Chapter IV: Sardinia--Toulon--Nice--Paris--Barras--Josephine. 1793-1796 - Page 2

with the result that our whole family was banished, and those fools of Corsicans broke into our house and smashed all of our furniture. They little knew that that furniture, if in existence to-day, would bring millions of francs as curios if sold at auction. It was thus that the family came to move to France and that I became in fact what I had been by birth--a Frenchman. If I had remained a Corsican, Paoli's treachery would have made me an Englishman, to which I should never have become reconciled, although had I been an Englishman I should have taken more real pleasure out of the battle of Waterloo than I got.

"After this I was ordered to Toulon. The French forces here were commanded by General Cartaux, who had learned the science of war painting portraits in Paris. He ought to have been called General Cartoon. He besieged Toulon in a most impressionistic fashion. He'd bombard and bombard and bombard, and then leave the public to guess at the result. It's all well enough to be an impressionist in painting, but when it comes to war the public want more decided effects. When I got there, as a brigadier-general, I saw that Cartaux was wasting his time and ammunition. His idea seemed to be that by firing cannon all day he could so deafen the enemy that at night the French army could sneak into Toulon unheard and capture the city, which was, to say the least, unscientific. I saw at once that Cartaux must go, and I soon managed to make life so unbearable for him that he resigned, and a man named Doppet, a physician, was placed in command. Doppet was worse than Cartaux. Whenever anybody got hurt he'd stop the war and prescribe for the injured man. If he could have prescribed for the enemy they'd have died in greater numbers I have no doubt, but, like the idiot he was, he practised on his own forces. Besides, he was more interested in surgery than in capturing Toulon. He always gave the ambulance corps the right of line, and I believe to this day that his plan of routing the English involved a sudden rush upon them, taking them by surprise, and the subsequent amputation of their legs. The worst feature of the situation, as I found it, was that these two men, falling back upon their rights as my superior officers, refused to take orders from me. I called their attention to the fact that rank had been abolished, and that in France one man was now as good as another; but they were stubborn, so I wrote to Paris and had them removed. Then came Dugommier, who backed me up in my plans, and Toulon as a consequence immediately fell with a dull, sickening thud."

It was during this siege that Bonaparte first encountered Junot. Having occasion to write a note while under fire from the enemy's batteries, Napoleon called for a stenographer. Junot came to him.

"Do you know shorthand?" asked the general, as a bomb exploded at his feet.

"Slightly," said Junot, calmly.

"Take this