Napoleon: Uprising-The Fall of Tyrants

About the Author

Benno Schlicker is a teacher of History and English, currently working at Concordia College in Adelaide, South Australia. He studied at Adelaide University, achieving an Honours Degree in History. His thesis on the Calvinist Iconoclasm in the Dutch Revolt resides in the Barr Smith Library. He currently lives in Adelaide.

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Dedication

To my family, to my teachers who inspired a love of learning, and to all who dare to dream.

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Napoleon: Uprising, The Fall of Tyrants

Published by Austin Macauley at Smashwords

Copyright 2018, Benno Schlicker

The right of Benno Schlicker Irving to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All Rights Reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with the written permission of the publisher, or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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A CIP catalogue record for this title is

Available from the British Library.

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www.austinmacauley.com

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Napoleon: Uprising, The Fall of Tyrants, 2018

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd.

ISBN 978-1-78823-755-0 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-78823-756-7 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781788237574 (Kindle E-Book)

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First Published in 2018

Austin Macauley Publishers.LTD/

CGC-33-01, 25 Canada Square

Canary Wharf, London E14 5LQ

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Acknowledgements

The Production Team at Austin Macauley.

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Part One

Prologue

The Island of Saint Helena

South Atlantic, 1825

Waves crashed against the cliff with a thunderous roar as a solitary figure stood by the cliff’s edge, viewing the last moments of a setting sun. Seagulls cried their mournful song as they soared high above the waves, ever upwards, careless of the prone figure who longingly watched their movements from the humble ground. As darkness approached, the figure was joined by others, who’s purposeful and unison marching steps along the cobbled path, scattered the sombre solitude, sweeping it away like the outgoing tide.

‘My apologies, Monsieur Bonaparte, but as I’m sure you’re aware, your parole does not extend to this section of the coast. We have come to escort you back to your residence.’ The relief was clear on the captain’s face, as he had found his charge.

‘That’s perfectly alright, Captain Saunders. I know you are just fulfilling your duty. But you would not begrudge an old man the chance to stretch his tired legs and feel the spray of the sea on his face?’ said the prone figure, with a promiscuous smile, not the least full of remorse for his actions.

‘Certainly not, sir, but as you have already escaped one little island and caused considerable trouble, it is reasonable for me to take precautions that you don’t escape this one,’ Captain Saunders replied stoically. He avoided the general’s gaze, which was still piercing and sharp with intellect, even in his twilight years.

‘Very well. I shall go quietly,’ said Bonaparte, taking one last look at the final glimmer of light, as the sun was finally spent, like all his youth and ambition. He turned back to the captain and asked, ‘Won’t you join me for a glass of wine tonight? I would much appreciate the company of a fellow soldier.’

‘As always, it would be my pleasure, General,’ Saunders replied. They made their way back to the cottage, with all its warming obscurity, leaving the cares of the world outside like the howling wind.

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Chapter One

Village of Ponte Nuovo

Corsica, 5 May 1769

The river was swollen by the melting snow and the spring rains, which carried fallen pine down the river at a rapid, merciless pace. From his position behind the barricade, Carlo looked with anxious eyes towards his commander, Pasquale Paoli, leader of the rebels, for the order to open fire on the approaching French lines. In the previous year, he was inspired by the dashing captain, whose impressive physique towered over his fellow compatriots. Paoli’s open face held strong blue eyes, full of courage and conviction, compared with Carlo’s own which were dark brown. His own eyes peered out underneath thinning dark hair and all too furrowed eyebrows, which gave him a constant cynical look. Yet, Paoli did not look half as impressive now, cowering in the mud behind the barricade as enemy artillery exploded nearby and smooth-bore musket shot whistled overhead. When asked to join Paoli in his fight for Corsican independence against the French occupying force, Carlo was fuelled by patriotic fervour and the just nature of their cause. But weeks on the run through the mountainous terrain of northern Corsica, desertion and the continual onslaught of a relentless and outnumbering enemy revealed the naivety of such dreams.

