on the frigate?'
'Don't know, sir. The colonel went out to the frigate as soon as we reached the beach. Before we had even got into the tenders one of them small boats came from the frigate.The officer, one of the colonel's staff, shouted the order and my officer sent me to fetch you.'
'So your company hadn't even reached the frigate?'
'No, sir.'
'So how can the situation be out of control?'
The man shrugged helplessly. 'I don't know, sir.'
Clearly the man knew no more than he had said, and Napoleon dismissed him. In a blind rage, before he could stop himself, he had clenched his fists into balls and smashed them against his thighs. 'SHIT!… Shit! Shit!'
Lieutenant Alessi approached him warily. 'Sir?'
'What? What do you want?'
'Orders, sir,' Alessi said gently. 'What are your orders?'
'Just a moment.' Napoleon forced himself to relax and concentrate. He must obey Colonel Colonna right now.The time to question his decisions would have to be later. But, there had better be a damn good reason for this folly. He cleared his head of the bitter rage that had briefly consumed him. 'Alessi, I'll stay here with the gun crews and half a company.You take the rest back to the boats.'
'What are you going to do, sir?'
'We can't let those guns fall into enemy hands. I'll have to destroy them, and all the other weapons here, before we leave. Now take the rest of the men and go.'
'Yes, sir.'
'Alessi, one last thing. Make sure that the good colonel doesn't leave without us…'
Napoleon selected his men quickly – strong, fit men, ready for back-breaking labour. When the din of nailed boots of the departing soldiers had faded sufficiently, Napoleon addressed the remaining men. 'We must destroy those guns. They have to go over the wall.'
The men set to work knocking gaps in the parapet, using their bayonets to chisel away the ancient mortar before others laid into the stones with hammers from the fort's workshop. As soon as the gaps were wide enough, the first gun carriage was painstakingly levered forward, then slowly toppled over the wall. Napoleon watched it tumble gracefully until the muzzle struck an outcrop of rock, which was pulverised by the impact. Then the gun crashed into the sea and vanished from sight. As soon as the second gun had joined it Napoleon checked to ensure that all the firearms had been destroyed, down to the last pistol, and then ordered his men to release the prisoners.
Napoleon was the last man to leave the fort and ran to catch up with the others.
The light was fading when they reached the beach. The frigate's boats were bobbing in the surf and Lieutenant Alessi and his men were holding their guns to the boats' crews. As Napoleon came running down the shingle to join the men scrambling aboard Alessi greeted him with a smile. 'I'm afraid I had to persuade these gentlemen to wait for you and the others.'
'Really?'
'Seems that the La Gloire was going to leave the moment the last of my grenadiers was aboard.' Alessi's expression was serious now. 'God knows what's going on, sir. But we'd better watch our backs.'
The sun was setting over the horizon and a cold evening breeze was humming in the frigate's rigging as Napoleon climbed up the side and on to the deck. The scene there was as calm and ordered as it had been when he had left the vessel before dawn. There was no sign of mutiny, no sign at all, and Colonel Colonna was nowhere to be seen.
Chapter 68
'I'm telling you, Joseph, the whole fiasco was intended to fail from the outset.' Napoleon stabbed his finger on the table to emphasise the point.
They were sitting in the salon of the family's house in Ajaccio. It was late, and the rest of the family had gone to bed. After Napoleon's return from the failed expedition in March he had told them some of what had happened after he sailed off to battle with the volunteers. The rest he saved for his older brother, and now that Joseph had come home Napoleon at last unburdened himself. Joseph had never seen him so filled with anger and bitterness.
'Paoli wanted me to fail. No, he wanted me to be abandoned there. To die, or to be taken prisoner.'
Joseph looked at his brother uncomfortably. 'Assuming for a moment that your suspicions-'
'Suspicions?' Napoleon exploded. 'Have you been listening to a word I've said? I don't have any suspicions about Paoli. I know precisely what kind of creature he is.Yesterday, one of my friends at the Jacobin Club told me there's a rumour that the Paolists are planning to assassinate me.'
'This is madness.' Joseph drew a breath and tried again, in a calm tone. 'What reason could Paoli have for wanting you to fail in your mission, and maybe be killed or captured in the process?'
Napoleon reached across the table and tapped Joseph on the forehead. 'Think! He did not want this operation to proceed. Paoli wants to stay on good terms with Piedmont, and sabotage French policy. So, when the time comes to cut Corsica away from France and join Britain he can point to his record of resistance to France. But he couldn't be too obvious about it. So he went along with the instructions to prepare for the invasion of Sardinia. He is seen to co-operate, and even to offer a battalion of Corsican volunteers to carry out the job. So that when it fails he can blame me, a known Jacobin, and discredit the Jacobin party into the bargain. Of course, he has to make sure that I am not around to contradict him. The fact is that we succeeded, and that lickspittle Colonna ordered us to abandon the fort, abandon the guns… The guns,' Napoleon murmured, and sat back with a shocked expression. 'Of course! I see it now.'
'See what?'
'Colonna told me to abandon the guns and return to the frigate. He ordered me to.'
'So?' Joseph shook his head. 'I don't understand.'
'I'm an artillery officer. It's an article of faith that we never abandon our guns to the enemy. Paoli knew that. So Colonna makes up some story about a mutiny, and orders me to abandon the guns, knowing full well that I would not obey the order. He was counting on me destroying the guns and meanwhile the rest of the battalion would embark and set sail for home. Only, he didn't think that Lieutenant Alessi would put a gun to the head of the boat crews and force them to wait for us.' Napoleon slumped against the back of his chair. 'You have to admire Paoli – he thought it through in almost every detail.The only thing he didn't account for was Alessi.'
Joseph reluctantly concluded that Napoleon's version of events made sense. 'All right. So Paoli is our enemy, and he's betraying France, then what do you suggest we do? Inform the Convention?'
'It may be too late for that. By the time we got a message to Saliceti and he convinced the Convention to act, Paoli might have changed sides. He'll do it anyway, the moment he suspects that Paris knows about his treachery.' Napoleon looked at his older brother. 'We have to try and stop him here and now.'
'What are you talking about?' Joseph answered nervously. 'What can we do?'
'I'm going to speak at the Jacobin Club tomorrow night. I'm going to tell them everything. Just as I told you.' Napoleon's eyes widened as his mind seized on the options open to him.'Then I'll propose a motion that we name Paoli as an enemy of the state and order his immediate arrest.'
'No!' Joseph shook his head.'You go too far. Even the Jacobins wouldn't dare to oppose Paoli. Most of them wouldn't even think to. He's their hero, for God's sake! You tell them he's a traitor and you'll get yourself killed. And the rest of us too.You can't put your family in that kind of danger.'
'I must do this,' Napoleon insisted. 'Paoli is our enemy. He is the enemy of our people, only they don't know it yet. I have to open their eyes. So I will speak tomorrow night.'
'You can't! You'll get us all killed.'
Napoleon stared back at him, and then relented as he accepted that he would be taking a risk, and had no right to endanger his brothers and sisters and his mother. He sighed wearily and then spoke in as gentle a tone as he could manage. 'You must take the family somewhere safe.'
