The Rest Is History - 383. Young Napoleon: The Shadow of the Guillotine

Episode Date: November 2, 2023

Within the turmoil of the French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte stands out to his military superiors, first by defeating the British at Toulon, then by putting down a royalist mob in Paris when outnumbered four to one, with a “whiff of grapeshot”. Having finally shaken off the humiliation of the failed invasion of Sardinia which began his career, he is made Commander of the Interior, and rewarded with command of the Army of Italy. Has the Corsican rebel finally given up on his roots, and embraced French ideals of brotherhood? Join Tom and Dominic in the second part of our deep dive on young Napoleon, as they delve into his rise within the French military, his disillusionment with Corsican politics, his precocious strategic savoir-faire, and the story of how he met the future Empress of the French, Josephine de Beauharnais… *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. 17th of July, 1796. I write to you, my beloved, very often, and you write very little. You are wicked. You are naughty, oh so naughty, as much as you are fickle. It is unfaithful so to deceive a poor husband, a tender lover. Ought he to lose all his enjoyments, because he is so far away,

bound down with toil, fatigue, and hardship? Without his Josephine, without the assurance of her love. What has left him upon earth? What can he do? Adieu, adorable Josephine. One of these nights, your door will open with a great noise as a jealous person, and you will find me in your arms. A thousand loving kisses.

Mwah, mwah, mwah. Bonaparte. Oh, God almighty. So, Dominic. I had to watch that. They just have to listen to it. I had to watch that. That was Napoleon Bonaparte writing to Josephine, famous, of course, as his wife, not tonight, Josephine, all that kind of thing, which we will be coming to at the end of this episode. And alert listeners may recall that in the previous episode, I began with a very Ligurian

accent. You did. And now I have given Napoleon a French accent, even though actually he never had a French accent. He always kept his course. But you've uncovered a symbolic truth there, Tom, haven't you? It's all about the symbolic truth. It's all about the symbolic truth. Because this episode really is about the process by which Napoleon jettisons his Corsican identity

and commits wholeheartedly to La France. Yeah. Is it n'est pas? Yeah, absolutely right. I'm still slightly in shock after that. I mean, it was very Inspector Clouseau, but the stuff with the kisses was quite punchy. I didn't see that coming. Yes. So Napoleon's relationship with Josephine is an intriguing story. Yeah, it's a crazy story, isn't it, actually? So something to look forward to at the end of this episode. But to begin with, Dominic, the revolution is kind of hurtling towards the terror. And meanwhile, Napoleon, having watched the massacres in the Tuileries and all kinds of horrible things, has gone back to Corsica, hasn't he?

He has. So people who listened to episode one will recall that Napoleon, who is, of course, extremely Corsican, speaks to the Corsican accent, has believed himself for a long time to be a kind of son of liberty of Corsica, fighting for an independent Corsica, or it's hard to see what he's fighting for because it's all very confused. He has been going back and forth. And in the autumn of 1792, he has returned to Corsica. France is descending into greater and greater chaos. It is at war with its neighbors who are supporting the king.

France is obviously moving towards a republic. It is moving, as you said, towards the terror, the faction fighting in Paris, the Jacobin emerging as the strongest party, the extreme party. And he's back in Corsica, which he discovers in greater chaos than ever. So open faction fighting in the streets. The French have decided to try and invade Sardinia which belongs to their kingdom the neighboring kind of kingdom of um savoy isn't it yeah but the french troops in the harbor when they are out off their ships they kind of roam around causing trouble fighting there are lynchings in the streets um at one point there there's an attack by the French on Corsicans. They mutilate

their bodies and they parade them around the town. At another point, Napoleon himself is captured by some volunteers and some of his men have to rescue him. So it's an incredibly dangerous and anarchic situation. And Dominic, the invasion of Sardinia that you mentioned, this piles disaster on disaster, doesn't it? Because it all goes horribly wrong. And this is Napoleon's first experience of armed combat. And it's an utter humiliation. And he ends up having to spike his own guns and retreat with his tail between his legs. So not a good start. to 10 days and they're beaten off in a very shambolic sort of circumstances they get back to Corsica and everybody says it's everybody else's fault people blame him the big cheese in Corsica Pasquale Paoli who Napoleon had once seen as a kind of father figure has completely turned against the uh the Bonapartes Napoleon's brother Lucien writes a speech denouncing Pauli and sends it to the National Convention in Paris.

Lucien is very Jacobin, isn't he? He actually changes his name to Brutus, the assassin of Caesar. Yes, exactly. And this is read out. The Bonaparte's denouncing Pauli is read out. That reaches Corsica. And basically in Corsica, it now completely kicks off. Napoleon tries to very

weaselly fashion Tom actually he now tries to write speech himself defending Pauli but basically everybody in the Jacksio is out for his blood there are a whole series of very confused shenanigans which even his biographers say throw their hands up in despair yeah it's impossible to work out what's going on well because this is the Corsican vibe in history, just endless people shooting at each other for reasons that's quite hard to get a handle on. But I think basically, if they don't know themselves, it pays to shoot your neighbour first, right? Because he might shoot you for reasons you don't fully understand.

