The life of Napoleon I, including new materials from the British official records

Front matter

ni II 111 I 1 I

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

Preface

Ak apology seems to be called for from anyone who gives to tlie world a new Life of Napoleon I. My excuse must be that for many years I have sought to revise the traditional story of his career in the light of facts gleaned from the British Archives and of the many valuable materials that have recently been published by continental historians. To explain my manner of dealing with these sources would require an elaborate critical Introduction ; but, as the limits of my space absolutely preclude any such attempt, I can only briefly refer to the most important topics.

To deal with the published sources first, I would name as of chief importance the works of MM. Aulard, Chuquet, Houssaye, Sorel, and Vandal in France ; of Herren Beer, Delbriick, Fournier, Lehmann, Oncken, and Wertheimer in Germany and Austria ; and of Baron Lumbroso in Italy. I have also profited largely by the scholarly monographs or collections of documents due to the labours of the " Societe d'Histoire Contemporaine," the General Staff of the French Army, of MM. Bouvier, Caudrillier, Capitaine " J. G.," Levy, Madelin, Sagnac, Sciout, Zivy, and others in France ; and of Herren Bailleu, Demelitsch, Hansing, Klinkowstrom, Luckwaldt, Ulmann, and others in Germany. Some of the recently published French Memoirs dealing with those times are not devoid of value, though this class of literature is to be used with caution. The new letters of Napoleon published by M. Leon Lecestre and M. Leonce de Brotonne have also opened up viii PREFACE

fresh vistas into the life of the great man ; and the time seems to have come when we may safely revise our judgments on many of its episodes.

But I should not have ventured on this great undertaking, had I not been able to contribute something new to Napoleonic literature. During a study of this period for an earlier work published in the " Cambridge Historical Series," I ascertained the great value of the British Records for the years 1795-1815. It is surely discreditable to our historical research that, apart from the fruitful labours of the Navy Records Society, of Messrs. Oscar Browning and Hereford George, and of Mr. Bowman of Toronto, scarcely any English work has appeared that is based on the official records of this period. Yet they are of great interest and value. Our diplomatic agents then had the knack of getting at State secrets in most foreign capitals, even when we were at war with their Governments ; and our War Office and Admiralty Records have also yielded me some interesting "finds." M. Levy, in the preface to his "Napoleon intime " (1893), has well remarked that " the documentary history of the wars of the Empire has not yet been written. To write it accurately, it will be more important thoroughly to know foreign archives than those of France." Those of Russia, Austria, and Prussia have now for the most part been examined ; and I think that I may claim to have searched all the important parts of our Foreign Office Archives for the years in question, as well as for part of the St. Helena period. I have striven to embody the results of this search in the present volumes as far as was compatible with limits of space and with the narrative form at which, in my judgment, history ought always to aim.

On the whole, British policy comes out the better the more fully it is known. Though often feeble and vacillat-

PREFACE IX

ing, it finally attained to firmness and dignity ; and Ministers closed the cycle of war with acts of magnanimity towards the French people which are studiously ignored by those who bid us shed tears over the martyrdom of St. Helena. Nevertheless, the splendour of the finale must not blind us to the flaccid eccentricities that made British statesmanship the laughing-stock of Europe in 1801-3, 1806-7, and 1809. Indeed, it is questionable whether the renewal of war between England and Napoleon in 1803 was due more to his innate forcefulness or to the contempt which he felt for the Addington Cabinet. When one also remembers our extraordinary blunders in the war of the Third Coalition, it seems a miracle that the British Empire survived that life and death struggle against a man of superhuman genius who was determined to effect its overthrow. I have called special attention to the extent and pertinacity of Napoleon's schemes for the foundation of a French Colonial Empire in India, Egypt, South Africa, and Australia ; and there can be no doubt that the events of the years 1803-13 determined, not only the destinies of Europe and Napoleon, but the general trend of the world's colonization.

As it has been necessary to condense the story of Napoleon's life in some parts, I have chosen to treat with special brevity the years 1809-11, which may be called the constans aetas of his career, in order to have more space for the decisive events that followed ; but even in these less eventful years I have striven to show how his Continental System was setting at work mighty economic forces that made for his overthrow, so that after the dShdcle of 1812 it came to be a struggle of Napoleon and France contra mundum.

While not neglecting the personal details of the great man's life, I have dwelt mainly on his public career.

