“From St. Charles Street you enter on a very small square. An elm tree
stands before a yellowish gray plastered house, with a flat roof and
a projecting balcony. It has six front windows in each of its three
stories, and the doors look old and time-worn. On the corner of this
house is an inscription, _Letitia Square_. The traveller knocks in vain
at the door. No voice answers.”
Such is the picture, drawn in 1852, of the Bonaparte mansion in
Ajaccio. Few tourists go to see it, for Corsica lies not in the direct
routes of the world’s trade or travel. Yet it is a house whose story
is more fascinating, more marvellous, than that of any building which
cumbers the earth this day.
We shut our eyes, and we see a picture which is richer than the richest
page torn from romance. We see a lean, sallow, awkward, stunted lad
step forth from the door of the old house and go forth into the world,
with no money in his pocket, and no powerful friends to lift him over
the rough places. He is only nine years old when he leaves home, and
we see him weep bitterly as he bids his mother good-by. We see him at
school in France, isolated, wretched, unable at first to speak the
language, fiercely resenting the slights put upon his poverty, his
ignorance, his family, his country--suffering, but never subdued. We
see him rise against troubles as the eagle breasts the storm. We see
him lay the better half of the civilized world at his feet. We see him
bring sisters and brothers from the island home, and put crowns on
their heads. We see him shower millions upon his mother; and we hear
him say to his brother on the day he dons the robes of empire, “Joseph,
suppose father were here--!”
As long as time shall last, the inspiration of the poor and the
ambitious will be the Ajaccio lawyer’s son: not Alexander, the born
king; not Cæsar, the patrician; but Napoleon, the moneyless lad from
despised Corsica, who stormed the high places of the world, and by his
own colossal strength of character, genius, and industry took them!
As long as time shall last his name will inspire not only the
individual, but the masses also. Wherever a people have heard enough,
read enough, thought enough to feel that absolutism in king or priest
is wrong; that special privilege in clan or clique is wrong; that
monopoly of power, patronage, wealth, or opportunity is wrong, there
the name of Napoleon will be spoken with reverence, despot though he
became, for in his innermost fibre he was a man of the people, crushing
to atoms feudalism, caste, divine right, and hereditary imposture.
* * * * *
As early as the year 947 there had been Bonapartes in Corsica, for
the name of one occurs as witness to a deed in that year. There were
also Bonapartes in Italy; and men of that name were classed with the
nobles of Bologna, Treviso, and Florence. It is said that during the
civil wars of Italy, members of the Bonaparte family took refuge in
Corsica, and that Napoleon’s origin can be traced to this source. It is
certain that the Bonapartes of Corsica continued to claim kindred with
the Italian family, and to class themselves as patricians of Italy;
and both these claims were recognized. In Corsica they ranked with the
nobility, a family of importance at Ajaccio.
At the time of the French invasion the representatives of the family
were Lucien, archdeacon of Ajaccio, and Charles Bonaparte, a young man
who had been left an orphan at the age of fourteen.
Born in 1746, Charles Bonaparte married, in 1764, Letitia Ramolino,
a Corsican girl of fifteen. She was of good family, and she brought
to her husband a dowry at least equal to his own estate. Beautiful,
high-spirited, and intelligent, Madame Letitia knew nothing of books,
knew little of the manners of polite society, and was more of the proud
peasant than of the grand lady. She did not know how to add up a column
of figures; but time was to prove that she possessed judgment, common
sense, inflexible courage, great loftiness and energy of character.
Misfortune did not break her spirit, and prosperity did not turn her
head. She was frugal, industrious, strong physically and mentally,
“with a man’s head on a woman’s shoulders,” as Napoleon said of her.
Charles Bonaparte was studying law in Italy when the war between France
and Corsica broke out. At the call of Paoli, the student dropped
his books and came home to join in the struggle. He was active and
efficient, one of Paoli’s trusted lieutenants. After the battle of
Ponte Nuovo, realizing that all was lost, he gave in his submission
(May 23, 1769) to the French, and returned to Ajaccio.
