THE CORRESPONDENCE OF NAPOLEON. CHAPTER I. YOUTHFUL LETTERS AND ANTECEDENTS. DURING the Second Empire the French Government determined to publish the "Correspondence of Napoleon I.," and a Committee, presided over by Prince Napoleon, was charged with this duty. At the outset of their labours the Committee thus addressed Napoleon III. : "SIRE,-Augustus placed Cæsar among the gods, and dedicated a temple to him: the temple has disappeared, his Commentaries remain. Your Majesty, wishing to raise an imperishable monument to the chief of your dynasty, has ordered us to collect and to publish the political, military, and administrative correspondence of Napoleon I. . . . "Let us at once state that, in conformity with the instructions of your Majesty, we have scrupulously avoided any alteration, amendment, or modification of the originals. In declaring that his public life commenced with the siege of Toulon, Napoleon I. himself determined the starting-point for the Committee. It is at that immortal date the present publication begins." It is objected that the public life of a man commences from the day he enters the career he has chosen, and that VOL. I. B Napoleon's public life dates from his first commission in the army in 1785, if not from his entry into the military school of Brienne, at the expense of the country, in 1779. The Committee was no doubt deterred from publishing the early correspondence for several reasons. It would have revealed Napoleon first of all in his character of a Corsican patriot, hating France, ignorant of the language of the people he was destined to govern; then a violent Jacobin and the friend of the Robespierres; an officer guilty of several serious acts of insubordination, which in less troubled times would have cost him his life; who only escaped being brought before a court-martial by a miracle, on the charges of desertion and levying war against the French Government; whose name was five times struck off the Army List, and who was only reinstated on the production of documents filled with inaccurate statements. The assertion made by the Committee of not tampering with the correspondence is certainly not correct, for many curious letters have been omitted altogether, and others have been revised and corrected. This is not much to be wondered at on the part of a Committee engaged in raising "an imperishable monument." However, since the fall of the Second Empire there has been a great rummaging of the archives of the War Office, and strange matters have been brought to light and rescued from that dust in which Augustin Thierry says the national history is still hidden. The Committee published twenty-nine 8vo. volumes, reaching from the siege of Toulon, where Napoleon acquired the rank of general, down to the second and final collapse of the First Empire at Waterloo. Before commencing the perusal of the letters we have selected, it will be well to bear in mind the following facts in connection with the most remarkable genius of modern times. Corsica, after having been some time in the possession of the Genoese, was sold to France under the auspices of Choiseul, "the coachman of Europe," who bought it to counterbalance the loss of Canada. The Corsicans offered NAPOLEON'S BIRTH. 3 a stout resistance to the French, but were finally subdued, after an expenditure of much blood and 50,000,000 francs. Paoli, the Corsican leader, had exhibited great skill, courage, and energy in defence of his native island, but in May, 1769, Corsica was definitively annexed to France. Paoli fled to England. Charles Bonaparte, the father of the future emperor, had been one of his warmest partisans, and his wife had shared with him the dangers of the last campaign. Towards the end of May Charles Bonaparte tendered his submission, and was thus brought into contact with the Comte de Marbeuf, the French governor, with whom he was soon on intimate terms. In 1764 Charles Bonaparte, the last of his race, had married Lætitia Ramolino, the most beautiful girl in the island. In 1765 a son was born, who lived only a few months. In 1766 came a daughter, who also died young; and in 1768 a third child, who was christened Nabulione. The identity of Nabulione is enveloped in mystery. According to Charles Bonaparte, and the official historians of the empire, this child was Joseph. Recent authors reject the idea of two sons having received the name of Nabulione, and declare there was a fraudulent substitution; that Nabulione, or rather Napoleon, was born at Corte in 1768, and Joseph at Ajaccio in 1769. There is a great deal of evidence in support of this theory, and no reliable evidence against it—nothing but the assertion of interested parties. In a letter to Paoli, Napoleon afterwards alluded to the scenes of bloodshed amid which he had been born-scenes which took place in 1768, but which had ceased in 1769. On several other occasions he made allusions and declarations tending to show that he was born in January, 1768, and not on the 15th August, 1769. Joseph, too, made similar admissions, and certainly Napoleon from his childhood behaved like the eldest son. However, according to official history, Napoleon was born on the 15th August, 1769, when Corsica had become French, and as all the early documents concerning the |