‘Bonaparte! Quit your daydreaming, man,’ Paoli shouted at Carlo ungraciously. ‘If we stay here in range of that artillery, we will not last long. We need to make the bastards think twice about hitting their own men. Take 300 of our Prussian and Swiss mercenaries to shore up the left flank. We’ll see if they’re worth the money we paid for them,’ Paoli shouted heroically from relative safety. ‘Fire on the French right positioned across the other side of the river. You need to keep them engaged so they don’t fire on our boys on the bridge. The Prussian rifles should outrange the French muskets,’ Paoli reassured Carlo, as he snapped back to the current predicament. ‘I’ll bring the reserve in for close quarters as the French cross the bridge. We’ll hit them with a bayonet charge.’ Carlo felt his stomach turn. The prospect of being exposed on the left flank next to the bridge as Paoli advanced on the French centre made his legs feel weak. Carlo’s hesitation was apparent as Paoli tried to reassure his aide-de-camp. ‘Stop them here before they reach Corte or our cause is lost.’ With that, Carlo’s courage reignited. He would not disappoint this man; a man who had plucked him from obscurity and given him the status of his second in command. Carlo’s family was also in Corte, and given the nature of the guerrilla war they had been fighting, he feared the kind of reprisals the French would most certainly make.

With haste, he ran desperately back to the mercenaries, evading the snap and whistle of shot as it passed close by and relayed the orders. The Prussian captain, Frederick Wilhelm, could speak quite good Italian, so it did not take long for the orders to be relayed. The Swiss captain, however, seemed unsure, but there was no time to delay as the French were about to approach the bridge as Paoli’s Corsicans began fixing bayonets. He pointed to the French on the opposite side and hoped that the Swiss would follow the Prussians’ lead. The two cohorts wheeled left and then advanced towards the river bank in firing lines, just as Paoli advanced on the bridge. The light screen of skirmishers deployed to protect the main Corsican force was already pulling back in the face of heavy French artillery and musket fire from the opposite bank.

The French formed up on the bridge as Paoli advanced and fired two volleys which tore into the Corsican militia. Men were cut down and the entire front rank was devastated by the hail of metal. They lay on the ground, the lifeless dead, and the howling wounded. Before Paoli knew what was happening, the Corsicans had lost their disciplined ranks and charged ahead mindlessly. They discarded all order as fear turned them into a wild mass of scared and panicking men. With still 50 yards before the French, the charge became ragged and lost momentum, as men grew tired from the fretful charge. One final volley cut through the charging Corsicans, killing scores of men, before they crashed into the French frontline. They hit the line sporadically, in isolated ones and twos, due to their undisciplined charge and so were easily cut down by French bayonets. This, in turn, created a slippery line of dead and dying Corsicans that fouled up the men charging from behind, as they slipped on blood, excrement, and viscera.

On the river bank, Carlo watched on mortified as the Corsican charge faltered. Paoli could be seen in the thick of the fighting, rallying the men. More and more Corsicans joined the fight, causing the frontline to stabilise; the tight confinement on the bridge negating the French weight of numbers. The centre was holding for now, but for how long, Carlo could not estimate. The Prussians’ more accurate and powerful rifles were pinning down the French on the other side of the river, but they were taking a heavy toll from artillery fire. Shot from a four-pounder exploded next to Carlo and he was thrown backwards by the force of the explosion. He lay on the ground for what seemed an age; his ears ringing from the thunder of the explosion. In this dazed state, he witnessed a man twenty yards from him take aim and begin to fire, before his entire head was taken from his shoulders by a cannonball. Other cannonballs bounced along the ground, taking legs and arms, paving a path of maiming destruction in the fading twilight. The Swiss began to rout as more and more men started to flee the barrage, but the Prussians were holding; for now.

‘If we can just withstand another half hour, nightfall will give us a chance to disengage and retreat,’ Carlo shouted at Fredrick, whose grim but stoic expression showed the look of a man resigned to his grisly fate.

