Note Back to Main Text — Chapter X

The contemptuous attitude of the Ajaccio liberals toward the religion of Rome seriously alienated the superstitious populace from them. Buonaparte was once attacked in the public square by a procession organized to deprecate the policy of the National Assembly with regard to the ecclesiastical estates. One of the few royalist officials left in Corsica also took advantage of the general disorder to express his feelings plainly as to the acts of the same body. He was arrested, tried in Ajaccio, and acquitted by a sympathetic judge. At once the liberals took alarm; their club and the officials first protested, and then on June twenty-fifth assumed the offensive in the name of the Assembly. It was on this occasion probably that he was seen by the family friend who narrated his memories to the English diarist already mentioned. "I remember to have seen Napoleon very active among the enraged populace against those then called aristocrats, and running through the streets of Ajaccio so busy in promoting dissatisfaction that, though he lost his hat, he did not feel nor care for the effects of the scorching sun to which he was exposed the whole of that memorable day. The revolution having struck its poisonous root, Napoleon never ceased stirring up his brothers, Joseph and Lucien, who, being moved at his instance, were constantly attending clubs and popular meetings where they often delivered speeches and debated public matters, while Napoleon sat listening in silence, as he had no turn for oratory." "One day in December," the narrator continues, "I was sent for by his uncle already mentioned, in order to assist him in preparing his testament; and, after having settled his family concerns, the conversation turned upon politics, when, speaking of the improbability of Italy being revolutionized, Napoleon, then present, quickly replied: 'Had I the command, I would take Italy in twenty-four hours.'"[20]