with the
forces of the age; for he had now severed his connection with the
Corsican patriots, of whose cause he had only two years before been
the most passionate champion. It is evident that the schism which
finally separated Buonaparte and Paoli originated in their divergence
of views regarding the French Revolution. Paoli accepted revolutionary
principles only in so far as they promised to base freedom on a due
balance of class interests. He was a follower of Montesquieu. He
longed to see in Corsica a constitution similar to that of England or
to that of 1791 in France. That hope vanished alike for France and
Corsica after the fall of the monarchy; and towards the Jacobinical
Republic, which banished orthodox priests and guillotined the amiable
Louis, Paoli thenceforth felt naught but loathing: "We have been the
enemies of kings," he said to Joseph Buonaparte; "let us never be
their executioners." Thenceforth he drifted inevitably into alliance
with England.

Buonaparte, on the other hand, was a follower of Rousseau, whose ideas
leaped to power at the downfall of the monarchy. Despite the excesses
which he ever deplored, this second Revolution appeared to him to be
the dawn of a new and intelligent age. The clear-cut definitions of
the new political creed dovetailed in with his own rigid views of
life. Mankind was to be saved by law, society being levelled down and
levelled up until the ideals of Lycurgus were attained. Consequently
he regarded the Republic as a mighty agency for the social
regeneration not only of France, but of all peoples. His insular
sentiments were gradually merged in these vaster schemes.
Self-interest and the differentiating effects of party strifes
undoubtedly assisted the mental transformation; but it is clear that
the study of the "Social Contract" was the touchstone of his early
intellectual growth. He had gone to Rousseau's work to deepen his
Corsican patriotism: he there imbibed doctrines which drew him
irresistibly into the vortex of the French Revolution, and of its wars
of propaganda and conquest.

* * * * *

CHAPTER III

TOULON

When Buonaparte left Corsica for the coast of Provence, his career had
been remarkable only for the strange contrast between the brilliance
of his gifts and the utter failure of all his enterprises. His French
partisanship had, as it seemed, been the ruin of his own and his
family's fortunes. At the age of twenty