The origin of the Bonaparte family can no longer be precisely ascertained. Low flattery has availed itself of the most ridiculous means to procure Napoleon ancient and dignified ancestors. A pedigree has even been constructed beginning with Emanuel II., the eighth Greek emperor of the house of the Comneni, whose two sons are said to have emigrated under the name of Bonaparte after the fall of Constantinople, first to Corfu, then to Naples, Rome, and Florence. From them, as this ridiculous fiction will have it, the Corsican Bonapartes are descended.
It has been historically proved that the Bonapartes figured among the seigniors of the Italian cities during the Middle Ages. The Bonapartes were inscribed in the Golden Book of Bologna, among the Patricians of Florence, and in the book of the nobility of Treviso. When Napoleon became son-in-law of Austria, the Emperor Francis ordered active researches to be made as to the position occupied by the Bonaparte family in Italy during the Middle Ages; and sent his son-in-law some documents purporting to prove that the Bonapartes had been for a long period the lords of Treviso. Napoleon expressed himself as obliged, but replied that he found himself sufficiently honoured in being the Rudolph of Hapsburg of his race. On another occasion he declined the ancient patents of nobility which were being palmed on him, with the words: "I date my nobility from Millesimo and Montenotte."
It is quite uncertain when the Bonapartes came to Corsica. Muratori quotes a document of the year 947, in which three Corsican seigniors—Otho, Domenico, and Guido—gift their estate of Venaco in Corsica to Silverio, Abbot of the cloister of Monte Cristo; a Messer Bonaparte signing the instrument in Mariana, along with other witnesses. The family, or rather a branch of it, would therefore seem to have come to Corsica at an early period. Others, perhaps, followed in later centuries, for the Tuscan Bonapartes were partly Guelphs and partly Ghibellines, and were alternately expatriated with the one or the other faction. It is known that some of them removed to Sarzana, in the district of Lunigiana, where they entered into the service of the powerful Malaspinas, with whom, as I am disposed to believe, they came over to Corsica. Another branch remained in Tuscany, establishing itself there permanently—first in Florence, and afterwards in the little town of San Miniato al Tedesco, which lies upon the road to Pisa. The family had its tomb in the Church of San Spirito at Florence; and I saw there, in the piazza of the convent, a stone with the inscription, in antique lettering—
S. di Benedeto
Di Piero di Giovanni
Buonaparte. E di sua Descendenti.
The coat of arms above the inscription bears two stars, one in its upper and one in its lower division, significantly enough—for the star has twice ascended over the house of Bonaparte.
Members of his family were still living in San Miniato in the time of Napoleon. After his expedition from Leghorn, he found in the little town the last of that branch of the Bonapartes, in the person of an old canon, Filippo Bonaparte, who made the young hero his heir, and died in the year 1799.
As regards the Bonapartes of Ajaccio, they can be traced with certainty as far back as Messire Francesco Bonaparte, who died in the year 1567. Without doubt, the Corsican branch of the family came over from Sarzana.
The following little table gives Napoleon's ancestry so far as it is known with certainty:—
| Francesco Bonaparte, 1567. | ||
| | | ||
| Gabriele Bonaparte Messire, Built towers in Ajaccio against the Saracens. |
||
| | | ||
| Geronimo Bonaparte Egregius, procurator nobilis, Head of the Senators of Ajaccio. |
||
| | | ||
| Francesco Bonaparte, Capitano of the Town. |
||
| | | | | |
| Sebastiano Bonaparte. | Fulvio Bonaparte. | |
| | | | | |
| Carlo Bonaparte, nobilis. | Ludovico Bonaparte, 1632, Married Maria of Gondi. |
|
| | | ||
| Giuseppe Bonaparte. Senator of the Town. |
||
| | | | | |
| Sebastian Bonaparte, magnificus. Senator of the Town, 1760. |
Luciano Bonaparte, Archidiaconus. |
|
| | | ||
| Carlo Maria Bonaparte, Born 29th March 1746, Father of Napoleon, married Letitia Ramolino. |
||
The Bonapartes played no part in Corsican history. Influential in their own city, and honoured with titles of nobility by the Genoese, to whom Ajaccio was subject, they confined themselves to a share in the civic administration of the town. It is not till Carlo Bonaparte that the name acquires consideration throughout the whole of Corsica, and becomes to a certain extent historic.
Napoleon's father was born, as we have seen, on the 29th of March 1746, at Ajaccio, in a stormy time, when the Corsicans were mustering all their force to shake off the detested yoke of Genoa. Gaffori was then the leader of the Corsicans, and Pasquale still in banishment at Naples. It had become customary with the Bonapartes of Ajaccio, to send their children to complete their education in Tuscany, and particularly to let them study in Pisa. For the Bonapartes remembered their Florentine nobility, and never ceased to assert it. Carlo Bonaparte himself, called himself Nobile and Patrician of Florence. The young Carlo studied first at Paoli's newly founded University in Corte; and then went to Pisa, where many of his countrymen were his fellow-students. He studied jurisprudence; and it is said of him, that his talents and learning procured him respect, and his generosity attachment. Returning to his native country after graduating as Doctor of Laws, he soon became the most popular advocate in Ajaccio.
Carlo Bonaparte, with his prepossessing exterior, powerful intellect, and fervid eloquence, was not long in attracting the attention of Paoli, whose perception of character was acute. He began to employ him in business of state. In the year 1764, the young advocate became acquainted with the most beautiful girl in Ajaccio, Letitia Ramolino, at that time fourteen years of age. Both were warmly attached to each other; but the Ramolinos belonged to the Genoese party, and would not consent to their daughter's marriage with a Paolist. Paoli himself, however, interfered, gained the good-will of the parents, and obtained their permission. Letitia's mother had, as widow, married a Signor Fesch, captain of a Swiss regiment in the service of Genoa; Cardinal Fesch was their son.
Paoli, meanwhile, made the young Carlo Bonaparte his secretary, and took him with him to Corte, the seat of government. Letitia followed unwillingly. Corsican liberty was on the eve of its extinction; the French had already entered the island, after the treaty of Fontainebleau; and in the critical position of affairs, a parliament had assembled to decide upon the course to be followed. Carlo Bonaparte, in a fiery, patriotic speech, demanded war against France.
