NAPOLEON IN PARIS—LIEUTENANT OF ARTILLERY—LITERARY WORK—NAPOLEON AND THE
REVOLUTION
It was in October, 1784, that Napoleon was placed in the Ecole Militaire
at Paris, the same school which still faces the Champ de Mars. He was
fifteen years old at the time, a thin-faced, awkward, countrified boy,
who stared open-mouthed at the Paris street sights and seemed singularly
out of place to those who saw him in the capital for the first time.
Napoleon found his new associates even more distasteful than those at
Brienne had been. The pupils of the Ecole Militaire were sons of
soldiers and provincial gentlemen, educated gratuitously, and rich young
men who paid for their privileges. The practices of the school were
luxurious. There was a large staff of servants, costly stables, several
courses at meals. Those who were rich spent freely; most of those who
were poor ran in debt. Napoleon could not pay his share in the lunches
and gifts which his mates offered now and then to teachers and fellows.
He saw his sister Eliza, who was at Madame de Maintenon’s school at St.
Cyr, weep one day for the same reason. He would not borrow. “My mother
has already too many expenses, and I have no business to increase them
by extravagances which are simply imposed upon me by the stupid folly of
my comrades.” But he did complain loudly to his friends. The Permons, a
Corsican family living on the Quai Conti, who made Napoleon thoroughly
at home, even holding a room at his disposal, frequently discussed these
complaints. Was it vanity and envy, or a wounded pride and just
indignation? The latter, said Monsieur Permon. This feeling was so
profound with Napoleon, that, with his natural instinct for regulating
whatever was displeasing to him, he prepared a memorial to the
government, full of good, practical sense, on the useless luxury of the
pupils.
A year in Paris finished Napoleon’s military education, and in October,
1785, when sixteen years old, he received his appointment as second
lieutenant of the artillery in a regiment stationed at Valence. Out of
the fifty-eight pupils entitled that year to the promotion of second
lieutenant, but six went to the artillery; of these six Napoleon was
one. His examiner said of him:
“Reserved and studious, he prefers study to any amusement, and
enjoys reading the best authors; applies himself earnestly to the
abstract sciences; cares little for anything else. He is silent and
loves solitude. He is capricious, haughty, and excessively
egotistical; talks little, but is quick and energetic in his
replies, prompt and severe in his repartees; has great pride and
ambitions, aspiring to anything. The young man is worthy of
patronage.”
He left Paris at once, on money borrowed from a cloth merchant whom his
father had patronized, not sorry, probably, that his school days were
over, though it is certain that all of those who had been friendly to
him in this period he never forgot in the future. Several of his old
teachers at Brienne received pensions; one was made rector of the School
of Fine Arts established at Compiègne, another librarian at Malmaison,
where the porter was the former porter at Brienne. The professors of the
Ecole Militaire were equally well taken care of, as well as many of his
schoolmates. During the Consulate, learning that Madame de Montesson,
wife of the Duke of Orleans, was still living, he sent for her to come
to the Tuileries, and asked what he could do for her. “But, General,”
protested Madame de Montesson, “I have no claim upon you.”
“You do not know, then,” replied the First Consul, “that I received my
first crown from you. You went to Brienne with the Duke of Orleans to
distribute the prizes, and in placing a laurel wreath on my head, you
said: ‘May it bring you happiness.’ They say I am a fatalist, Madame, so
it is quite plain that I could not forget what you no longer remember;”
and the First Consul caused the sixty thousand francs of yearly income
left Madame de Montesson by the Duke of Orleans, but confiscated in the
Revolution, to be returned. Later, at her request, he raised one of her
relatives to the rank of senator. In 1805, when emperor, Napoleon gave a
life pension of six thousand francs to the son of his former protector,
the Count de Marbœuf, and with it went his assurance of interest and
good will in all the circumstances of the young man’s life. Generous,
forbearing, even tender remembrance of all who had been associated with
him in his early years, was one of Napoleon’s marked characteristics.
His new position at Valence was not brilliant. He had an annual income
of two hundred and twenty-four dollars, and there was much hard work. It
was independence, however, and life opened gayly to the young officer.
