deputy, was a near relative of the defeated rival; Paoli's
displeasure was only too manifest; the bitter hate of a large element
in Ajaccio, including the royalist commander of the garrison, was
unconcealed. Napoleon's energy, rashness, and ambition combined to
make Pozzo di Borgo detest him. He was accused of being a traitor, the
source of all trouble, of plotting a new St. Bartholomew, ready for
any horror in order to secure power. Rejected by Corsica, would France
receive him? Would not the few French friends he had be likewise
alienated by these last escapades? Could the formal record of
regimental offenses be expunged? In any event, how slight the prospect
of success in the great mad capital, amid the convulsive throes of a
nation's disorders!

But in the last consideration lay his only chance: the nation's
disorder was to supply the remedy for Buonaparte's irregularities. The
King had refused his sanction to the secularization of the estates
which had once been held by the emigrants and recusant ecclesiastics;
the Jacobins retorted by open hostility to the monarchy. The plotting
of noble and princely refugees with various royal and other schemers
two years before had been a crime against the King and the
constitutionalists, for it jeopardized their last chance for
existence, even their very lives. Within so short a time what had been
criminal in the emigrants had seemingly become the only means of
self-preservation for their intended victim. His constitutional
supporters recognized that, in the adoption of this course by the
King, the last hope of a peaceful solution to their awful problem had
disappeared. It was now almost certain and generally believed that
Louis himself was in negotiation with the foreign sovereigns; to
thwart his plans and avert the consequences it was essential that open
hostilities against his secret allies should be begun. Consequently,
on April twentieth, 1792, by the influence of the King's friends war
had been declared against Austria. The populace, awed by the armies
thus called out, were at first silently defiant, an attitude which
changed to open fury when the defeat of the French troops in the
Austrian Netherlands was announced.

The moderate republicans, or Girondists, as they were called from the
district where they were strongest, were now the mediating party;
their leader, Roland, was summoned to form a ministry and appease this
popular rage. It was one of his colleagues who h