After the defeat at Ponte Nuovo, when the flight had become universal, and the French were already in the vicinity of Corte, some hundreds of families of the higher classes sought refuge on Monte Rotondo, and among them Carlo Bonaparte and his wife, who was then pregnant with Napoleon. The mountain presented a mournful spectacle of despairing, defenceless fugitives, of terrified women and children, who believed that their last hour was come. Several days of anguish and uncertainty passed in these rocky wilds among the goat-herds. At length French officers appeared on the mountain with a flag of truce, sent by Count Devaux, who had occupied Corte. They announced to the fugitives that the island had been conquered, that Paoli was about to leave it, and that they had nothing to fear, but might descend from the mountain to their homes. The fugitives immediately sent a deputation to Corte, at the head of which were Carlo Bonaparte and Lorenzo Giubega of Calvi, to obtain passes providing for the safety of all their families, furnished with which the deputation returned to Monte Rotondo, and brought their friends away.
Bonaparte descended with his wife into the little pastoral district of Niolo, taking this difficult route for Ajaccio. They had to pass the river Liamone, which was swollen, and Letitia was in danger of being drowned. Only her own courage and the activity of her attendants rescued her from the stream. Carlo Bonaparte now purposed to accompany Paoli, his patron and friend, into exile, holding it dishonourable to remain in Corsica now that the common fatherland had fallen under the yoke of the French. But the entreaties of his uncle, the Archdeacon Lucian, and the tears of his wife, induced him to relinquish this despairing thought. He remained on the island, returned to Ajaccio, and there, under the French government, became assessor in the Supreme Court. Marbœuf showed him many marks of distinction; and it was through his influence that Carlo procured for his eldest son Joseph a place in the seminary of Autun; and for his second son Napoleon, a cadetship in the military school of Brienne. It was Marbœuf, therefore, the conqueror of Corsica, who made the career of the young Corsican, Napoleon Bonaparte, possible. He was a frequent visitor at the house of the Bonapartes, and spent many agreeable hours in the society of the beautiful Madame Letitia; this, and the patronage which the French Count bestowed on Napoleon, gave occasion to the scandalous reports circulated by the enemies of the latter, that the gallant Frenchman had enjoyed the favours of Napoleon's handsome mother.
Marbœuf was himself, however, under obligation to Carlo Bonaparte. For when General Narbonne-Fritzlar was intriguing in Corsica against his countryman, in order to obtain the command of the island, Bonaparte had by his courage and energy prevailed with the French ministry to retain Marbœuf as governor. The count repaid this service with his friendship, his good offices, and the recommendation of the young military scholar Napoleon, to the influential family of Brienne. Carlo Bonaparte showed his attachment to Marbœuf in every possible way; I have read a sonnet of his addressed to the count, which I shall not communicate, as it contains nothing characteristic;—any cultivated Italian can write a tolerable sonnet in his native language.
In the year 1777, Napoleon's father was made deputy of the nobility for Corsica, and travelled to Paris by way of Florence. He visited the French capital a second time, in order to bring to a conclusion his process with the Jesuits of Ajaccio in regard to certain properties. While prosecuting this business he died, in February 1785, in his thirty-ninth year, of the same malady in the stomach, which was to prove fatal to his son Napoleon. The incoherent dreams of his deathbed ran always upon Napoleon—a proof that he centred his hopes upon this son; he cried, dying: "Where is Napoleon; why does he not come with his great sword to help his father?" He died in the arms of his son Joseph. They buried him in Montpellier. When Napoleon had become Emperor, the citizens of this town offered to erect a monument to his father. But Napoleon replied to their proposal, that they should allow the dead to rest; for if a statue were raised to his father, now so long dead, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather, might with equal justice demand a similar honour. Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland, afterwards had his father's body disinterred and deposited in St. Leu.
Napoleon was at school in Paris, when Carlo Bonaparte died. The following is the letter which the youth of sixteen wrote to his mother on the occasion:—
"Paris, March 29, 1785.
"My dear Mother,—Time has to-day somewhat calmed the first outbreak of my sorrow; and I hasten to convince you of the gratitude with which your constant kindness to us has inspired me. Console yourself, my dear mother. Circumstances demand it. We shall redouble our care and our grateful attention, and shall be happy if we can in any degree compensate to you by our obedience, for the incalculable loss of a beloved husband. I conclude, my dear mother—my grief compels me; while, at the same time, I beg you to moderate your own. My health is excellent, and I pray Heaven every day that yours may be equally good. Give my respects to aunt Gertrude, Minana Saveria, Minana Fesch, &c.
"P.S.—The queen of France was confined of a prince, named the Duke of Normandy, on the 27th of March, at seven o'clock in the evening.—Your very devoted and affectionate son,
"Napoleon de Bonaparte."
If this laconic epistle of the young Napoleon is genuine, it is of some value.
Carlo Bonaparte was a man of brilliant talent and clear intellect, an impassioned orator, a patriot, and yet, as we have seen, capable of adapting himself to circumstances, and not wanting in political prudence. He was fond of splendid living, and his expenditure was lavish. Madame Letitia was only thirty-five years old at his death, and had already borne him thirteen children, five of whom were dead. Jerome was an infant in the cradle.
The Archdeacon Lucian now became the head of the house and proved himself a careful and frugal steward of the family property. The Bonapartes owned some lands, some vineyards, and herds.
"I too am a mortal man
Like others, born
Of the race of him who was first made."
Wisdom of Solomon.
We dwell with singular interest on the childhood of extraordinary men; the imagination pleases itself with the picture of the boy still lost among his play-fellows, and unconscious of his destiny. We are tempted to guess, in the physiognomy of the child, the traits that mark his future greatness as a man; but childhood is a deep mystery; who shall distinguish in the soul of a child the form of the genius or the demon that sleeps therein?—who prophesy of the mysterious power that is suddenly to determine the vast and slumbering forces, and send them forth commissioned into space and time?
I once saw in Florence the marble bust of a boy. The innocent smile on the childish face attracted me, and I contemplated it with pleasure. On the pedestal was inscribed: Nero.
Little is known of Napoleon's infancy. His mother Letitia was in church at the festival of the Assunta of the Virgin when she felt the first pangs of approaching labour. She immediately hastened home; but had not time to gain her own room, and gave birth to her child in a small cabinet, on a temporary couch of tapestry representing scenes from the Iliad. Gertrude, her sister-in-law, attended her. It was eleven o'clock in the forenoon when Napoleon came to the world.
He was not baptized till the 21st of July 1771, nearly two years after his birth, along with his sister Maria Anna, who died soon after. It is said that he resisted vehemently when the priest was about to sprinkle the consecrated water on him; perhaps he wanted to baptize himself, as at a later period he crowned himself, taking the crown from the hands of the Pope when he was about to set it on his head.
