was ordered up to A vignon to supervise a convoy bringing powder to the
Mediterranean for use by the Army of Italy. Napoleon's exact movements
in July and August are hard to follow, so it is not clear if he took part in
the fighting when Jacobin General Carteaux stormed Avignon on 24 July;
the probability is that he did not.
It was while proceeding south through Tarascon and Beaucaire on 28
July that he wrote his last major essay Le Souper de Beaucaire. The work is
cast in the form of a Socratic dialogue, with 'an army officer' (clearly
Napoleon) and a Marseilles businessman as principals; also participating
are a manufacturer from Montpellier and a citizen of Nimes. The
businessman defends the right of Provence to fight Carteaux, while the
officer castigates the men of the South for plunging France into civil war,
arguing that this cannot be justified while France has external enemies to
contend with. Napoleon's main point was that the conflict between
Girondin and Montagnard was unnecessary and played the royalists' game
for them: the real enemy of both sides were the rebels of the Vendee.
Needless to say, the army officer wins the argument, and in 'gratitude' the
businessman stays up late and buys him champagne. An unashamed work
of propaganda designed to justify the Jacobin position, Le Souper de
Beaucaire is notable for the vehemence of its attacks on Paoli:
Paoli, too, hoisted the Tricolor in Corsica, in order to give himself time
to deceive the people, to crush the true fr iends of liberty, and in order
to drag his compatriots with him in his ambitious and criminal plots; he
hoisted the Tricolor, and had the ships of the Republic fired at, he had
our troops expelled fr om the fo rtresses and he disarmed those who
remained... he ravaged and confiscated the property of the richer
fa milies because they were allied to the unity of the Republic, and all
those who remained in our armies he declared 'enemies of the nation'.
He had already caused the fa ilure of the Sardinian expedition, yet he
had the impudence to call himself the fr iend of France and a good
republican.Le Souper de Beaucaire was published as a pamphlet at the urging of
Saliceti, who saw that Napoleon had the makings of a propagandist of
genius. He in turn brought it to the notice of Augustin Robespierre,
brother of the leader of the new twelve-man executive in Paris, the
Committee of Public Safety. Robespierre thought the work brilliant and
was equally impressed by the author when he met him soon afterwards. A
great advance in point of style, economy and lucidity over his earlier
literary efforts, it shows Napoleon to be extremely well-informed on the
political and military issues of the day, and is the first time we see the