And this happens to Napoleon. He's arrested. I mean, if I just read you this line, the various accounts of what happened next read like an adventure story with Napoleon arrested, locked up under guard, freed at night by cunning subterfuge, pursued, caught, held with a gun to his temple in the standoff and finally spirited away while rival gangs of bandits settled scores. What is certain is that he was arrested in Boccagno, that he was freed by a cousin, briefly held again and eventually taken to a kinsman shepherd's hut outside of Jaxio. There's this whole series of shenanigans. I think it's pretty obvious to him by this point that basically if he stays in Corsica beyond the spring summer of 1793, he will be killed. His entire family are in fact denounced by an assembly in a place called Corte, which is in the center of the island. They're described as zealous collaborators

born in despotism and all this kind of thing. And so basically the entire family have to flee Corsica. Right, and they've been on the island for what, two and a half centuries, I think? Yeah. And they all decide to go and they pile into a boat and set sail for France. And in Abel Gantz's film, have you seen it?

No, never seen it. I've seen clips, but never seen them. I saw it in the South Bank, and there's a brilliant moment at this point. So the Bonapartes are in their boat, sailing from Corsica off to Marseille, and a Royal Navy ship appears. And on board the ship is a young Nelson. No! Brilliant. And he asks

his commanding officer, permission to blow up the ship, sir. And the commanding officer says, no, it will make no difference. Let them go. Oh, no. And Nelson gazes wistfully as Napoleon's ship crashes. Yeah, it's a great moment. How many lives would have been spared if only Nelson had followed his instincts?

So the interesting thing about this is that Napoleon only visited Corsica once more in the rest of his life when he was coming back from Egypt in 1799. And he's done with it. He's finished. And actually, after we recorded the previous episode, we were chatting with the producers, weren't we, with Theo and Tabby, about this phenomenon of people who are outsiders taking the reins of kind of expansionist imperialistic nations. So obviously- So Austrians taking... Austrians in Germany, for instance. Have a bad record.

Georgians in the Soviet Union, for example. And there is definitely... I mean, Napoleon is the great example of this, actually, because he obviously is ultimately Corsican, not French. But there is part of him that feels French as well. And there's also part of him that's turned his back on Corsican and is embarrassed by it, don't you think? Absolutely. But I think that it becomes possible for him ideologically, because as we mentioned in the first episode, the justification for the revolution in France

is very, very self-consciously universalist. So by nailing his colours to the French mast, he is also proclaiming himself a would-be citizen of the world. And this, of course, over the long run will provide Napoleon with tremendous justification for all kinds of conquests. Because he's doing it for the good of humanity, not just for France. And I think that that must facilitate psychologically his transition from being Corsican to being French. Don't you think? Oh, I think that's definitely true. The universalism, the invocation of the Romans as forebears, the appeal to kind of republican principles, they allow him to escape the bind, I guess, that he's in to some extent.

But don't you think psychologically there's also, because he spent so long writing his little histories of Corsica and novels about Corsicans killing loads of Frenchmen and stuff like this. There must have been a little part of him, if only subconsciously, when he puts on the robes of the emperor of the French, when he has all France behind him, that gains this satisfaction. Do you not think from taming the colonial power? Of course, psychologically. He might not have admitted it to himself. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm absolutely sure. But I do also think that the opportunities that revolutionary ideology provides him for self-advancement are incredibly significant. And I think it's really telling that when he gets to France from having escaped from Corsica, that he writes a very, very overtly Jacobin tract, doesn't he? He does.

And has it kind of published, very much saying, this is what I am. I am now a French Jacobin. Yeah, he does. Le Soupé de Boucère, it's called, a kind of weird sort of polemic disguised as conversation among people at an inn in Boucère, which is between Avignon and Nice. I mean, it's a pure political manifesto, really. Adam Zmoyski is very good on this in his book, talking about how this is the moment where you see in this manifesto, very much in keeping, I think, with the mood of the times, which is war-torn, you know, the revolution is clearly, we're moving into the terror.

There's a kind of grim cynicism to it, a sort of fear of the excesses of human nature, an emphasis on strong government, on shedding blood, on all these kinds of things, which is very of the moment. We talked about his adolescent histrionics, this tone that runs throughout his writings from his teenage years. But by the time he's getting into his late 20s and the events around him and he is starting to become a player in it, a tone that sounds histrionic when you're a 16-year-old increasingly comes to match the circumstances that he finds himself in. Well, because the people who are running the revolution are now the people who are 16-year-olds at the same time as him, right? Yeah. The Saint-Justs, I mean, even the other people on the Committee of Public Safety,

they're remarkably young. They're all tanked up. Remember we talked about this when we did that French Revolution podcast back in the midst of time. Their wine bills are through the roof. They've been probably talking about the purifying nature of bloodshed for years anyway, and now they have a chance to put it into practice. For Napoleon, it's different because he's not in Paris. He remains an army officer. He remains an artillery commander. And with the escalation of the terror, so also France is becoming internationally ever more besieged. So that Royal Navy ship in the Able Gantsville with Nelson on it is an expression of the fact that Britain and France by this point are at war. And there are Aristo's reactionary pro-royalist French forces that are now in alliance with the Royal Navy. And they are looking to seize a port on the south coast, aren't they? Basically, when he gets back to France, France is a war zone.

