Chapter 2 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND CORSICA

"They seek to destroy the Revolution by attacking my person: I will defend it, for I am the Revolution." Such were the words uttered by Buonaparte after the failure of the royalist plot of 1804. They are a daring transcript of Louis XIV.'s "L'état, c'est moi." That was a bold claim, even for an age attuned to the whims of autocrats: but this of the young Corsican is even more daring, for he thereby equated himself with a movement which claimed to be wide as humanity and infinite as truth.

And yet when he spoke these words, they were not scouted as presumptuous folly: to most Frenchmen they seemed sober truth and practical good sense. How came it, one asks in wonder, that after the short space of fifteen years a world-wide movement depended on a single life, that the infinitudes of 1789 lived on only in the form, and by the pleasure, of the First Consul? Here surely is a political incarnation unparalleled in the whole course of human history. The riddle cannot be solved by history alone. It belongs in part to the domain of psychology, when that science shall undertake the study, not merely of man as a unit, but of the aspirations, moods, and whims of communities and nations. Meanwhile it will be our far humbler task to strive to point out the relation of Buonaparte to the Revolution, and to show how the mighty force of his will dragged it to earth.

The first questions that confront us are obviously these. Were the lofty aims and aspirations of the Revolution attainable? And, if so, did the men of 1789 follow them by practical methods? To the former of these questions the present chapter will, in part at least, serve as an answer. On the latter part of the problem the events described in later chapters will throw some light: in them we shall see that the great popular upheaval let loose mighty forces that bore Buonaparte on to fortune.

Here we may notice that the Revolution was not a simple and therefore solid movement. It was complex and contained the seeds of discord which lurk in many-sided and militant creeds. The theories of its intellectual champions were as diverse as the motives which spurred on their followers to the attack on the outworn abuses of the age.

Discontent and faith were the ultimate motive powers of the Revolution. Faith prepared the Revolution and discontent accomplished it. Idealists who, in varied planes of thought, preached the doctrine of human perfectibility, succeeded in slowly permeating the dull toiling masses of France with hope. Omitting here any notice of philosophic speculation as such, we may briefly notice the teachings of three writers whose influence on revolutionary politics was to be definite and practical. These were Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau. The first was by no means a revolutionist, for he decided in favour of a mixed form of government, like that of England, which guaranteed the State against the dangers of autocracy, oligarchy, and mob-rule. Only by a ricochet did he assail the French monarchy. But he re-awakened critical inquiry; and any inquiry was certain to sap the base of the ancien régime in France. Montesquieu's teaching inspired the group of moderate reformers who in 1789 desired to re-fashion the institutions of France on the model of those of England. But popular sentiment speedily swept past these Anglophils towards the more attractive aims set forth by Voltaire.

This keen thinker subjected the privileged classes, especially the titled clergy, to a searching fire of philosophic bombs and barbed witticisms. Never was there a more dazzling succession of literary triumphs over a tottering system. The satirized classes winced and laughed, and the intellect of France was conquered, for the Revolution. Thenceforth it was impossible that peasants who were nominally free should toil to satisfy the exacting needs of the State, and to support the brilliant bevy of nobles who flitted gaily round the monarch at Versailles. The young King Louis XVI., it is true, carried through several reforms, but he had not enough strength of will to abolish the absurd immunities from taxation which freed the nobles and titled clergy from the burdens of the State. Thus, down to 1789, the middle classes and peasants bore nearly all the weight of taxation, while the peasants were also encumbered by feudal dues and tolls. These were the crying grievances which united in a solid phalanx both thinkers and practical men, and thereby gave an immense impetus to the levelling doctrines of Rousseau.

