Marseilles became the head-quarters of the Bona-
2*



84 LOtJIS NAPOLEON AND HIS TIMES.
parte family during the Eeign of Terror. Here, from
1793 to 1796, they were severally to be either seen or
heard of — Joseph, employed as a commissary of war,
living in the town, wooing, and at last (1794) marrying
a Mademoiselle Clary, the daughter of a wealthy mer-
chant ; Napoleon, occasionally at Marseilles, but usu-
ally absent in Paris, or elsewhere, already a general of
brigade, having been raised to that rank for his serv-
ices at the siege of Toulon, yet grumbling at his pov-
erty and inactivity, and thinking his brother Joseph a
" lucky rogue " in having made so good a match ; Lu-
cien, a young firebrand, known over the whole district
as "Brutus Bonaparte," and extremely popular as a
republican orator at Marseilles, where, in 1795, he
married the sister of an innkeeper ; and lastly, the
five younger members of the family living with their
mother.
The fall of Eobespierre and his party (July, 1794)
was a temporary blow to the fortunes of the Bonapartes,
connected as they were with that side of the Revolu-
tion. General Bonaparte was arrested, and although
afterward liberated, was still suspected and degraded.
His release was purchased by the sacrifice of his rank
in the army, and he lost all the fruits of the brilliant
reputation he had won, and was thrown an outcast
upon the world, at the age of twenty-five, ignomini-
ously expelled from the profession in which he had
already begun to gather prospective laurels.
