the management and maintenance of the family. Napoleon held a commission from the king of France as a lieutenant of artillery, and was remarkable chiefly for his love of solitude and the laborious studies in which he passed his time. Already he had ceased to look upon Corsica as his country; France opened to him a wider theatre for the play of his aspiring spirit, and he readily merged his feelings of patriotism in the ambition of partaking the dangers and the glories of the new competition about to arise from the crash of feudalism.

It was very different with the old patriot of the island-Paoli. As a venerated champion of freedom, the National Assembly of France had invited him to return from his long exile in England; and in 1792 he reappeared among his countrymen with all the lustre of a name endeared to them by his services and his sufferings. He was hailed with a boundless enthusiasm, especially by the mountaineers, who revered him as their tutelary chief. In Ajaccio he was received with triumph, and Lucien Buonaparte records with exultation that he pronounced a discourse before him which, by its touching pathos, drew tears from the honoured veteran. So lively, indeed, was the impression made upon him by this fervent orator, that Paoli took him to his residence of Rostino, and kept him near his person for many months, during which he sought to instil into the mind of his pupil, as the latter himself relates with grief, that England was the only land of real freedom, and the British constitution far superior to any which the legislators of France were likely to frame. Notwithstanding his veneration for the patriotic sage, Lucien was too zealous for the credit of France and the virtue of republicanism to admit the force of this doctrine, and he began to entertain suspicions of the orthodoxy of Paoli in the precepts of the revolutionary code. This first alarm was verified when the execution of Louis XVI. aroused the indignation of the virtuous patriot, and stirred him to an open denunciation of the sanguinary monsters who were disgracing the sacred cause of liberty. Paoli declared he would no longer belong to France, neither he nor his brave mountaineers; and he called upon the sons of his old companion in the war of independence, Charles Buonaparte, to join him in a fresh struggle against a more terrible tyranny than had ever yet oppressed the island. But to this appeal the Buonapartes were deaf, for their ambition lay in the very opposite direction; and Paoli having summoned around him an army of mountaineers, prepared to march on Ajaccio, which was the only town that had refused, at his command, to lower the tricolour flag. His rage, if we are to credit Lucien, was principally directed against the Buonapartes, and he ordered them to be taken dead or alive. Joseph and Napoleon were both absent at this critical moment; Lucien had proceeded to France as the head of a deputation to crave succours from the Jacobins; but the heroic Letitia, who had in earlier days fought by the side of her husband, was fully equal to the task of providing for the safety of her younger progeny. In the dead of night she was aroused by intelligence of the approach of her exasperated enemy, who was intent, above all, to seize her person as a hostage for the submission of her sons; and, escorted by a village chieftain named Costa, she hastened from the city to seek refuge in the fastnesses of the hills and forests. Under the shade of darkness, amidst a small band of faithful followers, she marched with her young children, and before daylight reached

a secluded spot on the sea-shore, whence from an elevation she could see her house in flames. Undaunted by the sad spectacle, she exclaimed, 'Never mind, we will build it up again much better: Vive la France!' After a concealment of two days and nights in the recesses of the woods, the fugitives were at length gladdened by the sight of a French frigate, on board of which were Joseph and Napoleon with the deputies of the Convention on a mission to Corsica. In this vessel the whole party at once embarked, and as no hope remained of finding security in Corsica, it was straightway steered for France. Marseilles was its port of destination, and there it accordingly landed the family of exiles, destitute of every remnant of property, but unbroken, it would seem, in courage and health. Madame Buonaparte was fain to receive with thankfulness the rations of bread distributed by the municipality to refugee patriots. Joseph speedily received an appointment as a commissary of war; and he and Napoleon contributed to the support of the family from their scanty allowances; but there is no doubt that, during the first years of their residence in France, these obscure exiles, who even spoke the language of their adopted country with difficulty, suffered all the inconveniences of a sordid penury.

France was at this time a prey to all the horrors of civil war, as well as to the dangers of a foreign invasion. The principal cities of the Republic had revolted against the central authority of Paris and the bloody domination of the Jacobins, and among the rest Marseilles was distinguished in the great federalist movement. But the reduction of Lyons, and the terrible vengeance inflicted on it, restored the supremacy of the redoubtable Committee of Public Safety. Many thousands of the inhabitants of Marseilles fled in terror on the approach of the Jacobin forces, and sought protection in Toulon, which had not only cast off the yoke of the Convention, but called in the aid of the British and Spanish fleets to uphold the desperate cause of royalty. In this general flight, however, the Buonapartes did not participate, since they in truth belonged to the triumphant faction.