‘If we hold for another half hour, I won’t have any men left,’ he replied in his thick Prussian accent. Just as he spoke, a trumpet sounded on the far side of the river and the French began to disengage. A space grew between the two forces on the bridge. Men from both sides, weary from fighting, were reluctant to put themselves at risk with the prospect of safety, camp and a hot meal tantalisingly close.

Fredrick gave the order for the Prussians to fall back; the musket fire diminishing as the light began to fade. Paoli ordered the Corsicans in the centre, what remained of them, to fall back also. Of the thousand men that began the engagement, only 400 remained, not enough to hold the bridge again the following day without artillery. Carlo limbed back with the Prussians, a small piece of shrapnel from the exploded shell burning in his leg, causing it to bleed heavily. They reached the top of a ridge that looked down on the bridge, which was now a mess of bodies. They were strewn all over the bridge and either side on the river banks. Carlo noted that there were nearly three times as many bodies on his side of the bridge than there were on the French side; a telling summary of the afternoon’s engagement. As he signalled for Fredrick to call a halt, a rider on a grey mare rode up to him, his horse’s body a shimmer with sweat and its mouth lathered with saliva from the exertion of riding up the ridge. The rider dismounted and urgently strode up to Carlo and embraced him.

‘Nicolino, good to see that you survived the carnage, brother. I thought you would have run with thee Swiss,’ Carlo said to the rider with a weary smile as they both took a step back.

‘The Swiss make fine mercenaries but they can see when a battle is lost,’ Nicolino replied. ‘Furthermore, out of the two of us, I always had the more sense, so the thought naturally crossed my mind, but I may have caught some nasty patriotism from my fool of an older brother,’ Nicolino retorted while clapping Carlo on the shoulder with a force that belied his more slender and agile frame. His face darkened. ‘I’ve orders from Paoli. You are to force-march through the night, the remaining twenty-two miles south to Corte. He will be coming with the remainder of the militia to defend the capital.’

‘What of the wounded?’ Carlo asked, his shocked face displaying his abhorrence of the order that they were to surrender the bridge.

‘They are to be left where they are. There is no other choice. We must defend the women and children of Corte in the hope that we can propose a favourable armistice, and that the French will spare the town. Paoli knows our cause is lost, but we must limit the scale of French retribution,’ Nicolino lamented dejectedly. Both men nodded their heads in agreement and resignation. The bridge at Ponte Nuovo had been their last hope of a free and independent Corsica. Now the road to Corte was open, as was their entire country. Carlo gazed up at the wild olive trees that grew all over Corsica. The wind had changed direction, as a gale blew through the branches, causing the olives to fall to the ground. It was with resignation that Carlo realised the wind was blowing from the direction of the French riverbank, and if he and his family were to survive, he would have to bend with the prevailing wind. To stand against it was to surely break.

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Town of Ajaccio, Corsica 1778

From his position on the beach, Napoleon looked up with awe at the citadel that protected the Gulf of Ajaccio; the scene bathed in sunlight that fine August afternoon. Built by the Genoese over two hundred years ago to protect the strategically important port, the fort had a solid wall and watchtower on the seaward side and a moat that separated it from the town of Ajaccio. Napoleon could see the powerful cannons pointing out, ever watchful for threats coming west from the Mediterranean. This position provided the nine year old with his favourite view of the fort, with the glistening turquois waves lapping at the feet of its strong twenty foot walls. A lustrous orange radiated from the terracotta tiles of Ajaccio’s many townhouses that glowed in the background; contrasting vividly with the water. He prized this view so much that he had even convinced his eleven year old brother, Giuseppe, to walk the extra half hour around the town’s walls to view the fort from this particular side. Access to this beach directly from the town was cut off by guards patrolling the bridge that extended over a moat dug around the landward side of the fort. Napoleon heard a bell sound to signal the changing of the guard, and watched as a guard dressed in a white coat with lining, collar and cuffs all a shade of royal blue, came to relieve the sentry. He found the military routine comforting in its precision, and had often come to watch the changing of the guard and marvel at their exact timing. He knew the time must have been three in the afternoon, and that knowledge caused some consternation in the young boy, as his parents would be expecting him and his brother back soon. They were never allowed to go this far without someone older, like their fifteen year old uncle escorting them. His father, Carlo Bonaparte, would not have been too concerned. His mother, Letizia, on the other hand, was a very stern woman and not so forgiving. She would be most upset, particularly seeing as it was his birthday and they were expecting the French governor, the Comte de Marbuef, to attend. For the governor’s convenience, the party was to be held at their four-story building in Ajaccio, rather than their villa in the country-side. The governor had state business in the town, meeting with the heads of the craft guilds to implement new regulations in line with King Louis VXI’s new economic edicts.