X PREFACE

Apart from his brilliant conversations, his private life has few features of abiding interest, perhaps because he early tired of the shallowness of Josephine and the Corsican angularity of his brothers and sisters. But the cause also lay in his own disposition. He once said to M. Gallois : " Je n'aime pas beaucoup les femmes, ni le jeu — enfin rien: je suis tout a fait un etre politique." In dealing with him as a warrior and statesman, and in sparing my readers details as to his bolting his food, sleeping at concerts, and indulging in amours where for him there was no glamour of romance, I am laying stress on what interested him most — in a word, I am taking him at his best.

I could not have accomplished this task, even in the present inadequate way, but for the help generously accorded from many quarters. My heartfelt thanks are due to Lord Acton, Regius Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge, for advice of the highest importance ; to Mr. Hubert Hall, of the Public Record Office, for guidance in my researches there ; to Baron Lumbroso of Rome, editor of the "Bibliografia ragionata deir Epoca Napoleonica," for hints on Italian and other affairs ; to Dr. Luckwaldt, Privat Docent of the University of Bonn, and author of " Oesterreich und die Anfange des Befreiungs-Krieges," for his very scholarly revision of the chapters on German affairs ; to Mr. F. H. E. Cunliffe, M.A., Fellow of All Souls' College, Oxford, for valuable advice on the campaigns of 1800, 1805, and 1806 ; to Professor Caudrillier of Grenoble, author of " Pichegru," for information respecting the royalist plot ; and to Messrs. J. E. Morris, M.A., and E. L. S. Horsburgh, B.A., for detailed communications concerning Waterloo. The nieces of the late Professor Westwood of Oxford most kindly allowed the facsimile of the new Napoleon letter, printed opposite

PREFACE xi

p. 143 of vol. i., to be made from the original in their possession ; and Miss Lowe courteously placed at my disposal the papers of her father relating to the years 1813- 1815, as well as to the St. Helena period. I wish here to record my grateful obligations for all these friendly courtesies, which have given value to the book, besides saving me from many of the pitfalls with which the subject abounds. That I have escaped them altogether is not to be imagined ; but I can honestly say, in the words of the late Bishop of London, that " I have tried to write true history."

J. H. R.

[Note. — The references to Napoleon's "Correspondence" in the notes are to the ofBcial French edition, published under the auspices of Napoleon III. The "New Letters of Napoleon " are those edited by L6on Lecestre, and translated into English by Lady Mary Loyd, except in a very few cases where M. L^once de Brotonne's still more recent edition is cited under his name. By " F. 0.," France, No. — , and " F. 0.," Prussia, No. — , are meant the volumes of our Foreign Office despatches relating to France and Prussia. For the sake of brevity I have called Napoleon's Marshals and high oificials by their names, not by their titles ; but a list of these is given at the close of vol. ii.]

Contents

OHAPTEB p^gj, m. Toulon 40

IV. Vendemiaire 52

VII. Leoben to Campo Formio 128

Appendix

Reports hitherto unpublished on (a) The Sale of Louisiana; (V) The Irish Division in Napoleon's Service 469

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Napoleon Bonaparte as First Consul, from the painting by

Isabey, in the Museum at Versailles . . . Frontispiece

TO FACE PAGE

Madame Buonaparte (Napoleon's Mother), from the original

painting in the Town Hall at Ajacoio . The Attack on the Tuileries, August 10th, 1792 . The Execution of Marie Antoinette, October 16th, 1793 Robespierre, Couthon, and St. Just declared Traitors at the

Hotel de VUle, July 28th, 1794 Napoleon and Josephine (medallions) .

The Passage of the Bridge of Lodi, 1796 The Entry of the French into Milan, 1796 . Medals illustrating the Years 1796-8 . The Spoliation of St. Mark's, Venice, 1797 . Facsimile of a Letter of Napoleon to " La Citoyenne Tallien.

The Third Convoy of Statues leaving Rome, 1798

The Battle of the Nile, 1798 ....

Bonaparte at St. Cloud, November 10th, 1800

Medals — (1) Napoleon at the Battle of the Pyramids ; (2) The

Three Consuls — Bonaparte, Cambaceres, and Lebrun The Passage of Mount St. Bernard, May, 1800 .

