CHAPTER SIX.
THE BATTLE WITH THE SHEPHERD BOYS.
The relations between Napoleon and the shepherd boys of the Ajaccio hillsides were not improved by his unsatisfactory food-trade during his bread-and-water days.
Whenever he took his walks abroad in their direction, the belligerent shepherd boys made haste to annoy and attack him.

They had no special love for the town boys; there was, in fact, a long-standing rivalry and quarrel between them, as there often is between boys of different sections, or between boys of the country and the town.
So you may be sure that Napoleon's solitary tramps along the hillsides were often disturbed and made unpleasant.
At last he determined upon the punishment or discomfiture of the shepherd boys.

He roused his playmates to action; and one day they sallied forth in a body, to surprise and attack the shepherd boys.

But there must have been a traitor in the camp of the town boys; for, when they reached the hill pastures, they not only found the shepherd boys prepared for them, but they found them arrayed in force.

Before the town boys could rush to the attack, the shepherd boys, eager for the fray, "took the initiative," as the war records say, and making a dash upon the town boys, drove them ignominiously from the field.
Napoleon disliked a check.