It was toward the end of March that the volunteers from the mountains began to appear in Ajaccio for the election of their officers. Napoleon had bitter and powerful rivals, but his recent trip had apparently enabled him to win many friends among the men. While, therefore, success was possible by that means, there was another influence almost as powerful--that of three commissioners appointed by the directory of the island to organize and equip the battalion. These were Morati, a friend of Peraldi, the Paolist deputy; Quenza, more or less neutral, and Grimaldi, a devoted partisan of the Buonapartes. With skilful diplomacy Napoleon agreed that he would not presume to be a candidate for the office of first lieutenant-colonel, which was desired by Peretti, a near friend of Paoli, for his brother-in-law, Quenza, but would seek the position of second lieutenant-colonel. In this way he was assured of good 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.