The Battle of Marengo

The Town and Fortifications of Malta, from an Engraving by

G-oupy

French Map of the South of Australia

Pauline Bonaparte

6 33 38

54 68 85 88 105 134

143 163 175 207

216 227 237

352 408 xvi ILLUSTRATIONS, MAPS, AND PLANS

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The Due d'Enghien 424

General Moreau 436

Napoleon crowning Josephine ....... 443

Raft devised for the Invasion of England 448

Medals to commemorate the Rupture of the Treaty of Amiens

and the Invasion of England 465

MAPS AND PLANS

The Siege of Toulon, 1793 ....

Map to illustrate the Campaigns in North Italy- Plan to illustrate the Victory of Areola The Neighbourhood of Rivoli Central Europe, after the Peace of Campo Formio, 1797 Plan of the Siege of Acre, from a Contemporary Sketch The Battle of Marengo, to illustrate KeUermann's Charge

PAGE

47 73 115 122 157 187 235

NOTE ON THE REPUBLICAN CALENDAR

The republican calendar consisted of twelve months of thirty days each, each month being divided into three " decades " of ten days. Five days (in leap years six) were added at the end of the year to bring it into coincidence with the solar year.

VIII began Sept. 2-2, 1799.

The new computation, though reckoned from Sept. 22, 1792, was not introduced until Nov. 26, 1793 (An II). It ceased after Dec. 31, 1805.

The months are as follows :

Vendemiaire .... Sept. 22 to Oct. 21.

Brumaire Oct. 22 „ Nov. 20.

Frimaire Nov. 21 „ Dec. 20.

Nivose Dec. 21 „ Jan. 19.

Pluviose Jan. 20 „ Feb. 18.

VentSse Feb. 19 „ Mar. 20.

Germinal Mar. 21 „ April 19.

Floreal April 20 „ May 19.

Prairial May 20 „ June 18.

Messidor June 19 „ July 18.

Thermidor July 19 „ Aug. 17.

Fructidor Aug. 18 „ Sept. 16.

Add five (in leap years six) " Sansculottides " or " Jours complementaires."

In 1796 (leap year) the numbers in the table of months, so far as concerns all dates between Feb. 28 and Sept. 22, will have to be reduced by one, owing to the intercalation of Feb. 29, which is not compensated for until the end of the republican year.

The matter is further complicated by the fact that the republicans reckoned An VIII as a leap year, though it is not one in the Gregorian Calendar. Hence that year ended on Sept. 22, and An IX and succeeding years began on Sept. 23. Consequently in the above table of months the numbers of all days from Vendemiaire 1, An IX (Sept. 23, 1800), to Niv6se 10, An XIV (Dec. 31, 1805), inclusive, will have to be increased by one, except only in the next leap year between Ventose 9, An XII, and Vendemiaire 1, An XIII (Feb. 28-Sept. 23, 1804), when the two Revolutionary aberrations happen to neutralize each other.

Chapter I Parentage And Early Years

" I WAS born when my country was perishing. Thirty thousand French vomited upon our coasts, drowning the throne of Liberty in waves of blood, such was the sight which struck my eyes." This passionate utterance, penned by Napoleon Buonaparte at the beginning of the French Revolution, describes the state of Corsica in his natal year. The words are instinct with the vehemence of the youth and the extravagant sentiment of the age : they strike the keynote of his career. His life was one of strain and stress from his cradle to his grave.

In his temperament as in the circumstances of his time the young Buonaparte was destined for an extraordinary career. Into a tottering civilization he burst with all the masterful force of an Alaric. But he was an Alaric of the south, uniting the untamed strength of his island kindred with the mental powers of his Italian ancestrj'. In his personality there is a complex blending of force and grace, of animal passion and mental clearness, of northern common sense with the promptings of an oriental imagination ; and this union in his nature of seeming opposites explains many of the mj^steries of his life. Fortunately for lovers of romance, genius cannot be wholly analyzed, even by the most adroit historical philosophizer or the most exacting champion of heredity. But in so far as the sources of Napoleon's power can be measured, they may be traced to the unexampled needs of mankind in the revolutionary epoch and to his own exceptional endowments. Evidently, then, the characteristics of his family claim some attention from all who would understand the man and the influence which he was to wield over modern Europe.

