[Footnote 20: Correspondence of Sir John Sinclair, I, 47.] At last the opportunity to emulate the French cities seemed assured. It was determined to organize a local independent government, seize the citadel with the help of the home guard, and throw the hated royalists into prison. But the preparations were too open: the governor and most of his friends fled in season to their stronghold, and raised the drawbridge; the agitators could lay hands on but four of their enemies, among whom were the judge, the offender, and an officer of the garrison. So great was the disappointment of the radicals that they would have vented their spite on these; it was with difficulty that the lives of the prisoners were saved by the efforts of the militia officers. The garrison really sympathized with the insurgents, and would not obey orders to suppress the rising by an attack. In return for this forbearance the regular soldiers stipulated for the liberation of their officer. In the end the chief offenders among the radicals were punished by imprisonment or banished, and the tumult subsided; but the French officials now had strong support, not only from the hierarchy, as before, but from the plain pious people and their priests. This result was a second defeat for Napoleon Buonaparte, who was almost certainly the instigator and leader of the uprising. He had been ready at any moment to assume the direction of affairs, but again the outcome of such a movement as could alone secure a possible temporary independence for Corsica and a military command for himself was absolutely naught. Little perturbed by failure, he took up the pen to write a proclamation justifying the action of the municipal authorities. The paper was dated October thirty-first, 1789, and fearlessly signed both by himself and the other leaders, including the mayor. It execrates the sympathizers with the old order in France, and lauds the Assembly, with all its works; denounces those who sold the land to France, which could offer nothing but an end of the chain that bound her; and warns the enemies of the new constitution that their day is over. There is a longing reference to the ideal self-determination which the previous attempt might have secured. The present rising is justified, however, as an effort to carry out the principles of the new charter.[21] There are the same suggested force and suppressed fury as in his previous manifesto, the same fervid rhetoric, the same lack of coherence in expression. The same two elements, that of the eighteenth-century metaphysics and that of his own uncultured force, combine in the composition. Naturally enough, the unrest of the town was not diminished; there was even a slight collision between the garrison and the civil authorities. [Footnote 21: For the text see Napoléon inconnu, II, 92.]