‘Napoleon, we are going to be hard pressed to make it back in time for the party! I knew I should not have let you talk me into taking the long way around the fort. We are going to be in so much trouble!’ said Giuseppe, with an air of superiority that infuriated Napoleon, particularly given that they were only separated by a solitary year.

Napoleon was unwilling to admit to his older brother that his selfishness was the cause of their current predicament and so he defiantly suggested an alternative. ‘We have plenty of time to make it back home; we just need to take a different route,’ he said. He pointed in the direction of the bridge over the mote and a large smile slowly grew on his face, as an equally large frown descended on Giuseppe’s. ‘Unless you’re too scared, big brother,’ he said, unable to resist the small barb to his brother’s courage. With that he triumphantly trotted off toward the bridge, taking cover behind each rock and boulder, so as not to arouse the suspicion of the guards. He imagined he was on a mission, scouting the enemy fort for the Corsican rebellion against the occupying French, eager to get back to his commander, and inform him of the fort’s strengths and weaknesses, of which he knew intimately from the many hours studying it.

‘Your arrogance is going to be your downfall one day, Napoleon. Mark my words,’ Giuseppe remonstrated, as they approached the bridge.

They crouched low behind a pile of hessian sacks next to the bridge. The sacks were being unloaded from a wagon fifteen yards away and stacked, one on top of the other, by tired looking dock workers. They seemed not to notice the two boys, or more than likely, did not care. The sacks seemed to contain coffee beans by the bitter and pungent aroma emanating from them. Napoleon could hear someone who appeared to be a merchant by the opulence of his attire, arguing with a French officer in Italian as men continued to unload the coffee sacks. Although he could not fully understand the French, he understood the merchant clearly, who, from what Napoleon overheard, was angry about his goods being impounded in the fort. Apparently, the merchant had failed to pay to the French crown the appropriate tax. He heard the merchant offer the French captain a bribe of two hundred Livres and to his astonishment saw the two shake hands. The captain said something in French to the dock workers, who groaned and began loading the sacks back onto the wagon. Napoleon was shocked that a soldier would be so corrupt, but became alarmed at the fact that their hiding place was soon to be dismantled. ‘Now what are we going to do, genius?’ Giuseppe whispered, with his sense of triumph only masked by the growing panic in his voice. Napoleon was about to suggest turning around, and taking the long and exhausting journey around the fort and the town walls, which would almost certainly end in a hiding from his father for being late, when to his amazement, the French captain motioned to the four guards on the bridge to help load up the coffee sacks. Not willing to gain the Captain’s displeasure, the guards marched toward the coffee sacks.

‘Fortune smiles on us, brother. Now when the fourth guard picks up his sack and turns for the wagon, we make a run for the bridge,’ Napoleon instructed. One by one, the guards picked up a sack each, as the boys lay flat on the dusty ground, trying hard not to breathe. As the fourth guard turned, Napoleon motioned for the two boys to make a run for it. They sprang to their feet and rushed for the bridge. They were barely half way across the bridge when the Captain saw them and shouted at the guards to give pursuit. Napoleon and Giuseppe turned right at the end of the bridge, and ran along the esplanade, which wound its way along the coast, heading south from the citadel and adjacent to the port with its sheltered bay.