It has been the fortune of his House to be the subject of dispute from first to last. Some writers have endeavoured to trace its descent back to the Csesars of Rome, others to the Byzantine Emperors ; one genealogical explorer has tracked the family to Majorca, and, altering its name to Bonpart, has discovered its progenitor in the Man of the Iron Mask; while the Duchesse d'Abrantes, voyaging eastwards in quest of its ancestors, has confidently claimed for the family a Greek origin. Painstaking research has dispelled these romancings of historical trouveurs, and has connected this enigmatic stock with a Florentine named William, who in the year 1261 took the surname of Bonaparte or Buonaparte. The name seems to have been assumed when, amidst the unceasing strifes between Guelfs and Ghibellines that rent the civic life of Florence, William's party, the Ghibellines, for a brief space gained the ascendancy. But perpetuity was not to be found in Florentine politics ; and in a short time he was a fugitive at a Tuscan village, Sarzana, beyond the reach of the victorious Guelfs. Here the family seems to have lived for wellnigh three centuries, maintaining its Ghibelline and aristocratic principles with surprising tenacity. The age was not remarkable for the virtue of constancy, or any other virtue. Politics and private life were alike demoralized by unceasing intrigues ; and amidst strifes of Pope and Emperor, duchies and republics, cities and autocrats, there was formed that type of Italian character which is delineated in the pages of Macchiavelli. From the depths of debasement of that cynical age the Buonapartes were saved by their poverty, and by the isolation of their life at Sarzana. Yet the embassies discharged at intervals by the more talented members of the family showed that the gifts for intrigue were only dormant ; and they were certainly transmitted in their intensity to the greatest scion of the race.

In the year 1529 Francis Buonaparte, whether pressed by poverty or distracted by despair at the misfortunes which then overwhelmed Italy, migrated to Corsica.

There the family was grafted upon a tougher branch of the Italian race. To the vulpine characteristics developed under the shadow of the Medici there were now added qualities of a more virile stamp. Though dominated in turn by the masters of the Mediterranean, by Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, by the men of Pisa, and finally by the Genoese Republic, the islanders retained a striking individuality. The rock-bound coast and mountainous interior helped to preserve the essential features of primitive life. Foreign Powers might affect the towns on the sea-board, but they left the clans of the interior comparatively untouched. Their life centred around the family. The Government counted for little or nothing ; for was it not the symbol of the detested foreign rule ? Its laws were therefore as naught when they conflicted with the unwritten but omnipotent code of family honour. A slight inflicted on a neighbour would call forth the warning words — " Guard thyself : I am on my guard." Forthwith there began a blood feud, a vendetta, which frequently dragged on its dreary course through generations of conspiracy and murder, until, the principals having vanished, the collateral branches of the families were involved. No Corsican was so loathed as the laggard who shrank from avenging the family honour, even on a distant relative of the first offender. The murder of the Due d'Enghien by Napoleon in 1804 sent a thrill of horror through the Continent. To the Corsicans it seemed little more than an autocratic version of the vendetta traversale.^

The vendetta was the chief law of Corsican society up to comparatively recent times ; and its effects are still visible in the life of the stern islanders. In his charming romance, " Colomba," M. Prosper Merimee has depicted

1 From a French work, " Mceurs et Coutumes des Corses" (Paris, 1802), I take the following incident. A priest, charged with the duty of avenging a relative for some fourteen years, met his enemy at the gate of Ajaccio and forth withi shot him, under the eyes of an official — who did nothing. A relative of the murdered man, happening to be near, shot the priest. Both victims were quickly buried, the priest being interred under the altar of the church, "because of his sacred character." See too Miot de Melito, "M^moires," vol. i., ch. xiii., as to the utter collapse of the jury system in 1800-1, because no Corsican would " deny his party or desert his blood."

the typical Corsican, even of the towns, as preoccupied, gloomy, suspicious, ever on the alert, hovering about his dwelling, like a falcon over his nest, seemingly in preparation for attack or defence. Laughter, the song, the dance, were rarely heard in the streets ; for the women, after acting as the drudges of the household, were kept jealously at home, while their lords smoked and watched. If a game at hazard were ventured upon, it ran its course in silence, which not seldom was broken by the shot or the stab — first warning that there had been underhand play. The deed always preceded the word.

