On his return to Bonifazio, he learned that Paoli, who now saw himself compelled to throw off the mask, had dissolved the Quenza battalion. This occurred in the spring of 1793, about the time that the Convention sent Saliceti, Delcher, and Lacombe, to the island as commissaries. Lucian Bonaparte and Bartolommeo Arena had denounced Paoli. But Napoleon had no part in this denunciation; the memory of his father, and his own generous spirit, led him, on the contrary, to defend his great countryman. He himself wrote an apology for Paoli, and sent it to the Convention—an action that does him honour. This remarkable document has been preserved, though in a somewhat defective state. We have the defence, it appears to me, as Napoleon first threw it off, previously to giving it a complete form. NAPOLEON'S LETTER TO THE CONVENTION. "REPRESENTATIVES!—You are the true organs of the people's sovereignty. All your decrees are dictated by the nation, or receive their effect immediately from the nation. Every one of your laws is a benefit, and earns for you a new claim on the gratitude of posterity, which owes to you the Republic, and on that of the world, which will date from you its freedom. "A single decree that you have passed has greatly disheartened the city of Ajaccio; that which commands a feeble gray-haired man of seventy to drag himself to your bar, and place himself for a moment beside the impious mover of sedition or the venal self-seeker. "Paoli a mover of sedition, or an ambitious man? "Seditious! and with what object? To revenge himself on the family of the Bourbons, whose _perfidious policy_ overwhelmed his country with calamity, and _forced himself into banishment_. But was not the end of their tyranny also the end of his exile; and have you not already appeased his wrath—if he still cherished it—by the blood of Louis? "Seditious! and with what object? To restore the aristocracy of the nobles and the priests? He who, since his thirteenth year ... he who was no sooner at the head of affairs than he destroyed _feudalism_, and knew no other distinction than that of the citizen; he who, thirty years ago, fought against Rome, and was _excommunicated_,[M] who made himself master of the estates of the bishops to give them away, to Venice ... in Italy.... "Seditious! and with what object? To deliver Corsica into the hands of England? he who would not deliver it to France, despite the efforts of Chauvelin, who did not spare titles nor marks of favour! "Give Corsica to England! What would he gain by living in the mire of London? Why did he not remain there when he was banished? "Paoli a self-seeker! If Paoli is a self-seeker, _what more can he desire_? He is the object of his people's affection, and they refuse him nothing; _he is at the head of the army_; he is on the eve of the day when he must defend the island against a foreign attack.