Ships of all shapes and sizes could be seen further out to sea or docking at the many piers that extended from the shoreline. There were small one-mast schooners, with their modest cargo. Sloops and corvettes that glided on the water, as well as merchant ships being unloaded and in the distance could be seen a French Man of War with three levels of gun batteries. It was stalking the Mediterranean, between Marseilles and Ajaccio, with an eager eye for pirates. At sixty metres in length, with three masts, and one hundred and twenty four guns, it was a match for anything in those waters. Its smaller companion, a frigate, never left her side. Napoleon could not help but marvel at the power and might of the ships, even as he gasped for breath in his endeavour to outrun those who currently pursued him. His small legs were starting to ache and a sharp pain started to throb in his stomach; they needed to lose their pursuers in a crowd quickly.

They turned left at the marketplace, which opened out onto the shore and were immediately assaulted by an array of fragrant aromas. Spices such as black pepper, cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, turmeric, nutmeg and cloves combined with his exhaustion to overpower his senses; causing a wave of dizziness to crash over him. The spices came from Asia through either Constantinople or Egypt and brought great wealth to colonial powers like France, and enriched the palate of the European aristocracy. Napoleon could see and smell sugar, tobacco and molasses, either from the Americas or the Caribbean, as well as the local produce of wine, oranges, olive oil and fish of all kinds.

As Napoleon turned his head to catch a glimpse of the guards, he slipped on a sardine that had fallen from a fish mongers stall and crashed to the ground. ‘Get up, quick!’ Giuseppe shouted, as both boys crouched down, partially hidden from the guards by the mass of people who were walking, chatting, bargaining and inspecting the varied wares of the market. The people of the marketplace were as varied as the produce on display. Napoleon could see a wealthy man in a suit with a fashionable olive coloured coat that extended to the knee, and narrowly fitted the shoulders and sleeves. He had a mustard coloured waistcoat over a fine linen shirt. His head was covered with the three-cornered hat that most men wore and only a greying ponytail, tied together with a gold ribbon, was revealed under the hat. His breeches, the same colour as his coat, extended to the knee from which white stockings revealing his rather shapely carves, flowed on to black leather shoes that glinted with square bronze buckles. He arrogantly pushed the commoners out of his path, using a black cane with a golden handle. Napoleon could not help but compare his appearance with the poor street urchins and beggars that infested the market. Their tattered and dirty rags emanated a foul body odour. Their bare feet, black from walking the street, were always shuffling on to find easy prey that they could pickpocket. They constantly stole food from the busily haggling street vendors and their number had been growing lately, making the town more and more dangerous; particularly for two young, rich boys.

Napoleon and Giuseppe crawled on hands and knees through the crowd to a butcher’s stall where they could hide until the guards had passed. Napoleon’s hand squelched on what he hoped was mud but judging from the smell of it, such a hope was forlorn. His breeches would be ruined, he realised. He imagined the beating he would be subjected to, and the possible punishments his mother would force him and his brother to endure for ruining their expensive clothes. He would rather miss out on a few meals than have to eat a cake of soap, like he had to last time he was in trouble.

The sound of a meat cleaver chopped down hard on the table overhead, startling Napoleon back to the present. Blood from the butchered animal poured off the table and onto an ever growing puddle that threatened to darken further their already soiled breeches. The smell and sight of the blood was overwhelming, as both boys fought with themselves to keep the contents of their stomachs intact. Just as Napoleon was about to cry out in disgust, he saw four pairs of dark leather boots come to a stop, directly in front of the butcher’s stall. He held his breath; fear welling up inside of him.

‘Did you see where they went?’ one of the guards asked in French with a deep rasping voice.

‘No. I saw one of them fall down around here but then I lost sight of them,’ another guard said more meekly.

‘Well, spread out and meet back here in a few minutes, if you can’t find them, we’ll head back to the captain. Why he sent us out here for two stupid children, I cannot know. Maybe they insulted his prickly aristocratic pride. The arsehole hates being made a fool of,’ said the first guard with a distinctly spiteful tone. With that, the four sets of boots marched off in different directions and the two boys let out simultaneous sighs of relief. They had just begun stretching their tired legs when a deep voice made them jump.