He made many acquaintances, and for the first time saw something of
society and women. Madame Colombier, whose _salon_ was the leading one
of the town, received him, introduced him to powerful friends, and,
indeed, prophesied a great future for him.
The sixteen-year-old officer, in spite of his shabby clothes and big
boots, became a favorite. He talked brilliantly and freely, began to
find that he could please, and, for the first time, made love a
little—to Mademoiselle Colombier—a frolicking boy-and-girl love, the
object of whose stolen rendezvous was to eat cherries together.
Mademoiselle Mion-Desplaces, a pretty Corsican girl in Valence, also
received some attention from him. Encouraged by his good beginning, and
ambitious for future success, he even began to take dancing lessons.
[Illustration:
BONAPARTE AT VALENCE.
From a painting by François Flameng.]
Had there been no one but himself to think of, everything would have
gone easily, but the care of his family was upon him. His father had
died a few months before, February, 1785, and left his affairs in a sad
tangle. Joseph, now nearly eighteen years of age, who had gone to Autun
in 1779 with Napoleon, had remained there until 1785. The intention was
to make him a priest; suddenly he declared that he would not be anything
but a soldier. It was to undo all that had been done for him; but his
father made an effort to get him into a military school. Before the
arrangements were complete Charles Bonaparte died, and Joseph was
obliged to return to Corsica, where he was powerless to do anything for
his mother and for the four young children at home: Louis, aged nine;
Pauline, seven; Caroline, five; Jerome, three.
Lucien, now nearly eleven years old, was at Brienne, refusing to become
a soldier, as his family desired, and giving his time to literature; but
he was not a free pupil, and the six hundred francs a year needful for
him was a heavy tax. Eliza alone was provided for. She had entered St.
Cyr in 1784 as one of the two hundred and fifty pupils supported there
by his Majesty, and to be a _demoiselle de St. Cyr_ was to be fed,
taught, and clothed from seven to twenty, and, on leaving, to receive a
dowry of three thousand francs, a _trousseau_, and one hundred and fifty
francs for travelling expenses home.
Napoleon regarded his family’s situation more seriously than did his
brothers. Indeed, when at Brienne he had shown an interest, a sense of
responsibility, and a good judgment about the future of his brothers and
sisters, quite amazing in so young a boy. When he was fifteen years old,
he wrote a letter to his uncle, which, for its keen analysis, would do
credit to the father of a family. The subject was his brother Joseph’s
desire to abandon the Church and go into the king’s service. Napoleon is
summing up the pros and cons:
“First. As father says, he has not the courage to face the perils of
an action; his health is feeble, and will not allow him to support
the fatigues of a campaign; and my brother looks on the military
profession only from a garrison point of view. He would make a good
garrison officer. He is well made, light-minded, knows how to pay
compliments, and with these talents he will always get on well in
society.
“Second. He has received an ecclesiastical education, and it is very
late to undo that. Monseignor the Bishop of Autun would have given
him a fat living, and he would have been sure to become a bishop.
What an advantage for the family! Monseignor of Autun has done all
he could to encourage him to persevere, promising that he should
never repent. Should he persist, in wishing to be a soldier, I must
praise him, provided he has a decided taste for his profession, the
finest of all, and the great motive power of human affairs.... He
wishes to be a military man. That is all very well; but in what
corps? Is it the marine? First: He knows nothing of mathematics; it
would take him two years to learn. Second: His health is
incompatible with the sea. Is it the engineers? He would require
four or five years to learn what is necessary, and at the end of
that time he would be only a cadet. Besides, working all day long
would not suit him. The same reasons which apply to the engineers
apply to the artillery, with this exception: that he would have to
work eighteen months to become a cadet, and eighteen months more to
become an officer.... No doubt he wishes to join the infantry....
And what is the slender infantry officer? Three-fourths of the time
a scapegrace.... A last effort will be made to persuade him to enter
the Church, in default of which, father will take him to Corsica,
where he will be under his eye.”
It was not strange that Charles Bonaparte considered the advice of a son
who could write so clear-headed a letter as the one just quoted, or that
the boy’s uncle Lucien said, before dying: “Remember, that if Joseph is
the older, Napoleon is the real head of the house.”
