o drive out the Prussian
and Austrian invaders; and when Europe looked to see France fall for
ever, it saw with wonder her strength renewed as by enchantment. Later
on it learnt that that strength was the strength of Antaeus, of a
peasantry that stood firmly rooted in their native soil. Organization
and good leadership alone were needed to transform these ardent masses
into the most formidable soldiery; and the brilliant military
prospects now opened up certainly knit Buonaparte's feelings more
closely with the cause of France. Thus, on September 21st, when the
new National Assembly, known as the Convention, proclaimed the
Republic, we may well believe that sincere convictions no less than
astute calculations moved him to do and dare all things for the sake
of the new democratic commonwealth.[17]

For the present, however, a family duty urges him to return to
Corsica. He obtains permission to escort home his sister Elise, and
for the third time we find him on furlough in Corsica. This laxity of
military discipline at such a crisis is explicable only on the
supposition that the revolutionary 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 wh