South of France is a war zone. Ten provinces have turned against the national convention. There's a full-scale revolution against the revolution in the Vendée and the west of France. Counter-revolution, I believe is the phrase, Dominique. Yes. Thank you. I was looking for that. I like revolution against the revolution.

I think that's a more French-free way of putting it. La révolution contre la révolution, Tom. Peut-être. If I was a polo-neck-wearing French professor, that's what I'd call it. That'd be the title of my book, my monograph. Anyway, Royalists had taken Toulon, and they had occupied it in collaboration with the British, with a fleet under Admiral Hood. Which has sailed in, hasn't it?

Yes. And seized control of all the naval dockyards. Because we talked about this in the context of the episodes we did on Nelson, that navies cannot function without well-stocked dockyards. I know you love a dockyard. So by seizing Toulon, the British have effectively knocked out the French navy. So the convention have sent an army to recapture Toulon, and Bonaparte ends up being associated with this army as an artillery officer. And the guy who is in charge of the artillery is badly wounded in the early sort of engagements around Toulon, and Napoleon ends up being promoted to replace him. I mean, it's a really interesting thing

that's happening because you've said a couple of times about the revolution clearing the way for Napoleon. That's obviously what this does, because people who are very young are being thrust into positions, as in Paris, of unexpected power and responsibility because their elders have either defected to the other side or are leading the rebellion or have been executed. So Napoleon is the next guy in line. And actually, some people say, really? I mean, he's never really done anything. He's just a kid. And somebody says they've read his Jacobin pamphlet, Le Super de Bocaire, and they say, well, he's one of us. Very kind of Thatcherite approach. He's on, you know, he's ideologically, he's okay.

He's on side. He's on side. And actually, some people may say who love Napoleon, because of course, there are always people who adore Napoleon. Andrew Roberts, for example. They may say, Tom and Dominic have been very sniffy about Napoleon in these podcasts. But actually, he really distinguishes himself at Toulon, doesn't he?

Oh, he does tremendously well, doesn't he? And he does it in all kinds of ways. So his strategic sense, there are heights commanding the harbour. And even though the French don't have ships with which to attack the Royal Navy, Napoleon immediately recognises that if they can seize the forts that the British and the Royalists. Napoleon immediately recognises that if they can seize the forts that the British and the Royalists have occupied, then this will be tremendous, because the Royal Navy will have no choice but to retreat. Napoleon immediately recognises that. He recognises that to make this happen, he will need to source large quantities of artillery. And so he never rests. He gets artillery from every corner of Southern France that he can, concentrating an immense quantity of firepower. And also, he is physically very brave. I mean,

he's absolutely in the heart of the fighting. And at one point, an artilleryman is killed. There's great explosions going on. Napoleon se seizes his gloves loads of cannon fires it himself and uh it's all tremendous and the cost that napoleon pays for doing this dominic is that he gets scabies from the gloves that's right yes yes scabies i mean he gets it for about the next 10 years he does and so this is an important part of his courtship of josephine which will come to you later would you like to come up upstairs and look at my scabies he's not only kind of scrawny and unsophisticated but he's got scabies so yes you know but we all have to make sacrifices for la patrie we do right exactly that's napoleon's sacrifice so he really impresses his superior officers the army attacking too long

goes through a succession of different generals many of whom are utterly useless they're kind of doctors people who write poems yeah this kind of thing but they almost without exception recognize napoleon that he's a very charismatic leader that his attention to detail his work ethic his seriousness really impresses his men. He's getting fans, not just senior people, but also there's a guy called Junot, who will end up becoming one of his great generals. A guy called Marmont, another one of his great kind of collaborators. And also there's a man called Augustin Robespierre, who is the brother of the big Gs in Paris. And obviously an alliance with a Robespierre. Very good, isn't it? Yeah. Well, as long as the Robespierres can stay in power and obviously an alliance with a Robespierre. Very good, isn't it?

Yeah. Well, as long as the Robespierres can stay in power and not shoot their jaws off and end up on the guillotine. Of course. But I mean, the thing is that taking the war to the British is obviously a way to win the hearts of pretty much everyone in France. Yeah. To a degree, even royalists in their hearts are going to be conflicted at a French victory

over British arms. And so Napoleon does very well on this score. And he even captures a British commander of one of the forts above Toulon, a guy called Charles O'Hara. He'd been launching a counterattacking sally against the besieging French, gets captured. And this was the same guy, Dominic, who had surrendered on behalf of General Cornwallis at Yorktown to George Washington. And now he surrenders to Napoleon. So he's the only person ever personally

to have surrendered to both Washington and Napoleon. And he gets sent off to Paris where he ends up in prison with Thomas Paine. The rights of man by this point has been imprisoned. And apparently gets on tremendously well with him. Oh, I think worse and worse of him tom golly what a record yeah what a record odd that we don't make more of uh general o'hara in prison yes um so um the defeat of general o'hara i mean that's very helpful and by december 1793 essentially napoleon strategy has worked yes the commanding heights have been seized and Admiral Hood has no choice but to beat retreat. And there are a lot of explosions going on, aren't there? Huge, huge excitement.

