Napoleon Bonaparte, in his seventieth year, received his first commission as second lieutenant in a regiment of artillery, and was almost immediately afterwards promoted to the rank of first lieutenant in the corps quartered at Valence. He mingled with society when he joined his regiment, more than he had hitherto been accustomed to do; mixed in public amusements, and exhibited the powers of pleasing, which he possessed in an uncommon degree when he chose to exert them. His handsome and intelligent features, with his active and neat, though slight figure, gave him additional advantages. His manners could scarcely be called elegant, but made up in vivacity and variety of expression, and often in great spirit and energy, for what they wanted in grace and polish.

He became an adventurer for the honours of literature also, and was anonymously a competitor for the prize offered by the Academy of Lyons on Raynal's question, "What are the principles and institutions, by application of which mankind can be raised to the highest pitch of happiness?" The prize was adjudged to the young soldier. It is impossible to avoid feeling curiosity to know the character of the juvenile theories respecting government, advocated by one who at length attained the power of practically making what experiments he pleased. Probably his early ideas did not exactly coincide with his more mature practice; for when Talleyrand, many years afterwards, got the essay out of the records of the academy, and returned it to the author, Bonaparte destroyed it after he had read a few pages. He also laboured under the temptation of writing a journey to Mount Cenis, after the manner of Sterne, which he was fortunate enough finally to resist. The affectation which pervades Sterne's peculiar style of composition was not likely to be simplified under the pen of Bonaparte.

Sterner times were fast approaching, and the nation was now fully divided by those factions which produced the revolution. The officers of Bonaparte's regiment were also divided into royalists and patriots; and it is easily to be imagined, that the young and friendless stranger and adventurer should adopt that side to which he had already shown some inclination, and which promised to open the most free career to those who had only their merit to rely on. "Were I a general officer," he is alleged to have said, "I would have adhered to the king; being a subaltern, I join the patriots."

There was a story current, that in a debate with some brother officers on the politics of the time, Bonaparte expressed himself so outrageously, that they were provoked to throw him into the Rhone, where he had nearly perished. But this is an inaccurate account of the accident which actually befell him. He was seized with the cramp when bathing in the river. His comrades saved him with difficulty, but his danger was matter of pure chance.

Napoleon has himself recorded that he was a warm patriot during the whole sitting of the National Assembly; but that on the appointment of the Legislative Assembly, he became shaken in his opinions. If so, his original sentiments regained force, for we shortly afterwards find him entertaining such as went to the extreme heights of the revolution.

Early in the year 1792, Bonaparte became a captain in the artillery by seniority; and in the same year, being at Paris, he witnessed the two insurrections of the 20th of June and 10th of August. He was accustomed to speak of the insurgents as the most despicable banditti, and to express with what ease a determined officer could have checked these apparently formidable, but dastardly and unwieldy masses. But with what a different feeling of interest would Napoleon have looked on that infuriated populace, those still resisting though overpowered Swiss, and that burning palace, had any seer whispered to him, "Emperor that shall be, all this blood and massacre is but to prepare your future empire!" Little anticipating the potent effect which the passing events were to bear on his own fortune, Bonaparte, anxious for the safety of his mother and family, was now desirous to change France for Corsica, where the same things were acting on a less distinguished stage.

BONAPARTE'S FIRST MILITARY EXPLOIT.

Napoleon's first military exploit was in the civil war of his native island. In the year 1793, he was despatched from Bastia, in possession of the French party, to surprise his native town Ajaccio, then occupied by Paoli or his adherents. Bonaparte was acting provisionally, as commanding a battalion of National Guards. He landed in the Gulf of Ajaccio with about fifty men, to take possession of a tower called the Torre di Capitello, on the opposite side of the gulf, and almost facing the city. He succeeded in taking the place; but as there arose a gale of wind which prevented his communicating with the frigate which had put him ashore, he was besieged in his new conquest by the opposite faction, and reduced to such distress, that he and his little garrison were obliged to feed on horse-flesh. After five days he was relieved by the frigate, and evacuated the tower, having first in vain attempted to blow it up. The Torre di Capitello still shows marks of the damage it then sustained, and its remains may be looked on as a curiosity, as the first scene of his combats, before whom

—"Temple and tower
Went to the ground.—

A relation of Napoleon, Masserio by name, effectually defended Ajaccio against the force employed in the expedition.