Two only of his political teachings concern us here, namely, social equality and the unquestioned supremacy of the State; for to these dogmas, when they seemed doomed to political bankruptcy, Napoleon Buonaparte was to act as residuary legatee. According to Rousseau, society and government originated in a social contract, whereby all members of the community have equal rights. It matters not that the spirit of the contract may have evaporated amidst the miasma of luxury. That is a violation of civil society; and members are justified in reverting at once to the primitive ideal. If the existence of the body politic be endangered, force may be used: "Whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be constrained to do so by the whole body; which means nothing else than that he shall be forced to be free." Equally plausible and dangerous was his teaching as to the indivisibility of the general will. Deriving every public power from his social contract, he finds it easy to prove that the sovereign power, vested in all the citizens, must be incorruptible, inalienable, unrepresentable, indivisible, and indestructible. Englishmen may now find it difficult to understand the enthusiasm called forth by this quintessence of negations; but to Frenchman recently escaped from the age of privilege and warring against the coalition of kings, the cry of the Republic one and indivisible was a trumpet call to death or victory. Any shifts, even that of a dictatorship, were to be borne, provided that social equality could be saved. As republican Rome had saved her early liberties by intrusting unlimited powers to a temporary dictator, so, claimed Rousseau, a young commonwealth must by a similar device consult Nature's first law of self-preservation. The dictator saves liberty by temporarily abrogating it: by momentary gagging of the legislative power he renders it truly vocal.

The events of the French Revolution form a tragic commentary on these theories. In the first stage of that great movement we see the followers of Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau marching in an undivided host against the ramparts of privilege. The walls of the Bastille fall down even at the blast of their trumpets. Odious feudal privileges disappear in a single sitting of the National Assembly; and the Parlements, or supreme law courts of the provinces, are swept away. The old provinces themselves are abolished, and at the beginning of 1790 France gains social and political unity by her new system of Departments, which grants full freedom of action in local affairs, though in all national concerns it binds France closely to the new popular government at Paris. But discords soon begin to divide the reformers: hatred of clerical privilege and the desire to fill the empty coffers of the State dictate the first acts of spoliation. Tithes are abolished: the lands of the Church are confiscated to the service of the State; monastic orders are suppressed; and the Government undertakes to pay the stipends of bishops and priests. Furthermore, their subjection to the State is definitely secured by the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (July, 1790) which invalidates their allegiance to the Pope. Most of the clergy refuse: these are termed non-jurors or orthodox priests, while their more complaisant colleagues are known as constitutional priests. Hence arises a serious schism in the Church, which distracts the religious life of the land, and separates the friends of liberty from the champions of the rigorous equality preached by Rousseau.

The new constitution of 1791 was also a source of discord. In its jealousy of the royal authority, the National Assembly seized very many of the executive functions of government. The results were disastrous. Laws remained without force, taxes went uncollected, the army was distracted by mutinies, and the monarchy sank slowly into the gulf of bankruptcy and anarchy. Thus, in the course of three years, the revolutionists goaded the clergy to desperation, they were about to overthrow the monarchy, every month was proving their local self-government to be unworkable, and they themselves split into factions that plunged France into war and drenched her soil by organized massacres.

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We know very little about the impression made on the young Buonaparte by the first events of the Revolution. His note-book seems even to show that he regarded them as an inconvenient interference with his plans for Corsica. But gradually the Revolution excites his interest. In September, 1789, we find him on furlough in Corsica sharing the hopes of the islanders that their representatives in the French National Assembly will obtain the boon of independence. He exhorts his compatriots to favour the democratic cause, which promises a speedy deliverance from official abuses. He urges them to don the new tricolour cockade, symbol of Parisian triumph over the old monarchy; to form a club; above all, to organize a National Guard. The young officer knew that military power was passing from the royal army, now honeycombed with discontent, to the National Guard. Here surely was Corsica's means of salvation. But the French governor of Corsica intervenes. The club is closed, and the National Guard is dispersed. Thereupon Buonaparte launches a vigorous protest against the tyranny of the governor and appeals to the National Assembly of France for some guarantee of civil liberty. His name is at the head of this petition, a sufficiently daring step for a junior lieutenant on furlough. But his patriotism and audacity carry him still further. He journeys to Bastia, the official capital of his island, and is concerned in an affray between the populace and the royal troops (November 5th, 1789). The French authorities, fortunately for him, are nearly powerless: he is merely requested to return to Ajaccio; and there he organizes anew the civic force, and sets the dissident islanders an example of good discipline by mounting guard outside the house of a personal opponent.