And Napoleon will always remember with a kind of, you know, the thrill of watching magazines and ships exploding. So later in life, he remembered the whirlwind of flames and smoke from the arsenal resembled the eruption of a volcano and the 13 vessels blazing in the roads were like so many displays of fireworks. The masts and forms of the vessels were distinctly traced out by the flames, which lasted many hours and formed an unparalleled spectacle. So the thrill of violence, war, and victory, I guess. Very suitable background for the spectacular achievements of this upstart young officer.

He did very well at Toulon. Everybody recognizes that he's the architect of victory. It's not just that he planned the strategy to seize the forts rather than the city. In other words, to remove the British Navy as a factor, which basically means the city has no choice but to fall. But also, he led them in. and removed the British Navy as a factor, which basically means the city has no choice but to fall. But also, he led them in. I mean, he led his men, you know, saber drawn kind of thing. He received a big wound, didn't he, to the leg.

Yes, from a British officer, from a bayonet. It's a perfect wound because you're not going to die. But you get a scar. But you get a scar and everybody will say he led his troops. He led them in, sword in hand in hand he was wounded what a hero actually the siege of toulon what something that doesn't often get brought out i don't know whether ridley scott's film will bring it out is what happened next to toulon so the people of toulon were desperate to get away they were throwing themselves it's very kind of smyrna 1920s they're're throwing themselves into the sea, desperate to reach the British ships.

Probably thousands of people were raped and killed and mutilated in various ways. Yeah, because I think the population was something like 25,000. By the end of it, it's about 7,000. I mean, that's a lot of people killed. Because the Revolutionary Army, once they got into Toulon, the commanders just said, right, go for it. You've got three days. Do what you like. I mean, this is at the same time as that campaign in the Vendée, which some historians have characterized as near genocidal, just wiping out.

People being put in cages and chucked in the loire and all kinds of things. Exactly. Napoleon said later that he was revolted by it, that he was shocked at the atrocities. I think whether it's the violence that shocks him or whether it's the spectacle of disorder that shocks him, it's hard to say. Probably the latter, I would suggest. Because as we talked last time, he hates the idea of any form of anarchy, of any confusion or chaos, I suppose partly because of what he's seen on Corsica. But he comes out of Toulon,

everything's looking great. He is promoted to brigadier general, a general at 24. Extraordinary. There's talk of him joining the army of Italy that will push into Piedmont. He's drawing up plans for that. He has a great scheme that he will go through Italy and get to Vienna and knock Austria out of the war. And his great pal that he has made in the siege of Toulon, Augustin Robespierre, obviously a coming man, the brother of Maximilian.in Robespierre, obviously a coming man, the brother of Maximilian. And Robespierre says to him, why don't I take you with me to Paris?

What could possibly go wrong? And going to Paris in 1794 with a Robespierre. So this is a really interesting road not taken because some people have said, maybe he would have ended up commanding the National Guard in Paris in mid 1794. And had he done that, had he gone with Augustin to Paris, I guess he might have been executed at Termidor in the turn against the Jacobin. I'd have thought it very, very likely. He'd be a threat, wouldn't he? He would. A successful military man who had pinned his colors so firmly to the Rosé Pierre mast.

So he doesn't go. He's still in the south of France at Nice at the beginning of August 1794, when he gets news that his great pal has been guillotined. There's been a turn against the extremists on the Committee of Public Safety. There's been a coup in Paris, the Termidor coup. And he's actually briefly arrested. I don't't there's ever a serious threat to him but he's briefly detained because isn't it juno proposes trying to break him out he does exactly and says no don't do that it'll be fine it'll be fine and it is fine but obviously what he needs now is a new focus and um he needs a kind of new patron i suppose and in the second half

we'll see how he finds this new patron a man called paul barras who as luck would have it is going to become the single most influential figure in the new regime the directory he will be requiring from napoleon a whiff of grapeshot. And crucially, Tom, which will give you a chance to delve back into that lovely impression, Barras has a girlfriend called Josephine. So we'll be meeting her after the break. The whiff of grapeshot. Won't be the only whiff, but more on that later.

I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. But more on that later. episodes and early access to live tickets head to the rest is entertainment.com that's the rest is entertainment.com welcome back to the rest is history we are still dealing with the young napoleon so napoleon has lost a potential patron in his friend augustin robespierre the termidorian reaction in par Paris is underway. So that's a turn against the kind of what are perceived as being the kind of militant excesses of the terror. He doesn't initially go to Paris, does he, Tom? He spends a lot of time lurking around the south of France, where he actually ends up getting engaged, Napoleon. He does, yes, to Eugène-Désiré Clary, who is very sweet. Napoleon, I mean, he's not the greatest romantic figure, is he? Basically, he just kind of mansplains to her what she should be reading and bullies her

because she doesn't play the piano well enough and all kinds of things. Kind of nightmare boyfriend. He's about 10 years older than her, isn't he? Just under 10 years, because she's about 16. And he's constantly writing her letters saying, You don't want to do it like that yeah are you doing your music practice your music teacher is awful i think you should be playing this and all this kind of thing that's how you do it i'll show you yeah amazingly she she tolerates all this it seems to be a great romance doesn't she actually you see she ends up as the queen of sweden yeah she marries bernadotte doesn't

she does yeah who become she has a very impressive life yeah so her descendant is i mean that it's still on the swedish throne to this day i think exactly she's the winner of all this she's the real star of this of this series anyway he's he's kind of carrying on with her bossing around and stuff he goes off to paris with juno and marmont who are kind of hero worshipping him by this point first of all when he gets to paris it's a very strange atmosphere in Paris, isn't it? Because they're still at war, but there's been a sort of backlash against the whole terror thing. So now there's this sort of Weimar Republic. Yeah, so everyone is partying, celebrations, orgies.