His boyhood showed symptoms of a vehement and passionate temperament, and he was at perpetual variance with his eldest brother Joseph. In these childish quarrels Joseph had always the worst of it, and was rudely handled; and when he ran to complain, Napoleon was declared to be in the right. Joseph became at last quite submissive to his younger brother, and the family began very early to look upon Napoleon as taking the lead among his brothers and sisters. The Archdeacon Lucian said to Joseph on his deathbed, "You are the oldest of the family, but there stands its head—you must not forget that."
We are willing enough to believe that the boy Napoleon showed a quite indomitable passion for everything military, and that this born soldier liked nothing so well as to run by the side of the soldiery of Ajaccio. The soldiers had a pleasure in seeing the boy go through the exercise beside them, and many a grayhaired veteran lifted him in his arms and caressed him for imitating the drill so valiantly. He teased his father till he purchased him a cannon, and the toy was long shown in the house of the Bonapartes with which he used to make his mimic battle-thunder, and play the cloud-compelling Jove. He soon began to exercise empire over the youth of Ajaccio, and, like Cyrus with the shepherd-boys of the Medes, and Peter the Great with his play-fellows, he formed the children of Ajaccio into a regiment of soldiers, who bravely took the field against the youngsters of the Borgo of Ajaccio, and fought sanguinary engagements with stones and wooden sabres.
In the year 1778, his father took him to the military school of Brienne, where the afterwards celebrated Pichegru was his master. It is known that Napoleon here at first showed himself quiet, gentle, and diligent. His impassioned temperament broke out only occasionally when his delicate sense of honour was touched. His quartermaster one day condemned him for some fault to eat his dinner on his knees in the woollen dress of disgrace, at the door of the refectory. Such a dinner was more than the pride of the young Corsican could stomach; he had an attack of vomiting and a fit. The Père Petrault immediately freed him from the punishment, and made it matter of complaint that his best mathematician was treated so shamefully.
In 1783, Napoleon went to the military school of Paris to complete his studies, already a completely-formed character, highly cultivated, glowing with the fires of genius and of youth, his head full of the heroes of his favourite Plutarch, and his heart penetrated with the deeds of his great Corsican forefathers. Society had already begun to ferment, and coming great events threw their shadow forward on the time. It was a period worth living in, heaving with mighty energies, big with change, and full of creative, Titanic impetuosity; it had given Nature the command to prepare great men.
The young officer, Napoleon Bonaparte, joined his regiment in Valence in the year 1785. His soul, profoundly though uncertainly stirred, needed expression. He wrote on the theme proposed for a prize essay by the Academy of Lyons: "What are the Principles and the Institutions which we must give to mankind to make them happy?"—a favourite subject in that humanistic period. Napoleon wrote anonymously. When he had become Emperor, and Talleyrand had extracted the paper from among the archives of Lyons to flatter the potentate, he threw it into the fire. Sentimentality was one of the features of the age, and we see that the young philanthropist did not escape without paying tribute to his time. What if Napoleon should have become the popular author of a sentimental romance in the vein of Richardson and Sterne? He had undertaken a journey to Mount Cenis with his friend Demarris, and on his return, agreeably excited by his little love-affair with Mademoiselle Colombier of Valence, who gave him secret rendezvous and very innocent banquets of cherries, he sat down to write a Sentimental Journey on Mount Cenis. He did not get far with it; but this fit of tender susceptibility in Napoleon is remarkable—and had he not "The Sorrows of Werther" with him in Egypt?
Still body and soul a Corsican, he also wrote in Valence a History of the Corsicans—a theme that suited the young Napoleon well. The manuscript exists in an incomplete state in the Library at Paris, and is now about to be published. Napoleon sent his manuscript to Paoli, whom he admired, and who was at that time living in exile in London. The following is part of the letter to his great countryman, which accompanied it:—
"I was born when our country died. Three thousand Frenchmen infesting our island, the throne of freedom sinking in waves of blood—such was the detested spectacle that first shocked my gaze. The groans of the dying, the sighs of the oppressed, the tears of despair, surrounded my cradle from the moment I was born.
"You left Corsica, and with you vanished the hopes of better fortune; slavery was the tribute we had to pay to conquest. Under an accumulation of burdens—under the threefold chain of the soldier, the legislator, and the tax-gatherer—our countrymen lived on in contempt,... despised by those who had the reins of government in their hands. Is not this the most cruel torture that any one possessed of feeling can have to suffer?
"The traitors to their country—the venal souls whom the love of base hire corrupts—have disseminated calumnies against the national Government, and against you personally. Authors adopt them, and transmit them as truths to posterity.
"Reading them, I was fired with indignation, and I have resolved to dissipate these mischievous falsehoods—the children of ignorance. An early-commenced study of the French language, attentive observation, and memorabilia extracted from the papers of the patriots, put me in a position even to hope for some success.... I shall compare your Government with the present.... I shall paint the betrayers of the common cause, with the pencil of shame, in black.... I shall summon those in power before the bar of public opinion, give the minutest details of their vexatious system of oppression, disclose their secret intrigues, and, if possible, interest the virtuous minister who at present governs the State, for the lamentable fate which keeps us so cruelly prostrate."
Such are the sentiments and language of the young Corsican, Napoleon—the revolutionary democrat and scholar of Plutarch. In his History of the Corsicans, he says in one place: "When his country is no more, a high-spirited citizen should die." These were, in those days, no mere phrases from Tacitus; they were the glowing language of a young soul capable of all that was great and noble. There is hardly another character whose development—rapid as the flush of youth and genius can make it—we follow with the same passionate delight as we do that of the young hero, Napoleon, till about the peace of Campio Formio. We see a more than ordinary man—a demigod passing before us, still uncontaminated by the foul touch of selfishness—till the fair picture gradually becomes blurred, and we class it with those of ordinary despots. For no greatness endures, and Macchiavelli is right: "There are none but ordinary men." Other youthful literary attempts of Napoleon are mentioned by his biographers, and they are now to be printed; among them two novels, Le Comte d'Essex, and Le Masque Prophête, and a dialogue on Love, entitled Giulio.