This was a connection which may principally be ascribed to Lucien, who was by far the most hot-headed of the family, and who, by dint of inflammatory harangues, had recommended himself to an administrative appointment at St Maximin, a small town a few leagues distant from Marseilles. Here he assumed the name of Brutus, and in conjunction with a renegade monk, who styled himself Epaminondas, exercised a petty dictatorship, filling the prisons with unfortunate victims, as suspected royalists and aristocrats. But it is his boast that, with unlimited power in his hands, and at so youthful an age, he shed no blood, notwithstanding the influence of the examples around him. He even opposed the mandate of the commissioners, sent by the Convention to restore its authority at Marseilles, for the removal of his prisoners to be tried or rather guillotined at Orange-an act which exposed him to the anger of the commissioners, Barras and Fréron, and nevertheless failed to save him from the imputation of being a Terrorist when the day of reaction arrived. In this revolutionary career Lucien was of service to his family: Joseph, who continued to reside at Marseilles with his mother, was of too mild and unobtrusive a character to gain credit with the powers of Jacobinism,

whilst Napoleon was as yet an unknown subaltern, jostling among the crowd of rivals for preferment. In the person of the Abbé Fesch, who had accompanied his sister in her exile, the positive danger was incurred of harbouring a priest, then the most obnoxious to popular wrath of all delinquents. However, when the portents of the storm were gathering, the abbé prudently discarded his clerical robe, and sought a safer calling as a keeper of stores in the army of General Montesquiou, who, in the autumn of 1793, overran the country of Savoy. It was at a later period of the same year that an event occurred which laid the foundation of mighty changes, involving not only the fortunes of the Corsican refugees, but deranging the destinies of all the nations of Christendom.

Toulon alone of all the revolted cities still held out against the victorious banner of the Republic. The energies of the government were directed against it with the greater virulence, that the flag of England, the most hated of the foes of France, floated on its traitorous ramparts. General Carteaux was despatched to undertake the siege at the head of a force amounting to 30,000 men of all arms; but carrying on the operations with less vigour than suited the impatience of the sovereign Committee, he was displaced, and succeeded by Dugommier, who had been provided by the celebrated Carnot with a detailed plan for his guidance in the reduction of the place. During the temporary absence of the senior officer in command, and in a happy moment of inspiration, Dugommier confided the charge of the artillery to the young engineer of Ajaccio, who had been recently promoted to a colonelcy of brigade, and who recommended a plan of operation so much more feasible than the one dictated by the Committee, that it was at once adopted, with the preliminary sanction, nevertheless, of the Representatives on mission with the army. This plan consisted in carrying the more distant forts which commanded the harbour of Toulon, instead of pursuing the attack against the main body of the place. It was calculated that they would thus insure either the destruction of the hostile fleet, or its hasty removal out of range of the guns. In either case, the reduction of Toulon was certain and immediate without much waste of blood, since it would be no longer tenable by the foreign garrison, which constituted the chief means of its defence. The plan being finally determined upon, Napoleon applied himself to its execution with his characteristic ardour; and such was his exercise of scientific skill, combined with a personal heroism remarkable even in those days of matchless daring, that on the eighteenth day from unmasking his batteries he was enabled to carry by assault the fort called Little Gibraltar, the possession of which gave the republican arms that decisive predominance he had contemplated. Lord Hood immediately evacuated the harbour with his ships; the garrison prepared for a gradual abandonment of the defensive posts; the wretched inhabitants flocked to the quays, imploring protection from their fugitive allies; the galley-slaves burst from their chains, and commenced a general plunder; the arsenal was set on fire, and the huge vessels of war roared with the flames of devastation; the raging conquerors rushed into the devoted city, and then was consummated a scene of horror which it is impossible for the pen to describe.

Such was the achievement by which Napoleon Buonaparte first erged from among that swarm of youthful heroes who in this famous e