Now that young Bonaparte was in an independent position, he felt still
more keenly his responsibility, and it was for this reason, as well as
because of ill health, that he left his regiment in February, 1787, on a
leave which he extended to nearly fifteen months, and which he spent in
energetic efforts to better his family’s situation, working to
reëstablish salt works and a mulberry plantation in which they were
concerned, to secure the nomination of Lucien to the college at Aix, and
to place Louis at a French military school.
When he went back to his regiment, now stationed at Auxonne, he denied
himself to send money home, and spent his leisure in desperate work,
sleeping but six hours, eating but one meal a day, dressing once in the
week. Like all the young men of the country who had been animated by the
philosophers and encyclopedists, he had attempted literature, and at
this moment was finishing a history of Corsica, a portion of which he
had written at Valence and submitted to the Abbé Raynal, who had
encouraged him to go on. The manuscript was completed and ready for
publication in 1788, and the author made heroic efforts to find some one
who would accept a dedication, as well as some one who would publish it.
Before he had succeeded, events had crowded the work out of sight, and
other ambitions occupied his forces. Napoleon had many literary projects
on hand at this time. He had been a prodigious reader, and was never so
happy as when he could save a few cents with which to buy second-hand
books. From everything he read he made long extracts, and kept a book of
“thoughts.” Most curious are some of these fragments, reflections on the
beginning of society, on love, on nature. They show that he was
passionately absorbed in forming ideas on the great questions of life
and its relations.
Besides his history of Corsica, he had already written several
fragments, among them an historical drama called the “Count of Essex,”
and a story, the “Masque Prophète.” He undertook, too, to write a
sentimental journey in the style of Sterne, describing a trip from
Valence to Mont Cenis. Later he competed for a prize offered by the
Academy of Lyons on the subject: “To determine what truths and feelings
should be inculcated in men for their happiness.” He failed in the
contest; indeed, the essay was severely criticised for its incoherency
and poor style.
The Revolution of 1789 turned Napoleon’s mind to an ambition greater
than that of writing the history of Corsica—he would free Corsica. The
National Assembly had lifted the island from its inferior relation and
made it a department of France, but sentiment was much divided, and the
ferment was similar to that which agitated the mainland. Napoleon,
deeply interested in the progress of the new liberal ideas, and seeing,
too, the opportunity for a soldier and an agitator among his countrymen,
hastened home, where he spent some twenty-five months out of the next
two and a half years. That the young officer spent five-sixths of his
time in Corsica, instead of in service, and that he in more than one
instance pleaded reasons for leaves of absence which one would have to
be exceedingly unsophisticated not to see were trumped up for the
occasion, cannot be attributed merely to duplicity of character and
contempt for authority. He was doing only what he had learned to do at
the military schools of Brienne and Paris, and what he saw practised
about him in the army. Indeed, the whole French army at that period made
a business of shirking duty. Every minister of war in the period
complains of the incessant desertions among the common soldiers. Among
the officers it was no better. True, they did not desert; they held
their places and—did nothing. “Those who were rich and well born had no
need to work,” says the Marshal Duc de Broglie. “They were promoted by
favoritism. Those who were poor and from the provinces had no need to
work either. It did them no good if they did, for, not having patronage,
they could not advance.” The Comte de Saint-Germain said in regard to
the officers: “There is not one who is in active service; they one and
all amuse themselves and look out for their own affairs.”
Napoleon, tormented by the desire to help his family, goaded by his
ambition and by an imperative inborn need of action and achievement,
still divided in his allegiance between France and Corsica, could not
have been expected, in his environment, to take nothing more than the
leaves allowed by law.
Revolutionary agitation did not absorb all the time he was in Corsica.
Never did he work harder for his family. The portion of this two and a
half years which he spent in France, he was accompanied by Louis, whose
tutor he had become, and he suffered every deprivation to help him.
Napoleon’s income at that time was sixty-five cents a day. This meant
that he must live in wretched rooms, prepare himself the broth on which
he and his brother dined, never go to a _café_, brush his own clothes,
give Louis lessons. He did it bravely. “I breakfasted off dry bread, but
I bolted my door on my poverty,” he said once to a young officer
complaining of the economies he must make on two hundred dollars a
month.