Yeah, sort of sex and money everywhere. Yeah. But people are kind of doing things like, I've seen, I was astounded by this. The weird ball for people whose relatives have been guillotined. Did you see that? Balls for people

whose relatives have been guillotined. And you wear a thin red stripe around your neck. They have parties in the prisons where the September massacres had happened where you wear,

yeah, where you wear a red ribbon around your neck. Yeah. Like you've been guillotined. I mean, that is bonkers. But he,

when he goes to these parties, he's very shifty, awkward. It's not his scene, is it? No. You can take the boy out of Corsica, but... You can't take... they're all Corsican, shifty, and awkward at parties. No, but they're not having kind of decadent type parties with... No, they're not. You know, relatives of guillotine duchesses in a jacksio, are they? I mean, that's the

whole point of it. They're wearing wide trousers and shooting pistols at each other. Wide trousers and eating goat's cheese. Yeah. Growing big moustaches. It's a very different party vibe, Dominic. I'm not saying which one is better. No.

I'm not being judgmental. I'm just saying you can understand. It must be awkward for a young lad from Ajaxio. It's the difference between South London and Chipping Norton, Tom. That that's pretty much what it is i thought you were going to say the difference between south london and mayfair no i wasn't oh you're casting the south londoners as the corsicans yes okay while he's hanging around in paris he becomes friendly with this guy who's an extraordinary character called paul barras and barras had been at toulon as a kind of political bigwig attached to the

army. Barras had an extraordinary history. He'd fought the British in India. He'd then become a sort of delegate at the convention. He'd played a small kind of supporting part in the downfall of Robespierre. And he had worked his way up to become the chief figure in this new regime, which is known as the Directory. And Barras is incredibly corrupt, conniving, kind of cynical, doesn't trust anybody, nobody trusts him. But he is incredibly rich. He's basically siphoning a lot of the money that goes to the army for himself. And he knows everybody. Paris is full of his ex-lovers and his friends and all of this sort of thing. And he is a very useful person for Napoleon to know.

But at first, it's not clear what's going to happen to Napoleon. Technically, he's been posted to the Vendée, to this incredibly brutal campaign. But he doesn't want to go, does he? He doesn't want to go. He doesn't want to go and fight fellow Frenchmen, which is interesting. He spends a lot of time in very Napoleon style, writing a novel. So he writes a sort of romantic novel, doesn't he? It's about a young lad, very brave. I mean, who it could be modelled on, God only knows. But isn't he also at the same time as

he's writing his novel, contemplating perhaps going to Constantinople, perhaps even going to India and joining the East India Company? I mean, kind of history would have been very different then, wouldn't it? So he's a bit mopey because I'd always had the vague sense that, you know, he becomes the great star after too long. But actually, he's kind of slightly stuck, isn't he? He's treading water. Yeah, he is. Exactly.

I thought the same. I thought he would have been taken up as the great hero. But not really. He's just sort of drifting. And then fate really plays into his hands. Because in the summer of 1795 paris we're talking about france but it's really paris is in a very uncertain position because they they need to adopt a new constitution and it's not clear whether the new

constitution will be more left wing or right wing than the republican constitution under the jacobin and what is more there has there is clearly a lot of latent royalist support right so louis the 16th has been executed and his son the poor boy who gets put in a cage doesn't he pretty much and yeah i mean horrible um and he dies which means that the enormously fat new king is louisIII, who is obviously not in France. He's in Italy, I think. But he's siding with all the... Well, he'll end up in Britain, do you call it, 20? Yeah.

But it's that kind of royalist, internationalist axis. But therefore, the realisation that there are lots of potential royalists in Paris is very unsettling for anyone concerned with the survival of the Republic. Yes, exactly. So we're approaching the month of... Well, we concerned with the survival of the Republic. Yes, exactly. So we're approaching the month of, well, we're in the month of Vendée Mière because they're still using the mad revolutionary calendar. Yeah. But on what we would call the evening of the 3rd of October, 1795, Napoleon gets a message

from Paul Barras. Now, Paul Barras is a member of the Committee of Public Safety. He's the kind of the real, I wouldn't say the guiding spirit, but he's one of the most influential people in the directory. And Barras says, come to my house at Chaillot, which is to the kind of west of Paris. I need to talk to you. So the next morning, Bonaparte goes along.

It's the morning of the 4th. And Barras says to him, there are things that need to be done in Paris. There are royalists. There's trouble coming. I need to know that I can rely on you. And Bonaparte clearly says to him, okay, fine. You can rely on me. He goes back to Paris.

