When commissioners from Paris came to the headquarters of the army of Italy, instructed to suspend the operations of the army and to prepare for an expedition against Corsica, Napoleon saw an opportunity to get back into active service again. He sought and obtained, perhaps by the favor of Salicetti, command of the artillery for the expedition. Great preparations were made at Toulon to organize the forces and to equip the fleet. In this work Napoleon was intensely engaged for several months. His mother and the younger children took up their residence in pleasant quarters near Antibes, and he was able to enjoy the luxury of the home circle while getting ready to drive the English out of Corsica. In due time the French fleet set sail; in due time it did what French fleets have usually done--failed dismally. The English were on the alert, swooped down, and captured two French vessels. The others ran to shelter under the guns of shore forts. The conquest of Corsica was postponed. CHAPTER VIII It must have been a sadly disappointed young man who rejoined his family, now at Marseilles, in the spring of 1795. Gone was the Toulon glory; gone the prestige of the confidential friend of commissioners who governed France. Barely escaping with his life from the Robespierre wreck, here he now was, stranded by the failure, the miserable collapse, of an expedition from which so much had been expected. Very gloomy must have been Napoleon’s “yellowish green” face, very sombre those piercing eyes, as he came back to his seat at the hearth of the humble home in Marseilles. Ten years had passed since he had donned his uniform; they had been years of unceasing effort, painful labor, and repeated failure. A demon of ill-luck had dogged his footsteps, foiled him at every turn, made null all his well-laid plans. Even success had come to him only to mock him and then drop him to a harder fall. Not only had he lost ground, but his brothers had been thrown out of the places he had obtained for them. In the midst of these discouragements came another: Lacombe St. Michel, a commissioner who bore him no good-will, urged the government to remove him from the army of Italy and to transfer him to the West. An order to that effect had been issued. This transfer would take him away from an army where he had made some reputation and some friends, and from a field of operations with which he was thoroughly familiar. It would put him in La Vendée, where the war was the worst of all wars,--civil strife, brother against brother, Frenchman against Frenchman,--and it would put him under the command of a masterful young man named Hoche.