Napoleon visited Ajaccio every year, and made his influence be felt on the education of his brothers and sisters. They were brought up simply, after the fashion of their country, and with a primitive strictness. "It was almost," says Nasica, "as if you were living in a convent. Prayers, sleep, study, refreshment, pleasure, promenade—everything went by rule and measure. The greatest harmony, a tender and sincere affection, prevailed among all the members of the family. It was in those days a pattern to the town, as it afterwards became its ornament and boast."
The Archdeacon Lucian managed the family affairs economically; and it cost the young Napoleon great exertion to obtain a little additional money to meet his expenses. But he obtained it. The whole family felt the influence of the young man, and was subject to the sway of this born ruler. It is characteristic—since empire was his destiny—that he, the second-born, has not only the mastery of his younger brothers and sisters, but even of his elder brother, and that his interference has a decisive effect on their upbringing. It was soon quite well understood that the young Napoleon was to be obeyed.
I find an authentic letter of Napoleon to his uncle Fesch, afterwards the Cardinal, dated from Brienne, the 15th July 1784. The boy of fifteen, in writing here as to the career on which his eldest brother Joseph ought to enter, speaks in the clearest and most sensible way of the circumstances necessary to be taken into account. The letter is sufficiently well worth reading—especially if we consider that the Joseph of whom so many doubts are therein expressed, afterwards became King of Spain.
"My dear Uncle,—I write to inform you of the journey of my dear father over Brienne to Paris, where he has gone in order to take Marianne (afterwards Eliza of Tuscany) to St. Cyr, and to re-establish his health. He arrived here on the 21st with Lucian, and the two demoiselles whom you saw: he has left Lucian here. He is nine years old, and three feet, eleven inches, ten lines high: he is in the sixth in Latin, and will learn the various branches taught in this school; he shows much talent and willingness, and we may hope that something will come of him (que ce sera un bon sujet). [Lucian was the only one of the family who scorned a crown.] He is healthy, he is strong, lively, and thoughtless, and, in the meantime, his masters are content with him. He knows French very well, and has completely forgotten his Italian; but he will write to you along with this, and I shall say nothing to him, that you may see how matters stand with him.
"I hope he will write to you oftener now, than he did when he was in Autun.... I am confident my brother Joseph has not written to you yet. How could you expect it? He sends my dear father, when he does write to him, at most two lines. He is, in truth, quite changed. He writes to me, however, frequently. He is in the rhetoric class; and he would do better if he were diligent, for the master told my dear father that there was no one in the college (at Autun) who showed more talent than he in physics, rhetoric, or philosophy, or who could make so good a translation. In regard to the profession he is to follow, you know he at first chose the clerical. He kept by this resolution up till the present hour, but he now wishes to serve the king. In this he is wrong, on several grounds.
"1. As my father remarks, he has not courage to face the dangers of a battle; his weak health does not allow of his enduring the fatigues of a campaign; and my brother looks at the life of a soldier only from the garrison side. Yes, my dear brother will make an excellent officer in garrison. Well, as he is light-minded, and therefore clever at making frivolous compliments, he will always, with his talents, make a good figure in society—but in a battle? It is about this my dear father is dubious.
Qu'importe à des guerriers ces frivoles avantages?
Que sont tous ces trésors sans celui du courage?
A ce prix fussiez vous aussi beau qu'Adonis,
Du Dieu même du Pinde eussiez-vous l'éloquence,
Que sont tous ces dons sans celui de la vaillance?
"2. He has received an education for the clerical profession; it is too late to forget it. The Bishop of Autun would have given him a large benefice, and he was certain to have become a bishop. What an advantage for the family! The Bishop of Autun has done all he could to prevail on him to stay, and has promised him that he never would have cause to repent it. In vain!—he persists. I commend his resolution, if he has a decided taste for this profession—the finest of all professions—and if the Great Mover of human things (le Grand Moteur des choses humaines) had, in forming him, given him, as He has given me, a decided inclination for a military life.
"3. He wishes to obtain a commission; that is very well, but in what corps? In the marine, perhaps. 4. He knows nothing of mathematics. It would take him two years to learn them. 5. The sea does not agree with his health. Perhaps among the engineers? Then he would require four or five years to master what is necessary. Moreover, I think that to work and be occupied the whole day does not suit the levity of his disposition. The same reason exists for his not joining the artillery as for the engineers, with the exception that he would only have to work eighteen months to become élève, and as many to be made officer. Oh! but that is still not his taste. Let us see, then—doubtless he wishes to join the infantry. Good! I understand; he wants to have nothing to do the whole day but wear the pavement; but what is an insignificant infantry officer?—a mauvais sujet for three-fourths of his time. And neither my father, nor you, nor my mother will hear of this, nor my uncle the archdeacon, for he has already given some little specimens of lightheadedness and extravagance. It follows that a last attempt must be made to gain him for the clerical profession; if this cannot be done, my dear father will take him with him to Corsica, where he will be under his own eye. They will try to make a law-clerk of him. I conclude by begging that you will continue your good-will towards me; to make myself worthy of it will be my chief and my most agreeable duty. I am, with the most profound respect, my dear uncle, your very devoted and very obedient servant and nephew,
"Napoleon de Bonaparte.
"P.S.—Tear this letter.
"We may hope, nevertheless, that Joseph, with the talents he possesses, and the sentiments with which his education must have inspired him, will think better of it, and become the stay of our family. Represent to him a little these advantages."
Have we not almost a right to doubt that a boy of fifteen can have written so self-conscious, so clear and decisive a letter? It has never hitherto been published anywhere but in the work of Tommaseo—Letters of Pasquale Paoli—where I found it; the author says he owes it to Signor Lucgi Biadelli, councillor at the Supreme Court of Bastia. The letter appears to me to be an invaluable document; we seem to be present at the family council of the Bonapartes, and have all its members vividly before our eyes. Monsieur Fesch in Ajaccio, when he received the letter with the news about the giddy Joseph, wore his woollen blouse, and had his little wooden pipe in his mouth, precisely as many eye-witnesses remember to have seen him. Later, he wore the cardinal's hat; and the light-headed young Joseph became king of Spain.
We can recognise, in the Napoleon of this letter, the future tyrant of his family. We here find him caring for his brothers—pondering over their prospects; afterwards, he gave them kingly crowns, and demanded unconditional obedience. The plain citizen Lucian, and Louis King of Holland, alone withstood his tyranny.
When Napoleon came on a visit to Ajaccio, he liked to live and work in Milelli—a little country-house in the neighbourhood of Ajaccio belonging to the family—where the old oak-tree may still be seen under which the stripling Bonaparte used to sit and dream, and anxiously revolve his plans of life.
