by Alan Schom
Although a good Corsican patriot, Charles Buonaparte (the family never used the aristocratic particle, for which there was no title in any event), following Paoli’s defeat by the French, had adapted quickly to the new political scene. He was one of those individuals who, although lazy by nature, are constantly devising new projects and schemes for the government to develop, in the hope of improving their own positions. But apart from getting himself elected one of the twelve members of the ruling municipal council of Ajaccio, most of Charles’s schemes went awry. Nevertheless, at least his position in society was grounded in four generations of noble birth, and that opened many a door for him. Because of his ever growing number of progeny — now including Maria Anna (Elisa), Lucien, Louis, Maria Annunziata (Caroline), Paoletta (Pauline), and Jérôme — Charles Buonaparte needed all the help he could get, and thus, after dropping off the boys at Autun, he hastened on to Versailles, where he managed to secure a full scholarship for Napoleon at Brienne in January 1779.
Joseph and Napoleon went their separate ways for the first time on April 21, 1779. “I have never forgotten the day of our separation,” Joseph later recalled. “I could not stop crying, while Napoleon spilled only one tear, and even that he tried in vain to hide.”[2] If Joseph was very much his father’s son, Napoleon was his mother’s.
On May 15, 1779, the scrawny, undersize Napoleon passed by the concierge and into the dusty, lime-tree-lined courtyard of the establishment that was to be his home for the next six years. Run by a second-rate order of priests known as the Minimes, the Royal Military School included behind its massive walls the few remaining stone buildings, with moss-covered tiles, left of a former monastery. Donning his new uniform, including a light blue jacket with red cuffs, and dark blue breeches, Napoleon entered a new world. It was to change his life.
That he was there at the “king’s expense” as a full scholarship student did not in itself distinguish him from the other 109 students, half of whom were in the same position. But his diminutive stature, his very limited French, distorted by a strong Corsican accent, his arrogance and continual chip-on-the-shoulder attitude, and his anger against France as the occupier of his beloved country set him off from the others. Proud, irascible, sometimes violent, ever self-conscious of being the outsider, he made no really close friends and only a few with whom he could even talk at all on a fairly regular basis, Louis de Bourrienne being one of them. By nature a loner, young Napoleon became doubly so now, and therefore was an ideal target for the bullies inevitably found in all boarding schools. That he was in an occasional rough scuffle was hardly surprising, for once getting the worst of what he had been dishing out for years to his good-natured brother Joseph. It was life in the barracks, nothing more, nothing less.
But despite the many drawbacks, Brienne did indeed open a whole new world to him, one unobtainable in Corsica. In addition to mathematics, ancient history, geography, some Latin literature (mostly in French translation), and German, and a smattering of science, he was introduced to the bewildering social graces of dance and music lessons, in which, if anything, he felt even more ill at ease. But unlike most of the other boys there, he was serious well beyond his years, knowing that apart from his own efforts, he could expect nothing from the world. His negligent if cheerful father, although now a Corsican delegate at Versailles, had no money to speak of.
Fortunately Napoleon had no special interest in personal wealth. Rather, he was determined to return to liberate occupied Corsica from the arrogant French who were holding his people in “slavery,” as he put it. “I had even then the belief that my willpower was destined to make me triumph over the others,”[3] he asserted, and by the age of nine he was already a dedicated patriot boasting of his people, and especially of his hero, Paoli. To succeed — and he had no doubt that he would — required that he take advantage of everything the school, however humble, had to offer.
He needed special tutoring in French, which he was destined always to speak with a jarring Corsican accent, and was fascinated by classical history, reading eagerly (if only in translation) Cicero, Virgil, Tacitus, Suetonius, Horace, and Plutarch’s Lives. “Napoleon shared his reading with me,” his brother Joseph remarked. “It was always on ancient or modern historical subjects. And I would write to him about my own books, though they were less serious,” Joseph preferring the epic poets to Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic and civil wars.[4]
Napoleon had other passions that he did not share with his brother: geography and mathematics, in both of which he excelled. One of Napoleon’s mathematics instructors was a strict, humorless man by the name of Jean-Charles Pichegru, who within a few years would exchange a teaching career for one in the military. (During the Revolution he ultimately commanded the army that conquered Holland, which Napoleon in turn would later hand over to one of his brothers.) Apart from an annual invitation on the king’s birthday to the château of the Comte Loménie de Brienne, Napoleon rarely escaped the high, forbidding stone walls enclosing his school. Nor did he much wish to do so, in hostile France. Instead he studied and studied and studied.
