Napoleon Bonaparte

It was at this time that Napoleon met Louis Frereon and Paul Francois de Barras...Napoleon avoided Freron while he encouraged the interest Barras showed in him. This was to pay unimaginable dividends, for Barras was a man on the rise, soon to become a member of the five-man Directory, which would replace the Committee of Public Safety. Indeed, it was thanks to this much tainted voluptuary that Napoleon's career was to skyrocket...
[...]
Napoleon never left his thundering guns, standing by them all day long, sleeping in or near the batteries every night, despite the heavy rain.
[...]
As for Citizen Buonaparte, who had arrived in Toulon a mere captain in charge of a wagon train en route for Nice back in mid-September, three months later, on December 22, 1793, he received a further promotion to brigadier general. For the first time in his military career, his name was briefly mentioned in every city and village of the land. "I cannot find praiseworthy enough words to describe Buonaparte's full worth," General du Teil wrote the war minister following the taking of Toulon. "He has a solid scientific knowledge of his profession and as much intelligence, if too much courage, voila--there you have but a scant sketch of the virtues of this rare officer. It now only remains for you, Minister, to consecrate his talents to the glory of the Republic!" At the age of twenty-five Napoleon had arrived--or nearly.

Praise attracts praise, and Napoleon's critical role in defeating the British at Toulon was now echoed everywhere, even by the tyrannically powerful "representatives." These political commissaires of the Committee of Public Safety sent to subdue and administer Provence, from the Rhone River to the Var, had enormous powers to appoint and replace even the highest officials and officers. Two such representatives, Freron and Slicetti, wrote to Paris of their "satisfaction with the zeal and intelligence displayed by Citizen Buonaparte." Even more important to Napoleon, now at his new headquarters at Nice, were the reports sent by the more powerful and influential representatives of Paris in that city, Ricord and Maximilien Robespierre's twenty-nine-year-old brother, Augustin, who took up the cause of the hero of the day. Writing to his brother, the dreaded head of the Committee of Public Safety, after praising Napoleon to the hilt, Augustin declared him "to be worthy of rising merit."

Shortly after the events, possibly on the 29 July whilst still in Beaucaire, Napoleon wrote a political pamphlet titled Le souper de Beaucaire (The supper at Beaucaire) in which a soldier speaks with four merchants and sympathetic to their opinions attempts to dissipate their counter-revolutionary sentiments. The pamphlet was read by Augustin Robespierre, brother of Maximilien Robespierre, who was impressed by the revolutionary context. The pamphlet itself had little effect against the rebellious forces, but served to advance Napoleon's career. He soon became recognised for his political ambitions by a Corsica-born politician, and family friend, Christophe Saliceti, who arranged to have it published and distributed. Christophe's influence, along with fellow Convention deputy Augustin Robespierre, advanced Napoleon into the position of senior gunner, at Toulon.

Napoleon was successful on many battlefields; and he may have been a master of campaigning. However, in strategic terms, he was a failure principally because he never succeeded in transforming a defeated enemy into a willing ally. He won wars, but he never won the peace.