independent and separate Corsica. Paoli, at first the champion of the
Revolution against the old regime, increasingly emerged as a conservative
figure, moving back into reaction even as many of his followers swung left
into Jacobinism. The fissiparous nature of the Paolist movement resulted
in violent religious riots in Bastia in June 1791. There was bloodshed,
Bastia lost the rank of capital city and, more ominously, Paoli's authority
and prestige were compromised and a parliamentary opposition arose
against him.
Napoleon in late 1791 still retained his faith in Paoli. His strategy now
was to parlay his furlough into a quasi-permanent leave while becoming
an Adjutant-Major in a volunteer company; this would make him a
significant military force in the land. But in December 1791 the National
Assembly came close to torpedoing this strategy with a law requiring all
officers in the regular army to return to their regiments for a nationwide
census, to be carried out between 25 December and 10 January 1792.
Fortunately for Napoleon, the deputy military commander in Corsica,
General Antonio Rossi, had already petitioned Minister of War
Narbonne for Napoleon's commission in the Ajaccio volunteer regiment,
and a favourable reply to the request arrived in January 1791. Rossi wrote
to Colonel Campagnol of the 4th Regiment to inform him that First
Lieutenant Bonaparte was now an Adjutant-Major in the Corsican
Volunteers.
But Napoleon's problems were not yet over, for in February 1792 the
National Assembly passed a further law, requiring all officers of volunteer
battalions to rejoin their regular army regiments by the end of March; the
only exception permitted was to the handful of colonels of important
volunteer battalions. There were only two such lieutenant-colonelships in
Corsica, and it was now Napoleon's task to obtain one of them or see his
career as a Corsican political fixer in ruins.
The two colonelships were elective positions, in which the five
hundred or so National Guardsmen cast two votes for their two chosen
candidates, in order of preference. Napoleon began by getting Paoli's
backing for himself and Q!Ienza as the two Lieutenant-Colonels. They
faced stiff opposition, particularly from Jean Peraldi and Pozzo di Borgo,
scion of another of Ajaccio's great families. Napoleon began by laying out
a good part of Archdeacon Lucien's legacy on bribery: more than two
hundred voting volunteers were lodged free of charge in the grounds of
the Casa Buonaparte and provided with lavish board for the two weeks
before the elections. Then Napoleon thought of other ways to scupper
the opposition. Tradition says that he actually tried to eliminate Pozzo di
Borgo physically, by challenging him to a duel which Pozzo did not
marcin
(Marcin)
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