return to Paris after the abortive flight to Varennes, and few observers
doubted that it was the beginning of the end for Louis XVI. Napoleon,
however, thought that if he had been king it would have been an easy
matter to disperse the crowd.
All this time Napoleon had been submitting documents and affidavits
to the Ministry of War, trying to prove his version of events against the
hostile counter-testimony of Peraldi. On 21 June a departmental
committee of the Artillery accepted that Napoleon's reasons for not
returning from Corsica by r April were entirely satisfactory. The
committee rejected the Peraldi submission- which has been endorsed by
some modern critics of Napoleon - that to accept Napoleon's version was
to reward crime: it was preposterous, on this view, that a man who had
been leading a riot against the King's army in Corsica, should be
commended for it, and even secure the promotion he would have got
normally only by being with his regular army regiment. Whether
Napoleon was a master manipulator, or just lucky, or whether he
convinced the committee that he was a true son of the Revolution, the
result was the same. On ro July the Ministry of War informed him that
he would be reinstated in the 4th Artillery Regiment, with the rank of
captain.
This new commission was backdated to 6 February 1792 - which
meant Napoleon would receive the equivalent of £4o in back pay. To
warn him against further legerdemain, the Ministry announced that it
expected him to return to his regiment as soon as his promotion was
ratified; meanwhile, some minor complaints brought from Corsica by
Peraldi and Pozzo di Borgo would be dealt with by the Ministry of
Justice. Napoleon was delighted. He knew, as did his opponents, that the
Ministry of Justice was a lab yrinth where complaints disappeared. The
only thing keeping Napoleon in Paris now was the formal ratification of
this decision, in the name of the King, by Minister of War Joseph Servan.
Despite his triumph, Napoleon was gloomy. On 7 August he wrote to
Joseph that the interests of the family necessitated his return to Corsica,
but he would probably have to rejoin his regiment.
Before that, on 23 July he had written to Lucien words that show the
youthful idealism about Corsica giving way to generalized cynicism:
'Those at the top are poor creatures. It must be admitted, when you see
things at first hand, that the people are not worth the trouble taken in
winning their favour. You know the history of Ajaccio; that of Paris is
exactly the same; perhaps men are here even a little smaller, nastier, more
slanderous and censorious.'
On ro August Jean-Paul Marat masterminded the decisive blow
marcin
(Marcin)
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