In May 1793 the break between the Bonapartes and Pasquale Paoli turned into proscription: the Ajaccio house was ransacked, the family condemned by the Corsican assembly. Letizia fled by night with her children, took ship at Calvi and landed at Toulon, then reached Marseille. There were eight of them, penniless, entered on the relief registers for Corsican refugees.
Napoleon, a twenty-four-year-old artillery captain, was the only one drawing pay. From this period dates Le Souper de Beaucaire, a pamphlet written in July 1793 in which a soldier explains to federalist merchants that civil war is a losing calculation. It was printed at the expense of the representatives on mission: his first successful political act.
Marseille also brought a family. The Clarys, rich silk and soap merchants, married their daughter Julie to Joseph Bonaparte in August 1794; the younger daughter, Désirée, became engaged to Napoleon in 1795. He broke it off the next year for Joséphine. Désirée would marry Bernadotte and become Queen of Sweden, Julie Queen of Spain: the Marseille trading house had produced two sovereigns.
The city keeps an ambiguous memory of the Empire. A port ruined by the Continental Blockade, it saw its merchant fleet collapse and its trade shift to smuggling. The Provençal cradle of the Bonaparte fortune was also one of the cities their economic system hit hardest.