The French Revolution came, the storming of the Bastille, the overthrow of the existing state of things.
The young Napoleon threw himself, with all the force of his impassioned nature, into the excitement of the time. Destiny, however, did not mean him to exhaust his energies in the struggle of the revolutionary parties; it had reserved him for something else. At a distance from Paris, and on his own little island, he was to play a merely preparatory part in the first stormy agitations of the new period. Corsica became his school.
We find him in Ajaccio as a young, enthusiastic revolutionist, declaiming in the clubs, writing addresses, helping to organize the national guard—in short, playing the great politician precisely in the way we are acquainted with from our own experience.
Ajaccio was at that time the centre of the Corsican revolutionists; the house of the Bonapartes their place of meeting; the two brothers, Joseph and Napoleon, undisputed leaders of the democracy. The little town was in a state of wild uproar. The commotion appeared to General Barrin, at that time in command of the island, of a threatening character; and he sent Gaffori's son, Marshal Francesco Gaffori, to check it. Gaffori was by no means successful in this; on the contrary, he was glad to find hospitality and protection in the house of Bacciocchi, afterwards Prince of Lucca and Piombino.
Napoleon and Joseph, meanwhile, assembled the democratic party in the Church of San Francesco, and prepared a congratulatory address to the Constituent Assembly, which contained at the same time the bitterest complaints of the oppressive character of the existing administration in Corsica, and expressed an urgent wish that the island should be declared an integral part of France.
Napoleon understood his time: renouncing his Corsican patriotism, he became decidedly French, and threw himself into the arms of the Revolution.
He returned to Valence in 1789; and soon after he is again in Ajaccio, where the active Joseph, while the national guard was in the process of formation, was zealously exerting himself to obtain an officer's commission. Marius Peraldi, the richest man in Ajaccio, and an enemy of the Bonaparte family, was made colonel of the national guard, and Joseph an officer.
It had in the meantime been proposed in Corsica to recall the exiles; and by the exertions of the two brothers Bonaparte and the Abbot Coti, the Corsican General Assembly was induced to name four deputies, who were to meet Paoli in France, and conduct him to the island. Among these was Marius Peraldi, and both Napoleon and Joseph accompanied the deputation.
When Paoli arrived in Paris, the Constituent Assembly had already (1st December 1789) incorporated Corsica with France, by a decree which for ever put an end to the political independence of the island. Mirabeau and Saliceti—Corsican deputy for the Third Estate, afterwards the celebrated statesman, and minister of Murat in Naples—proposed the resolution.
Napoleon himself hastened to Marseilles to welcome Paoli, and was witness to the tears of joy which the noble patriot shed when he again set foot on his native soil in Cape Corso. An assembly met in Orezza to deliberate on and regulate the affairs of the island. Napoleon and his foe, the young Carlo Andrea Pozzo di Borgo, earned here, at the elections, the first honours as public speakers. Carlo Bonaparte's son could not but attract the attention of Paoli, who, astonished at the exuberance of intellectual resource and unerring judgment of the young man, is said to have expressed himself with regard to him in these terms: "This young man has a career before him; he needs nothing but the opportunity, to be one of Plutarch's men." It is related that Paoli on one occasion entered a locanda, and finding the rooms in disorder, was told in explanation by the landlord that a young man, by name Bonaparte, had been lodging there; had written day and night, and constantly torn what he wrote to pieces; had run restlessly up and down, and at last started off for the battle-field of Ponte Nuovo.
The young Napoleon had left no stone unturned to procure his brother Joseph the presidency of the district of Ajaccio, travelling as an adroit partisan through the villages of the region, soliciting votes, and spending money.
In Ajaccio he was indefatigably occupied in keeping the republican club at the due heat, and thwarting the priests and the aristocrats. A sanguinary struggle took place between the two parties in the little town; Napoleon's life was endangered, and an officer of the national guard was killed by his side. He narrates the details in a manifesto of his own composition. Blood continued to be shed for several days and several times the lives of Joseph and Napoleon were a stake.
Napoleon was considered the soul of the club of Ajaccio. Reminding us of the young politicians of our late popular commotions, we see him fulminate a stinging address against an aristocrat—Count Matteo Buttafuoco, the same who had invited Rousseau to Vescovato, and who, during the Corsican war of independence, had served in the French army, and lent the enemies of his country his arm against his country's cause. He was deputy of the nobility for Corsica, had voted in Versailles against the union of the Estates, and made himself odious by other votes of aristocratic and unpopular tendency. Against this man the young Napoleon wrote a manifesto in his country house at Milelli, which he printed in Dôle, and then sent to the club of Ajaccio. The pamphlet, rhetorical and impassioned, but substantially based on fact, is a notable contribution to our acquaintance with Napoleon. It has all the bold, poetic exuberance of diction characteristic of young revolutionists; and as I read it in this solitude of Ajaccio, it awakened in me amusing recollections of the years 1848 and 1849. But it is more than the mere pamphlet of a young demagogue—it is a preparatory exercise for the imperial edicts; it is the Emperor himself trying his wings. This manifesto is indispensable if we are desirous of insight into the nature and growth of Napoleon in the earlier periods of his development.
"Monsieur,—From Bonifazio to Cape Corso, from Ajaccio to Bastia, is but one chorus of curses upon you. Your friends hide themselves, your relatives disown you; and even the prudent man, who never allows himself to be mastered by popular opinion, is this time carried away by the general indignation.
"What is it you have done, then? What are the crimes that can legitimate an animosity so universal, and a desertion so complete? This, Monsieur, is precisely what I am about to investigate, by the aid of light which you yourself shall supply.
"The history of your life, at least since you were thrown upon the stage of public affairs, is known. Its main features are drawn here in characters of blood. There are details, however, not so generally known; I may therefore make mistakes, but I count upon your indulgence, and on your correcting them.