ung

themselves into the service of France. In this early stage of his career he met two young soldiers, still struggling against the frowns of fortune, whom he attached to himself by the notice he took of their cool intrepidity in the midst of danger. These were Junot and Duroc, who retained for him ever afterwards an affection and admiration which were wholly independent of his waxing fortunes. The Representatives of the Convention and Dugommier freely acknowledged the value of Napoleon's services; and the Committee of Public Safety, which rewarded and punished with equal promptitude, at once elevated him to the rank of general of brigade. He was henceforth attached to the army of the Alps under Dumorbion, who, being old, and diffident of himself, willingly relinquished to his more vigorous lieutenant the conduct of a campaign which, owing to the rugged nature of the country and the absolute destitution of the soldiers, was beset with unusual difficulties. To this army were delegated the same commissioners who had superintended the siege of Toulon, all men of note and influence in the Republic at the time, and two of whom at least manifested a perfect appreciation of the merits of the new commandant of artillery. One of these was the younger Robespierre, brother of the chief dictator among the ruling decemvirs; the other was Barras, who affected military knowledge, and was fresh from the massacres of Marseilles: the third commissioner was Salicetti, himself a Corsican, but nourishing a bitter envy of his rising countryman. The first, indeed, formed with Napoleon an intimacy which had nearly led to momentous consequences. Although the atrocities of the Jacobins were extremely revolting to him-for his temperament was utterly averse to their horrible system of government-Napoleon was not insensible to the advantage of cultivating a friendship with the brother of their most potential leader, whose favour was the surest avenue to distinction. Moreover, the younger Robespierre, who was really estimable for many virtues, laboured to convince him that Maximilian was far from being the bloody tyrant his actions seemed to indicate. It is not singular, therefore, that Napoleon turned his eyes with some predilection towards one so capable of promoting his interests, and whom he might suppose an involuntary agent of bloodshed, or at least not so vulgar and complete a villain as some of his colleagues. Thus he became connected with Robespierre, who entertained the idea of conferring on him the command of the Parisian sans-culottes in lieu of the miserable Henriot, whose blustering incompetence he had the sagacity to detect. The proposition was even made to him by the younger brother, who repeatedly urged him to accompany him to Paris, whither he himself was recalled by the perils beginning to threaten the continuance of the existing dominion. But Napoleon resolutely resisted all such solicitations, for however Robespierre might have imposed on him by professions of moderation, he could not consent to wear the actual livery of such a master, whose character of sternness and implacability he was not anxious to encounter too closely. 'There is no honourable place for me at present but the army; the time is not yet come, but it will come, when I shall command at Paris,' are the prophetic words which Lucien does not hesitate to put into his mouth on this occasion. Yet notwithstanding his refusal to identify himself with Robespierre, he was involved in the downfall of that monster; and after the glorious 9th of Thermidor (27th of July 1794), he was arrested as an adherent and partisan of the fallen

tyrant.* Being cast into prison with other more avowed Terrorists, he narrowly escaped the death which awaited them under the violence of reaction; but he was eventually set at liberty through the force of his own remonstrances and the plaintive pleadings of his humble friend Junot. Nevertheless this release did not prevent the loss of his rank in the army, and of all the other fruits of the brilliant reputation he had won: at the age of twenty-five he was thrown as an outcast upon the world, ignominiously expelled from the profession in which he had already begun to gather laurels. His brothers shared in the reverses of the moment: Joseph saved himself by a temporary retreat to Genoa, but Lucien incurred the horrors of the incarceration he had so liberally administered to others, albeit he protested against so ungrateful a return for the boon of life he had usually granted to his victims.

This may be considered the second phase in the calamities of the illustrious House of Buonaparte. Whilst all France was ringing with the joy of its deliverance from the detestable thraldom of murderers, the heaviest gloom hung upon the hopes of those forlorn strangers in the land. Proscription and degradation were now their lot, in addition to the poverty from which they had partially emerged. In this extremity Joseph became the prop and support of the family, by his marriage with the daughter of a wealthy merchant of Marseilles named Clary. By the dowry he got with his wife, he was raised into almost affluent circumstances, and obtained a position which enabled him to be of essential benefit to his mother and the children still remaining under her charge. Lucien had been liberated from the prison of Aix after a detention of six weeks, during which he escaped almost miraculously the massacres then perpetrating by the Royalists on the imprisoned Jacobins in the southern departments of France, and he returned to Marseilles from his incarceration in very dismal plight. He, too, had contracted matrimony during his residence at St Maximin, where the daughter of an innkeeper called Boyer had fixed his wayward affections. Unlike his eldest brother, however, he received no fortune with his partner; and in the existing condition of his finances she proved rather an inopportune encumbrance. But he was fondly attached to her, portionless as she was, for she was very beautiful and very amiable, and his sanguine temper found consolation for present indigence in visions of future prosperity.

After his discharge from the army and from captivity, Napoleon had proceeded to Paris, with the view of claiming from the new government reparation of the wrongs he had suffered. His former friend Barras was now in an influential station, in consequence of the important part he had borne in the overthrow of Robespierre. But although he experienced from that personage a friendly reception, he derived no advantage from his advocacy, if it were ever sincerely exerted, which it probably was not, since Barras might well dread to implicate himself by too earnest a recommendation of one involved in the odium of terrorism. Being, as is well known, unsuccessful in his suit, and denied further employment, the extraordinary youth who carried with him the destinies of Europe fell into the condition of an

*Napoleon accused Salicetti of provoking his arrest by his vile machinations, and he subsequently revenged the perfidious deed by facilitating that personage's escape from the vengeance of the Convention after the event of the 1st Prairial (20th May 1795).