Then he goes to the theater. People are always doing that in the French Revolution, aren't they? Of course. Crucial moments. Yeah. They're in the middle of a massive coup, and they say well hold on there's a i don't want to miss that so he goes to the to the theater and when he gets out he hears that one of the sections le pelletier which is in the center of paris has revolted so the sections are the kind

of local government kind of areas this has been brewing for a long time there's been a lot of discontent they declare their defiance of the sort of central authority and they call on the other sections to rise up and join them that evening the national assembly send a guy called general menu to go and suppress this revolt menu leads his troops into the very narrow streets of le politier and he basically, we're going to get surrounded and trapped. This isn't going to work at all. And actually, what way is the embodiment of the revolution. Exactly. I mean, it has been since 1789. Yeah.

Whereas Napoleon has no such cause at all, which presumably is why Barras has fixed on him. I mean, it's not just his military ability, his command of artillery, but presumably there's also a kind of, he's recognised a- Stealiness? But not merely a stealiness, but an ideological attitude towards what Napoleon presumably would cast as rabbles. Yeah, I think there's that. Do you think, Tom, that his Corsican-ness might be a thing here? That he perhaps doesn't feel the sentimental attachment to the Paris mob that other metropolitan Frenchmen might think?

Yeah, I'm sure that's true. And he's used to mobs on the streets of Ajaccio, isn't he? Trying to lynch him. So probably he kind of thinks, you know, I'd love to get my own back on a mob one day. But this is also, I mean, it is also, you know, we described how he sees the mobs rampaging through the Tuileries. Yeah.

He despises it. He does. He thinks it needs to be tamed. So there are two different versions of what happens next. There's Napoleon's version, which is that he goes to the convention. Everybody's in a terrible panic. They're debating different generals. He hears them mention his name.

He has a think about it, and he says, I will do it as long as you give me total authority to do whatever is necessary. So very kind of Man of Destiny stuff. The other version is Barrasas's version which i think sounds slightly more plausible which is that baras who is far better known than than napoleon says to his friends on the committee of public safety i have the man you need a little corsican officer who won't be squeamish now you can see why napoleon wouldn't want that story told because it's very demeaning to him it does sound slightly more plausible doesn't it so the next morning on the 5th of october when paris awakes

they discover that napoleon as always full of energy full of kind of that work ethic that drive he has already secured loads of guns and he has positioned them around the sort of institutions of government at the Tuileries Palace, on the bridges, at the Place de la Concorde and so on and so forth. He has mustered about 5,000 men, but they are outnumbered, I think, four to one by the mob and the National Guardsmen who have joined the mob. And I guess in Ridley Scott's film, what'll probably do I'm anticipating is they'll show Napoleon firing on the mob as they advance but that actually isn't what happens

they then stand around for about the next 12 hours just sort of shuffling their feet and waiting and waiting so when does the whiff of grapeshot happen

it doesn't happen until the late afternoon so it starts raining a lot of people go home that is always the case with kind of mobs coups yeah it's like the

Chartists isn't it? Yeah. As soon as it starts raining, people just think, oh, sod this, I'm going home. I'm not getting wet. It's like cricket. Yeah, it's like cricket. Mob violence and cricket are very, very similar. Yeah.

And then Napoleon just says, okay, go for it. And he says, let's show them that we mean business. His cannons open fire and they're using grapes shot, which I'd never really understood. I'd always thought that the whiff of grape shot sounded so trivial that they shot in the air and they shot buckshot or something. But no, it's pretty brutal, isn't it? Because what they do is they've got hundreds of musket balls. They're packing them into this case,

this sort of metal cylinder or something, and they shoot them out of the cannon. And as it comes out of the cannon... It just goes everywhere. Yeah. The case explodes. The metal balls fly. Do you see this, how quickly they go? It's kind of like shrapnel.

They go about 2,000 feet per second. That speed. You wouldn't want to be in the middle of that, would you? And they can go up to 600 yards. But you know what Napoleon said of the rabble, Dominic? He said it must be persuaded by terror. He puts those words into action. I don't want to say he did it and he was right to do it, but he did it and it

worked. I mean, it could not have worked more successfully. And effectively, this is what ends the role that the mob has been playing in the politics of France for about 30 years, doesn't it? Yeah, totally. How many people are killed? We don't know. Hundreds. Some people might say even 1,000. But the net result of it is that the new regime completely wins. The mob is dispelled. The royalist uprising disappears. Barras is left in full charge of the city.

He has Napoleon appointed as the commander of the army of the interior as his reward. So he is now effectively the military governor of Paris. And Napoleon seizes that opportunity. He closes down some of the clubs. He reforms the National Guard. He gets new positions for all of his cronies. So Junot. And his family.

Marmont. And his family. Exactly. Yeah, his family. So that's, again, very Corsican, isn't it? Clans, clan loyalties, all that kind of thing. And he also, no, it's not just that he does all that, but he also starts to now turn himself into a celebrity.

He is the man that won the day, and he starts riding around the city with his officers. They have enormous moustaches. He doesn't have an enormous moustache, but they do. They're wearing massive hats, big boots, and they're kind of a very impressive spectacle. And they're making it clear. They're very young. They're in their twenties. And they're making it clear to everybody in Paris, we are the new generation. We're in charge. Who are in charge now. Yeah. We're the new masters. Now, one of the other things that he

does is he says he's going to confiscate all privately held arms. And he says to people, if you are found with private weapons, they will be taken away from you. And again, I mean, this is the key thing, isn't it? Over the previous years, the inability of anyone to exercise a monopoly of violence is what has made politics so chaotic and brutal. But from this point on, effectively, there is a monopoly of violence. Yeah. And people, do you think they crave order by this time? Six years of chaos? I think so.

