Lieutenant Buonaparte landed on his island like a prophet carrying a new doctrine to a foreign coast. He was the first to bring the red cockade; to promise liberty, equality, and fraternity. Was not this a race of free mountaineers, who of old had been self-governing, but for twenty years had groaned under the heel of the oppressor—a conqueror who ruled through the instrumentality of the nobles and the Church, but did not understand the people?

What did it matter to the young Jacobin that until yesterday he had lived upon his patrician birth, that solely because of his rank he had been educated at the king’s cost? What was the king to him? At length the peoples were to be free to rule themselves. If the new France, just awakened, had proclaimed the right of self-government, Corsica, which the old France had loaded with chains, must proclaim its own freedom. Citizens, the hour has struck! To arms! Let every one wear the red cockade of the new era; let us form a National Guard, as they have done in Paris! Let us wrest the means of power from the king’s troops. I am an artillerist, and I will be your leader!

Twenty years of age, pale of countenance, with cold, blue-grey eyes, but with a mouth full of glowing phrases, such is the aspect of young Buonaparte as he hastens through the streets of Ajaccio. Every one in the little town knows him, and he is followed by a growing number of persons, some eager for liberty, and others in search of a change of any kind. To the crowd in the square, he seems a man bringing passionate hopes; his figure is that of a tribune of the people. In this half-oriental atmosphere, and among these quarrelsome families (so he says later), “a man soon learns to study the human heart.”

But there is a set-back. No reinforcements come from the mountains; and, when the regular troops put in an appearance, they scatter the revolutionists. Within a few hours, all have been disarmed, though, for prudence, no arrests are made. This is a further source of disillusionment. He is not even a martyr, but only a would-be popular leader who has been defeated; his position borders on the ludicrous. Yet the fever is still burning in his veins, and at all costs he must do something to cool himself. A statement of grievances to the National Assembly in Paris! First of all, in the florid style of the day, an ode to the new freedom, and then a spate of complaints and adjurations. To the gallows with the king’s servants! Arm the citizens of the island!—A committee promptly joins him in signing the document.

Weeks of waiting. What answer will come from Paris? Here is the courier at last. The island is to be a French province, having the same rights as the other provinces; in accordance with Mirabeau’s proposal, Paoli and all the champions of liberty are free to return home. The lieutenant is taken aback. A province? In spite of the new ideas, and indeed because of them, the Corsicans are to remain Frenchmen? A strange form of liberty! But there, already, is the procession, headed by the authorities, on its way to the cathedral, where the decree from Paris is to receive a blessing. Buonaparte is prompt to seize the rope which all are seizing. He pens fiery manifestoes to his fellow-citizens, seeks supporters in the new political club, and engineers his elder brother’s election to the town council. Meanwhile he continues to work at his history of Corsica, and reads to his mother choice passages of what he is writing.

“Can this be the great Paoli?” That is the question Buonaparte asks himself, when, after twenty years’ exile, the hero of his youthful enthusiasms returns amid popular acclamations. “His talk and his appearance are so humdrum, so politic, so unsoldierly.” But it was expedient to keep on good terms with Paoli, for he was to be the commander of the National Guard. In the mountains, the young artillery officer was for some time closely associated with the man who had been his father’s chief just before his own coming into the world.

When they were sitting together or riding together—the tried veteran and the darkly aspiring young Corsican,—the latter would eagerly expound to the former his plans for an armed rising, and even for the forcible severance of the island from the new France. On these occasions, Paoli would look at Buonaparte with mingled pride and alarm. He could not but feel that the author of the _Letters on Corsica_ really had a claim upon him. But the young fellow had the devil in his body; and (which was worse) in his brain, for in the man’s brain was the image of the world throne in solitary splendour. Shaking his head, Paoli would exclaim:

“There is nothing modern about you, Napolione. You come from the age of Plutarch!”

For the first time in his life young Napoleon felt that he was understood. The Roman heroes of Plutarch were alone adequate to his aspirations. Paoli was the first to recognise the Roman in Buonaparte.

At length he has a phrase upon which his self-esteem can luxuriate. Now, from his country retreat, when at Paoli’s instigation he writes a manifesto, the superscription penned by his fevered imagination runs as follows: “23rd day of January in the 2nd year, from my study at Midilli.” Ridiculous or sublime? However this may be, as soon as he has issued the dictatorial pronunciamento the young man has to hasten back to his military duties in France, for his furlough, though renewed again and again, has finally expired. Is he to sacrifice this last firm standing-ground? To what end? Why should he stay in the island any longer? The first place is occupied!