to him with great wisdom and patriotism.

But Paoli's views of liberty were different from those which unhappily began to be popular in France. He was desirous of establishing that freedom, which is the protector, not the destroyer of property, and which confers practical happiness, instead of aiming at theoretical perfection. In a word, he endeavoured to keep Corsica free from the prevailing infection of Jacobinism; and in reward, he was denounced in the Assembly. Paoli, summoned to attend for the purpose of standing on his defence, declined the journey on account of his age, but offered to withdraw from the island.

A large proportion of the inhabitants took part with the aged champion of their freedom, while the Convention sent an expedition, at the head of which were La Combe Saint Michel,[29] and Salicetti,[30] one of the Corsican deputies to the Convention, with the usual instructions for bloodshed and pillage issued to their commissaries.[31]

Buonaparte was in Corsica, upon leave of absence from his regiment, when these events were taking place; and although he himself, and Paoli, had hitherto been on friendly terms, the young artillery officer did not hesitate which side to choose. He embraced that of the Convention with heart and hand; and his first military exploit was in the civil war of his native island. In the year 1793, he was despatched from Bastia, in possession of the French party, to surprise his native town Ajaccio, then occupied by Paoli or his adherents. Buonaparte was acting provisionally, as commanding a battalion of national guards. He landed in the gulf of Ajaccio with about fifty men, to take possession of a tower called the Torre di Capitello, on the opposite side of the gulf, and almost facing the city. He succeeded in taking the place; but as there arose a gale of wind which prevented his communicating with the frigate which had put him ashore, he was besieged in his new conquest by the opposite faction, and reduced to such distress, that he and his little garrison were obliged to feed on horse-flesh. After five days he was relieved by the frigate, and evacuated the tower, having first in vain attempted to blow it up. The Torre di Capitello still shows marks of the damage it then sustained, and its remains may be looked on as a curiosity, as the first scene of his combats, before whom

The strength of Paoli increasing, and the English preparing to assist him, Corsica became no longer a safe or convenient residence for the Buonaparte family. Indeed, both Napoleon and his brother Joseph, who had distinguished themselves as partisans of the French, were subjected to a decree of banishment from their native island; and Madame Buonaparte, with two of her daughters, set sail under their protection, and settled for a time, first at Nice, and afterwards at Marseilles, where the family remained in obscurity, until the dawning prospects of Napoleon afforded him the means of assisting them.

One small fountain at Ajaccio is pointed out as the only ornament which, in after days, his bounty bestowed on his birth-place.[33] He might perhaps think it impolitic to do any thing which might remind the country he ruled that he was not a child of her soil, nay, was in fact very near having been born an alien, for Corsica was not united to, or made an integral part of France, until June 1769, a few weeks only before Napoleon's birth. This stigma was repeatedly cast upon him by his opponents, some of whom reproached the French with having adopted a master, from a country from which the ancient Romans were unwilling even to choose a slave; and Napoleon may have been so far sensible to it, as to avoid showing any predilection to the place of his birth, which might bring the circumstance strongly under observation of the great nation, with which he and his family seemed to be indissolubly united. But as a traveller already quoted, and who had the best opportunities to become acquainted with the feelings of the proud islanders, has expressed it,—"The Corsicans are still highly patriotic, and possess strong local attachment—in their opinion, contempt for the country of one's birth is never to be redeemed by any other qualities. Napoleon, therefore, certainly was not popular in Corsica, nor is his memory cherished there."[34]

The feelings of the parties were not unnatural on either side. Napoleon, little interested in the land of his birth, and having such an immense stake in that of his adoption, in which he had every thing to keep and lose,[35] observed a policy towards Corsica which his position rendered advisable; and who can blame the high-spirited islanders, who, seeing one of their countrymen raised to such exalted eminence, and disposed to forget his connexion with them, returned with slight and indifference the disregard with which he treated them?

On his return from Corsica, Buonaparte had arrived at Nice, and was preparing to join his regiment, when General Degear, who commanded the artillery of "the army of Italy," then encamped round the city, required his services, and employed him in several delicate operations. Shortly after, the insurrection of Marseilles broke out—a movement consequent upon the arrest of the leaders of the Girondist party in the Convention, on the first Prairial (31st May;) and which extended with violence into the departments. The insurgents of Marseilles organized a force of six thousand men, with which they took possession of Avignon, and thereby intercepted the communications of the army of Italy. The general-in-chief being much embarrassed by this circumstance, sent Buonaparte to the insurgents, to try to induce them to let the convoys pass. In July he went to Marseilles and Avignon, had interviews with the leaders, convinced them that it was their own interest not to excite the resentment of the army of Italy, and in fine secured the transit of the convoys.

During his residence at Marseilles, when sent to the insurgents, having, he says, an opportunity of observing all the weakness and incoherence of their means of resistance, he drew up a little pamphlet, which he called "Le Souper de Beaucaire," and which he published in that city. "He endeavoured," he says, "to open the eyes of these frantic people, and predicted that the only result of their revolt would be to furnish a pretext to the men of blood of the day, for sending the principal persons amongst them to the scaffold." "It produced," he