I think most people do. And lots of people want a quiet life and they think, great, finally, he's sorting it out. Now, one of the people he wants to confiscate arms from is this family where a 14-year-old boy supposedly comes to his headquarters and says, can I please keep my father's sword? Because my father was a general and he was guillotined in the terror and i would love to keep his sword and bone apart what a soft-hearted man he is he says course you young whippersnapper course my boy ruffles his hair and then well it depends which story you believe maybe he goes to the boy's house to pay his respects to the boy's mother, to the widow himself.

Maybe she comes to visit him, or maybe Tom has already met her at loads of parties around the city, and this story is completely invented and not true. Because who is the woman, Dominic? She is Marie-Joseph Rose de Beauharnais, born Tasha, but better known to us all as Josephine. At last. And Josephine is an extraordinary character. So her family owned a plantation in Martinique and had married her off.

She spends her childhood there, doesn't she? Exactly, yes. And so a taste for sugarcane, which doesn help with her her dentistry her teeth no so she's lost all her teeth hasn't she because of she's eaten far too much sugar which is never an attractive thing i think but she she's very good at disguising it isn't she um she can kind of smiles and keeps her her lips together she does and she's had a very strange life up to this point. She had been married off to this guy called Alexandre de Beauharnais, who was just a terrible person. He was unfaithful. He was abusive. He was jealous. When the revolution happened, he was put in charge

of the army of the Rhine and he was totally inept. He lost the fortress at Mance and was accused of treason and executed. And she was thrown into the same prison that he was, a prison called Les Carmes. He had an affair in this prison with some other general's widow, and she had an affair with General Lazar Osh, who was the guy who ends up commanding the army in the Vendée. And she's having that affair in the prison. And this is quite common, isn't it? Totally, yeah. Because if you're pregnant, you can't be guillotined.

Exactly. So lots of female prisoners are having sex with jailers and everybody to try and get pregnant. The descriptions by Napoleon's biographers of the prison are actually terrifying. So apparently the walls are still smeared with blood from the massacres in September 1792 of all these priests and stuff. But people are copulating in all different parts of the prison, partly because of this thing of trying to escape if you're a pregnant woman, but also this sort of last desperate act of hedonism before the blade comes down. As Roberts says, he thinks she ended up suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder,

Josephine, because of her experiences in the prison. Anyway, she gets out. She carries on with General Osh still. She also becomes the mistress of Paul Barras. Now, Barras was quite ungallant about her. He said she was precociously decrepit, which is a harsh thing. She's old, isn't she? I mean, by the standards of successful courtesans.

She's what, 35 or something? She's 32. 32. She's not that old. But considering the role that she is playing, I mean, she doesn't have any money, does she? No. She's lost all her money.

So she's dependent on rich and powerful men. Yeah. A bit like Emma Hamilton. Same thing. But what Josephine, she doesn't have teeth. That's true. And Barras says she's decrepit, and you very ungallantly say she no longer has her youth.

But what she has tom is what barras himself calls the most refined the most perfected artistry ever practiced by the courtesans of ancient greece or paris in the exercise of their profession so she's a very accomplished performer and napoleon at this stage is not it would be fair to say no napoleon not at all he's gauche he's inexperienced with women, shifty, awkward. I mean, he's certainly never done something that she does, that Andrew Roberts discusses, says he doesn't know what it is, which is called the zigzags. Yes.

Do you know what the zigzags are, Tom? Well, I don't because nobody does. Nobody knows. Nobody knows, but it absolutely wins Napoleon's heart, doesn't it? It does. He becomes obsessed by her. And an example of that obsession is the kind of lurid tones of the love letter that I read out at the head of the show.

Yeah. And I mean, his letters to her are astonishing. I mean, very explicit. We talked about the whiff of grapeshot, but he is very keen on her not washing. Yes. So that's something he really likes. So that's another whiff. Yeah.

And he calls her private parts, Baron de Kepa. Yeah. Nobody knows why. Something to do with the zigzags, is it? So zigzags, Baron de Kepa, no washing, it's all happening. But from the start,

she's not keen on him. She calls him a puss in boots. She says he comes from a family of beggars. She's not keen on him she calls him a puss in boots she says he comes from a family of beggars she's not that interested really she would much rather married general osh i think or barras well barras basically a lot of people say he was trying to get rid of an unwanted mistress so again it's like emma hamilton who gets dumped by hamilton's nephew on him that's right yeah but also there's an element with barras as some biographers say the thing with Barras is he wants to get rid of Josephine. She's just a pain and he's sick of her. He also wants to distract. He wants to both bind Napoleon to him and also

kind of Napoleon is being really difficult and annoying because he's always writing plans for invasions and demanding meetings and kind of, you know, working too much. So deploy the zigzags. Yeah. So Varys thinks deploy the zigzags, get him distracted. It's just being a pain. And as you say, he is totally and utterly smitten. To be fair, this is the one point in the whole series where I think he comes out quite well

because I was impressed to read that he's very nice to her children so he goes to visit they're 14 and 12 Eugène and Hortense what about the young boy who's come for the sword well he's he's Eugène he's Eugène yeah and um Napoleon tells him ghost stories and plays with him yeah that is nice so we haven't seen that side of him no that is nice yeah I imagine he's playing wooden soldiers though. Oh, undoubtedly. This is an attack on the English. Let's, you know, I'll be the French again, that kind of thing. But meanwhile, Dominic, while he is playing wooden soldiers with Josephine's children,

