able to assert her mastery, France would never allow another power to intervene, and so, for the sake of peace, might accept this solution. But the great master of diplomacy was not misled. In his designs upon Corsica he had little to fear from European opposition. He knew how hampered England was by the strength of parliamentary opposition, and the unrest of her American colonies. The Sardinian monarchy was still weak, and quailed under the jealous eyes of her strong enemies. Austria could not act without breaking the league so essential to her welfare, while the Bourbon courts of Spain and Naples would regard the family aggrandizement with complacency. Moreover, something must be done to save the prestige of France: her American colonial empire was lost; Catherine's brilliant policy, and the subsequent victories of Russia in the Orient, were threatening what remained of French influence in that quarter. Here was a propitious moment to emulate once more the English: to seize a station on the Indian highroad as valuable as Gibraltar or Port Mahon, and to raise again high hopes of recovering, if not the colonial supremacy, at least the equality among nations which was menaced. With out loss of time, therefore, the negotiations were ended, and Buttafuoco was dismissed. On May 15, 1768, the price to be paid having been fixed, a definitive treaty with Genoa was signed, the sale was completed, and Corsica passed finally into French hands. Paoli appealed to the great powers in vain.

The campaign of subjugation opened at once, Buttafuoco taking service against his kinsfolk with a few Corsicans so friendly to the enterprise that, unlike the Royal Corsican regiment formed under his father's influence, they were willing to fight their brethren. The French troops already in the island were at once reinforced, but during the first year of the final conflict the advantage was all with the patriots; indeed, there was one substantial victory which awakened dismay at Versailles. Once more Paoli hoped for intervention, especially that of England, whose liberal feeling would coincide with his interest in keeping Corsica from France. Money and arms were sent from Great Britain, but that was all.

The following spring an army of no less than twenty thousand men was despatched from France to make short and thorough work of the conquest. The previous year of bloody and embittered conflict had gone far to disorganize the patriot army. It was only with the utmost difficulty that the little bands of mountain villagers could be tempted away from the ever more necessary defense of their homes and firesides. And yet in spite of disintegration, and that, too, before such overwhelming odds,-in

want of the simplest munitions and of the very necessities of life, the forces of Paoli continued a fierce and heroic resistance. It was only after weeks, and even months, of devastating, heartrending, hopeless warfare, that their leader, utterly routed in the affair known as the battle of Ponte-Nuovo, finally gave up the desperate cause. Exhausted, and without resources, he would have been an easy prey to the French; but they were too wise to take him prisoner. On June 12, 1769, by their connivance he escaped to the mainland. His goal was England. The journey was a long, triumphant procession from Leghorn through Germany and Holland to England; the honors showered on him by the liberals in the towns through which he passed were such as are generally paid to victory, not to defeat. Kindly received and entertained, he lived for the next thirty years in London, the recipient from the government of twelve hundred pounds a year as a pension.

The following year saw the king of France apparently in peaceful possession of that Corsican sovereignty which he claimed to have bought from Genoa. His administration was soon firmly established, and there was nowhere any interference from foreign powers. Philanthropic England had provided for Paoli, but would do no more, for she was busy at home with a transformation of her parties. The old Whig party was disintegrating; the new Toryism was steadily asserting itself in the passage of contemptuous measures for oppressing the American colonies. She was, moreover, soon to be so absorbed in her great struggle on both sides of the globe that interest in Corsica and the Mediterranean must remain for a long time in abeyance. But the establishment of a French administration in the king's new acquisition did not proceed smoothly. The party favorable to incorporation had grown, and, in the rush to side with success, it now probably far outnumbered the old patriots. At the outset they faithfully supported the conquerors in an attempt to retain as much of Paoli's system as possible. But the appointment of a royal governor with a veto over legislation was essential. This of necessity destroyed the old democracy, for, in any case, such an office must create a quasiaristocracy, and its power would rest not on popular habit and good-will, but on the French soldiery. The situation was frankly recognized, therefore, in a complete reorganization of the old nobility, from among whom a council of twelve was selected to support and countenance the governor. Moreover, the most important offices were given into French hands, while the seat of government was moved from Corte, the highland capital, to the lowland towns of Bastia and Ajaccio. The primeval feud of highlanders and lowlanders was thus revived,

DRAWN BY ERIC PAPE.

and in the consequent agitations the patriots originally hostile to France either lost influence, or were alienated from the government. Old animosities were everywhere restored and strengthened, until finally the flames burst forth in open rebellion. They were, of course, suppressed, but the work was done with a savage thoroughness the memory of which long survived to prevent the formation in the island of a natural sentiment friendly to the French. Those who professed such a feeling were held in no great esteem.