The French boys laughed at him, at everything about him, including his droll first name, Napoleone, which sounded like “la paille-au-nez” straw in the nose, and that is what they called him for months thereafter. But, grinning and bearing it, he studied even harder. Nor did he play games with the others, who took every occasion to taunt him. “I’ll make you French pay, one day!” he would retaliate, shaking his small fist, which only increased their teasing. He was often disrespectful and outspoken in class. On one occasion he was disciplined by a master for disobedience and ordered to replace his uniform with rough clothing and then to eat dinner kneeling on the floor of the refectory with 109 smirking schoolboys looking on. Napoleon rebelled. “I’ll eat standing up, Monsieur, and not on my knees!” he protested. “In my family we kneel only before God!” He stood there adamantly, then suddenly turned livid, seized by a violent attack that left him trembling, out of control, and vomiting. The school’s superior rescinded the punishment, and a feverish Napoleon was taken back to his dormitory. He was to have other, much more serious attacks in the future, especially when exhausted or very tense.
Once a year the royal school inspectors examined each student individually in his subjects, the results of which determined the boy’s future. The reports on Napoleon varied considerably. One described him as “distinguished...in mathematics” but “very poor in social accomplishments” and recommended him for a career as a naval officer. Another report found him “domineering, imperious, and stubborn.” The final, determining one, issued in September 1784, recommended instead an army career for the boy.
The years passed in complete isolation from his family, as he never had money to return to Corsica for any of the school holidays, not even in summer. It was pretty grim, but the long spell was broken in June 1784, when his otherwise inattentive father stopped to visit him, with his sister Maria Anna (or Elisa, as she was now called) and brother Lucien in tow. Elisa was destined for a finishing school at St.-Cyr, while young Lucien was left at Brienne for a couple of years. It was the first time Napoleon had been called “Nabulio” since separating from the family at Autun, and it was the last time he would ever see his father.[5]
Charles Buonaparte stopped at the ancient Faculté de Médecine at Montpellier, where he learned that he only had a few months to live. There he spent his last days with the Permon family, friends from Corsica. He died of cancer on February 24, 1785, at the age of thirty-nine.
On October 19, 1784, the fifteen-year-old “Napoleone de Buonaparte Esq.” entered the gates of the Ecole Militaire in Paris, where he exchanged his old uniform for a light blue one with silver stripes on the sleeves and a red collar. He was now a “gentleman cadet” and beginning his first real military training, which after two years would lead to a king’s commission in the royal army.
Founded by Louis XVI, the Ecole Militaire had been completed only in 1751. The cadets were as
signed to various divisions. The wealthy were groomed to be cavalry officers. Napoleon, because of his strong background in mathematics, was one of the fourteen selected for the unaristocratic and unpopular artillery.
With War Minister Ségur at the helm, life at the Ecole Militaire was very strict indeed, especially compared to the rather lax existence at Brienne. Each cadet gentilhomme left his tiny individual monk’s cell — barely large enough for an iron bed, a wooden chair, and a wardrobe — at the crack of dawn and was in chapel by 6:00 A.M. for prayers and mass, with more prayers at every meal. The day officially ended at 8:30 P.M., with each cadet back in his room. And what a day it was! The four instructing officers and eight drill sergeants kept the young men going, without a moment to themselves, all day long. Napoleon found daily drill in the large stone courtyard the most annoying and difficult of all the activities, with both sergeants and officers bellowing at him time and again for his slackness and unconcern, his mind forever elsewhere. As for the manual of arms, it was a positive bore, and week after week Napoleon was singled out for discipline. When the other cadets in his company were at “Present Arms,” Napoleon would be at “Order Arms,” and vice versa. “Civilize this dangerous islander,” the drill instructor ordered Alexandre des Mazis, one of Napoleon’s few friends. It was a tall order.