‘What do we have here? Two little gentlemen running from French guards?’ the big booming voice of the butcher said in an Italian which reverberated in their ears, accentuated by a slight Prussian accent. ‘You can come out now from your hiding spots’. Napoleon and Giuseppe came out from underneath the table, both covered in blood and dirt, and with fearful looks on their faces. They peered up at a mountain of a man. The butcher’s cleaver kept clanging on the table with a menacing hack. He was a heavy set man in his late forties, with strong arms and a large barrel of a stomach that stretched an apron covered in dried blood from the day’s messy work. He put the cleaver down and twisted his curled moustache, which was a rich auburn colour like the thinning wisp of hair on his head. ‘Well, I have no love for the French so I will not hand you over for a small sum of money, though I was tempted. I doubt you two would fetch much of a price. What are your names, my little spies?’ the butcher asked. The two boys introduced themselves with wavering voices, clearly intimidated by the man and his gigantic size.

‘Bonaparte! You’re not related to Carlo Bonaparte are you, the wealthy nobleman?’ the butcher said with surprise on his face.

‘He is our father, sir.’ Napoleon said with a meek voice, unsure whether he could trust this man. What if he kidnapped them and held his father to ransom? Napoleon could imagine the cleaver coming down, severing his fingers as a warning to his family. He could not bear the thought of the level of shame and fear it would bring to the family.

‘That name brings back some memories. My name is Fredrick Wilhelm. I had the pleasure of fighting with your father against the French in the rebellion,’ Fredrick recalled, a pleasant smile growing on his broad face. ‘Well, I would very much like to see him again and talk of old times. I don’t blame him for collaborating with the French; it was the only option. What are you two doing out here, all by yourselves, being chased by French guards?’ Fredrick asked with a curious expression that softened his hard features.

‘We went for a walk to see the fort. We took too long and were going to be late for my birthday party tonight, so we took a shortcut across the bridge and the guards chased us into the marketplace,’ Napoleon recounted with a sense of pride at their daring.

‘Well. It seems you inherited your father’s courage, as well as his foolhardiness. I can’t let you go back by yourselves. The town can be a dangerous place for little gentlemen,’ Fredrick warned with a somewhat sinister smile. ‘This is my son, Martin. He will escort you back’. He clapped a strong hand on a handsome young man of around seventeen, whose apron, like his father’s, was also covered in blood and grime. ‘Take them safely back to their home. While you’re at it, buy some more salt on the way back. We’ll use it to preserve any of today’s left-over meat’.

‘Yes, Father,’ Martin acknowledged, with his father’s same self-assuredness.

‘Oh and one more thing,’ Fredrick said, while taking a small fileting knife and cutting at the side of beef hanging from the roof of the stall. He cut three huge steaks and wrapped them in some cloth. ‘Take these to your father and give him my regards,’ he said with a smile and a glint in his eye. He was full of nostalgia as he remembered his friendship with their father. With that they left Fredrick, and Martin escorted them back through the dark, damp and musky alleyways in order to avoid the guards. It was down one particular alleyway that their path was blocked by three youths dressed in wealthy looking apparel. The eldest of the three, all of around fifteen years of age, carried a small sword and had an ugly face that was dotted with acne. His upturned pug nose gave him a somewhat pig-like appearance.

‘What do we have here?’ the youth asked rhetorically. ‘Two little gentlemen led by a butcher’s boy?’

‘They don’t look like gentlemen to me. Look at the dirt and muck all over them,’ one of his companions said. ‘They look like they have just been born from a whore’s cunt,’ he said as the other two youths laughed out loud. Napoleon felt his face burn red with anger, but could not help but feel like the impotent child next to the three larger adolescents.

‘Pardon me, sirs,’ Martin said apologetically. ‘But if you could let us pass, we would appreciate it. We would not want to bother you.’

