. The life of Napoleon I, including new materials from the British official records . er all thefaculties that make for prudence. His vivid imaginationonly serves to fire him with the full assurance that he mustprevail over all obstacles. And yet, if he had now stopped to weigh well the lessonsof the past, hitherto fertile only in failures and contradic-tions, he must have seen the powerlessness of his own willwhen in conflict with the forces of the age ; for he hadnow severed his connection with the Corsican patriots, ofwhose cause he had only two years before been the mostpassionate champion
. The life of Napoleon I, including new materials from the British official records . er all thefaculties that make for prudence. His vivid imaginationonly serves to fire him with the full assurance that he mustprevail over all obstacles. And yet, if he had now stopped to weigh well the lessonsof the past, hitherto fertile only in failures and contradic-tions, he must have seen the powerlessness of his own willwhen in conflict with the forces of the age ; for he hadnow severed his connection with the Corsican patriots, ofwhose cause he had only two years before been the mostpassionate champion. It is evident that the schism whichfinally separated Buonaparte and Paoli originated in theirdivergence of views regarding the French accepted revolutionary principles only in so far asthey promised to base freedom on a due balance of classinterests. He was a follower of Montesquieu. He longedto see in Corsica a constitution similar to that of Englandor to that of 1791 in France. That hope vanished alikefor France and Corsica after the fall of the monarchy ; and. X o H UWX w I II THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND CORSICA 39 towards the Jacobinical Republic, wMch banished ortho-dox priests and guillotined the amiable Louis, Paolithenceforth felt naught but loathing: We have beenthe enemies of kings, he said to Joseph Buonaparte; letlis never be their executioners. Thenceforth he driftedinevitably into alliance with England. Buonaparte, on the other hand, was a follower of Rous-seau, whose ideas leaped to power at the downfall of themonarchy. Despite the excesses which he ever deplored,this second Revolution appeared to him to be the dawn ofa new and intelligent age. The clear-cut definitions ofthe new political creed dovetailed in with his own rigidviews of life. Mankind was to be saved by law, societybeing levelled down and levelled up until the ideals ofLycurgus were attained. Consequently he regarded theRepublic as a mighty agency for the social regenerationnot onl
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectnapoleo, bookyear1901