"After entering the service of France, you returned to see your relations; you found the tyrants beaten, the national government established, and the Corsicans, animated by the most generous sentiments, emulating each other in making daily sacrifices for the public weal. You, Monsieur, did not allow yourself to be led astray by the general ferment; far from it; you listened only with compassion to the babble of fatherland, freedom, independence, and constitution, with which the demagogues had been puffing up our meanest peasants. Profound reflection had taught you to estimate at its proper value this artificial excitement, which can only be maintained at the expense of the community. Of course the peasant must labour, and not act the hero, if he is not to die of hunger, but to bring up his family, and respect the authorities. As regards the persons who by their rank or good fortune are called to rule, it is impossible that they can for any length of time be so stupid as to sacrifice their ease and their influence to a chimera, and that they should stoop to pay court to a cobbler, for the sake of playing the Brutus. However, when you fell upon the project of gaining the friendship of Monsieur Paoli, it was necessary you should dissemble. Monsieur Paoli was the centre of all national movement. We will not deny him talent, nor even genius, of a certain kind; he had for a while made the affairs of the island flourish; he had founded a university, in which, for the first time since the creation, perhaps, those sciences which further the development of the mind were taught among our mountains; he had increased our means of defence by establishing an iron-foundry and powder-mills, and by erecting fortifications; he had opened ports which by encouraging commerce enlivened agriculture; he had created a marine which favoured our communications, while it was destructive to our enemies—and all that he had thus begun, was but the indication of what he would one day have accomplished. Harmony, peace, and freedom were the forerunners of national prosperity—had it not been, that, as you had discovered, an ill-organized government, constructed on a false basis, was the still surer omen of the misfortunes into which the nation was to be plunged.
"Paoli's dream was to play the Solon, but he copied his model badly. He had put everything into the hands of the people, or its representatives, so that one could not exist except at its pleasure. Strange mistake, to subordinate to a day-labourer, a man who by education, birth, and fortune, is destined to rule! Such a palpable perversion of reason cannot fail, in the long-run, to produce the ruin and dissolution of the body politic, after it has brought it into uproar by every species of abuse.
"You succeeded according to your wish. Monsieur Paoli, continually surrounded by hot-headed enthusiasts, did not conceive it possible that a man could have any other passion than the fanaticism of freedom and independence. Through certain French introductions, you procured his intimacy, and he did not take time to test your moral principle by anything deeper than your words. By his influence you were chosen to conduct the negotiations in Versailles, in regard to the settlement of affairs which was effected through the mediation of the French cabinet. Monsieur de Choiseul saw you and understood you. Men know in an instant how to estimate souls of a certain stamp. Very soon you transformed yourself from the representative of a free people into the agent of a satrap. You communicated to him the instructions, the projects, the secrets, of the cabinet of Corte.
"This conduct, which people here find base and shameless, I, for my part, find quite simple; after all, in every sort of affair, the important point is to have a clear eye and a cool judgment.
"The prude judges the coquette, and thereby makes herself ridiculous; that is her history in a few words.
"A man of principle would judge you very severely; but you do not believe in men of principle. The common man, who is constantly misled by virtuous demagogues, can have no consideration from you, who do not believe in virtue. Your own principles alone must pronounce sentence upon you, like the laws upon a criminal; but those who know what supple policy means, find nothing but the greatest simplicity in your mode of acting; we come to the same result as before, therefore—in every sort of affair we must first see clearly, and then judge calmly. As to other matters, you can defend yourself no less victoriously, for you have not coveted the reputation of a Cato or Catinat; it is sufficient for you to resemble a certain class; and, with this class, it is a received dogma, that he who can have money and does not use it, is a simpleton, since money procures all the pleasures of the senses, and nothing is of any value but these pleasures. The liberal Monsieur de Choiseul accordingly was sufficiently pressing in his offers, whereas your own ridiculous country, according to its pleasant custom, repaid your services with the honour of serving it.
"When the treaty of Compiègne had been concluded, Monsieur de Chauvelin landed with twenty-four battalions on our coasts. Monsieur de Choiseul, who attached the utmost importance to the speedy accomplishment of the objects of the expedition, became so uneasy that he could not conceal his anxiety from you—you advised him to send you here with a few millions. As Philip took cities with his sumpter-mule, you promised to overcome every obstacle, and produce complete subjection.... No sooner said than done; you hastened over the sea, threw off the mask, and, with money and promotion in your hand, you opened communications with those whom you considered most accessible.
"The Corsican cabinet had no idea that a Corsican could love himself more than his country—it had intrusted you with its interests. As you, on the other hand, had no idea that a man could not love money and himself more than his country, you sold yourself and hoped to buy every one else. Profound moralist! you knew the price of each man's fanaticism. A few pounds of gold more or less, were for you the shades of difference in character!
"You deceived yourself, however; the weak were perhaps shaken, but they were shocked at the frightful thought of lacerating the bosom of their country; they imagined they saw their fathers, their brothers, or their friends, who had perished in its defence, rising from their graves to overwhelm them with curses. These ridiculous prejudices were powerful enough to check you in your career. You sighed that you had to deal with a childish people; but, Monsieur, such refined sentiments as yours are not given to the multitude, and they live on in poverty and wretchedness, while the prudent man, as soon as circumstances become in any degree favourable to him, knows how to rise. And that is pretty nearly the moral of your history.
"In giving account of the obstacles which interfered with the fulfilment of your promises, you proposed that the Royal-Corse regiment should be sent here. You hoped that its example would convert our too good and too simple peasantry; that it would accustom them to a thing in which they found so much that was repulsive—but you were deceived in this hope too. Did not Rossi, Marengo, and some other fools, excite such an enthusiasm in this regiment, that the collective officers declared, in an authentic document, that they would rather send back their commissions than break their oath, or be unfaithful to still more sacred duties?
"You found yourself compelled to set the example yourself. Not at all disconcerted, you threw yourself into Vescovato, at the head of some friends and a detachment of French soldiers; but the terrible Clemens hunted you from the nest. You retired to Bastia with the companions of your adventure, and with your family. This little affair did not bring you much honour; your house, and the houses of your associates, were burnt down. In your place of security, you mocked at these impotent exertions of a dying cause.
"It is boldly affirmed here, that you wished to arm the Royal-Corse against its own brothers. And, in the same spirit, people are inclined to call your courage in question, on account of your slight defence of Vescovato. These are useless imputations. For the first is an immediate consequence, is a means for the execution, of your projects; and as we have affirmed that your mode of acting has been very simple, it follows that this incidental accusation is done away with. As regards your want of courage, I do not see that this is proved by the action of Vescovato; you did not go there to make war in earnest, but to encourage, by your example, those of the opposite party who already wavered. And then, what right had people to demand that you should have risked the fruit of two years' good behaviour, in order to let yourself be killed like a common soldier? But you must have been moved when you saw your house, and the houses of your friends, become the prey of the flames. Good God! when will silly mortals cease to take everything so seriously? When you allowed your house to be burnt, you compelled Monsieur de Choiseul to compensate you. The issue has confirmed the correctness of your calculations; you have been paid far beyond the value of what you lost. It is true, complaints have been made that you kept everything for yourself, and gave only a trifle to the wretched men you had corrupted. In order to know to what length you were capable of going, we only require to see how far you could go with safety; now, poor people, who were so much in need of your protection, were neither in a position to assert their claims, nor even to see clearly the wrong that was done them; they dared not exhibit their discontent, and rebel against your authority; detested by their countrymen, their return would not have been so much as safe. It is, therefore, natural that when you found a few thousands of dollars among your fingers, you did not allow them to slip through; that would have been stupid.
