olutionary chiefs knew of his devotion to
their cause and believed that his influence in the island would render
his informal services there more valuable than his regimental duties
in the army then invading Savoy. For the word Republic, which fired
his imagination, was an offence to Paoli and to most of the
islanders; and the phrase "Republic one and indivisible," ever on the
lips of the French, seemed to promise that the island must become a
petty replica of France--France that was now dominated by the authors
of the vile September massacres. The French party in the island was
therefore rapidly declining, and Paoli was preparing to sever the
union with France. For this he has been bitterly assailed as a
traitor. But, from Paoli's point of view, the acquisition of the
island by France was a piece of rank treachery; and his allegiance to
France was technically at an end when the king was forcibly dethroned
and the Republic was proclaimed. The use of the appellation "traitor"
in such a case is merely a piece of childish abuse. It can be
justified neither by reference to law, equity, nor to the popular
sentiment of the time. Facts were soon to show that the islanders were
bitterly opposed to the party then dominant in France. This hostility
of a clannish, religious, and conservative populace against the
bloodthirsty and atheistical innovators who then lorded it over France
was not diminished by the action of some six thousand French
volunteers, the off-scourings of the southern ports, who were landed
at Ajaccio for an expedition against Sardinia. In their zeal for
Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, these _bonnets rouges_ came to
blows with the men of Ajaccio, three of whom they hanged. So fierce
was the resentment caused by this outrage that the plan of a joint
expedition for the liberation of Sardinia from monarchical tyranny had
to be modified; and Buonaparte, who was again in command of a
battalion of Corsican guards, proposed that the islanders alone should
proceed to attack the Madalena Isles.

These islands, situated between Corsica and Sardinia, have a double
interest to the historical student. One of them, Caprera, was destined
to shelter another Italian hero at the close of his career, the noble
self-denying Garibaldi: the chief island of the group was the
objective of Buonaparte's first essay in regular warfare. After some
delays the little force set sail under the command of Cesari-Colonna,
the nephew of Paoli