he bounds of reason, abusing both the persons and the
legitimate property of their enemies. Death or surrender was often the
alternative. So it was that there was no refuge on their estates, not
even a temporary one, for those who had so long possessed them. Many
had already passed into foreign lands; the emigration increased, and
continued in a steady stream. The moderate nobles, honest patriots to
whom life in exile was not life at all, now clearly saw that their
order must yield: in the night session of August fourth, sometimes
called the "St. Bartholomew of privilege," they surrendered their
privileges in a mass. Every vestige, not only of feudal, but also of
chartered privilege, was to be swept away; even the King's
hunting-grounds were to be reduced to the dimensions permitted to a
private gentleman. All men alike, it was agreed, were to renounce the
conventional and arbitrary distinctions which had created inequality
in civil and political life, and accept the absolute equality of
citizenship. Liberty and fraternity were the two springers of the new
arch; its keystone was to be equality. On August twenty-third the
Assembly decreed freedom of religious opinion; on the next day freedom
of the press.

CHAPTER IX.

Buonaparte and Revolution in Corsica.

Napoleon's Studies Continued at Auxonne -- Another Illness
and a Furlough -- His Scheme of Corsican Liberation -- His
Appearance at Twenty -- His Attainments and Character -- His
Shifty Conduct -- The Homeward Journey -- New Parties in
Corsica -- Salicetti and the Nationalists -- Napoleon
Becomes a Political Agitator and Leader of the Radicals --
The National Assembly Incorporates Corsica with France and
Grants Amnesty to Paoli -- Momentary Joy of the Corsican
Patriots -- The French Assembly Ridicules Genoa's Protest --
Napoleon's Plan for Corsican Administration.

[Sidenote: 1789-90.]

Such were the events taking place in the great world while Buonaparte
was at Auxonne. That town, as had been expected, was most uneasy, and
on July nineteenth, 1789, there was an actual outbreak of violence,
directed there, as elsewhere, against the tax-receivers. The riot was
easily suppressed, and for some weeks yet, the regular round of
studious monotony in the young lieutenant's life was not disturbed
except as his poverty made his asceticism more rigorous. "I have no
other resource but work," he wrote to his mother;