The policy of the French was to conciliate the leading Corsicans, and
special attention seems to have been given to Charles Bonaparte. His
mansion in Ajaccio, noted for its hospitality, became the favorite
resort of General Marbeuf, the bachelor French governor of the
island. With an ease which as some have thought indicated suppleness
or weakness of character, Bonaparte the patriot became Bonaparte the
courtier. He may have convinced himself that incorporation with France
was best for Corsica, and that his course in making the most out of the
new order of things was wisdom consistent with patriotism.
Resistance to France having been crushed, the policy of conciliation
inaugurated, and the Corsicans encouraged to take part in the
management of their own affairs, subject to France, one might hesitate
before condemning the course of Charles Bonaparte in Corsica, just as
we may hesitate between the policies of Kossuth and Déak in Hungary,
or of Kosciusko and Czartoryski in Poland. We may, and do, admire the
patriot who resists to the death; and, at the same time, respect the
citizen who fights till conquered, and then makes the best of a bad
situation.
In 1765 Madame Letitia Bonaparte gave birth to her first child; in
1767, to her second, both of whom died while infants. In 1768 was born
Joseph, and on August 15, 1769, Napoleon.[1]
[1] During the period of this pregnancy, Corsica was in
the storm of war; and Madame Bonaparte, following her
husband, was in the midst of the sufferings, terrors, and
brutalities which such a war creates. The air was still
electrical with the hot passions of deadly strife when the
young wife’s time came. On the 15th of August, 1769, Madame
Bonaparte, a devout Catholic, attended service at the
church; but feeling labor approaching, hastened home, and
was barely able to reach her room before she was delivered
of Napoleon on a rug upon the floor.
The authority for this statement is Madame Bonaparte herself,
who gave that account of the matter to the Permons in Paris,
on the 18th of Brumaire, the day on which the son thus born
was struggling for supreme power in France.
The story which represents the greatest of men and warriors
as having come into the world upon a piece of carpet,
or tapestry, upon which the heroes of the “Iliad” were
represented, is a fable, according to the express statement
made by Madame Bonaparte to the American General Lee, in
Rome, in 1830.
Other children came to the Bonapartes in the years following, the
survivors of these being: Elisa, Lucien, Louis, Pauline, Caroline, and
Jerome. To support this large family, and to live in the hospitable
fashion which custom required of a man of his rank, Charles Bonaparte
found a difficult matter, especially as he was a pleasure-loving,
extravagant man whose idea of work seemed to be that of a born
courtier. He returned to Italy after the peace; spent much of his
patrimony there; made the reputation of a sociable, intelligent,
easy-going gentleman; and took his degree of Doctor of Laws, at Pisa,
in November, 1769.
It was his misfortune to be cumbered with a mortgaged estate and a
hereditary lawsuit. Whatever surplus the mortgage failed to devour
was swallowed by the lawsuit. His father had expensively chased this
rainbow, pushed this hopeless attempt to get justice; and the steps of
the father were followed by the son. It was the old story of a sinner,
sick and therefore repentant; a priest holding the keys to heaven and
requiring payment in advance; a craven surrender of estate to purchase
the promise of salvation. Thus the Jesuits got Bonaparte houses and
lands, in violation of the terms of an ancestor’s will, the lawsuit
being the effort of the legal heirs to make good the testament of the
original owner.
In spite of all they could do, the Bonapartes were never able to
recover the property.
Charles Bonaparte, a man of handsome face and figure, seems to have
had a talent for making friends, for he was made assessor to the
highest court of Ajaccio, a member of the council of Corsican nobles,
and later, the representative of these nobles to France. With the
slender income from his wife’s estate and that from his own, aided by
his official earnings, he maintained his family fairly well; but his
pretensions and expenditures were so far beyond what he was really able
to afford that, financially, he was never at ease.
