with Marseilles was reestablished by land. "We have
celebrated the fifth sansculottide of the year II (September
twenty-first, 1794) in a manner worthy of the republic and the
National Convention," wrote the commissioners to their colleagues in
Paris. On the twenty-fourth, General Buonaparte was released by them
from attendance at headquarters, thus becoming once again a free man
and his own master. He proceeded immediately to Toulon in order to
prepare for the Corsican expedition. Once more the power of a great
nation was, he hoped, to be directed against the land of his birth,
and he was an important agent in the plan.

To regain, if possible, some of his lost influence in the island,
Buonaparte had already renewed communication with former acquaintances
in Ajaccio. In a letter written immediately after his release in
September, 1794, to the Corsican deputy Multedo, he informed his
correspondent that his birthplace was the weakest spot on the island,
and open to attack. The information was correct. Paoli had made an
effort to strengthen it, but without success. "To drive the English,"
said the writer of the letter, "from a position which makes them
masters of the Mediterranean, ... to emancipate a large number of good
patriots still to be found in that department, and to restore to their
firesides the good republicans who have deserved the care of their
country by the generous manner in which they have suffered for
it,--this, my friend, is the expedition which should occupy the
attention of the government." His fortune was in a sense dependent on
success: the important position of artillery inspector could not be
held by an absentee and it was soon filled by the appointment of a
rival compatriot, Casabianca. In the event of failure Buonaparte would
be destitute. Perhaps the old vista of becoming a Corsican hero opened
up once again to a sore and disappointed man, but it is not probable:
the horizon of his life had expanded too far to be again contracted,
and the present task was probably considered but as a bridge to cross
once more the waters of bitterness. On success or failure hung his
fate. Two fellow-adventurers were Junot and Marmont. The former was
the child of plain French burghers, twenty-three years old, a daring,
swaggering youth, indifferent to danger, already an intimate of
Napoleon's, having been his secretary at Toulon. His chequered destiny
was interwoven with that of his friend and he came to high pos