TOULON When Buonaparte left Corsica for the coast of Provence, his career had been remarkable only for the strange contrast between the brilliance of his gifts and the utter failure of all his enterprises.

His French partisanship had, as it seemed, been the ruin of his own and his family's fortunes.

At the age of twenty-four he was known only as the unlucky leader of forlorn hopes and an outcast from the island around which his fondest longings had been entwined.

His land-fall on the French coast seemed no more promising; for at that time Provence was on the verge of revolt against the revolutionary Government.

Even towns like Marseilles and Toulon, which a year earlier had been noted for their republican fervour, were now disgusted with the course of events at Paris.