It was the familiar misery of the gentleman who strives to gratify a
rich man’s tastes with a poor man’s purse. There was his large stone
mansion, his landed estate, his aristocratic associates, his patent of
nobility signed by the Duke of Florence; and yet there was not enough
money in the house to school the children.
The widowed mother of Madame Letitia had married a second husband,
Fesch, a Swiss ex-captain of the Genoese service, and by this marriage
she had a son, Joseph Fesch, known to Napoleonic chronicles as “Uncle
Fesch.” This eleven-year-old uncle taught the young Napoleon the
alphabet.
In his sixth year Napoleon was sent to a dame’s school. For one of the
little girls at this school the lad showed such a fondness that he was
laughed at, and rhymed at, by the other boys.
_Napoleon di mezza calzetta
Fa l’armore a Giacominetta._[2]
[2]Napoleon with his stockings half off
Makes love to Giacominetta.
The jeers and the rhyme Napoleon answered with sticks and stones.
It is not very apparent that he learned anything here, for we are told
that it was the Abbé Recco who taught him to read; and it was this
Abbé whom Napoleon remembered in his will. As to little Giacominetta,
Napoleonic chronicles lose her completely, and she takes her place
among the “dream children” of very primitive poesy.
Just what sort of a boy Napoleon was at this early period, it is next
to impossible to say. Perhaps he did not differ greatly from other
boys of his own age. Probably he was more fractious, less inclined to
boyish sports, quicker to quarrel and fight. But had he never become
famous, his youthful symptoms would never have been thought to indicate
anything uncommon either for good or evil.
At St. Helena, the weary captive amused himself by picturing the young
Napoleon as the bad boy of the town. He quarrelled, he fought, he bit
and scratched, he terrorized his brothers and sisters, and so forth. It
may be true, it may not be; his mother is reported as saying that he
was a “perfect imp of a child,” but the authority is doubtful.
The Bonaparte family usually spent the summer at a small country-seat
called Milleli. Its grounds were beautiful, and there was a glorious
view of the sea. A large granite rock with a natural cavity, or grotto,
offered a cool, quiet retreat; and this is said to have been Napoleon’s
favorite resort. In after years he improved the spot, built a small
summer-house there, and used it for study and meditation.
It is natural to suppose that Napoleon as a child absorbed a good deal
of Corsican sentiment. His wet-nurse was a Corsican peasant, and from
her, his parents, his playmates, and his school companions he probably
heard the story of Corsica, her wrongs, her struggles, and her heroes.
Della Rocca, Sampiero, Gaffori, and Paoli were names familiar to his
ears. At a very early age he had all the passions of the Corsican
patriot. The French were masters, but they were hated. While the
Bonapartes had accepted the situation, they may not have loved it.
The very servants in the house vented their curses on “those dogs of
French.”
General Marbeuf, the warm friend of the family, encouraged Charles
Bonaparte to make the attempt to have the children educated at the
expense of France. In 1776 written application was made for the
admission of Joseph and Napoleon into the military school of Brienne.
At that time both the boys were on the safe side of the age-limit of
ten years. But the authorities demanded proofs of nobility,--four
generations thereof,--according to Bourbon law; and before these proofs
could be put into satisfactory shape, Joseph was too old for Brienne.
Chosen in 1777 by the nobles of Corsica as their deputy to France,
Charles Bonaparte set out for Versailles in 1778, taking with him his
sons Joseph and Napoleon. Joseph Fesch accompanied the party as far as
Aix, where he was to be given a free education for the priesthood by
the seminary at that place. Joseph and Napoleon both stated in after
years that their father visited Florence on the way to France, and was
given an honorable reception at the ducal court.
The Bishop of Autun, nephew of General Marbeuf, had been interested
in behalf of the Bonapartes; and it was at his school that Joseph was
to be educated for the Church. Napoleon was also placed there till he
could learn French enough for Brienne. On January 1, 1779, therefore,
he began his studies.
