The family Buonaparte (so the name is written by Napoleon’s father and by himself down to 1796, though the other spelling occurs in early Italian documents) was of Tuscan origin. A branch of it was settled in Corsica at least as early as the sixteenth century, from which time the Buonapartes appear as influential citizens of Ajaccio. The had an ancient title from the Genoese republic, and Napoleon’s grandfather obtained letters of nobility also from the Grand Duke of Tuscany. They had therefore the right to sign De Buonaparte, but ordinarily dropped the preposition of honour. Charles Marie de Buonaparte (who was born in 1746, and studied law at the University of Pisa, where he took his doctor’s degree in 1769) married at the age of eighteen Letitia Ramolino,who was not quite fifteen. The lady had beauty, but apparently neither rank nor wealth. In the children of this marriage the father, a somewhat indolent gentlemen with a certain taste for literature, seems traceable in Joseph, Jerome, and partly also in Lucien; the energy of which Lucien had a share, which Caroline also displayed, and which astonished the world in Napoleon, is perhaps attributable to the Corsican blood of the mother. Thirteen children were born, of whom eight grew up. The list of these is as follows:- Joseph (king, first of Naples, then of Spain), Napoleon, Lucien, Eliza (Princess Bacciochi), Pauline (married first to General Leclerc, afterwards to Prince Borghese), Caroline (married to Murat, became queen of Naples), Louis (king of Holland), Jerome (king of Westphalia). Of these the eldest was born in 1768, the youngest in 1784.
    Besides his brothers and sisters, Napoleon raised to importance Joseph Fesch, half-brother of his mother, a Swiss on the father’s side, who was afterwards known to the world as Cardinal Fesch.
    It is the accepted opinion that Napoleon was born at Ajaccio on August 15,1769. This opinion rests indeed on the positive statement of Joseph, but it is certain fron documents that on January 7, 1768, Madame Letitia bore a son at Corte, who was baptised by the name of Nabulione. And even in legal documents we find contradictory statements about the time and place of birth, not only of Napoleon, but also of Joseph. It has been suggested that all difficulties disappear at once if we suppose that Napoleon and Nabulione were one and the same, and that Joseph was really the second son, whom the parents found it convenient to pass off as first born. This they may have found convenient when, in 1779, they gained admission for a son to the military school of Brienne. A son born in 1768 would at that date be inadmissible, as being above ten years if age. On this supposition Napoleon was introduced by a fraud to that military career which changed the face of the world! Nevertheless it is certain from Lucien’s memoir that of such a fraud nothing was known to the younger members of the family, who regarded Joseph as without doubt the eldest.
    After passing two or three months in a school at Autun for the purpose of learning French—he had hitherto been a thorough
Italian—Napoleon entered Brienne on April 23 or 25, 1779, where he remained for more than five years, and then in October 1784 passed, as ‘cadet-gentilhomme,’ into military school in Paris. In the next year, 1785, he obtained his commission of lieutenant in the regiment La Fere, stationed at Valence. He had already lost his father, who, undertaking a journey to France on business, was entertained at Montpellier in the house of an old Corsican friend, Madame Permon, mother of the celebrated memoir-writer Madame Junot, and died there of the disease which was afterwards fatal to Napoleon, on February 24, 1785, at the age of thirty-eight years.
    The fact principally to be noticed about Napoleon’s extraction aand boyhood is that he was by birth a noble, needy and provincial, and that from his tenth year his education was exclusively military. Of all the great rulers of the world none has been by breeding so purely a military specialist. He could scarcely remember a time when he was not a soldier living among soldiers. The effects of this training showed themselves too evidently when he had risen to the head of affairs. At the same time poverty in a society of luxurious noblemen, and the consciousness of foreign birth and of ignorance of the French language, made his school life at times very unhappy. At one time he demands passionately to be taken away, at another he sends in a memorial, in which he argues the expediency of subjecting cadets to a more Spartan diet. His character declared itself earlier than his talents. He was reported as ‘taciturn, fond of solitude, capricious, haughty, extremely disposed to egoism, seldom speaking, energetic in his answers, ready and sharp in repartee, full of self-love, ambitious, and of unbounded aspirations.’ So he appeared to his teachers, and in some stories, probably exaggerated, he is represented as a complete Timon, living as a hermit, and perpetually at war with his school-fellows. His abilities do not seem to have excited wonder, but he was studious, and in mathematics and geography made great progress. He never, however, so Carnot tells us became a truly scientific man. He had neither taste nor talent for grammatical studies, but was fond of books, and books of a solid kind. Of the writers of the day he seems to have been chiefly influenced by Rousseau and Raynal.