Other events now transpired which began to assuage his opposition to France. Thanks to the eloquent efforts of Mirabeau, the Corsican patriots who had remained in exile since 1768 were allowed to return and enjoy the full rights of citizenship. Little could the friends of liberty at Paris, or even the statesman himself, have foreseen all the consequences of this action: it softened the feelings of many Corsicans towards their conquerors; above all, it caused the heart of Napoleon Buonaparte for the first time to throb in accord with that of the French nation. His feelings towards Paoli also began to cool. The conduct of this illustrious exile exposed him to the charge of ingratitude towards France. The decree of the French National Assembly, which restored him to Corsican citizenship, was graced by acts of courtesy such as the generous French nature can so winningly dispense. Louis XVI. and the National Assembly warmly greeted him, and recognized him as head of the National Guard of the island. Yet, amidst all the congratulations, Paoli saw the approach of anarchy, and behaved with some reserve. Outwardly, however, concord seemed to be assured, when on July 14th, 1790, he landed in Corsica; but the hatred long nursed by the mountaineers and fisherfolk against France was not to be exorcised by a few demonstrations. In truth, the island was deeply agitated. The priests were rousing the people against the newly decreed Civil Constitution of the Clergy; and one of these disturbances endangered the life of Napoleon himself. He and his brother Joseph chanced to pass by when one of the processions of priests and devotees was exciting the pity and indignation of the townsfolk. The two brothers, who were now well known as partisans of the Revolution, were threatened with violence, and were saved only by their own firm demeanour and the intervention of peacemakers.

Then again, the concession of local self-government to the island, as one of the Departments of France, revealed unexpected difficulties. Bastia and Ajaccio struggled hard for the honour of being the official capital. Paoli favoured the claims of Bastia, thereby annoying the champions of Ajaccio, among whom the Buonapartes were prominent. The schism was widened by the dictatorial tone of Paoli, a demeanour which ill became the chief of a civic force. In fact, it soon became apparent that Corsica was too small a sphere for natures so able and masterful as those of Paoli and Napoleon Buonaparte.

The first meeting of these two men must have been a scene of deep interest. It was on the fatal field of Ponte Nuovo. Napoleon doubtless came there in the spirit of true hero-worship. But hero-worship which can stand the strain of actual converse is rare indeed, especially when the expectant devotee is endowed with keen insight and habits of trenchant expression. One phrase has come down to us as a result of the interview; but this phrase contains a volume of meaning. After Paoli had explained the disposition of his troops against the French at Ponte Nuovo, Buonaparte drily remarked to his brother Joseph, "The result of these dispositions was what was inevitable." [13]

For the present, Buonaparte and other Corsican democrats were closely concerned with the delinquencies of the Comte de Buttafuoco, the deputy for the twelve nobles of the island to the National Assembly of France. In a letter written on January 23rd, 1791, Buonaparte overwhelms this man with a torrent of invective.-He it was who had betrayed his country to France in 1768. Self-interest and that alone prompted his action then, and always. French rule was a cloak for his design of subjecting Corsica to "the absurd feudal régime" of the barons. In his selfish royalism he had protested against the new French constitution as being unsuited to Corsica, "though it was exactly the same as that which brought us so much good and was wrested from us only amidst streams of blood."-The letter is remarkable for the southern intensity of its passion, and for a certain hardening of tone towards Paoli. Buonaparte writes of Paoli as having been ever "surrounded by enthusiasts, and as failing to understand in a man any other passion than fanaticism for liberty and independence," and as duped by Buttafuoco in 1768.[14] The phrase has an obvious reference to the Paoli of 1791, surrounded by men who had shared his long exile and regarded the English constitution as their model. Buonaparte, on the contrary, is the accredited champion of French democracy, his furious epistle being printed by the Jacobin Club of Ajaccio.

After firing off this tirade Buonaparte returned to his regiment at Auxonne (February, 1791). It was high time; for his furlough, though prolonged on the plea of ill-health, had expired in the preceding October, and he was therefore liable to six months' imprisonment. But the young officer rightly gauged the weakness of the moribund monarchy; and the officers of his almost mutinous regiment were glad to get him back on any terms. Everywhere in his journey through Provence and Dauphiné, Buonaparte saw the triumph of revolutionary principles. He notes that the peasants are to a man for the Revolution; so are the rank and file of the regiment. The officers are aristocrats, along with three-fourths of those who belong to "good society": so are all the women, for "Liberty is fairer than they, and eclipses them." The Revolution was evidently gaining completer hold over his mind and was somewhat blurring his insular sentiments, when a rebuff from Paoli further weakened his ties to Corsica. Buonaparte had dedicated to him his work on Corsica, and had sent him the manuscript for his approval. After keeping it an unconscionable time, the old man now coldly replied that he did not desire the honour of Buonaparte's panegyric, though he thanked him heartily for it; that the consciousness of having done his duty sufficed for him in his old age; and, for the rest, history should not be written in youth. A further request from Joseph Buonaparte for the return of the slighted manuscript brought the answer that he, Paoli, had no time to search his papers. After this, how could hero-worship subsist?