The Abbé Chardon, who was his teacher, says that he was a boy of
thoughtful and gloomy character. “He had no playmate and walked about
by himself.” Very naturally. He was a stranger to all the boys, he was
in a strange country, he could not at first speak the language, he
could not understand those who did speak it--how was the homesick lad
to be sociable and gay under such conditions? Besides, he was Corsican,
a despised representative of a conquered race. And the French boys
taunted him about it. One day, according to the teacher, the boys threw
at him the insult that “the Corsicans were a lot of cowards.” Napoleon
flashed out of his reserve and replied, “Had you been but four to one
you would never have conquered us, but you were ten to one.” To pacify
him the teacher remarked, “But you had a good general--Paoli.”--“Yes,”
answered the lad of ten, “and I would like to resemble him.”
According to the school register and to Napoleon’s own record, he
remained at Autun till the 12th of May, 1779. He had learned “enough
French to converse freely, and to make little themes and translations.”
In the meantime, Charles Bonaparte had been attending his king, the
young Louis XVI., at Versailles. Courtier in France as in Ajaccio, the
adroit lawyer had pleased. A bounty from the royal purse swelled the
pay of the Corsican delegates, a reward for “their excellent behavior”;
and for once Charles Bonaparte was moderately supplied with funds.
On May 19, 1779, Napoleon entered the college of Brienne. Its teachers
were incompetent monks. The pupils were mainly aristocratic French
scions of the privileged nobility, proud, idle, extravagant, vicious.
Most of these young men looked down upon Napoleon with scorn. In him
met almost every element necessary to stir their dislike, provoke
their ridicule, or excite their anger. In person he was pitifully thin
and short, with lank hair and awkward manners; his speech was broken
French, mispronounced and ungrammatical; it was obvious that he was
poor; he was a Corsican; and instead of being humble and submissive, he
was proud and defiant. During the five years Napoleon spent here he was
isolated, moody, tortured by his own discontent, and the cruelty of his
position. He studied diligently those branches he liked, the others he
neglected. In mathematics he stood first in the school, in history and
geography he did fairly well; Latin, German, and the ornamental studies
did not attract him at all. The German teacher considered him a dunce.
But he studied more in the library than in the schoolroom. While the
other boys were romping on the playground, Napoleon was buried in some
corner with a book.
On one occasion Napoleon, on entering a room and seeing a picture of
Choiseul which hung therein, burst into a torrent of invective against
the minister who had bought Corsica. The school authorities punished
the blasphemy.
At another time one of the young French nobles scornfully said to
Napoleon, “Your father is nothing but a wretched tipstaff.” Napoleon
challenged his insulter, and was imprisoned for his temerity.
Upon another occasion he was condemned by the quartermaster, for some
breach of the rules, to wear a penitential garb and to eat his dinner
on his knees at the door of the common dining-room. The humiliation was
real and severe; for doubtless the French lads who had been bullying
him were all witnesses to the disgrace, and were looking upon the
culprit with scornful eyes, while they jeered and laughed at him.
Napoleon became hysterical under the strain, and began to vomit. The
principal of the school happening to pass, was indignant that such a
degradation should be put upon so dutiful and diligent a scholar, and
relieved him from the torture.
“Ah, Bourrienne! I like you: you never make fun of me!” Is there
nothing pathetic in this cry of the heart-sick boy?
To his father, Napoleon wrote a passionate appeal to be taken from
the school where he was the butt of ridicule, or to be supplied
with sufficient funds to maintain himself more creditably. General
Marbeuf interfered in his behalf, and supplied him with a more liberal
allowance.
The students, in turn, were invited to the table of the head-master.