    He is now a lieutenant of artillery in the service of Louis XVI. The next few years are spent mainly with his regiment at Valence, Lyons, Douai, Auxonne, Seurre, Auxonne again. But he takes long holidays with his family at Ajaccio, obtaining permission on the ground of ill-health. Thus he was at Ajaccio in 1787 from February to October, again from December 1787 to May 1788, again from September 1789 to February 1791.During this period he was chiefly engaged in authorship, being consumed by the desire of distinction, and having as yet no other means of attaining it. He produces ’Letters on the History of Corsica,’ which he proposes at first to dedicate to Paoli, later to Raynal; he competes for the prize offered by the Academy of Lyons for the best essay written ‘to determine the truths and feelings which it is most important to inculcate on men for their happiness.’ Among his smaller compositions is ‘The Narrative of the Masked Prophet.’ Of all these writings, which are to be distinguished from the pamphlets written by him with a practical object, it may be said that they show more character than literary ability. As the compositions of a boy they are indeed remarkable for their precocious seriousness; but what strikes the reader most in them is a sort of suppressed passion that marks the style, a fierce impatience, as if the writer knew already how much he had to get through in a short life. But his sentiment, love of liberty, of virtue, of domestic happiness, are hollow, and his affectation of tenderness even ridiculous. The essay, as a composition, is positively bad, and was naturally unsuccessful.

    Meanwhile his active life had begun with the Revolution of 1789. The first chapter of it is separate from the rest, and leads to nothing. That astonishing career, which has all the unity of a most thrilling drama, does not begin till 1795. The six years which preceded it may be called his Corsican period, because for the greater part of it he may be thought to have regarded Corsica as the destined scene of his future life. It must be very summarily treated here.
    In 1789 the Italian island of Corsica had been for twenty years a dependency of France. But France had acquired it in a most unscrupulous manner by purchasing the rights of the republic of Genoa over it. She did this in 1768, that is, when Corsica had contested those rights in a war of nearly forty years, and had been practically independent and happy for about thirteen years underthe dictatorship of Pasquale Paoli. It was an act similar to the partition of Poland, and seems to mark a design on the part of France—which had just suffered great colonial losses—to extend her power by way of the Mediterranean into the east. Paoli was compelled to take refuge in England, where he was still living when the French Revolution broke out. In the fall of Corsica a certain Matteo Buttafuoco played a disgraceful part.He had been sent by Paoli to treat as plenipotentiary with France, was won over by Choiseul, declared against the national cause, and appeared in the island as colonel of Louis XV's Corsican regiment. He too was still living when the States-General met and represented there the noblesse of Corsica, while Salicetti, a name of no little prominence in the revolution, was one of the representatives of the Corsican tiers etat.
    The Revolution was almost as dangerous an event to the relation between France and Corsica as to that between France and St. Domingo. Would the island assert its independence, and if so, could the Assembly deny its right to do this? The islanders and the exiled Paoli at their head took a moderate view. France must guarantee a good deal of local freedom; on such conditions, they thought, the relation might continue, if only to prevent the republic of Genoa from reviving its pretensions. Accordingly, on November 30, 1789, Corsica was declared by the National Assembly to be a province of France on the motion of Salicetti himself, and the protest against this decree made by Genoa was treated with contempt. Paoli left London, was received in France with an ovation, appeared before the National assembly on April 22, 1790, where he received the honours of the sitting, and landed in Corsica on July 14, after an absence of twenty-one years. Thus was Corsica reconciled to France by the Revolution of 1789; but the good work was undone by the Second Revolution of 1792.