In such a life, where commerce and agriculture were despised, where woman was mainly a drudge and man a conspirator, there grew up the typical Corsican temperament, moody and exacting, but withal keen, brave, and constant, which looked on the world as a fencing-school for the glorification of the family and the clan.^ Of this type Napoleon was to be the supreme exemplar ; and the fates granted him as an arena a chaotic France and a distracted Europe.

Amidst that grim Corsican existence the Buonapartes passed their lives during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Occupied as advocates and lawyers with such details of the law as were of any practical importance, they must have been involved in family feuds and the oft-recurring disputes between Corsica and the suzerain Power, Genoa. As became dignitaries in the municipality of Ajaccio, several of the Buonapartes espoused the Genoese side ; and the Genoese Senate in a document of the year 1652 styled one of them, Jerome, " Egregius Hieronimus di Buonaparte, procurator Nobilium." These distinctions they seem to have little

1 As to the tenacity of Corsican devotion, I may cite a curious proof from the unpublished portion of the "Memoirs of Sir Hudson L^we." He was colonel in command of the Royal Corsican Rangers, enrolled during the British occupation of Corsica, and gained the affections of his men during several years of fighting in Egypt and elsewhere. When stationed at Capri in 1808 he relied on his Corsican levies to defend that island against Murat's attacks ; and he did not rely in vain. Though confronted by a French Corsican regiment, they remained true to their salt, even during a truce, when they could recognize their compatriots. The partisan instinct was proof against the promises of Murat's envoys and the shouts even of kith and kin.

coveted. Very few families belonged to the Corsican noblesse, and their fiefs were unimportant. In Corsica, as in the Forest Cantons of Switzerland and the Highlands of Scotland, class distinctions were by no means so coveted as in lands that had been thoroughly feudalized; and the Buonapartes, content with their civic dignities at Ajaccio and the attachment of their partisans on their country estates, seem rarely to have used the prefix which implied nobility. Their life was not unlike that of many an old Scottish laird, who, though possibly bourgeois in origin, yet by courtesy ranked as chieftain among his tenants, and was ennobled by the parlance of the countryside, perhaps all the more readily because he refused to wear the honours that came from over the Border.

But a new influence was now to call forth all the powers of this tough stock. In the middle of the eighteenth century we find the head of the family, Charles Marie Buonaparte, aglow with the flame of Corsican patriotism then being kindled by the noble career of Paoli. This gifted patriot, the champion of the islanders, first against the Genoese and later against the French, desired to cement by education the framework of the Corsican Commonwealth and founded a university. It was here that the father of the future French Emperor received a training in law, and a mental stimulus which was to lift his family above the level of the caporali and attorneys with whom its lot had for centuries been cast. His ambition is seen in the endeavour, successfully carried out by his uncle, Lucien, Archdeacon of Ajaccio, to obtain recognition of kinship with the Buonapartes of Tuscany who had been ennobled by the Grand Duke. His patriotism is evinced in his ardent support of Paoli, by whose valour and energy the Genoese were finally driven from the island. Amidst these patriotic triumphs Charles confronted his destiny in the person of Letizia Ramolino, a beautiful girl, descended from an honourable Florentine family which had for centuries been settled in Corsica. The wedding took place in 1764, the bridegroom being then eighteen and the bride fifteen years of age. The union, if rashly undertaken in the midst of civil strifes, was yet well assorted. Both parties to it were of patrician, if not definitely noble descent, and came of families which combined the intellectual gifts of Tuscany with the vigour of their later island home.^ From her mother's race, the Pietra Santa family, Letizia imbibed the habits of the most backward and savage part of Corsica, where vendettas were rife and education was almost unknown. Left in ignorance in her early days, she yet was accustomed to hardships, and often showed the fertility of resource which such a life always develops. Hence, at the time of her marriage, she possessed a firmness of will far beyond her years ; and her strength and fortitude enabled her to survive the terrible adversities of her early days, as also to meet with quiet matronly dignity the extraordinary honours showered on her as the mother of the French Emperor. She was inured to habits of frugality, which reappeared in the personal tastes of her son. In fact, she so far retained her old parsimonious habits, even amidst the splendours of the French Imperial Court, as to expose herself to the charge of avarice. But there is a touching side to all this. She seems ever to have felt that after the splendour there would come again the old days of adversity, and her instincts were in one sense correct. She lived on to the advanced age of eighty-six, and died twenty-one years after the break-up of her son's empire — a striking proof of the vitality and tenacity of her powers.