[Illustration:
BONAPARTE AT THE TUILERIES, AUGUST 10, 1792.
After a lithograph by Charlet. Lieutenant Bonaparte on the terrace of
the Tuileries, watching the crowd of rioters who were hastening to
the massacre of the Swiss Guards.]
Economy and privation were always more supportable to him than
borrowing. He detested irregularities in financial matters. “Your
finances are deplorably conducted, apparently on metaphysical
principles. Believe me, money is a very physical thing,” he once said to
Joseph, when the latter, as King of Naples, could not make both ends
meet. He put Jerome to sea largely to stop his reckless expenditures.
(At fifteen that young man paid three thousand two hundred dollars for a
shaving case “containing everything except the beard to enable its owner
to use it.”) Some of the most furious scenes which occurred between
Napoleon and Josephine were because she was continually in debt. After
the divorce he frequently cautioned her to be watchful of her money.
“Think what a bad opinion I should have of you if I knew you were in
debt with an income of six hundred thousand dollars a year,” he wrote
her in 1813.
The methodical habits of Marie Louise were a constant satisfaction to
Napoleon. “She settles all her accounts once a week, deprives herself of
new gowns if necessary, and imposes privations upon herself in order to
keep out of debt,” he said proudly. A bill of sixty-two francs and
thirty-two centimes was once sent to him for window blinds placed in the
_salon_ of the Princess Borghese. “As I did not order this expenditure,
which ought not to be charged to my budget, the princess will pay it,”
he wrote on the margin.
It was not parsimony. It was the man’s sense of order. No one was more
generous in gifts, pensions, salaries; but it irritated him to see money
wasted or managed carelessly.
Through his long absence in Corsica, and the complaints which the
conservatives of the island had made to the French government of the way
he had handled his battalion of National Guards in a riot at Ajaccio,
Napoleon lost his place in the French army. He came to Paris in the
spring of 1792, hoping to regain it. But in the confused condition of
public affairs little attention was given to such cases, and he was
obliged to wait.
Almost penniless, he dined on six-cent dishes in cheap restaurants,
pawned his watch, and with Bourrienne devised schemes for making a
fortune. One was to rent some new houses going up in the city and to
sub-let them. While he waited he saw the famous days of the “Second
Revolution”—the 20th of June, when the mob surrounded the Tuileries,
overran the palace, put the _bonnet rouge_ on Louis XVI.’s head, did
everything but strike, as the agitators had intended. Napoleon and
Bourrienne, loitering on the outskirts, saw the outrages, and he said,
in disgust:
“_Che coglione_, why did they allow these brutes to come in? They ought
to have shot down five or six hundred of them with cannon, and the rest
would soon have run.”
He saw the 10th of August, when the king was deposed. He was still in
Paris when the horrible September massacres began—those massacres in
which, to “save the country,” the fanatical and terrified populace
resolved to put “rivers of blood” between Paris and the _émigrés_. All
these excesses filled him with disgust. He began to understand that the
Revolution he admired so much needed a head.
In August Napoleon was restored to the army. The following June found
him with his regiment in the south of France. In the interval spent in
Corsica, he had abandoned Paoli and the cause of Corsican independence.
His old hero had been dragged, in spite of himself, into a movement for
separating the island from France. Napoleon had taken the position that
the French government, whatever its excesses, was the only advocate in
Europe of liberty and equality, and that Corsica would better remain
with France rather than seek English aid, as it must if it revolted. But
he and his party were defeated, and he with his family was obliged to
flee.
The Corsican period of his life was over; the French had opened. He
began it as a thorough republican. The evolution of his enthusiasm for
the Revolution had been natural enough. He had been a devoted believer
in Rousseau’s principles. The year 1789 had struck down the abuses which
galled him in French society and government. After the flight of the
king in 1791 he had taken the oath:
“I swear to employ the arms placed in my hands for the defence of
the country, and to maintain against all her enemies, both from
within and from without, the Constitution as declared by the
National Assembly; to die rather than to suffer the invasion of the
French territory by foreign troops, and to obey orders given in
accordance with the decree of the National Assembly.”