    Since 1769 the French power in the island had rested mainly on the noblesse and the clergy.The Buonaparte family, as noble, had been on the unpatriotic side; Napoleon's father appears always as a courtier of the French governor Marboeuf and as a mendicant at Versailles; Madame Letitia in soliciting a place for her son Louis styles herself 'the widow of a man who always served the king in the administration of the affairs of Corsica.' It is therefore after taking of the Bastille, Napoleon hurried to Ajaccio and placed himself at the head of the revolutionary party with all the decision characteristic of him. He devoted himself to the establishment of a National Guard, of which he might hope to be the La Fayette, and he published a letter to Buttafuoco, which properly understood, is a solemn desertion of the principles of his family, similar to that of Mirabeau. This letter has all the intensity of his other early writings, but far more effectiveness. It lashes Buttafuoco for his treason of 1768, describing him as a cynic, who had no belief in virtue, but supposed all men to be guided by selfish interest. The invective has lost its edge for us who know that the author soon after openly professed this very creed. In declaring for the Revolution he obeyed the real inclination of his feelings at the time, as we may see from his writings, which are in the revolutionary tone of Raynal. But had he not really, we may ask, an ulterior object—viz. To make Corsica independent of France, and to restore the old rule of Paoli, aiming himself at Paoli's succession? Probably he wished to see such a result, but he had always two strings to his bow. In his letter to Buttafuoco he carefully avoids separating Corsican liberty from the liberty offered by the French Revolution. Had the opportunity offered, he might no doubt have stood forth at this time as the liberator of Corsica; but circumstances did not prove favourable, and he drifted gradually in quite the opposite direction.
    In October 1790 he met Paoli at Orezza, where Corsica constituted itself as a French department, Paoli being president, Salicetti procureur-general syndic, Arena and Pozzo di Borgo (also from Ajaccio) members of the Directorum. Paoli is said to have hailed Napoleon as 'one of Plutarch's men.' As the only Corsican officer trained at a royal military school, Napoleon might aspire to become commander of a paid native guard which it was proposed to create for the island. But France had misgivings about the use to which such a guard might be put, and the Minister of War rejected the proposal. In the next year, however, he was successful in a second attempt to get command of an armed force in Corsica, and betrayed in the course of this attempt how much more intent he was at the time upon Corsican than upon French affairs. It was decided to create four battalions of national volunteers for Corsica and Napoleon became candidate for the post of lieutenant-colonel in the district of Ajaccio. The choice was in the hands of the volunteers themselves and in pursuing his canvass Napoleon did not hesitate to outstay his furlough, and thus forfeit his French commission by wilful absence from a great review of the whole French army which was appointed for the opening day of 1792. He was, however elected, having, it is said, executed the first of his many coups d'etat by violently imprisoning a commissioner sent down to superintend the election. We can understand his eagerness when we remark that anarchy in Corsica was steadily increasing, so that he may have believed that the moment for some military stroke was at hand. He did not long delay. At the Easter festival of 1792 he tried to get possession of Ajaccio under cover of a tumult between the volunteers and the refractory clergy. The stroke failed, and he fled from the island. The European war was just breaking out, and at Paris everything was in confusion; otherwise he would probably have been tried by court-martial and shot.
