At midsummer he is transferred, as first lieutenant, to another regiment which happened to be quartered at Valence; but his second sojourn there is remarkable only for signs of increasing devotion to the revolutionary cause.  In the autumn of 1791 he is again in Corsica on furlough, and remains there until the month of May following.  He finds the island rent by strifes which it would be tedious to describe.  Suffice it to say that the breach between Paoli and the Buonapartes gradually widened owing to the dictator’s suspicion of all who favoured the French Revolution.  The young officer certainly did nothing to close the breach.  Determined to secure his own election as lieutenant-colonel in the new Corsican National Guard, he spent much time in gaining recruits who would vote for him.  He further assured his success by having one of the commissioners, who was acting in Paoli’s interest, carried off from his friends and detained at the Buonapartes’ house in Ajaccio—­his first coup[16] Stranger events were to follow.  At Easter, when the people were excited by the persecuting edicts against the clergy and the closing of a monastery, there was sharp fighting between the populace and Buonaparte’s companies of National Guards.  Originating in a petty quarrel, which was taken up by eager partisans, it embroiled the whole of the town and gave the ardent young Jacobin the chance of overthrowing his enemies.  His plans even extended to the seizure of the citadel, where he tried to seduce the French regiment from its duty to officers whom he dubbed aristocrats.  The attempt was a failure.  The whole truth can, perhaps, scarcely be discerned amidst the tissue of lies which speedily enveloped the affair; but there can be no doubt that on the second day of strife Buonaparte’s National Guards began the fight and subsequently menaced the regular troops in the citadel.  The conflict was finally stopped by commissioners sent by Paoli; and the volunteers were sent away from the town.

Buonaparte’s position now seemed desperate.  His conduct exposed him to the hatred of most of his fellow-citizens and to the rebukes of the French War Department.  In fact, he had doubly sinned:  he had actually exceeded his furlough by four months:  he was technically guilty, first of desertion, and secondly of treason.  In ordinary times he would have been shot, but the times were extraordinary, and he rightly judged that when a Continental war was brewing, the most daring course was also the most prudent, namely, to go to Paris.  Thither Paoli allowed him to proceed, doubtless on the principle of giving the young madcap a rope wherewith to hang himself.