The four months spent by Buonaparte at Auxonne were, indeed, a time of disappointment and hardship. Out of his slender funds he paid for the education of his younger brother, Louis, who shared his otherwise desolate lodging. A room almost bare but for a curtainless bed, a table heaped with books and papers, and two chairs-such were the surroundings of the lieutenant in the spring of 1791. He lived on bread that he might rear his brother for the army, and that he might buy books, overjoyed when his savings mounted to the price of some coveted volume.

Perhaps the depressing conditions of his life at Auxonne may account for the acrid tone of an essay which he there wrote in competition for a prize offered by the Academy of Lyons on the subject-"What truths and sentiments ought to be inculcated to men for their happiness." It was unsuccessful; and modern readers will agree with the verdict of one of the judges that it was incongruous in arrangement and of a bad and ragged style. The thoughts are set forth in jerky, vehement clauses; and, in place of the sensibilité of some of his earlier effusions, we feel here the icy breath of materialism. He regards an ideal human society as a geometrical structure based on certain well-defined postulates. All men ought to be able to satisfy certain elementary needs of their nature; but all that is beyond is questionable or harmful. The ideal legislator will curtail wealth so as to restore the wealthy to their true nature-and so forth. Of any generous outlook on the wider possibilities of human life there is scarcely a trace. His essay is the apotheosis of social mediocrity. By Procrustean methods he would have forced mankind back to the dull levels of Sparta: the opalescent glow of Athenian life was beyond his ken. But perhaps the most curious passage is that in which he preaches against the sin and folly of ambition. He pictures Ambition as a figure with pallid cheeks, wild eyes, hasty step, jerky movements and sardonic smile, for whom crimes are a sport, while lies and calumnies are merely arguments and figures of speech. Then, in words that recall Juvenal's satire on Hannibal's career, he continues: "What is Alexander doing when he rushes from Thebes into Persia and thence into India? He is ever restless, he loses his wits, he believes himself God. What is the end of Cromwell? He governs England. But is he not tormented by all the daggers of the furies?"-The words ring false, even for this period of Buonaparte's life; and one can readily understand his keen wish in later years to burn every copy of these youthful essays. But they have nearly all survived; and the diatribe against ambition itself supplies the feather wherewith history may wing her shaft at the towering flight of the imperial eagle.[15]

At midsummer he is transferred, as first lieutenant, to another regiment which happened to be quartered at Valence; but his second sojourn there is remarkable only for signs of increasing devotion to the revolutionary cause. In the autumn of 1791 he is again in Corsica on furlough, and remains there until the month of May following. He finds the island rent by strifes which it would be tedious to describe. Suffice it to say that the breach between Paoli and the Buonapartes gradually widened owing to the dictator's suspicion of all who favoured the French Revolution. The young officer certainly did nothing to close the breach. Determined to secure his own election as lieutenant-colonel in the new Corsican National Guard, he spent much time in gaining recruits who would vote for him. He further assured his success by having one of the commissioners, who was acting in Paoli's interest, carried off from his friends and detained at the Buonapartes' house in Ajaccio-his first coup[16] Stranger events were to follow. At Easter, when the people were excited by the persecuting edicts against the clergy and the closing of a monastery, there was sharp fighting between the populace and Buonaparte's companies of National Guards. Originating in a petty quarrel, which was taken up by eager partisans, it embroiled the whole of the town and gave the ardent young Jacobin the chance of overthrowing his enemies. His plans even extended to the seizure of the citadel, where he tried to seduce the French regiment from its duty to officers whom he dubbed aristocrats. The attempt was a failure. The whole truth can, perhaps, scarcely be discerned amidst the tissue of lies which speedily enveloped the affair; but there can be no doubt that on the second day of strife Buonaparte's National Guards began the fight and subsequently menaced the regular troops in the citadel. The conflict was finally stopped by commissioners sent by Paoli; and the volunteers were sent away from the town.