"The French, defeated notwithstanding their gold, their commissions, the discipline of their numerous battalions, the lightness of their squadrons, and the skill of their artillery, routed at Penta, at Vescovato, at Oreto, at San Nicolao, at Borgo, Borbaggio, and Oletta, retired behind their entrenchments completely discouraged. The winter, the time of their repose, was for you, Monsieur, a period of the greatest diligence; and though you could not triumph over the obstinacy of prejudices deeply-rooted in the minds of the people, you succeeded in corrupting some of their leaders, whom you robbed of their nobler sentiments, though with difficulty; and this, and the thirty battalions that Monsieur de Vaux brought with him in spring, made Corsica bow her neck to the yoke, and forced Paoli and the most enthusiastic to retire.
"A number of the patriots had fallen in the defence of their independence, others had fled a proscribed country—now the loathsome nest of tyranny; but many had neither died nor been able to flee, they became the objects of persecution. Souls that had proved themselves superior to corruption were of another stamp. The French supremacy could only be secured by their complete extinction. Ah! this plan was but too punctually executed. Some died the victims of supposititious crimes; others, betrayed by those to whom they had extended their hospitality and their confidence, expired upon the scaffold, repressing their tears. Great numbers, immured by Narbonne-Fritzlar in the jail of Toulon, poisoned by bad food, tortured by their chains, loaded with every species of misusage, lived for some time in the spasms of the death-struggle, only to see death slowly approaching.... O God, witness of their innocence, why hast Thou not made Thyself their avenger?
"In this general misery, in the midst of the cries and groans of this unhappy people, you began meanwhile to enjoy the fruits of your labour. Honours, titles, pensions rained upon you; your possessions would have increased still more rapidly if Madame Dubarry, occasioning the fall of Monsieur de Choiseul, had not deprived you of a protector who knew how to estimate your services. The blow did not discourage you; you re-established yourself by your activity in the subordinate bureaus; you saw nothing in it but the necessity of increasing your diligence. People in higher quarters found themselves flattered, your services were so notorious!... Nothing was withheld from you. Not content with the lake of Biguglia, you requested portions of the lands of several communes. How could you rob them of these? people ask. I, for my part, ask: What consideration could you be expected to have for a nation which you knew detested you?
"Your favourite project was the division of the island among ten barons. What! not content with helping to forge the chains of your country, you proposed also to subject it to an absurd feudalism! But I commend you for doing the Corsicans all the harm that was in your power; you were at war with them, and in war it is an axiom to do hurt for your own advantage.
"But passing all this wretched business, let us come to the present, and conclude a letter, the shocking length of which cannot but have tired you.
"The posture of affairs in France was ominous of extraordinary events; you dreaded their effect in Corsica. The same madness with which we were possessed before the war, began again, to your great annoyance, to deprive this amiable people of its senses. You saw what would be the consequence; for, if generous sentiments were to sway public opinion, from an honest man you became a mere traitor; if these generous sentiments stirred the blood of our fiery fellow-citizens, something more wretched still; if a national government followed, what was to become of you? Your conscience accordingly began to make you uneasy. Frightened, cast down, you still did not despair; you resolved to stake your all, but you did it like a man of sense; you took a wife to strengthen your connexions. A worthy man, who, trusting to your honour, had given his sister to your nephew, saw himself deceived. Your nephew, whose paternal inheritance you had devoured to increase a property that should have been his, found himself with a numerous family plunged into misery.
"When you had arranged your private affairs, you threw a glance upon the country. You saw it reeking with the blood of its martyrs, covered with victims, and everywhere breathing nothing but thoughts of vengeance. You saw the reckless soldier, the impudent official, the greedy tax-gatherer, lording it with none to gainsay, while the Corsican, loaded with the triple chain, did not dare to think either on what he was, or on what he might yet be. In the joy of your heart you said to yourself: 'Matters are going on well, the only point is now to preserve them as they are, and forthwith you banded yourself with the soldier, the official, and the farmer of the revenue. All your aims were now centred on obtaining deputies inspired with similar sentiments; for, as concerned yourself, you could not imagine that a nation hostile to you would elect you as its representative. But you were destined to alter this opinion when the writs, with a perhaps intentional absurdity, ordered that the deputy of the nobility should be elected in an assembly composed of only twenty-two persons—all that was necessary was to gain twelve votes. Your associates of the Supreme Council were exceedingly active; threats, promises, caresses, everything was tried: you were successful. Your candidates in the communes were not: your First President was rejected, and two men—in your opinion, of extreme ideas—the one was son, brother, nephew of the most zealous defenders of the people's cause; the other had seen Sionville and Narbonne, and, sighing over his impotence, well remembered the atrocities which he had witnessed—these two men were proclaimed, and met the wishes of the nation, whose hope they became. The secret indignation, the rage, which seized on every one, when you were elected, does honour to your intrigues, and the influence of your associates.
"On arriving in Versailles, you became a zealous royalist; in Paris you saw, to your great affliction, that the government which was being erected on the ruins of the fallen system, was the same which among us had been drowned in so much blood.
"All the exertions of the despotic party were powerless; the new constitution, the admiration of Europe, has become an object of solicitude to every thinking being. There remained for you but one means of rescue, and that was, to make it be believed that this constitution was not fitted for our island, although it was precisely the same as that which had worked so prosperously, and to deprive us of which had cost so much blood.