    A rebel in Corsica, a deserter in France, what was he to do? He went to Paris, where he arrived on May 21. The Second Revolution was at hand, and he could observe while no one had leisure to observe him. He witnessed the 10th August and the downfall of the monarchy. To him this revolution was a fortunate event, for the new Government, attacked by all Europe, could not dispense with the few trained officers whom emigration had left. On August 30 his name was restored to the army list with the rank of captain, a commission dated back to February 6, and arrears of pay. He was saved from the most desperate condition to which he was ever in his whole life reduced. On September 2 (terrible date) he is engaged in withdrawing his sister Eliza from St Cyr (the House of St Louis having been suppressed). The next step he takes is remarkable. The great war which was to carry him to the pinnacle of fame was now in full progress. By undeserved good luck his military rank is restored to him. Will he not hurry to his regiment, eager to give proof of his military talents? No, his thoughts are still in Corsica. On the pretext of conducting his sister to her home he sets off without delay for Ajaccio, where he arrives on the 17th. The winter was spent in the unsuccessful expedition, which may be called Napoleon's first campaign, made from Corsica against the island of Sardinia. On his return he found a new scene opened. The Second Revolution was beginning to produce its effect in Corsica, which was no mere province of France, and in which everything was modified by the presence of Paoli. Elsewhere the Convention was able by its Representatives in Mission to crush opposition, but they could not so crush Corsica and Paoli. There was thus a natural opposition between the Convention and Paoli and the islanders began to fall into opposite parties, as adherents of the former or the latter. It might have been expected that Bonaparte, who all his life had glorified Paoli, and whose early letters are full of hatred to France, would have been an enthusiastic Paolist. But a breach seems to have taken between them soon after Napoleon's return from Paris, perhaps in consequence of his escapade of Easter, 1792. The crisis came on April 2, when Paoli was denounced before the Convention, among others by Marat, and it was decreed that he and Pozzo di Borgo should come to Paris and render an account of their conduct to the Convention. Paoli, refused, but, with remarkable, perhaps excessive, moderation which characterised him, offered to leave Corsica if his presence there appeared to the Convention undesirable. The islanders, however, rallied round him almost as one man.
    There could be no reason why the horrors of the Second Revolution should extend to Corsica, even if we consider them to have been inevitable for France. For a Corsican patriot no fairer opportunity could offer of dissolving with universal approbation the connexion with France which had begun in 1769. Napoleon took the opposite side. He stood out with Salicetti as the leading champion of the French connexion and the bitterest opponent of Paoli. Was his motive envy, or the bitterness caused by a recent personal quarrel with Paoli? We cannot positively say, but we can form an estimate of the depth of that insular patriotism which fills the 'Letters on the History of Corsica.' Paoli summoned a national consulta at the end of May, and the dissolution of the French connexion now began. The consulta denounced the Buonaparte family by name. Napoleon answered by desperate attempts to execute his old plan of getting possession of the citadel of Ajaccio. But he failed, and the whole family, with Madame Letitia and Fesch pursued by the fury of the people, took refuge in France. With this Hijra the first period of Napoleon comes to an end.

    Up to this time Napoleon has regarded the French nation with dislike, French ways and habits as strange and foreign, and he has more than once turned aside from a French career when it seemed open to him. Henceforth he has no other career to look for, unless indeed it may be possible, as for some time he continued to hope, to make his way back to Corsica by means of French arms. A certain change seems now to pass over his character. Up to this time his writings, along with their intensity, have had a high moral and sentimental tone. He seems sincerely to have thought himself not only stronger and greater but better than other men. At school he found himself among school-fellows who were a hundred fathoms below the noble sentiments which animated himself, and again much later he pronounced that 'the men among whom he lived had ways of thinking as different from his own as moonlight is from sunlight.' Probably he still felt that he had more vivid thoughts than other men, but he ceases henceforth to be a moralist. His next pamphlet, 'Le Souper de Beaucaire,' is entirely free from sentiment, and in a very short time he appears as a cynic, and even pushing cynicism to an extreme.
    It was in June 1793, that the whole family found themselves at Toulon in the midst of the Corsican emigration. France was in a condition not less disturbed than Corsica, for it was the moment of the fall of the Girondins. Plunged into this new party strife, Napoleon could hardly avoid taking the side of the Mountain. Paoli had been in the manner of the Girondin of Corsica, and Napoleon had headed the opposition to him. In 'le Souper de Beaucaire' (published in August 1793), which is the manifesto of the period, as the 'Letter to Buttafuoco' is of the earlier period, he himself compares the Girondins to Paoli, and professes to think that the safety of the state requires a deeper kind of republicanism than theirs.
