by ideas which sent him through an
edict of Parlement into miserable banishment. He did not aim at
destruction of the old order, but he depicted an ideal State and to
attain that ideal State men butchered their fellows without mercy. The
_Social Contract_ became the textbook of the first revolutionary party,
and none admired Rousseau more ardently than the ruthless wielder of
tyranny who followed out the theorist's idea that in a republic it was
necessary sometimes to have a dictator.

There were rival schools of thought during the lifetime of Voltaire and
Rousseau. The latter was King of the Markets, destined in years to
come to inspire the Convention and the Commune. Voltaire, companion of
kings and eager recipient of the favours of Madame de Pompadour, had
little sympathy with the author of a book in which the humble
watchmaker's son flouted sovereignty and showed no skill in his
handling of religion. The elder man offered the younger shelter when
abuse was rained upon him; but Jean-Jacques would have none of it, and
thought Geneva should have cast out the unbeliever, for Jean-Jacques
was a pious man in theory and shocked by the worship {167} of pure
reason. The mad acclamations which greeted the return of Voltaire to
Paris after thirty years of banishment must have echoed rather bitterly
in the ears of Rousseau, who had despised salons and chosen to live
apart from all society.

{168}

Chapter XV

The Man from Corsica

Born on August 15th, 1769, Napoleon Buonaparte found himself surrounded
from his first hours by all the tumult and the clash of war. Ajaccio,
on the rocky island of Corsica, was his birthplace, though his family
had Florentine blood. Letitia Ramolino, the mother of Napoleon, was of
aristocratic Italian descent.

Corsica was no sunny dwelling-place during the infancy of this young
hero, who learned to brood over the wrongs of his island-home. The
Corsicans revolted fiercely against the sovereignty of Genoa, and were
able to resist all efforts to subdue them until France interfered in
the struggle and gained by diplomatic cunning what could not be gained
by mere force of arms. This conquest was resented the more bitterly by
the Corsicans because they had enjoyed thirteen years of independence
in all but name under Paoli, a well-loved patriot. It was after Paoli
was driven to England that the young Napoleon wrote, "I was born when
my country was perishing, thirty thousand Frenchm