chapter XXIV
THE BRIGAND IN UNIFORM
Not a muscle in Roger's face moved but his ears felt as though they were standing out from the sides of his head. With Hoche's army in Brittany now freed, and that dynamic young Corsican charged with the invasion of England, a turn might be given to the war which had hitherto been unthinkable. In a matter of seconds his mission had been changed from a matter of investigation which might produce valuable results, to one demanding that he should stop at nothing to save his country.
That night, after leaving Barras's reception, he put in some very deep thought. The last invasion of England had been that by William of Orange, just over a hundred years before, but others had been threatened many times since; and, having spent his boyhood on the south coast, he well remembered the drills of the local fencibles, the beacons kept always ready and the occasional false alarms, which had formed a part of everyday life there until the Peace of Paris, in '83.
Since then the deterioration of the French Fleet, owing to revolution and a long series of defeats, had in the present war so far made any chance of invasion seem most unlikely. But the British Fleet was now dispersed between the Gulf of Genoa and the West Indies in many squadrons; a break-out from the French ports was always a possibility.; the enemy might succeed in landing a considerable army before their communications could be interrupted; and. as Britain had been almost denuded of troops for foreign service, that might prove positively calamitous—especially if the invading force were led by a man like Buonaparte.
Unlike Jourdan, Moreau, Hoche and several others, the young General had little military prestige to support his sudden elevation. He had rendered good service as an Artillery Commander at Toulon and afterwards for a few months on the Italian Riviera, but in the field he had not yet commanded even a Division. His present appointmeat was a political one, and solely due to his having saved the Convention on 13th Vendemiaire. If he was to maintain his status in .the High Command, he must direct a victorious campaign, or before very long he would find himself supplanted by officers of greater experience.
For the laurels he needed what could offer better prospects than a descent on England? But it would be all or nothing. There could be no question of joining up with other French armies, going into winter quarters with hopes of better fortune the following spring, or strategic withdrawals. Cut off by the British Navy, he would have to conquer or fail utterly; and, if defeated, even if he got away himself, having lost an army he would never be given another. Therefore, he would fight with utter ruthlessness, burning, slaying and laying waste the fair English countryside in a desperate attempt to reach London before he could be stopped.
Roger recalled hearing a revealing episode concerning his mentality. In '93, when the structure of the old French army was falling to pieces owing to the Revolution, he had virtually deserted, retiring to his native Corsica because he believed he could get himself made a Colonel in the National Guard of Ajaccio. There he had become one of the most violent members of the local Jacobin Club. Several of his friends among the lesser nobility, from which his own family came, endeavoured to dissuade him from inciting the roughs of the port to make trouble. Instead of agreeing he at once made another inflammatory speech, in which he declared that in such times there could be only friends and enemies, that all moderates must be classed by true patriots as enemies, and that, like Solon in ancient Greece, he advocated punishing with death every man who remained neutral during civil discord.
If he had really meant that, it suggested that he would show no mercy to man, woman or child should he command an army that succeeded in landing in England. In any case he promised to prove a most formidable opponent, and Roger decided that any approach to him must be made with the utmost wariness; so that before even hinting at his purpose to the Corsican, he would do well to get to know much more about him than he had learned during their short acquaintance.
The following day, as a first step, he called on the Permons because their apartment in the Chaussee d'Antin was the only place in which he had seen Buonaparte relaxed and natural Madame Pennon, with her son and little daughter, was at home, and received him kindly; but he soon learned that his hope of meeting Buonaparte there again, through cultivating the family, was doomed to disappointment, for not long since he and Madame Pennon had had a serious quarrel.
Apparently she had asked him to secure for her cousin a commission in the Guards, and he had promised to do so; but, although reminded several times, had failed to bring it to her. In consequence, when next he had called she had upbraided him as though he were still a schoolboy, and snatched her hand from him as he was about to kiss it As this had occurred in front of several of the young General's staff officers, he had been deeply mortified, and had ceased to visit her.
However, as the ex-protege of the unpretentious family had now become such a luminary, they were willing enough, when encouraged by Roger, to talk about him.
Monsieur Pennon had been a French official of some standing, and while the family were living in Toulouse it had transpired that one of three Corsicans lying ill and in money difficulties at a local inn was the husband of Letitia Buonaparte, Madame Pennon's girlhood friend. They had at once taken him into their house where, after a long illness through which Madame Pennon had nursed him, he had died. This had naturally strengthened the ties between the two families, and when the Pennons had moved to Paris they had taken a special interest in the orphaned Napoleon.
His father, being without fortune but able to prove that his family had been noble for four generations, had secured his admission as a King's charity pupil to the Military School at Brienne, at the age of nine. It was his poverty in contrast with the wealth of his noble schoolfellows there which had formed a bitter streak in his character and, later, led to his becoming such a fervid revolutionary.
Of this bitterness the Pennons had had plenty of evidence after he had graduated to the Military School in Paris in '84. He was too proud to accept money, until M. Pennon forced upon him a small sum on the pretext that it had been left by his father to be given to him in an emergency; and at times his outbursts against his rich brother cadets had been quite terrifying. He had, too, in his early years been fanatically devoted to the cause of Corsican independence, and had never forgiven his father for deserting Paoli, the Corsican patriot leader. On this score too he had been given to launching the most violent diatribes, and while at Brienne had been severely punished for shaking his fist and screaming imprecations at a portrait of the Due de Choiseul, Louis XV's minister, who had urged on the conquest of Corsica by France.
His nickname there had been 'the Spartan' but, on the rare occasions when he could afford it, he loved personal display. Little Laura related how, when he had at last obtained his commission, he had come in his new uniform to see them. Having been made by an inexpensive tailor it was of poor material and ill-cut, and his legs were so lean that, in his big high boots, they looked like broomsticks; but he had strutted up and down as though he were already a Field Marshal. Laurette had been so amused that she had christened him Puss-in-Boots; but he had taken her childish raillery well, and, although he could ill afford to buy expensive toys, had, next day, brought her a walking Puss-in-Boots carved from wood.
The violence of his temper was equalled only by his colossal assurance about his own abilities, and by the vividness of his imagination, as he was always producing grandiose schemes for his own advancement. During the period of his disgrace he had conceived the idea of going off to reorganize the army of the Grand Turk and, without even writing to ask n the Sultan would like to employ him, had applied to the War Office for permission to do so. It had been granted, and he had only been prevented from leaving for Turkey because somebody else at the