    The immediate occasion of this pamphlet is the civil war of the South, into which he was now plunged. Marseilles had declared against the Convention, and had sent an army under Rousselet which had occupied Avignon, but had evacuated it speedily on being attacked by the troops of the Mountain under Carteaux. Napoleon took part in the attack, commanding the artillery, but it seems an unfounded statement that he specially distinguished himself. This was in July, and a month later the pamphlet was written. It is a dialogue between inhabitants of Marseilles, Nimes, and Montpellier and a military man. It is highly characteristic, full of keen and sarcastic sagacity, and clear military views; but the temperature of its author's mind has evidently fallen suddenly; it has no warmth, but a remarkable cynical coldness.
    Among the Representatives in Mission recently arrived at Avignon was the younger Robespierre, with whom Salicetti was intimate. Napoleon , introduced by Salicetti and recommended by this pamphlet, naturally rose high in favour. We must not be misled by the violence with which as First Consul, he attacked this party, and the horror he then professed to feel for their crimes, so as to conclude that his connexion with the Jacobins, and especially the Robespierres, was at the beginning purely accidental and professional. What contemporary evidence we have exhibits Buonaparte at this time as holding the language of the terrorist, and we shall see how narrowly he escaped perishing with the Robespierres in Thermidor. Of course it is not necessary to disbelieve Marmont, when he says that the atrocities of the Robespierrists were never to Napoleon's taste, and that he did much to check them within the sphere of his influence.
    He marched with Carteaux into Marseilles late in August, and about the same time Toulon delivered itself into the hands of the English. Just at this moment he was promoted to the rank of chef de battaillon in the second regiment of artillery, which gave him practically the command of the artillery in the force which was now formed to besiege Toulon. The story of his relations with the generals who were sent successively to conduct the siege, Carteaux the painter, Doppet the physician, Dugommier the brave veteran and of his discovery of the true way to take Toulon, are perhaps somewhat legendary, but he may probably have been eloquent and persuasive at the council of war held on November 25, in which the plan of the siege was laid down. That he distinguished himself in action is more certain, for Dugommier writes: 'Among those who distinguished themselves most, and who most aided me to rally the troops and push them forward, are Citizens Buono Parte, commanding the artillery, Arena and Cervoni adjutants general' (Moniteur, December 7,1793). He was now named general of brigade.
    He now passes out of the civil into the foreign war. The military system of the Convention is by this time in full operation. Distinct armies face each enemy, and the great military names of the Revolution are already in men's mouths. The Army of the North has Jourdan, Leclerc, Vandamme, Brune, Mortier; that if the Moselle has Hoche, Bessieres, Moreau; that of the Rhine, Pichegru, Scherer, Berthier; that of the West, Marceau and Kleber. Buonaparte joins the Army of Italy as general of artillery and inspector-general; to the same army is attached Massena as general of division; Dumerbion is general-in-chief. It is now that for the first time we find the young man's exceptional ability remarked. Restless pushing ambition he had shown all along, but that he was more than a mere intriguer seems to have been first discerned by the younger Robespierre, who in a letter of April 5, 1794, describes him as 'of transcendent merit.' In the brief campaign of the Army of Italy which occupied the month of July, 1794, he took no part, while Massena commanded in the illness of Dumerbion. But in July he made his first essay in diplomacy. Genoa was among the earliest of the many feeble neutral states which suffered in the conflict of the Revolution with the Great Powers, and at the expense of which the revolutionary empire was founded. Bonaparte was sent by the younger Robespierre to remonstrate with the Genoese Government upon the use which they suffered the Coalition to make of their neutral territory. He was in Genoa from July 16 to July 23; he urged the French claim with success; he returned to Nice on July 28. But July 28, 1794, is the 9th Thermidor, on which his patron perished with the elder Robespierre on the scaffold.
