hampionship of the new peasant proprietors. He was
ever the peasants' General, the peasants' Consul, the peasants'
Emperor.

The transition of the Revolution to an ordinary form of polity was
also being furthered by its unparalleled series of military triumphs.
When Buonaparte's name was as yet unknown, except in Corsica and
Provence, France practically gained her "natural boundaries," the
Rhine and the Alps. In the campaigns of 1793-4, the soldiers of
Pichegru, Kleber, Hoche, and Moreau overran the whole of the Low
Countries and chased the Germans beyond the Rhine; the Piedmontese
were thrust behind the Alps; the Spaniards behind the Pyrenees. In
quick succession State after State sued for peace: Tuscany in
February, 1795; Prussia in April; Hanover, Westphalia, and Saxony in
May; Spain and Hesse-Cassel in July; Switzerland and Denmark in
August.

Such was the state of France when Buonaparte came to seek his
fortunes in the Sphinx-like capital. His artillery command had been
commuted to a corresponding rank in the infantry--a step that deeply
incensed him. He attributed it to malevolent intriguers; but all his
efforts to obtain redress were in vain. Lacking money and patronage,
known only as an able officer and facile intriguer of the bankrupt
Jacobinical party, he might well have despaired. He was now almost
alone. Marmont had gone off to the Army of the Rhine; but Junot was
still with him, allured perhaps by Madame Permon's daughter, whom he
subsequently married. At the house of this amiable hostess, an old
friend of his family, Buonaparte found occasional relief from the
gloom of his existence. The future Madame Junot has described him as
at this time untidy, unkempt, sickly, remarkable for his extreme
thinness and the almost yellow tint of his visage, which was, however,
lit up by "two eyes sparkling with keenness and will-power"--evidently
a Corsican falcon, pining for action, and fretting its soaring spirit
in that vapid town life. Action Buonaparte might have had, but only of
a kind that he loathed. He might have commanded the troops destined to
crush the brave royalist peasants of La Vendee. But, whether from
scorn of such vulture-work, or from an instinct that a nobler quarry
might be started at Paris, he refused to proceed to the Army of the
West, and on the plea of ill-health remained in the capital. There he
spent his time deeply pondering on politics and strategy. He designed
a history of the last two ye