“The nation is now the paramount object,” he wrote; “my natural
inclinations are now in harmony with my duties.”
The efforts of the court and the _émigrés_ to overthrow the new
government had increased his devotion to France. “My southern blood
leaps in my veins with the rapidity of the Rhone,” he said, when the
question of the preservation of the Constitution was brought up. The
months spent at Paris in 1792 had only intensified his radical notions.
Now that he had abandoned his country, rather than assist it to fight
the Revolution, he was better prepared than ever to become a Frenchman.
It seemed the only way to repair his and his family’s fortune.
The condition of the Bonapartes on arriving in France after their
expulsion from Corsica was abject. Their property “pillaged, sacked, and
burned,” they had escaped penniless—were, in fact, refugees dependent
upon French bounty. They wandered from place to place, but at last found
a good friend in Monsieur Clary of Marseilles, a soapboiler, with two
pretty daughters, Julie and Désirée, and Joseph and Napoleon became
inmates of his house.
It was not as a soldier but as a writer that Napoleon first
distinguished himself in this new period of his life. An insurrection
against the government had arisen in Marseilles. In an imaginary
conversation called _le souper de Beaucaire_, Napoleon discussed the
situation so clearly and justly that Salicetti, Gasparin, and
Robespierre the younger, the deputies who were looking after the South,
ordered the paper published at public expense, and distributed it as a
campaign document. More, they promised to favor the author when they had
an opportunity.
[Illustration:
PORTRAIT OF BONAPARTE, DONE IN CRAYON BY ONE OF HIS SCHOOLFELLOWS.
This sketch, which used to figure in the _Musée des Souverains_,
became afterwards the property of Monsieur de Beaudicourt, who
lately presented it to the Louvre. It possesses an exceptional
interest. Executed at Brienne by one of the schoolfellows of the
future Cæsar, it may be considered as the first portrait of
Bonaparte taken from life. Under it are these words written in
pencil:
“_Mio caro amico Buonaparte. Pontormini del Tournone. 1785._”]
It soon came. Toulon had opened its doors to the English and joined
Marseilles in a counter-revolution. Napoleon was in the force sent
against the town, and he was soon promoted to the command of the Second
Regiment of artillery. His energy and skill won him favorable attention.
He saw at once that the important point was not besieging the town, as
the general in command was doing and the Convention had ordered, but in
forcing the allied fleet from the harbor, when the town must fall of
itself. But the commander-in-chief was slow, and it was not until the
command was changed and an officer of experience and wisdom put in
charge that Napoleon’s plans were listened to. The new general saw at
once their value, and hastened to carry them out. The result was the
withdrawal of the allies in December, 1793, and the fall of Toulon.
Bonaparte was mentioned by the general-in-chief as “one of those who
have most distinguished themselves in aiding me,” and in February, 1794,
was made general of brigade.
It is interesting to note that it was at Toulon that Napoleon first came
in contact with the English. Here he made the acquaintance of Junot,
Marmont, and Duroc. Barras, too, had his attention drawn to him at the
same time.
The circumstances which brought Junot and Napoleon together at Toulon
were especially heroic. Some one was needed to carry an order to an
exposed point. Napoleon asked for an under officer, audacious and
intelligent. Junot, then a sergeant, was sent. “Take off your uniform
and carry this order there,” said Napoleon, indicating the point.
Junot blushed and his eyes flashed. “I am not a spy,” he answered; “find
some one beside me to execute such an order.”
“You refuse to obey?” said Napoleon.
“I am ready to obey,” answered Junot, “but I will go in my uniform or
not go at all. It is honor enough then for these——Englishmen.”
The officer smiled and let him go, but he took pains to find out his
name.
A few days later Napoleon called for some one in the ranks who wrote a
good hand to come to him. Junot offered himself, and sat down close to
the battery to write the letter. He had scarcely finished when a bomb
thrown by the English burst near by and covered him and his letter with
earth.
“Good,” said Junot, laughing, “I shall not need any sand to dry the
ink.”
Bonaparte looked at the young man, who had not even trembled at the
danger. From that time the young sergeant remained with the commander of
artillery.