Buonaparte's position now seemed desperate. His conduct exposed him to the hatred of most of his fellow-citizens and to the rebukes of the French War Department. In fact, he had doubly sinned: he had actually exceeded his furlough by four months: he was technically guilty, first of desertion, and secondly of treason. In ordinary times he would have been shot, but the times were extraordinary, and he rightly judged that when a Continental war was brewing, the most daring course was also the most prudent, namely, to go to Paris. Thither Paoli allowed him to proceed, doubtless on the principle of giving the young madcap a rope wherewith to hang himself.

On his arrival at Marseilles, he hears that war has been declared by France against Austria; for the republican Ministry, which Louis XVI. had recently been compelled to accept, believed that war against an absolute monarch would intensify revolutionary fervour in France and hasten the advent of the Republic. Their surmises were correct. Buonaparte, on his arrival at Paris, witnessed the closing scenes of the reign of Louis XVI. On June 20th he saw the crowd burst into the Tuileries, when for some hours it insulted the king and queen. Warmly though he had espoused the principles of the Revolution, his patrician blood boiled at the sight of these vulgar outrages, and he exclaimed: "Why don't they sweep off four or five hundred of that canaille with cannon? The rest would then run away fast enough." The remark is significant. If his brain approved the Jacobin creed, his instincts were always with monarchy. His career was to reconcile his reason with his instincts, and to impose on weary France the curious compromise of a revolutionary Imperialism.

On August 10th, from the window of a shop near the Tuileries, he looked down on the strange events which dealt the coup de grace to the dying monarchy. Again the chieftain within him sided against the vulture rabble and with the well-meaning monarch who kept his troops to a tame defensive. "If Louis XVI." (so wrote Buonaparte to his brother Joseph) "had mounted his horse, the victory would have been his-so I judge from the spirit which prevailed in the morning." When all was over, when Louis sheathed his sword and went for shelter to the National Assembly, when the fierce Marseillais were slaughtering the Swiss Guards and bodyguards of the king, Buonaparte dashed forward to save one of these unfortunates from a southern sabre. "Southern comrade, let us save this poor wretch.-Are you of the south?-Yes.-Well, we will save him."

Altogether, what a time of disillusionment this was to the young officer. What depths of cruelty and obscenity it revealed in the Parisian rabble. What folly to treat them with the Christian forbearance shown by Louis XVI. How much more suitable was grapeshot than the beatitudes. The lesson was stored up for future use at a somewhat similar crisis on this very spot.

During the few days when victorious Paris left Louis with the sham title of king, Buonaparte received his captain's commission, which was signed for the king by Servan, the War Minister. Thus did the revolutionary Government pass over his double breach of military discipline at Ajaccio. The revolutionary motto, "La carrière ouverte aux talents," was never more conspicuously illustrated than in the facile condoning of his offences and in this rapid promotion. It was indeed a time fraught with vast possibilities for all republican or Jacobinical officers. Their monarchist colleagues were streaming over the frontiers to join the Austrian and Prussian invaders. But National Guards were enrolling by tens of thousands to drive out the Prussian and Austrian invaders; and when Europe looked to see France fall for ever, it saw with wonder her strength renewed as by enchantment. Later on it learnt that that strength was the strength of Ant?us, of a peasantry that stood firmly rooted in their native soil. Organization and good leadership alone were needed to transform these ardent masses into the most formidable soldiery; and the brilliant military prospects now opened up certainly knit Buonaparte's feelings more closely with the cause of France. Thus, on September 21st, when the new National Assembly, known as the Convention, proclaimed the Republic, we may well believe that sincere convictions no less than astute calculations moved him to do and dare all things for the sake of the new democratic commonwealth.[17]

