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. 
Ventose                  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 Nivose 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.

* * * * *

THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON I

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 ancestry.  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 mysteries of his life.  Fortunately for lovers of romance, genius cannot be wholly analyzed,