It was perhaps an error that Paoli did not recognize the indissoluble bonds of race and speech as powerfully drawing Corsica to Italy, disregard the leanings of the democratic mountaineers toward France, sympathize with the fondness of the towns for the motherland, and so use his influence as to confirm the natural alliance between the insular Italians and those of the continent. When we regard Sardinia, however, time seems to have justified him. There is little to choose between the sister islands as regards the backward condition of both;

but the French department of Corsica is, at least, no less advanced than the Italian province of Sardinia. The final amalgamation of Paoli's country with France, which was in a measure the result of his leaning toward a French protectorate, accomplished one end, however, which has rendered it impossible to separate her from the course of great events, from the number of the mighty agents in history. Curiously longing in his exile for a second Sampiero to have wielded the physical power while he himself should have become the Lycurgus, Paoli's wish was to be half-way fulfilled in that a warrior greater than Sampiero was about to be born in Corsica, one who should, by the very union so long resisted, come, as the master of France, to wield a power strong enough to shatter both tyrannies and dynasties, thus clearing the ground. for a lawgiving closely related to Paoli's own just and wise conceptions of legislation.

This scion was to come from the stock which bore the name of Bonaparte, or, as the heraldic etymology later spelled it, Buonaparte. There were branches of the same stock, or, at

draw all the strength they could from a bygone grandeur, easily forgotten by their neighbors in the moderate circumstances of the later day.

No task had lain nearer to Paoli's heart than to unite in one nation the two factions into which he found his people divided. Accordingly, when at his request Carlo di Buonaparte, the single slender stem on which the consequential lowland family depended for continuance, appeared at Corte, the stranger was received with flattering kindness, and probably, as one account has it, was appointed to a post of emolument and honor as Paoli's private secretary. The new patrician, according to a custom common among Corsicans of his class, had already studied at both Rome and Pisa, and in 1769 he was made doctor of laws by the latter university. There are many pleasant anecdotes told to illustrate the good fellowship of the young advocate among his comrades while a student on the mainland. There are likewise mythical narratives of his persuasive eloquence at home and of his influence as a patriot. In short, an organized effort of sycophantic admirers, who would, if possible, illuminate the whole family in order to heighten Napoleon's renown, has invented fables and distorted facts to such a degree that the truth as to Charles's character is almost unrecognizable.

Certain undisputed facts, however, throw a strong light on Napoleon's father. His people were proud and poor; he endured the hardships of poverty with equanimity. Strengthening

what little influence he could muster, he at first appears ambitious, and has himself described in his diploma as a patrician of Florence, San Miniato, and Ajaccio. On the other hand, with no apparent regard for his personal advancement by marriage, he followed his own inclination, and in 1764, at the age of eighteen, rashly, perhaps, but gallantly wedded a lowly and beautiful child of fifteen, Letitia Ramolino. Her descent was the reverse of her husband's, although her fortune was quite equal, if not superior, to his. She was of peasant nature to the last day of her long life-hardy, unsentimental, frugal, and sometimes unscrupulous. Yet the hospitality of her little home in Ajaccio was lavish, after the manner of her kind, and consequently famous. Among the many guests who availed themselves of it was Marbeuf, commander in Corsica of the first army of occupation. There was long afterward a malicious tradition that the French general was Napoleon's father. The morals of Letitia di Buonaparte, like those of her conspicuous children, have been bitterly assailed, but herown good name, at least, has always been vindicated. The evident motive of the story sufficiently refutes such an aspersion as it contains. Of the bride's extraordinary beauty there never has been a doubt. She was a woman of heroic mold, like Juno in her majesty, unmoved in prosperity, undaunted in adversity. It was probably to his mother, whom he strongly resembled in childhood, that the famous son owed his tremen

dous, even gigantic, physical endurance. If in his mother was reproduced the type of a Roman matron, in the son would be recalled the virtues and vigor of an imperator.

