muddy fields to the embarkation point. Their labours were anyway in
vain, for only a single ship's boat was sent in to San Stefano to take off
the men. Unable to retrieve his cannon, Napoleon was forced to spike
them.
The Maddalena enterprise was fiasco with a capital 'f and made
Napoleon almost apoplectic with rage. It left him with a keen sense of
betrayal as a key factor in warfare and a distaste for amphibious
operations which, some say, was the unconscious factor in his ill
considered later plans for the invasion of England. But the immediate
effect of the fiasco was to finish Paoli with Napoleon for good. Restless,
ambitious, aggressive and treacherous- all the adjectives Paoli applied to
the Bonapartes - were exactly the epithets Napoleon now fastened on the
'saviour' of Corsica, the man he had worshipped for years.
On 28 February Napoleon landed at Bonifacio to find that his
suspicions of Paoli were shared by the Convention in Paris, for on 5
February they appointed three Commissioners to investigate the worsen
ing situation on the island; leading the deputation was Napoleon's ally
Christopher Saliceti. But Napoleon had his own deteriorating position to
consider, for at the beginning of March, in the Place Doria at Bonifacio,
there was an attempt on his life in which Napoleon again claimed to see
the hand of Paoli. Some sailors denounced him as an aristocrat and
formed a lynching party, which was foiled by the arrival of a group of
Napoleon's volunteers. Napoleon became convinced that the 'sailors'
were disguised Paolistas, possibly the selfsame ones who had fomented
the 'mutiny' on board the corvette off Maddalena.
He decided to beard the elderly lion in his den. He requested an
interview with Paoli at the convent of Rostino, which turned into an
acrimonious confrontation. To begin with Napoleon tried to softpedal,
aware that if it came to civil war on the island, the Paolistas were likely to
win, the Bonaparte properties then being confiscated and his family
reduced to destitution. He urged Paoli not to turn his back on the
Revolution which had brought him back from exile and to take the long
view of the nation's interests. Paoli spoke angrily of the way the French
Revolution had gone sour, how its leaders wanted a subservient, not
independent, Corsica and of how Marat, Danton and the others had
forced people in the west of France into open rebellion. Most of all, he
said, he was disgusted by the execution of Louis XVI, which for him was
the last straw. Napoleon protested that Louis had met his fate deservedly
for conspiring with foreign powers and inviting their armies on to the
sacred soil of France. At this point Paoli stormed from the room. The
two men never saw each other again.
marcin
(Marcin)
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