d will from two of the three
commissioners; the other was of course hostile, being a partizan of
Peraldi.

The election, as usual in Corsica, seems to have passed in turbulence
and noisy violence. His enemies attacked Buonaparte with every weapon:
their money, their influence, and in particular with ridicule. His
stature, his poverty, and his absurd ambitions were held up to
contempt and scorn. The young hotspur was cut to the quick, and,
forgetting Corsican ways, made the witless blunder of challenging
Peraldi to a duel, an institution scorned by the Corsican devotees of
the vendetta. The climax of contempt was Peraldi's failure even to
notice the challenge. At the crisis, Salicetti, a warm friend of the
Buonapartes and a high official of the department, appeared with a
considerable armed force to maintain order. This cowed the
conservatives. The third commissioner, living as a guest with Peraldi,
was seized during the night preceding the election by a body of
Buonaparte's friends, and put under lock and key in their candidate's
house--"to make you entirely free; you were not free where you were,"
said the instigator of the stroke, when called to explain. To the use
of fine phrases was now added a facility in employing violence at a
pinch which likewise remained characteristic of Buonaparte's career
down to the end. Nasica, who alone records the tale, sees in this
event the precursor of the long series of state-strokes which
culminated on the eighteenth Brumaire. There is a story that in one of
the scuffles incident to this brawl a member of Pozzo di Borgo's
family was thrown down and trampled on. Be that as it may, Buonaparte
was successful. This of course intensified the hatred already
existing, and from that moment the families of Peraldi and of Pozzo di
Borgo were his deadly enemies.

Quenza, who was chosen first lieutenant-colonel, was a man of no
character whatever, a nobody. He was moreover absorbed in the duties
of a place in the departmental administration. Buonaparte, therefore,
was in virtual command of a sturdy, well-armed, legal force. Having
been adjutant-major, and being now a regularly elected lieutenant-colonel
according to statute, he applied, with a well-calculated effrontery,
to his regimental paymaster for the pay which had accrued during his
absence. It was at first refused, for in the interval he had been
cashiered for remaining at home in disobedience to orders; but such
were the irregulariti