One day when this honor was accorded Napoleon, one of the
monk-professors sweetened the boy’s satisfaction by a contemptuous
reference to Corsica and to Paoli. It seems well-nigh incredible
that the clerical teachers should have imitated the brutality of
the supercilious young nobles, but Bourrienne is authority for the
incident. Napoleon broke out defiantly against the teacher, just as
he had done against his fellow-students: “Paoli was a great man; he
loved his country; and I will never forgive my father for his share in
uniting Corsica to France. He should have followed Paoli.” Mocked by
some of the teachers and tormented by the richer students, Napoleon
withdrew almost completely within himself. He made no complaints,
prayed for no relief, but fell back on his own resources. When the boys
mimicked his pronunciation, turned his name into an offensive nickname,
and flouted him with the subjection of his native land, he either
remained disdainfully silent, or threw himself single-handed against
his tormentors.
To each student was given a bit of ground that he might use it as he
saw fit. Napoleon annexed to his own plat two adjacent strips which
their temporary owners had abandoned; and by hedging and fencing made
for himself a privacy, a solitude, which he could not otherwise get.
Here he took his books, here he read and pondered, here he indulged his
tendency to day-dreaming, to building castles in the air.
His schoolmates did not leave him at peace even here. Occasionally they
would band together and attack his fortress. Then, says Burgoing, one
of his fellow-students, “it was a sight to see him burst forth in a
fury to drive off the intruders, without the slightest regard to their
numbers.”
Much as he disliked his comrades, there was no trace of meanness in
his resentments. He suffered punishment for things he had not done
rather than report on the real offenders. Unsocial and unpopular, he
nevertheless enjoyed a certain distinction among the students as well
as with the teachers. His pride, courage, maturity of thought, and
quick intelligence arrested attention and compelled respect.
When the students, during the severe winter of 1783–84, were kept
within doors, it was Napoleon who suggested mimic war as a recreation.
A snow fort was built, and the fun was to attack and defend it with
snowballs. Then Napoleon’s natural capacity for leadership was seen.
He at one time led the assailants, at another the defenders, as
desperately in earnest as when he afterward attacked or defended
kingdoms. One student refusing to obey an order, Napoleon knocked him
down with a chunk of ice. Many years after this unlucky person turned
up with a scar on his face, and reminded the Emperor Napoleon of the
incident; whereupon Napoleon fell into one of his best moods, and dealt
liberally with the petitioner.
During the whole time Napoleon was at Brienne he remained savagely
Corsican. He hated the French, and did not hesitate to say so. Of
course the French here meant were the pupils of the school--the big
boys who jeered at his poverty, his parentage, his countrymen. It
is worth notice that he never by word or deed sought to disarm his
enemies by pandering to their prejudices. He made no effort whatever to
ingratiate himself with them by surrendering any of his own opinions.
He would not even compromise by concealing what he felt. He was a
Corsican to the core, proud of his island heroes, proud of Paoli,
frankly detesting those who had trampled upon his country. It must have
sounded even to the dull ears of ignorant monks as something remarkable
when this shabby-looking lad, hardly in his teens, cried out,
defiantly, “I hope one day to be able to give Corsica her freedom!”
He had drunk in the wild stories the peasants told of Sampiero; he had
devoured the vivid annals of Plutarch, and his hopes and dreams were
already those of a daring man.
During these years at Brienne, General Marbeuf continued to be
Napoleon’s active friend. He seems to have regularly supplied him with
money, and it was the General’s interference which secured his release
from imprisonment in the affair of the duel. Through the same influence
Napoleon secured the good-will of Madame de Brienne, who lived in the
château near the school. This lady warmed to the lad, took him to her
house to spend holidays and vacations, and treated him with a motherly
kindness which he never forgot.
The character which Napoleon established at Brienne varied with the
point of view. To the students generally he appeared to be unsocial,
quarrelsome, and savage. To some of the teachers he seemed to be mild,
studious, grateful. To others, imperious and headstrong. M. de Keralio
reported him officially as submissive, upright, thoughtful, “conduct
most exemplary.” On all he made the impression that he was inflexible,
not to be moved after he has taken his stand. Pichegru, afterward
conqueror of Holland, and after that supporter of the Bourbons, was a
pupil-teacher to Napoleon at Brienne, and is thought to have been the
quartermaster who put upon him the shame of eating on his knees at the
dining-room door. Bourbon emissaries were eager to win over to their
cause the brilliant young general, Bonaparte, and suggested the matter
to Pichegru. “Do not try it,” said he. “I knew him at Brienne. His
character is inflexible. He has taken his side, and will not change.”
