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The Jacobin commission held a meeting, and determined to send Salicetti to justify their course at Paris.
When Salicetti, with his secretary, Milhaud, had arranged this honourable affair, they set out from Genoa to announce to Bonaparte, at Milan, their success. Not above a league from the former city their carriage was stopped, their persons stripped, and their papers and effects seized by a gang, called in the country the gang of PATRIOTIC ROBBERS, commanded by Mulieno.
He also declares, and Salicetti, too, repeatedly asseverated, that Buonaparte was the "man, the plan-maker" of the Robespierres. The impression which Salicetti and Marmont expressed was doubtless due to the conclusions of a council of war held on May twentieth by the leaders of the two armies of the Alps and of Italy to concert a plan of coöperation.
The pope's two physicians, standing near the bed, looked with terror upon the frightful spectacle. "He was, then, right," murmured the physician Barbi, folding his hands, "he was poisoned. These are the effects of the Acqua Tofana!" Salicetti, the second physician, shrugged his shoulders with a contemptuous smile.
The desires of both parties were temporarily fulfilled. The names of Mirabeau, Salicetti, and Volney were shouted with acclaim, those of Buttafuoco and Peretti with reprobation. The regular troops were withdrawn from Ajaccio; the ascendancy of the liberals was complete. Then feeble Genoa was heard once more.
Others have attributed Bonaparte's misfortune to a military discussion on war, and his connection with Robespierre the younger. It has, moreover, been said that Albitte and Salicetti explained to the Committee of Public Safety the impossibility of their resuming the military operations unaided by the talents of General Bonaparte. This is mere flattery.
In 1796, when Barras gave Bonaparte the command of the army of Italy, Salicetti was appointed a Commissary of Government to the same army, and in that capacity behaved with the greatest insolence towards all the Princes of Italy, and most so towards the Duke of Modena, with whom he and Bonaparte signed a treaty of neutrality, for which they received a large sum in ready money; but shortly afterwards the duchy was again invaded, and an attempt made to surprise and seize the Duke.
Mindful, therefore, of their fate, and of his obligations to England, Paoli firmly refused the proffered honor. Suspicion as to the existence of an English party in the island had early been awakened among the members of the Mountain; for half the Corsican delegation to the Convention had opposed the sentence passed on the King, and Salicetti was the only member who voted in the affirmative.
As the true state of things in Corsica began to be known in France, there was a general disposition to blame and punish the influential men who had brought things to such a desperate pass and made the loss of the island probable, if not certain. Salicetti, Multedo, and the rest quickly unloaded the whole blame on Buonaparte's shoulders, so that he had many enemies in Paris.
What a difference between Bonaparte, the author of the 'Souper de Beaucaire', the subduer of royalism at Toulon; the author of the remonstrance to Albitte and Salicetti, the fortunate conqueror of the 13th Vendemiaire, the instigator and supporter of the revolution of Fructidor, and the founder of the Republics of Italy, the fruits of his immortal victories, and Bonaparte, First Consul in 1800, Consul for life in 1802, and, above all, Napoleon, Emperor of the French in 1804, and King of Italy in 1805!
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