yet to be cast
into the seething caldron of French politics. The time was not yet
ripe for the exercise of his powers. The storming of the Bastille had
symbolized the overthrow of privilege and absolute monarchy; the
flight of the King presaged the overthrow of monarchy, absolute or
otherwise. The executive gone, the legislature popular and democratic
but ignorant how to administer or conduct affairs, the judiciary
equally disorganized, and the army transforming itself into a
patriotic organization--was there more to come? Yes. Thus far, in
spite of well-meant attempts to substitute new constructions for the
old, all had been disintegration. French society was to be reorganized
only after further pulverizing; cohesion would begin only under
pressure from without--a pressure applied by the threats of erratic
royalists that they would bring in the foreign powers to coerce and
arbitrate, by the active demonstrations of the emigrants, by the
outbreak of foreign wars. These were the events about to take place;
they would in the end evolve from the chaos of mob rule first the
irregular and temporary dictatorship of the Convention, then the
tyranny of the Directory; at the same time they would infuse a fervor
of patriotism, into the whole mass of the French nation, stunned,
helpless, and leaderless, but loyal, brave, and vigorous. In such a
crisis the people would tolerate, if not demand, a leader strong to
exact respect for France and to enforce his commands; would prefer the
vigorous mastery of one to the feeble misrule of the many or the few.
Still further, the man was as unready as the time; for it was, in all
probability, not as a Frenchman but as an ever true Corsican patriot
that Buonaparte wished to "show himself, overcome obstacles" at this
conjuncture.

On August fourth, 1791, the National Assembly at last decided to form
a paid volunteer national guard of a hundred thousand men, and their
decision became a law on August twelfth. The term of enlistment was a
year; four battalions were to be raised in Corsica. Buonaparte heard
of the decision on August tenth, and was convinced that the hour for
realizing his long-cherished aspirations had finally struck. He could
certainly have done much in Paris to secure office in a
French-Corsican national guard, and with this in mind he immediately
wrote a memorandum on the armament of the new force, addressing it,
with characteristic assurance, to the minister of war. When, howe