When Napoleon, in his last years, came to speak of his school days,
he seemed to have forgotten all that was unpleasant. Time had swept
its effacing fingers over the actual facts, and he had come to believe
that he had not only been happy at Brienne, but had been a jolly,
frolicksome fellow--a very cheerful, sociable, popular lad. It was
some other youth who had shunned his fellows, fenced himself within a
garden wall, combated all intruders with sticks and stones, and hated
the French because they teased him so. The real Napoleon, according to
the captive Emperor, was a boy like other boys, full of fun, frolic,
tricks, and games. One of the sportive tricks of the merry and mythical
Bonaparte was this: An old commandant, upward of eighty, was practising
the boys at target-shooting with a cannon. He complained that the aim
was bad, none of the balls hit the target. Presently, he asked of
those near him if they had seen the ball strike. After half a dozen
discharges, the old general bethought himself of counting the balls.
Then the trick was exposed--the boys had slipped the balls aside each
time the gun was loaded.
Another anecdote told by the Emperor brings him more immediately within
the circle of our sympathies. Just above his own room at the college
was a fellow-student who was learning to play on the horn. He practised
loudly, and at all hours. Napoleon found it impossible to study.
Meeting the student on the stairs, Napoleon feelingly remonstrated.
The horn player was in a huff at once, as a matter of course. His room
was his own, and he would blow horns in it as much as he pleased. “We
will see about that,” said Napoleon, and he challenged the offender to
mortal combat. Death could have no terrors compared to the incessant
tooting in the room above, and Napoleon was determined to take his
chances on sudden sword thrust rather than the slow tortures of the
horn practice. Fellow-students interfered, a compromise was reached,
and the duel did not come off. The student who roused the ire of
Napoleon in this extreme manner was named Bussey, and in the campaign
of 1814 Napoleon met him again, received offers of service from him,
and named him aide-de-camp. It is a pleasure to be able to record that
this fellow-student of Brienne remained faithful to Napoleon to the
very last, in 1814 and again in 1815.
In the year 1810 the Emperor Napoleon, divorced from Josephine, was
spending a few days in seclusion in the Trianon at Versailles, awaiting
the coming of the Austrian wife, “the daughter of the Cæsars.” Hortense
and Stephanie Beauharnais were with him, and Stephanie mischievously
asked him if he knew how to waltz. Napoleon answered:--
“When I was at the military school I tried, I don’t know how many
times, to overcome the vertigo caused by waltzing, without being able
to succeed. Our dancing-master had advised us when practising to take a
chair in our arms instead of a lady. I never failed to fall down with
the chair, which I squeezed affectionately, and to break it. The chairs
in my room, and those of two or three of my comrades, disappeared one
after another.”
The Emperor told this story in his gayest manner, and the two ladies
laughed, of course; but Stephanie insisted that he should even now
learn to waltz, that all Germans waltzed, that his new wife would
expect it, and that as the Empress could only dance with the Emperor,
he must not deprive her of such a pleasure.
“You are right,” exclaimed Napoleon. “Come! give me a lesson.”
Thereupon he rose, took the merry Stephanie in his arms, and went
capering around the room to the music of his own voice, humming the
air of _The Queen of Prussia_. After two or three turns, his fair
teacher gave him up in despair; he was too hopelessly awkward; and she
flattered him, while pronouncing him a failure, by saying that he was
made to give lessons and not receive them.