For the present, however, a family duty urges him to return to Corsica. He obtains permission to escort home his sister Elise, and for the third time we find him on furlough in Corsica. This laxity of military discipline at such a crisis is explicable only on the supposition that the revolutionary chiefs knew of his devotion to their cause and believed that his influence in the island would render his informal services there more valuable than his regimental duties in the army then invading Savoy. For the word Republic, which fired his imagination, was an offence to Paoli and to most of the islanders; and the phrase "Republic one and indivisible," ever on the lips of the French, seemed to promise that the island must become a petty replica of France-France that was now dominated by the authors of the vile September massacres. The French party in the island was therefore rapidly declining, and Paoli was preparing to sever the union with France. For this he has been bitterly assailed as a traitor. But, from Paoli's point of view, the acquisition of the island by France was a piece of rank treachery; and his allegiance to France was technically at an end when the king was forcibly dethroned and the Republic was proclaimed. The use of the appellation "traitor" in such a case is merely a piece of childish abuse. It can be justified neither by reference to law, equity, nor to the popular sentiment of the time. Facts were soon to show that the islanders were bitterly opposed to the party then dominant in France. This hostility of a clannish, religious, and conservative populace against the bloodthirsty and atheistical innovators who then lorded it over France was not diminished by the action of some six thousand French volunteers, the off-scourings of the southern ports, who were landed at Ajaccio for an expedition against Sardinia. In their zeal for Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, these bonnets rouges came to blows with the men of Ajaccio, three of whom they hanged. So fierce was the resentment caused by this outrage that the plan of a joint expedition for the liberation of Sardinia from monarchical tyranny had to be modified; and Buonaparte, who was again in command of a battalion of Corsican guards, proposed that the islanders alone should proceed to attack the Madalena Isles.

These islands, situated between Corsica and Sardinia, have a double interest to the historical student. One of them, Caprera, was destined to shelter another Italian hero at the close of his career, the noble self-denying Garibaldi: the chief island of the group was the objective of Buonaparte's first essay in regular warfare. After some delays the little force set sail under the command of Cesari-Colonna, the nephew of Paoli. According to Buonaparte's own official statement at the close of the affair, he had successfully landed his men near the town to be assailed, and had thrown the Sardinian defences into confusion, when a treacherous order from his chief bade him to cease firing and return to the vessels. It has also been stated that this retreat was the outcome of a secret understanding between Paoli and Cesari-Colonna that the expedition should miscarry. This seems highly probable. A mutiny on board the chief ship of the flotilla was assigned by Cesari-Colonna as the cause of his order for a retreat; but there are mutinies and mutinies, and this one may have been a trick of the Paolists for thwarting Buonaparte's plan and leaving him a prisoner. In any case, the young officer only saved himself and his men by a hasty retreat to the boats, tumbling into the sea a mortar and four cannon. Such was the ending to the great captain's first military enterprise.

On his return to Ajaccio (March 3rd, 1793), Buonaparte found affairs in utter confusion. News had recently arrived of the declaration of war by the French Republic against England and Holland. Moreover, Napoleon's young brother, Lucien, had secretly denounced Paoli to the French authorities at Toulon; and three commissioners were now sent from Paris charged with orders to disband the Corsican National Guards, and to place the Corsican dictator under the orders of the French general commanding the army of Italy.[18]

A game of truly Macchiavellian skill is now played. The French commissioners, among whom the Corsican deputy, Salicetti, is by far the most able, invite Paoli to repair to Toulon, there to concert measures for the defence of Corsica. Paoli, seeing through the ruse and discerning a guillotine, pleads that his age makes the journey impossible; but with his friends he quietly prepares for resistance and holds the citadel of Ajaccio. Meanwhile the commissioners make friendly overtures to the old chief; in these Napoleon participates, being ignorant of Lucien's action at Toulon. The sincerity of these overtures may well be called in question, though Buonaparte still used the language of affection to his former idol. However this may be, all hope of compromise is dashed by the zealots who are in power at Paris. On April 2nd they order the French commissioners to secure Paoli's person, by whatever means, and bring him to the French capital. At once a cry of indignation goes up from all parts of Corsica; and Buonaparte draws up a declaration, vindicating Paoli's conduct and begging the French Convention to revoke its decree.[19] Again, one cannot but suspect that this declaration was intended mainly, if not solely, for local consumption. In any case, it failed to cool the resentment of the populace; and the partisans of France soon came to blows with the Paolists.