A kindly Providence veiled the future from the young couple. Troubles fell swiftly upon them both in private and in public life. Their first two children died in infancy. The third, Joseph, was born in 1768, when the Corsican patriots were making their last successful efforts against their new French oppressors : the fourth, the famous Napoleon, saw the light on August 15th, 1769, when the liberties of Corsica were being finally extinguished. Nine other children were born before the outbreak of the French Revolution reawakened civil strifes,

1 The facts as to the family of Napoleon's mother are given in full detail by M. Masson in his "Napoleon Inconnu," oh. i. They correct the statement often made as to her "lowly," "peasant " origin. Masson also proves that the house at Ajaocio, which is shown as Napoleon's birthplace, is of later construction, though on the same site.

MADAME BUONAPARTE (nAPOLEON's JIOTHEr). From the picture in tlie Town Hall, Ajaccio.

amidst which the then fatherless family was tossed to and fro, and finally whirled away to France.

Destiny had already linked the fortunes of the young Napoleon Buonaparte with those of France. After the downfall of Genoese rule in Corsica, France had taken over, for empty promises, the claims of the hard-pressed Italian republic to its troublesome island possession. It was a cheap and practical way of restoring, at least in the Mediterranean, the shattered prestige of the French Bourbons. They had previously intervened in Corsican affairs on the side of the Genoese. Yet in 1764 Paoli appealed to Louis XV. for protection. It was granted, in the form of troops that proceeded quietly to occupy the coast towns of the island under cover of friendly assurances. In 1768, before the expiration of an informal truce, Marbeuf, the French commander, commenced hostilities against the patriots. ^ In vain did Rousseau and many other champions of popular liberty protest against this bartering away of insular freedom : in vain did Paoli rouse his compatriots to another and more unequal struggle, and seek to hold the mountainous interior. Poor, badly equipped, rent by family feuds and clan schisms, his followers were no match for the French troops ; and after the utter break-up of his forces Paoli fled to England, taking with him three hundred and forty of the most determined patriots. With these irreconcilables Charles Buonaparte did not cast in his lot, but accepted the pardon offered to those who should recognize the French sway. With his wife and their little child Joseph he returned to Ajaccio ; and there, shortly afterwards. Napoleon was born. As the patriotic historian, Jacobi, has finely said, " The Corsican people, when exhausted by producing martyrs to the cause of liberty, produced Napoleon Buonaparte." ^

1 See Jacobi, " Hist, de la Corse," vol. ii., ch. viii. The whole storyis told with prudent brevity by French historians, even by- Masson and Chuquet. The few words in which Thiers dismisses this subject are altogether misleading.

2 Much has been written to prove that Napoleon was born in 1768, and was really the eldest surviving son. The reasons, stated brieily, are: (1) that the first baptismal name of Joseph Buonaparte was merely Nahulione (Italian for Napoleon), and that Joseph was a later addition

Seeing that Charles Buonaparte had been an ardent adherent of Paoli, his sudden change of front has exposed him to keen censure. He certainly had not the grit of which heroes are made. His seems to have been an illbalanced nature, soon buoyed up by enthusiasms, and as speedily depressed by their evaporation ; endowed with enough of learning and culture to be a Voltairean and write second-rate verses ; and with a talent for intrigue which sufficed to embarrass his never very affluent fortunes. Napoleon certainly derived lao world-compelling qualities from his father : for these he was indebted to the wilder strain which ran in his mother's blood. The father doubtless saw in the French connection a chance of worldly advancement and of liberation from pecuniary difficulties ; for the new rulers now sought to gain over the patrician families of the island. Many of them had resented the dictatorship of Paoli ; and they now gladly accepted the connection with France, which promised to enrich their country and to open up a brilliant career in the French army, where commissions were limited to the scions of nobility.

Much may be said in excuse of Charles Buonaparte's decision, and no one can deny that Corsica has ultimately gained much by her connection with France. But his change of front was open to the charge that it was prompted by self-interest rather than by philosophic foresight. At any rate, his second son throughout his boyhood nursed a deep resentment against his father for his desertion of the patriots' cause. The youth's sympathies were with the peasants, whose allegiance was not to be bought by baubles, whose constancy and bravery long held out against the French in a hopeless guerilla warfare. His hot Corsican blood boiled at the stories of oppression and insult which he heard from his humbler