Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: MEMOIRS, ETC. CHAPTER I. CORSICA. " There is still a country in Europe capable of legislation. It is the island of Corsica. The valour and constancy with which those brave people recovered and defended their liberty, merits that some wise man should teach them to preserve it. 1 have a presentiment that one of these days that little island will astonish Kurope."— Contrat Social de J. J. Rousseau, chap. x. The Bonaparte Family—The French Fleet in the Bay of Ajaccio—Popular Society of the Admiral's Vessel—The Marseillese Conscripts—Fate of the Agents of the Ancient Regime Return of Paoli—His reception at Ajaccio—His sentiments with regard to England and France—His residence at Rostino—His wonderful memory—Our separation—My departure for the Continent—Dangers and Flight. When the revolution opened in 1789, the grand era of political reform, I entered my fifteenth year. After having been alternately for some time at the college of Autun, and at the military school of Brienne, lastly at the seminary of Aix in Provence, I returned to Corsica. My mother, a widow in the prime of her life, devoted herself to the care of her numerous family. Joseph, the eldest of her children, was twenty-two years of age, and seconded her attentions to us with ardour and with a paternal affection. Napoleon, two years younger than Joseph, was just returned from France with our sister Marianne—Eliza from the Ecole Royale of St. Cyr. Louis, Jerome, Pauline, and Caroline were still children. A brother of my father, the Archidiacre Lucien, was become the chief of our family, and though gouty and bedridden for some time past, he watched over our interests without ceasing. If Providence had struck us with a cruel blow in depriving us so early of our father, it compensated for that loss, as far as pos...