Note Back to Main Text — Chapter XIII

It is not likely that an ardent radical leader like Buonaparte, well known and influential in the Rhone valley, had remained a stranger to the Marseilles deputation. If the Duchesse d'Abrantès be worthy of any credence, he was very influential, and displayed great activity with the authorities during the seventh and eighth, running hither, thither, everywhere, to secure redress for an illegal domiciliary visit which her mother, Mme. Permon, had received on the seventh. But her testimony is of very little value, such is her anxiety to establish an early intimacy with the great man of her time. Joseph, in his memoirs,[29] declares that his brother was present at the conflict of August tenth, and that Napoleon wrote him at the time, "If Louis XVI had appeared on horseback, he would have conquered." "After the victory of the Marseillais," continues the passage quoted from the letter, "I saw a man about to kill a soldier of the guard. I said to him, 'Southron, let us spare the unfortunate!' 'Art thou from the South?' 'Yes.' 'Well, then, we will spare him.'" Moreover, it is a fact that Santerre, the notorious leader of the mob on that day, was three years later, on the thirteenth of Vendémiaire, most useful to Buonaparte; that though degraded from the office of general to which he was appointed in the revolutionary army, he was in 1800 restored to his rank by the First Consul. All this is consistent with Napoleon's assertion, but it proves nothing conclusively; and there is certainly ground for suspicion when we reflect that these events were ultimately decisive of Buonaparte's fortunes.