Except for German, which Napoleon loathed and nearly failed, his course work proved much more interesting. In addition to history, geography, literature, and German, there were higher courses on mathematics, physics, the construction of fortifications, and drawing, as well as talks on public law and philosophy. Of these, mathematics, fortifications, and, later, artillery, were Napoleon’s favorites. His instructors’ judgments of him were mixed. One referred to him as “a real Corsican by nationality and character” but acknowledged that he “would go far if circumstances permitted.” His despairing German master simply gave up altogether, classifying him as “a wretch.” But it was the report of artillery examiner Louis Monge — brother of Gaspard Monge, the mathematician and future founder of the Ecole Polytechnique — that saw the real Napoleon behind the face of a young boy:
Reserved and studious, he prefers studying to any kind of amusement.
He enjoys reading good authors and applies himself very well to the abstract sciences only, with a solid knowledge of mathematics and geography. He is quiet and solitary, capricious, haughty, and frightfully egotistical. He replies energetically to questions in class and is swift and sharp in his repartee at other times. He is most proud, ambitious, aspiring to everything. This young man merits our consideration and help.[6]
As if life had not been hard enough on Napoleon, the news of his father’s death at the end of February 1785 struck him a very severe blow. This was one tragedy he could not conceal from Alexandre des Mazis. He disagreed with his father’s having turned his back on the Corsican rebels holding out for independence from France and instead recognizing France and collaborating fully with its officials. And he had been hurt by his father’s shameful neglect, even in Ajaccio. Nevertheless, Napoleon loved him deeply, much more so than he ever would his mother, despite his unflagging respect for her.
In Paris, unlike Brienne, he could escape now and then, for instance by spending an occasional day or two with the Permons, when they moved back to the capital from Montpellier. Madame Permon, as an old friend of his mother from her childhood in Ajaccio, always had a room waiting for him at their rather splendid Paris mansion. Both Monsieur and Madame Permon had always been kind to Napoleon, and they provided a real home and hearth for the homesick boy over the next several years, as he got to know their son and especially their daughter, Laure. Despite “his captivating smile,” she admitted, “the disdainful twist of his mouth made you tremble.” And when he was angry, “I could never look at that adorable face of his...without feeling a chill up my spine.” But when he was in a good mood, he changed completely, becoming truly “charming” and “gentle.”[7] As the French navy had no academy, the Ecole Militaire provided its gunnery officers, and Napoleon was due to prepare to take the navy exams when it was announced that there would be none in 1785. Thus Napoleon, just turned sixteen, received his commission in the army artillery in the courtyard of the Ecole Militaire on September 28, 1785, ranked forty-second out of fifty-six students, among them his friend des Mazis and one Louis de Phélippeaux. None of his family was present to celebrate the great moment, and, on trying on his new uniform with the silver clasp at the throat, 2nd Lt. Napoleon Buonaparte rushed over to the Permons for their approval. By November 6 he and des Mazis had reached their first posting, with the La Fère artillery regiment, at Valence. Napoleon Buonaparte’s military career was about to begin.
*
“I know of nothing more handsome than the uniform of an artilleryman of La Fère,” he proudly proclaimed after successfully completing an initial three-month training period with his new regiment. “Soldier I am, and that because it is a special gift I was endowed with at birth,” he remarked.[8] Indeed, he had never looked handsomer, in his blue jacket with embroidered red cuffs, beneath that a muslin shirt with lace collar and cuffs, and the inevitable blue army breeches. He was now awarded the much-coveted epaulet with a gold fringe and a bright red silk cordon. This regiment was in fact the artillery school for the entire French army, and Napoleon had every right to be proud. He was already earning 920 livres per year, more than his father in his last position, but expenses in France were much greater, as were extra but obligatory regimental expenses.