    Probably the connexion of Napoleon with the Robespierres was closer than he himself at a later time liked to have thought. 'He was their man, their plan-maker,' writes Salicetti; 'he had acquired an ascendancy over the Representatives (i.e. especially Robespierre junior) which it is impossible to describe,' writes Marmont. Accordingly after Thermidor the Representatives in Mission who remaineed with the Army of Italy—viz. Salicetti, Albitte, and Laporte—suspended Bonaparte from his functions, and placed him provisionally under arrest (August 6). He was imprisoned at the Fort Carre near Antibes, but fortunately for him was not sent to Paris. On the 20th he was set provisionally at liberty on the ground of 'the possible utility of the military and local knowledge of the said Bonaparte.' This spelling begins already to creep in.
    His escape was due, according to Marmont, to Salicetti's favour and to powerful help he himself succeeded in procuring; 'he moved heaven and earth.' His power of attaching followers also now begins to appear; Junot and Marmont, who had become acquainted with him at Toulon, were prepared, if he had been sent to Paris, to set him free by killing the gens d'armes and carrying him into the Genoese territory. Marmont has graphically described the influence exerted upon himself at this time by Napoleon; ' there was so much future in his mind,' he writes.
    This was a passing check; early in 1795 he suffered a greater misfortune. He had been engaged in a maritime expedition of which the object was to recover Corsica, now completely in the control of the English. On March 3 he embarked with his brother Louis, Marmont, and others on the brig 'Amitie.' On the 11th the fleet set sail. It fell in with the English, lost two ships, and returned defeated. The enterprise was abandoned, and by the end of the same month we find Lacombe Saint-Michel, member of the Committee of Public Safety, sending orders to the General of Brigade Bonaparte, to proceed immediately to the Army of the West in order to take command of the artillery there. He left Marseilles for Paris on May 5, felling that all the ground gained by his activity at Toulon, and by the admiration he had begun to inspire, was lost again, that his career was all to recommence, and in peculiarly unfavourable circumstances.
    This may almost be called the last turn he ever received from fortune. It has been attributed to Girondist spite of a certain Aubry against the Montagnard Bonaparte. The truth seems rather to be that the Committee of Public Safety felt that the Corsican element was too strong in the Army of Italy; they remarked that 'the patriotism of these refugees is less manifest than their disposition to enrich themselves.' Lacombe Saint-Michel knew Corsica; and the new general of the Army of Italy, Scherer, remarks of Bonaparte just at this moment that 'he is a really good artillerist, but has rather too much ambition and intrigue for his advancement.'
    The anecdote told by Bonaparte himself of his ordering an attack of outposts in order to treat a lady to a sight of real war, 'how the French were successful, but necessarily no result could come of it, the attack being a pure fancy, and yet some men were left on the field,' belongs to the last months of service in the Army of Italy. It is worthy of notice, as showing his cynical insensibility, that he acted thus almost at the very beginning of his military career, and not when he had been hardened by long familiarity with bloodshed. On his arrival at Paris he avoids proceeding to the Army of the West, and after a time obtains from Doulcet de Pontecoulant a post in the topographical section of the War Office. Here he has an opportunity of resuming his old work, and we find him furnishing Doulcet, as he had before furnished Robespierre junior, with stategical plans for the conduct of the war in Italy. Late in August he applies for a commission from the Government to go to Constantinople at the head of a party of artillerists in order to reform that department of the Turkish service. He sends in a testimonial from Doulcet which describes him as 'a citizen who may be usefully employed whether in the artillery or in any other arm, and even in the department of foreign affairs.' But at this moment occurs the crisis of his life. It coincides with a remarkable crisis in the history of France.

    The Second Revolution (1792) had destroyed the monarchy, but a republic, properly speaking, had not yet been established. Between 1792 and 1795 the government had been provisionally in the hands of the National Convention, which had been summoned, not to govern, but to create a new constitution. Now at length, the danger from foreign enemies having been averted, the Convention could proceed to its proper work of establishing a definitive republic.
