The Life of Napoleon I (Complete) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,346 pages of information about The Life of Napoleon I (Complete).

The Life of Napoleon I (Complete) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 1,346 pages of information about The Life of Napoleon I (Complete).
when on July 14th, 1790, he landed in Corsica; but the hatred long nursed by the mountaineers and fisherfolk against France was not to be exorcised by a few demonstrations.  In truth, the island was deeply agitated.  The priests were rousing the people against the newly decreed Civil Constitution of the Clergy; and one of these disturbances endangered the life of Napoleon himself.  He and his brother Joseph chanced to pass by when one of the processions of priests and devotees was exciting the pity and indignation of the townsfolk.  The two brothers, who were now well known as partisans of the Revolution, were threatened with violence, and were saved only by their own firm demeanour and the intervention of peacemakers.

Then again, the concession of local self-government to the island, as one of the Departments of France, revealed unexpected difficulties.  Bastia and Ajaccio struggled hard for the honour of being the official capital.  Paoli favoured the claims of Bastia, thereby annoying the champions of Ajaccio, among whom the Buonapartes were prominent.  The schism was widened by the dictatorial tone of Paoli, a demeanour which ill became the chief of a civic force.  In fact, it soon became apparent that Corsica was too small a sphere for natures so able and masterful as those of Paoli and Napoleon Buonaparte.

The first meeting of these two men must have been a scene of deep interest.  It was on the fatal field of Ponte Nuovo.  Napoleon doubtless came there in the spirit of true hero-worship.  But hero-worship which can stand the strain of actual converse is rare indeed, especially when the expectant devotee is endowed with keen insight and habits of trenchant expression.  One phrase has come down to us as a result of the interview; but this phrase contains a volume of meaning.  After Paoli had explained the disposition of his troops against the French at Ponte Nuovo, Buonaparte drily remarked to his brother Joseph, “The result of these dispositions was what was inevitable.” [13]

For the present, Buonaparte and other Corsican democrats were closely concerned with the delinquencies of the Comte de Buttafuoco, the deputy for the twelve nobles of the island to the National Assembly of France.  In a letter written on January 23rd, 1791, Buonaparte overwhelms this man with a torrent of invective.—­He it was who had betrayed his country to France in 1768.  Self-interest and that alone prompted his action then, and always.  French rule was a cloak for his design of subjecting Corsica to “the absurd feudal regime” of the barons.  In his selfish royalism he had protested against the new French constitution as being unsuited to Corsica, “though it was exactly the same as that which brought us so much good and was wrested from us only amidst streams of blood.”—­The letter is remarkable for the southern intensity of its passion, and for a certain hardening of tone towards Paoli.  Buonaparte writes of Paoli as having been

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The Life of Napoleon I (Complete) from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.