“Even when I had finished my work and had nothing to do, I always vaguely felt that time was fleeting and I had not a moment to lose,”[9] he later recalled. Indeed, after his arrival at Valence, Second Lieutenant Buonaparte was scarcely seen outside his official regimental hours. He began an intensive five years during which almost every minute of his day and many hours of every night were occupied with four major preoccupations, if not obsessions: development of his career as a gunner; the financial problems encountered by his mother and family since the death of his father; his continuing private studies; and the liberation of Corsica from the French yoke. And although on rare occasions he did spare a few hours in society for the first time in his life, with introductions to the salons of women interested in finding suitable spouses for their daughters, they were few and far between. Still, he did request the hand of one young lady, though in vain. Then, simply dismissing this failure, he informed her mother, “My mother already has too many expenses to cope with, and I cannot permit myself to increase my own here, not to mention those resulting from the foolish entertainments of my comrades.”[10] In other words, he had no suitable “prospects,” and they should not consider him a possible son-in-law. Thus it was his decision to end this daydream of marriage to a wealthy young lady, without the personal means to support it. Napoleon would always have the last word.
Apart from artillery exercises, then, most of Napoleon’s time at Valence, from November 1785 to September 1786, was spent in the noisy room in which he was quartered, above a cafe. At times, given all he already had experienced, his thoughts naturally took a morbid turn. “Always alone, in the depths of my melancholy my thoughts dwell on death,” he wrote, thinking not of his father’s death but of his own. “What great rage brings me now to wish for my own destruction?” he asked himself. “No doubt because I see no place for myself in this world?” a question asked — and similarly answered — by many youths of his age. But in his case it was the overwhelming lack of prospects for any sort of future that got him down. Being not only of the lowest level of the nobility but also a foreigner, he saw no realistic future in a career in the Royal French Army. “As I must die sooner or later, why not kill myself?” he concluded, as he reflected on his impotence in the face of the French subjugation of his own country. “What would I see upon returning there? My fellow countrymen bound in chains...When one’s fatherland no longer exists, there is only one thing left for a true patriot to do: die.”[11]
But instead
of surrendering to death, Napoleon was saved by his innate drive, superior intelligence, and curiosity as he searched for answers to his questions. Not only would he continue to read voraciously over the next few years, filling a few dozen notebooks with his synopses and analyses, but he would later try to put them into action.
In the meantime he read and studied, read and studied. Given his home background and lack of solid formal education, the many volumes he pored over and the densely packed notebooks he filled soon covered an extraordinary range of subjects, probably unparalleled by any other French career officer. He read and wrote on the eighteenth-century English prime minister Sir Robert Walpole, a project for the total reorganization of the Regiment de La Fère; four different essays on the technical aspects of modern artillery and its development, including advice to one of his commanding officers; an analysis of Plato’s Republic, a detailed study of the government of the ancient Persians; and much more on the geography, history, and government of ancient Greece, including warfare and mores. He then restlessly turned to ancient Egypt, Carthage, and even Assyria, while not forgetting a “philosophical and political history of the European commercial developments in the East and West Indies.” He was always fascinated by England, studying it at considerable length and displaying a surprising knowledge and understanding of its historical and constitutional development. (How very different “the English” were from the rest of Europe, he noted.) Always impassioned about Friedrich II of Prussia, and making an analysis of such eighteenth-century works as the Abbé Marigny’s History of the Arabs Under the Caliphs and Amelot de la Houssaie’s work The Government of Venice, he studied Machiavelli in detail, including his History of Florence. He went on to study the histories of the nobility and even of the Sorbonne. Inspired, he wrote an essay, “My Reflections on the State of Nature,” and included an analysis of “happiness” and what it signified. His seemingly limitless curiosity still not quenched, he turned to a history of the Incas and of Cortes’s conquest of Montezuma, filling page after page, returning always to the Greeks, including special studies of the general-politician, Alcibiades, and of course, Aristotle.[12]