    But there was danger lest the country, when appealed to, should elect to undo the work of 1792 by recalling the Bourbons, or at least should avenge on the Mountain the atrocities of the Terror. To preserve the continuity of government an expedient was adopted. As under the new constitution the assemblies were to be renewed periodically to the extent only of one third at a time, it was decreed that the existing Convention should be treated as the first Corps Legislatif under the new system. Thus, instead of being dissolved and making way for new assemblies, it was to form the nucleus of the new legislature, and to be renewed only to the extent of one third. This additional law, which was promulgated along with the new constitution, excited a rebellion in Paris. The sections (or wards) called into existence a revolutionary assembly, which met at the Odeon. This the Convention suppressed by military force, and the discontent of the individual sections was thereby increased. At the same time their confidence was heightened by a check they inflicted upon General Menou, who, in attempting to disarm the section Lepelletier, was imprisoned in the Rue Vivienne, and could only extricate himself by concluding a sort of capitulation with the insurgents. Thereupon the Convention, alarmed, put Menou under arrest, and gave the command of the armed force of Paris and of the Army of the Interior to Barras, a leading politician of the day, who had acquired a sort of military reputation by having held several times the post of Representative in Mission. Barras knew the Army of Italy and the services which Buonaparte had rendered at Toulon, and nominated him second in command.
    It does not seem that Buonaparte showed any remarkable firmness of character or originality of genius in meeting the revolt of the sections on the next day (Vendemiaire 13—i.e. October 5) with grape shot. The disgrace of Menou was a warning that the Convention required decisive action, and the invidiousness of the act fell upon Barras, not upon Bonaparte. Indeed, in the official report drawn by Bonaparte himself his own name scarcely appears; instead of assuming courageously the responsibility of the deed, he took great pains to shirk it. He appeared in the matter merely as the instrument, as the skilful artillerist, by whom Barras and the Convention carried their resolute policy into effect. Moreover, though his arrangements were able, there seems no truth in the story of his despatching Murat at two o'clock in the morning to bring up artillery from Sablons. It will be observed that on this occasion he defends the cause of the Jacobinism. This does not require to be explained, as at a later time he took much pains to explain it, by the consideration that, odious as Jacobinism was, on the particular occasion it was identified with 'the great truths of our Revolution.' The truth is that in his first years he appears uniformly as a Jacobin. He was at the moment an official in the Jacobin Government, and speaks in his letters of the party of sections just as a Government official might be expected to do.
    In this affair he produced an impression of real military capacity among the leading men of France, and placed Barras himself under a personal obligation. He was rewarded by being appointed in succession to Barras, who now resigned, commander of the Army of the Interior.
    In this position, political and military at the same time, he preluded to the part reserved for him later of First Consul and Emperor. He also strengthened his new position materially by his marriage with Josephine de Beauharnais, nee Tascher. His first choice had been the friend of his family, Mme Permon, who however, rejected him. The legend tells of a youth calling upon him to claim the sword of his father, guillotined in the Terror, of Napoleon treating the youth kindly, of his mother paying a visit of thanks, of an attachment following. But even if he was really attached to Josephine, we must not think of the match as one of mere unworldly affection. It was scarcely less splendid for the young General Bonaparte than his second match was for the Emperor Napoleon. Josephine was prominent in Parisian society, and for the lonely Corsican, so completely without connexions in Paris or even in France, such an alliance was of priceless value. She had not much either of character or intellect, but real sweetness of disposition. Her personal charm was not so much that of beauty as of grace, social tact, and taste in dress. The act of marriage is dated Ventose 19,Year IV (i.e. March 9, 1796), and is remarkable because it declares Napoleon to have been born in 1768 instead of 1769, and Josephine in 1767 instead of 1763. On this day he had already been appointed to the command of the Army of Italy. His European career now begins.