‘But you do bother me. Your very smell of dried blood and dirt offends me terribly. Plus you need to pay the tax to pass through. This is territory of the Buttafuoco clan, I am Matteo, and these are my fellow nobles Peretti della Rocca, our man of the cloth and my bondsman, Gianni Vecchio. Any produce that passes through, needs the appropriate tariffs. What do you have there in that wrapped up cloth?’ Matteo asked, pointing at the parcel underneath Martin’s arm.

‘These are some sirloin steaks to go to the Bonaparte family, the sons of whom I am currently escorting back,’ Martin said as he motioned to move. ‘If you let us pass, I would be happy to give you a reasonable deal at our stall in the market. My Father would give you excellent cuts of meat at a fair price,’ Martin said diplomatically.

‘The Bonaparte family,’ Matteo said while spitting on the ground near Martin’s feet. ‘I thought these dirty urchins looked familiar. They belong to the traitor, Carlo Bonaparte, who has sold out his country to the French. My father says he is a weak man who should not control the city council. Our friend, Gaffori, whose daughter I am to marry, should represent the council. With him in charge, the influence of our families would be improved, wouldn’t it, boys?’ he asked his fellow companions, who all chuckled menacingly in agreement. ‘So I think we’ll just take the meat and teach the little runts a lesson. Peretti, Gianni, prepare to give these children a spanking,’ Matteo said, as he tapped the hilt of his sword with his fingers.

As quick as lightening, Martin drew his small filleting knife from his belt and before Matteo could react, had the point of the blade underneath Matteo’s chin; the pressure causing a little trickle of blood to dribble down the blade. ‘The problem with a sword is that it takes too long to draw,’ Martin said threateningly. ‘A knife provides a quick clean kill. I know that from slaughtering pigs. Should I slaughter one more today?’ Martin asked, twisting the blade just a little, so that the pressure increased ever so slightly.

‘No, no, no, please don’t!’ Matteo pleaded, bursting into tears as the smell of bowels loosening became evident in the air and Matteo’s breeches became sodden with urine.

‘Vaffanculo!’ Martin grunted and the three youths ran away down another alleyway, too scared to look back. ‘That’s how you deal with bullies, boys, you have to stand up to them and not give an inch,’ Martin replied to the two wide-eyed boys who were completely speechless thereafter. They had also never heard anyone swear like that before, and were unsure what go and do it in the arse meant, but they did not like the sound of it. Napoleon vowed he would learn more swear words just like it. ‘Now let’s get you two home, it’s been a busy day for you,’ Martin said, sheathing his knife.

They left the alleyway which opened out onto a main boulevard. It was on this road, which ran parallel with the shore, that their town apartment was situated, next to the Chapelle des Grecs, a large cathedral. But Napoleon could not take in the beautiful boulevard, or the elegant cathedral, as his mind was preoccupied with what he had just witnessed, and also the punishments that were to come for being late and soiling their new clothes.

The party was well underway as Napoleon helped himself to another serving of veal. Because of the governor’s attendance, the banquet was the most opulent that he could ever remember. He looked hungrily at the five metre long dining table that was laden with all kinds of delectable morsels. There were small pastries, braised rabbit with mustard, filet mignon of mutton with a piquant sauce, quails with bay leaves, a leg of veal glazed in its own juices, slices of medium rare sirloin steaks (courtesy of Fredrick who was subsequently invited to the party), roasted capons, rouen ducklings with orange, baked mackerel in tomato, onion and garlic, cauliflower with parmesan, and green beans with verjuice. Napoleon took a bite of the veal, with the sweet juices running down his cheeks.

His mother was busily fussing with the servants, ensuring that the table was adequately laden and that every guest had beverages at hand. Her stern features made her more handsome than beautiful, as wrinkles had begun to mature her complexion, which had been darkened by the Mediterranean sun, despite the overuse of powder to compensate. Her dark hair had been raised up in a fontage, as was the style in Paris, with the front hair piled up