s on the north. Despite the great difficulties of his task, the
young envoy bent the distracted Doge and Senate to his will. He
might, therefore, have expected gratitude from his adopted country;
but shortly after he returned to Nice he was placed under arrest, and
was imprisoned in a fort near Antibes.

The causes of this swift reverse of fortune were curiously complex.
The Robespierres had in the meantime been guillotined at Paris (July
28th, or Thermidor 10th); and this "Thermidorian" reaction alone would
have sufficed to endanger Buonaparte's head. But his position was
further imperilled by his recent strategic suggestions, which had
served to reduce to a secondary _role_ the French Army of the Alps.
The operations of that force had of late been strangely thwarted; and
its leaders, searching for the paralyzing influence, discovered it in
the advice of Buonaparte. Their suspicions against him were formulated
in a secret letter to the Committee of Public Safety, which stated
that the Army of the Alps had been kept inactive by the intrigues of
the younger Robespierre and of Ricord. Many a head had fallen for
reasons less serious than these. But Buonaparte had one infallible
safeguard: he could not well be spared. After a careful examination of
his papers, the Commissioners, Salicetti and Albitte, provisionally
restored him to liberty, but not, for some weeks, to his rank of
general (August 20th, 1794). The chief reason assigned for his
liberation was the service which his knowledge and talents might
render to the Republic, a reference to the knowledge of the Italian
coast-line which he had gained during the mission to Genoa.

For a space his daring spirit was doomed to chafe in comparative
inactivity, in supervising the coast artillery. But his faults were
forgotten in the need which was soon felt for his warlike prowess. An
expedition was prepared to free Corsica from "the tyranny of the
English"; and in this Buonaparte sailed, as general commanding the
artillery. With him were two friends, Junot and Marmont, who had clung
to him through his recent troubles; the former was to be helped to
wealth and fame by Buonaparte's friendship, the latter by his own
brilliant gifts.[31] In this expedition their talent was of no avail.
The French were worsted in an engagement with the British fleet, and
fell back in confusion to the coast of France. Once again Buonaparte's
Corsican enterprises were frustrated by the ubiquitous lor