month, was expected or not, nothing was done to improve it, and
the advancing battalions suddenly stopped, as if to make the
impression that they could go farther only by way of Genoese
territory. Buonaparte would certainly have shared in the campaign had
it been a serious attack; but, except to bring captured stores from
Oneglia, he did nothing, devoting the months of May and June to the
completion of his shore defenses, and living at Nice with his mother
and her family. That famous and coquettish town was now the center of
a gay republican society in which Napoleon and his pretty sisters were
important persons. They were the constant companions of young
Robespierre and Ricord. The former, amazed by the activity of his
friend's brain, the scope of his plans, and the terrible energy which
marked his preparations, wrote of Napoleon that he was a man of
"transcendent merit." Marmont, speaking of Napoleon's charm at this
time, says: "There was so much future in his mind.... He had acquired
an ascendancy over the representatives which it is impossible to
describe." He also declares, and Salicetti, too, repeatedly
asseverated, that Buonaparte was the "man, the plan-maker" of the
Robespierres.

The impression which Salicetti and Marmont expressed was doubtless due
to the conclusions of a council of war held on May twentieth by the
leaders of the two armies--of the Alps and of Italy--to concert a plan
of cooeperation. Naturally each group of generals desired the foremost
place for the army it represented. Buonaparte overrode all objections,
and compelled the acceptance of a scheme entirely his own, which with
some additions and by careful elaboration ultimately developed into
the famous plan of campaign in Italy. These circumstances are
noteworthy. Again and again it has been charged that this grand scheme
was bodily stolen from the papers of his great predecessors, one in
particular, of whom more must be said in the sequel. Napoleon was a
student and an omnivorous reader, he knew what others had done and
written; but the achievement which launched him on his career was due
to the use of his own senses, to his own assimilation and adaptation
of other men's experiences and theories, which had everything to
commend them except that perfection of detail and energy of command
which led to actual victory. But affairs in Genoa were becoming so
menacing that for the moment they demanded the exclusive attention of
the French authori