Salicetti and Buonaparte now plan by various artifices to gain the citadel of Ajaccio from the Paolists, but guile is three times foiled by guile equally astute. Failing here, the young captain seeks to communicate with the French commissioners at Bastia. He sets out secretly, with a trusty shepherd as companion, to cross the island: but at the village of Bocognano he is recognized and imprisoned by the partisans of Paoli. Some of the villagers, however, retain their old affection to the Buonaparte family, which here has an ancestral estate, and secretly set him free. He returns to Ajaccio, only to find an order for his arrest issued by the Corsican patriots. This time he escapes by timely concealment in the grotto of a friend's garden; and from the grounds of another family connection he finally glides away in a vessel to a point of safety, whence he reaches Bastia.

Still, though a fugitive, he persists in believing that Ajaccio is French at heart, and urges the sending of a liberating force. The French commissioners agree, and the expedition sails-only to meet with utter failure. Ajaccio, as one man, repels the partisans of France; and, a gale of wind springing up, Buonaparte and his men regain their boats with the utmost difficulty. At a place hard by, he finds his mother, uncle, brothers and sisters. Madame Buonaparte, with the extraordinary tenacity of will that characterized her famous son, had wished to defend her house at Ajaccio against the hostile populace; but, yielding to the urgent warnings of friends, finally fled to the nearest place of safety, and left the house to the fury of the populace, by whom it was nearly wrecked.

For a brief space Buonaparte clung to the hope of regaining Corsica for the Republic, but now only by the aid of French troops. For the islanders, stung by the demand of the French Convention that Paoli should go to Paris, had rallied to the dictator's side; and the aged chief made overtures to England for alliance. The partisans of France, now menaced by England's naval power, were in an utterly untenable position. Even the steel-like will of Buonaparte was bent. His career in Corsica was at an end for the present; and with his kith and kin he set sail for France.

The interest of the events above described lies, not in their intrinsic importance, but in the signal proof which they afford of Buonaparte's wondrous endowments of mind and will. In a losing cause and in a petty sphere he displays all the qualities which, when the omens were favourable, impelled him to the domination of a Continent. He fights every inch of ground tenaciously; at each emergency he evinces a truly Italian fertility of resource, gliding round obstacles or striving to shatter them by sheer audacity, seeing through men, cajoling them by his insinuations or overawing them by his mental superiority, ever determined to try the fickle jade Fortune to the very utmost, and retreating only before the inevitable. The sole weakness discoverable in this nature, otherwise compact of strength, is an excess of will-power over all the faculties that make for prudence. His vivid imagination only serves to fire him with the full assurance that he must prevail over all obstacles.

And yet, if he had now stopped to weigh well the lessons of the past, hitherto fertile only in failures and contradictions, he must have seen the powerlessness of his own will when in conflict with the forces of the age; for he had now severed his connection with the Corsican patriots, of whose cause he had only two years before been the most passionate champion. It is evident that the schism which finally separated Buonaparte and Paoli originated in their divergence of views regarding the French Revolution. Paoli accepted revolutionary principles only in so far as they promised to base freedom on a due balance of class interests. He was a follower of Montesquieu. He longed to see in Corsica a constitution similar to that of England or to that of 1791 in France. That hope vanished alike for France and Corsica after the fall of the monarchy; and towards the Jacobinical Republic, which banished orthodox priests and guillotined the amiable Louis, Paoli thenceforth felt naught but loathing: "We have been the enemies of kings," he said to Joseph Buonaparte; "let us never be their executioners." Thenceforth he drifted inevitably into alliance with England.

Buonaparte, on the other hand, was a follower of Rousseau, whose ideas leaped to power at the downfall of the monarchy. Despite the excesses which he ever deplored, this second Revolution appeared to him to be the dawn of a new and intelligent age. The clear-cut definitions of the new political creed dovetailed in with his own rigid views of life. Mankind was to be saved by law, society being levelled down and levelled up until the ideals of Lycurgus were attained. Consequently he regarded the Republic as a mighty agency for the social regeneration not only of France, but of all peoples. His insular sentiments were gradually merged in these vaster schemes. Self-interest and the differentiating effects of party strifes undoubtedly assisted the mental transformation; but it is clear that the study of the "Social Contract" was the touchstone of his early intellectual growth. He had gone to Rousseau's work to deepen his Corsican patriotism: he there imbibed doctrines which drew him irresistibly into the vortex of the French Revolution, and of its wars of propaganda and conquest.

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