n who loved
and honoured his mother, who asserted that her advice had often been
of the highest service to him, and that her justice and firmness of
spirit marked her out as a natural ruler of men. But when these
admissions are freely granted, it still remains true that his
character was naturally hard; that his sense of personal superiority
made him, even as a child, exacting and domineering; and the sequel
was to show that even the strongest passion of his youth, his
determination to free Corsica from France, could be abjured if
occasion demanded, all the force of his nature being thenceforth
concentrated on vaster adventures.

* * * * *

CHAPTER II

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND CORSICA

"They seek to destroy the Revolution by attacking my person: I will
defend it, for I am the Revolution." Such were the words uttered by
Buonaparte after the failure of the royalist plot of 1804. They are a
daring transcript of Louis XIV.'s "L'etat, c'est moi." That was a bold
claim, even for an age attuned to the whims of autocrats: but this of
the young Corsican is even more daring, for he thereby equated himself
with a movement which claimed to be wide as humanity and infinite as
truth. And yet when he spoke these words, they were not scouted as
presumptuous folly: to most Frenchmen they seemed sober truth and
practical good sense. How came it, one asks in wonder, that after the
short space of fifteen years a world-wide movement depended on a
single life, that the infinitudes of 1789 lived on only in the form,
and by the pleasure, of the First Consul? Here surely is a political
incarnation unparalleled in the whole course of human history. The
riddle cannot be solved by history alone. It belongs in part to the
domain of psychology, when that science shall undertake the study, not
merely of man as a unit, but of the aspirations, moods, and whims of
communities and nations. Meanwhile it will be our far humbler task to
strive to point out the relation of Buonaparte to the Revolution, and
to show how the mighty force of his will dragged it to earth.

The first questions that confront us are obviously these. Were the
lofty aims and aspirations of the Revolution attainable? And, if so,
did the men of 1789 follow them by practical methods? To the former of
these questions the present chapter will, in part at least, serve as
an answer. On the latter part of the problem the events described in
later cha