* * * * *
Toward the close of 1783 a royal inspector of the military schools,
Keralio by name, examined the students at Brienne for the purpose
of selecting those who were to be promoted to the higher military
school at Paris. M. de Keralio was greatly impressed by Napoleon, and
emphatically recommended his promotion. This inspector having died, his
successor examined Napoleon the second time, and passed him on to the
Paris school, which he entered on October 30, 1784. On the certificate
which went with him from Brienne were the words, “Character masterful,
imperious, and headstrong.”
When Napoleon alighted from the coach which brought him from Brienne to
Paris, and stood, a tiny foreign boy, in the midst of the hurly-burly
of a great city, he must have felt himself one of the loneliest and
most insignificant of mortals. Demetrius Permon found him in the Palais
Royal, “where he was gaping and staring with wonder at everything he
saw. Truly, he looked like a fresh importation.” M. Permon invited
the lad to dine, and found him “very morose,” and feared that he had
“more self-conceit than was suitable to his condition.” Napoleon made
this impression upon Permon by declaiming violently against the luxury
of the young men at the military school, denouncing the system of
education which prevailed there, comparing it unfavorably to the system
of ancient Sparta, and announcing his intention of memorializing the
minister of war on the subject.
Napoleon, at the military school of Paris, continued to be studious,
and to read almost constantly. He was obedient to the authorities,
and defiant to the young aristocrats who surrounded him and looked
down on him. The extravagance, indolence, and superciliousness of the
noble students, together with the general luxury which prevailed in
the establishment, disgusted and enraged a scholar who had no money to
spend, and who had come there to study. When he, as head of the State,
came to reorganize the educational system of France, he did not forget
the lessons taught by his own experience. As a man he adopted a system
which avoided all the abuses which as a boy he had denounced.
During this period he may have occasionally visited the Permons in
Paris and his sister Elisa, who had been admitted into the State
school at St. Cyr. Madame D’Abrantes so relates in her _Memoirs_;
and while there is a difficulty about dates, her narrative is,
perhaps, substantially correct. It is a lifelike picture she paints
of Napoleon’s gloom at Paris and Elisa’s sorrow at St. Cyr: Napoleon
wretched because he could not pay his way among the boys; Elisa
miserable because she could not keep step with the girls. Napoleon
sulked and denounced luxury; Elisa wept and bewailed her poverty. Elisa
was consoled by a tip given by Madame Permon. As for Napoleon, he
refused to borrow: “I have no right to add to the burdens of my mother.”
On final examination, August, 1785, Napoleon stood forty-second in his
class--not a brilliant mark, certainly, but it sufficed. He received
his appointment of sub-lieutenant with joy unbounded. His days of
tutelage were over: henceforth he was a man and an officer. Having
chosen the artillery service, he set out with Des Mazis, a friend he
had made at the military school, to join the regiment of La Fère, which
was stationed at Valence. According to one account, Napoleon borrowed
money from a cloth merchant to make this journey; according to another,
Des Mazis paid the way of both. However that may be, it seems that when
the young officers reached Lyons, a gay city of the south, they relaxed
the rigors of military discipline to such an extent that their money
all vanished. The remainder of the distance to Valence was made on foot.
* * * * *
Those biographers who devote their lives to defaming Napoleon, lay
stress on the alleged fact that he was educated by the King. In
becoming an adherent of the Revolution, these writers say that he
betrayed an amount of moral obliquity quite appalling. Louis XVI. was
king while Napoleon was at Brienne, and the suggestion that Napoleon
owed a debt of gratitude to Louis XVI. is amusing. The tax-payers, the
people, educated Napoleon; and whatever debt of gratitude he owed, he
owed to them. In going with the Revolution, he went with those who had
paid his schooling. He himself drew this distinction at the time. When
M. Demetrius Permon rebuked him for criticising royalty, throwing the
alleged debt of gratitude in his teeth, the boy replied, “The State
educates me; not the King.”
Of course Permon could not admit the distinction, he being a noble of
the Old Order; nor can biographers who write in the interest of modern
Toryism admit it. But the distinction is there, nevertheless; the boy
saw it, and so does impartial history.