I mean, he is seriously looking to have a crack at the Italians, isn't he? He is. So France is great antagonist. It was not just Britain. It's also Austria. Of course, Marion Sarnet was Austrian. Austria is the great power in Central Europe. And Napoleon has always thought, we can knock out Austria if we make a two-pronged attack. One army goes through Germany, and the other, led by me, will go through Italy, through

the Tyrol, and up towards Vienna. The soft underbelly, I believe is the phrase. Only a fool would describe that as a soft underbelly, because that's the white war from World War I. But you're right. Napoleon thinks it's a soft underbelly. I'm not calling you a fool, Tom. I'm calling Napoleon a fool if he thinks that's a soft underbelly. Anyway. I'm glad that's been made clear. Yeah, I would never do that to you. Not after that reading like that to start the episode. I mean, that was genius. So the other commanders say, this is a very bad idea.

Don't do it. But Napoleon manages to persuade everybody that it's a great plan and that he is the man to lead it. And before leaving, he decides, first of all, he reads everything that he can about Italy, maps, books. He shuts himself for a whole week in his office reading up on it. But also he decides to make an honest woman of Josephine, which is lovely. And she's actually very ambivalent about getting married, isn't she?

She doesn't really want to do it. Yeah. But. Signs up to it. Yeah. And very romantically, he forgets about it, doesn't he? Well, he's distracted by his war plans. Yeah.

And then he turns up two hours late, doesn't he? He does. And she is wearing a revolutionary sash. So, tricolour. That's nice. Looking very gorgeous. And at the wedding, they both lie about their age. So, Napoleon says he's older and Josephine says she's younger.

Yeah. Yeah. So, they have the same age. And also, she's been waiting for two hours. The guy who was meant to conduct the wedding ceremony has got sick of waiting and has gone home to bed. So they never actually get married, do they, legally? Yeah, because the guy who steps in is not actually legally equipped to do that.

So it's invalid. Napoleon gives her a wedding gift, a medallion with the words, to destiny on it. And he is now, I mean, he is now in a position to live up to this kind of melodrama. Yes. From this point on, when Napoleon says, to destiny, it's not inherently ridiculous.

No. He is becoming a man of destiny. Although what I did enjoy, Tom, which is inherently ridiculous, is his wedding night. They go back home and Napoleon tries to get into Josephine's bed and her dog won't let him do it.

No, Fortunet, her pet pug. Yeah, and bites him to stop him getting into her bed. Not tonight. Which probably, yeah. Bone apart. Yeah. This is the thing, the whole not tonight, Josephine. Josephine is really never that keen on him because she's always unfaithful to him, isn't she, later on?

Yeah. And she's hung around with a lot more worldly and impressive, so it would seem, richer and more impressive men than Boney. is the one that David will immortalize with his great painting, showing him as a kind of Hannibal crossing the Alps. And this is the moment, isn't it? Just as he's about to head off to take up the command of the Italian army, that he changes the spelling of his name. It's the perfect moment to end this, Tom, actually, because so much of this week's little series has been about the tension between Corsica and France and also the

sort of ambivalence within Napoleon about who he will be, who he is and who he'll be. And the first time he ever signs his name Bonaparte rather than Buonaparte is the letter that he writes to Josephine after he's left the headquarters of the army of Italy to begin this great enterprise that he has dreamed up. He writes, every instant takes me further away from you, my adorable love. With every instant, I find less and less strength of which to bear being away from you. You are the constant object of all my thoughts. And he signs that bonaparte. So it's as though he's finally pinned his colors to the French mast.

You know, he's no longer the little guy from Corsica, but he is the war hero, the embodiment of France, who's going to carry the flag of the revolution against the reactionary powers. And so that, Dominic, is why, although the accent at the start of this show on one level was inaccurate, in another, it speaks to a profounder truth yeah beautifully judged the truth being that napoleon from this point forward is a frenchman he's a frenchman and you know what people say he's um too young to command the army of italy and he has a wonderful line he says i should be old when i return and we will come back to that won't we maybe not immediately but we will come back to that won't we maybe not immediately

but we will come back to nevolium we can't just leave him hanging there forever but when we do we've done the french revolution because i think so many interesting things to talk about with the french revolution that we just have skimmed over when we did it on the rest is history all those 50 minutes yeah exactly so next year we'll do a big series on the french revolution all the blood and guts all the idealism all the aspirations and the ideas and the ideology and all the faction fighting and all that sort of stuff and tom i think we should do that on location we should we should go to the city of light so a tryst with destiny oh wait napoleon is napoleon would put it.

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