9 September. He accompanied the Baron du Teil as far as Lyons,
then continued alone to Valence, where he took the river coach to the
mouths of the RhOne. In Marseilles he visited his hero the Abbe Raynal
before crossing to Ajaccio, where he arrived at the end of September
1789.
On this leave, Napoleon began his career as Corsican politician - or
troublemaker, as his critics would have it. Learning that the new military
commander in Corsica, the Vicomte de Barrin, was a timid and irresolute
man with just six battalions at his call, Napoleon trimmed and
temporized with the Revolutionary faction, now dominant on the island.
The politics of Corsica were of quite extraordinary complexity, with
personal politics and class conflict overlying clan loyalties and ideological
struggle. Early in 1789, the situation had been reasonably clear. To the
famous meeting of the Estates-General in Versailles went the comte de
Buttafuoco, who had asked Rousseau to write a constitution for Corsica,
representing the nobility; Peretti della Rocca for the clergy; and for the
Third Estate Colonna Cesari and X Saliceti.
However, the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 was, for
Corsica, like applying a match to a powder-keg. On the royalist side the
vicomte de Sarrin was soon outflanked by firebrands like his deputy
General Gaffori. Corsica largely embraced the Revolutionary cause, and
the first Constituent Assembly adopted a resolution that the island was no
longer conquered territory but an integral part of France. In February
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