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It was, I've heard say, one of the most glorious and important ever fought on the sea." The object of the attack was to co-operate with the patriot Corsicans, who, under their well-known gallant general Paoli, desired to liberate themselves from the yoke of France, then ruled by the tyrannical and cruel convention.
He gave us a letter of introduction to Mr. Ferne, master of stores at Fort George. He shewed it to me. It recommended 'two celebrated gentlemen; no less than Dr. Johnson, author of his Dictionary, and Mr. Boswell, known at Edinburgh by the name of Paoli. He said he hoped I had no objection to what he had written; if I had, he would alter it.
When I raised my agonised eyes to the rocks, all was silent and desolate: the lady had vanished." It was in Paris, at the Hotel Mandeville, that I met the Baroness Paoli, an almost solitary survivor of the famous Corsican family. I was introduced to her by John Heroncourt, a friend in common, and the introduction was typical of his characteristic unorthodoxy.
He begged of General Paoli to repeat one of the introductory stanzas of the first book of Tasso's Jerusalem, which he did, and then Johnson found fault with the simile of sweetening the edges of a cup for a child, being transferred from Lucretius into an epick poem . The General said he did not imagine Homer's poetry was so ancient as is supposed, because he ascribes to a Greek colony circumstances of refinement not found in Greece itself at a later period, when Thucydides wrote.
An expedition was sent to deprive him of his government, under the command of La Combe, Michel, and Salicetti, one of the Corsican deputies to the Convention; and Paoli called on his countrymen to take arms in his and their own defence. Buonaparte happened at that time to have leave of absence from his regiment, and to be in Corsica on a visit to his mother.
I met there several officers, the chaplain of the fortress, a certain Paoli Vida, one of the singers of St. Cheerful as I was by nature, those pleasant guests easily managed to put me in the best of humours. Everyone expressed a wish to know the reasons which could have induced M. Grimani to send me to the fortress, so I gave a faithful account of all my adventures since my grandmother's death.
Jeanne asked: "And what became of the assassin?" Paoli Palabretti had a long fit of coughing and then said: "He escaped to the mountain. It was my brother who killed him the following year. You know, my brother, Philippi Palabretti, the bandit." Jeanne shuddered. "Your brother a bandit?" With a gleam of pride in his eye, the calm Corsican replied: "Yes, madame. He was celebrated, that one.
At last came the 11th of September, the day when we met Lord Howe at the Brandywine, and were sent reeling back in disorderly retreat, when by a skilful march they outflanked our right wing and rolled it up. And then disaster followed disaster. Paoli came, that grim and bloody surprise at the dead of night.
This, with a letter and some chapters of the book, was forwarded to Raynal, probably by post. Joseph, who was one of the delegates to meet Paoli, would pass through Marseilles, wrote Napoleon to the abbé, and would hand him the rest if he should so desire. The text of the unlucky book was not materially altered.
The haughty men of Corsica, changing their very nature for a season, began to labor with their hands by the side of their wives and hired assistants; to agriculture, industry, and the arts was given an impulse which promised to be lasting. The rule of Paoli was not entirely without disturbance.
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