After their marriage the youthful pair resded in Corte waiting until events should permit their return to Ajaccio. Naturally of an indolent temperament, the husband was at first drawn into the daring enterprises of Paoli, and displayed a temporary enthusiasm, but for more than a year before the end he wearied of them. At the head of a body of men of his own rank he finally withdrew to Monte Rotondo, and on May 23, 1769, a few weeks before Paoli's fight, the band made formal submission to the two French generals, Marbeuf and Vaux, explaining through Buonaparte that the national leader had misled them by promises of aid which never came, and that, recognizing the impossibility of further resistance, they were anxious to accept the new government, to return to their homes, and to resume the peaceful conduct of their affairs. It was this precipitate naturalization of the father as a French citizen which made his great son a Frenchman. Less than three months afterward, on August 15, his fourth child, Napoleone di Buonaparte, was born in Ajaccio.

The resources of the Buonapartes, as they still wrote themselves, were small, although their family and expectations were large. An only child, Letitia had inherited her father's Ittle home and his vineyards in the suburbs, fr her mother had married a second time. Her stepfather had been a Swiss mercenary in the pay of Genoa. In order to secure the woman of his choice he became a Roman Catholic, and was the father of Mme. di Buonaparte's half-brother, Joseph Fesch. Charles himself was the owner of lands in the interior, but they were heavily mortgaged, and he could contribute little to the support of his family. His uncle, a wealthy landlord, had died childless, leaving his domains to the Jesuits, and they had promptly entered into possession. According to the terms of his grandfather's will, the bequest was void, for the fortune was to fall in such a case to Charles's mother, and on her death to Charles himself. Joseph, his father, had wasted many years and most of his fortune in weary litigation to recover the property. Nothing daunted, Charles settled down to pursue the same phantom, virully depending for a livelihood on his wife's small patrimony. He became an officer of the highest court as assessor, and was made in 1772 a member, and later a deputy, of the council of Corsican nobles.

The peasant mother was most prolific. Her dest child, born in 1765, was a son who died in infancy; in 1767 was born a daughter, Mane-Anne, destined to the same fate; in 1768

a son, known later as Joseph, but baptized as Nabulione; in 1769 the great son, Napoleone. Nine other children were the fruit of the same wedlock, and six of them -three sons, Lucien, Louis, and Jérôme, and three daughters, Élise, Pauline, and Caroline-survived to share their brother's greatness. Charles himself, like his short-lived ancestors,—of whom five had died within a century,-reached only early middle. age, dying in his thirty-ninth year. Letitia, like the stout Corsican that she was, lived to the ripe age of eighty-six in the full enjoyment of her faculties, known to the world by the sobriquet of Madame Mère.

NAPOLEON'S BIRTH AND INFANCY.

THE trials of poverty made the Buonapartes most clever and adroit. Suspicions of shiftiness in small matters were developed later on, and led to an over-close scrutiny of their acts. The opinion has not yet disappeared among reputable authorities that Nabulione and Napoleone were one and the same, born on January 7, 1768, while Joseph was really the younger, born on the date assigned to his distinguished brother. The earliest documentary evidence consists of two papers, one in the archives of the French War Department, one in those of Ajaccio. The former is dated 1782, and testifies to the birth of Nabulione on January 7, 1768, and his baptism on January 8; the latter is the copy of an original which declares the birth, on January 7, of Joseph Nabulion. Neither is decisive, but the addition of Joseph, with the use of the two French forms for the name in the second, destroys much of its value, and leaves the weight of authority with the former. The reasonableness of the suspicion is further heightened by the fact that Napoleon's certificate of marriage gives the date of his birth as February 8, 1768. Moreover, in the marriage contract of Joseph, witnesses speak of him as born at Ajaccio, not at Corte.

But there are facts of greater weight on the other side. In the first place the documentary evidence is itself of equal weight, for the archives of the French War Department also contain an extract dated July 21, 1771, from the one original baptismal certificate, and this extract gives the date of Napoleone's birth as August 15, 1769. Charles's application for the appointment of his two eldest boys to Brienne has also been found, and it contains, according to regulation, still another copy from the original certificate. It is dated June 23, 1776, and also gives what is now generally accepted as the correct date. This quite explodes the old story that Napoleon's age was falsified by his father in order to obtain admittance for