"All the deputies of the old administration, entering as a matter of course into your cabals, served you with the warmth of men seeking their own interest. You drew up memorials in which you affirmed that the advantages of the existing government among us were matter of experience, and in which it was represented that any alteration was contrary to the wishes of the nation. At this time the town of Ajaccio got wind of your machinations; she raised her head, formed her National Guard, organized her committee. This, intervening so unexpectedly, alarmed you. The excitement spread. You persuaded the minister, of whom you had the advantage in knowledge of Corsican affairs, that it was necessary to send your father-in-law, Monsieur Gaffori, to the island, the worthy forerunner of Monsieur Narbonne; and Monsieur Gaffori, at the head of his troops, had the impudence to attempt to maintain by violence the tyranny which his father, of glorious memory, had by his genius beaten and suppressed. Innumerable blunders disclosed the mediocre talent of your father-in-law: the only art be possessed was that of making himself enemies. On every side people were uniting against him. In this imminent danger you lifted up your eyes and saw Narbonne. Narbonne, seizing a favourable moment, had formed the plan of establishing in an island which he had desolated by unheard-of cruelties, the despotism which tormented his own conscience. You assent: the plan is adopted, five thousand men receive orders; the decree directing the provincial regiment to be increased by a battalion, is despatched; Narbonne himself sets off. This poor nation without arms, without spirit to resist, is delivered, hopeless and helpless, into the hands of its executioner.
"O unhappy fellow-citizens, what detestable intrigues were you to be the victims of! You would not have understood them till it was too late. Where were your means of withstanding, without arms, ten thousand men? You yourselves would have signed the act of your degradation, hope would have fled, hope would have been extinguished, and days of misery would have succeeded each other without intermission. Liberated France would have looked on you with contempt, afflicted Italy with indignation, and Europe, astonished at a humiliation so profound, would have torn from her annals the pages that do your virtues honour. But the deputies of your communes penetrated the design, and put you on your guard in time. A king, who has constantly desired only the happiness of his people, informed by Monsieur Lafayette, that steadfast friend of liberty, of the true state of the case, was able to crush the perfidious machinations of a minister whom revenge ceaselessly spurred on to injure you. Ajaccio showed itself resolute in its address; the lamentable condition into which the most despotic of all governments had brought you had there been so powerfully impressed on people's minds. The hitherto slumbering Bastia awoke at the sound of danger, and seized its weapons with that resolution which has ever characterized it. Arena came from Paris to Balagna full of those sentiments which make a man capable of undertaking everything, and of fearing no danger. His weapons in the one hand, the decrees of the National Assembly in the other, he made the people's enemies turn pale. Achille Murati, the conqueror of Capraja, who carried despair into Genoa itself, and who wanted but opportunity and a wider field to be a Turenne, reminded the sharers of his fame that it was time to win it over again, and that their country needed—not intrigue, which it never understood—but steel and fire. Before the rising din of a resistance so universal, Gaffori withdrew into the nothingness from which intrigue had made him emerge against his will. He remained trembling in the fortress of Corte. Narbonne hastened away from Lyons to bury his shame and his hellish plans in Rome. A few days later, and Corsica is linked to France, Paoli is recalled, and in a single instant your prospects are changed, and a new career offered you for which you would never have ventured to hope.
"Excuse me, Monsieur, excuse me; I took my pen to defend you, but my heart utterly revolted against a system which brought treachery and perfidy in its train. What! son of this same fatherland, have you never had a filial feeling towards it? What! was there no emotion in your heart at the sight of the rocks, the trees, the houses, the neighbourhoods, which were the scene of your sports in childhood? When you came to the world, it carried you on its bosom, it nourished you with its fruits. When you came to years of discretion, it set its hopes upon you, it honoured you with its confidence, it said to you: 'My son, you see the wretched state to which the injustice of men has brought me; collecting my energies in my passionate grief, I once more attain a vigour which promises me sure and infallible restoration; but I am threatened anew; hasten, my son, to Versailles; inform the great king better, dissipate his suspicions, implore his friendship.'
"Well, and what then? A little gold made you a betrayer of the trust your country had reposed in you; for the sake of a little gold you were soon seen with the parricidal sword in your hand lacerating its bosom. Ah! Monsieur, I am far from wishing you any harm; but tremble ... there are pangs of conscience that avenge. Your fellow-citizens, who abhor you, will enlighten France as to your true character. The estates and the pensions, the fruit of your treasons, will be taken from you. Bowed down by age and misery, in the horrible solitude of crime, you will live long enough to be tormented by your conscience. The father will point you out to his son, the teacher to his scholar, and say: "Children, learn to honour your country, virtue, fidelity, and humanity.'
"And she, whose youth, beauty, and innocence they prostitute—her pure and chaste heart trembles under the touch of a polluted hand? Estimable and unhappy woman!...
"Soon the cordons of honour and the pomp of wealth will vanish, and the contempt of mankind will be heaped on you. Will you seek, on the breast of him who is the author of that report, a consolation with which your gentle and loving soul cannot dispense? Will you seek in his eyes tears to mingle with your own? Will your trembling hand, laid upon his heart, try to tell him the emotion of yours? Ah! if you find tears with him, they will be tears of remorse. If his heart beats, it will be in the convulsions of the wretch who dies cursing nature, himself, and the hand that leads him.
"O Lameth! O Robespierre! O Petion! O Volney! O Mirabeau! O Barnave! O Bailley! O Lafayette! see, this is the man that dares to sit by your side! Quite drenched in the blood of his brothers, polluted with crimes of every kind, he presents himself shamelessly in his General's uniform, the unrighteous hire of his villanies! He dares to call himself a representative of the nation, he—who has sold it, and you suffer it! He dares to raise his eyes to listen to your discourses, and you suffer it! This the voice of the people!—he had but the votes of twelve aristocrats! This the voice of the people!—and Ajaccio, Bastia, and most of the cantons wreaked that upon his effigy which they would willingly have done upon his person.
"But you, whom the mistake of the moment misleads, whose belief is for the present abused to make you oppose the projected alterations, will you endure the traitor? him who, under the cold exterior of a sensible man, conceals the greed of a lackey? I cannot believe it. You will be the first to drive him forth in shame and disgrace, as soon as you have been made to comprehend that web of knaveries of which he has been the artist.
"I have the honour, Monsieur, to be your very humble, and very obedient servant,
Bonaparte."
"From my Cabinet of Milelli,
"Jan. 23, in the second year."
"From my Cabinet of Milelli"—it sounds quite imperially. The reader will probably find that this bold, unsparing, powerful letter of the youth of twenty-one, half-Robespierre, half-Murat, is in no respect inferior to the best specimens of revolutionary eloquence furnished by the pamphlets of the period.
I may observe here, that of the six Corsican deputies to the Convention, three voted for the perpetual confinement of Louis Capet, two for his confinement till peace was established and his banishment thereafter, Cristoforo Saliceti alone for his death.