re the younger, and Ricrod, as
a representative of the people, to the army before Toulon, where, as well
as at Marseilles, he shared in all the atrocities committed by his
colleagues and by Bonaparte; for which, after the death of the
Robespierres, he was arrested with him as a terrorist.
He had not known Bonaparte much in Corsica, but, finding him and his
family in great distress, with all other Corsican refugees, and observing
his adroitness as a captain of artillery, he recommended him to Barras,
and upon their representation to the Committee of Public Safety, he was
promoted to a chef de brigade, or colonel. 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. In 1797 he was chosen a member of the
Council of Five Hundred, where he always continued a supporter of violent
measures.
When, in 1799, his former protege, Bonaparte, was proclaimed a First
Consul, Salicetti desired to be placed in the Conservative Senate; but
his familiarity displeased Napoleon, who made him first a commercial
agent, and afterwards a Minister to the Ligurian Republic, so as to keep
him at a distance. During his several missions, he has amassed a
fortune, calculated, at the lowest, of six millions of livres.
The order Salicetti received to prepare the incorporation of Genoa with
France, would not, without the presence of our troops, have been very
easy to execute, particularly as he, six months before, had prevailed on
the Doge and the Senate to resign all sovereignty to Lucien Bonaparte,
under the title of a Grand Duke of Genoa.
The cause of Napoleon's change of opinion with regard to his brother
Lucien, was that the latter would not separate from a wife he loved, but
preferred domestic happiness to external splendour frequently accompanied
with internal misery. So that this act of incorporation of the Ligurian
Republic, in fact, originated, notwithstanding the great and deep
calculations of our profound politicians and political schemers, in
nothing else but in the keeping of a wife, and in the refusal of a
ri
|