tted. The young artillery
commander was considered by all at Nice to be a pronounced
"Montagnard," that is, an extreme Jacobin. Augustin Robespierre had
quickly learned to see and hear with the eyes and ears of his Corsican
friend, whose fidelity seemed assured by hatred of Paoli and by a
desire to recover the family estates in his native island. Many are
pleased to discuss the question of Buonaparte's attitude toward the
Jacobin terrorists. The dilemma they propose is that he was either a
convinced and sincere terrorist or that he fawned on the terrorists
from interested motives. This last appears to have been the opinion of
Augustin Robespierre, the former that of his sister Marie, for the
time an intimate friend of the Buonaparte sisters. Both at least have
left these opinions on record in letters and memoirs. There is no need
to impale ourselves on either horn, if we consider the youth as he
was, feeling no responsibility whatever for the conditions into which
he was thrown, taking the world as he found it and using its
opportunities while they lasted. For the time and in that place there
were terrorists: he made no confession of faith, avoided all snares,
and served his adopted country as she was in fact with little
reference to political shibboleths. He so served her then and
henceforth that until he lost both his poise and his indispensable
power, she laid herself at his feet and adored him. Whatever the ties
which bound them at first, the ascendancy of Buonaparte over the young
Robespierre was thorough in the end. His were the suggestions and the
enterprises, the political conceptions, the military plans, the
devices to obtain ways and means. It was probably his advice which was
determinative in the scheme of operations finally adopted. With an
astute and fertile brain, with a feverish energy and an unbounded
ambition, Buonaparte must attack every problem or be wretched. Here
was a most interesting one, complicated by geographical, political,
naval, and military elements. That he seized it, considered it, and
found some solution is inherently probable. The conclusion too has all
the marks of his genius. Yet the glory of success was justly
Massena's. A select third of the troops were chosen and divided into
three divisions to assume the offensive, under Massena's direction,
against the almost impregnable posts of the Austrians and Sardinians
in the upper Apennines. The rest were held in garrison partly as a
reser