Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers Part 6

NAPOLEON

THE FRIENDLESS BOY WHO WAS TO SWAY MIGHTY ARMIES

"Hayseed! hayseed!"

Thus mocked a group of schoolboys of a mate who stood moodily by and glowered upon them.

Although their words were not English, "Hayseed!" was what they meant by the punning French phrase. This boy from the South who did not speak as they did, or act as they did, and wore cheaper clothes, was the b.u.t.t of their ridicule.

"He calls himself 'Napoleone,'" they said. "He means 'La paille au nez' (straw-nose)."

And the way they rattled it off sounded like his name turned round. No wonder the Southerner glared.

How this moody and unpopular schoolboy grew from childhood without intimate friends--without being understood--into a masterful leader of men is one of the strange puzzles of history. It totally upsets that other paradox, "The child is father of the man," for there was little to indicate in the child Bonaparte, the man Napoleon.

He was not even born on the land with which his name is forever a.s.sociated, France. He first saw the light of day upon the isle of Corsica, a rocky point in the blue waters of the Mediterranean, some fifty miles west of Italy. By treaty, this island pa.s.sed from Genoese into French control in 1769; and it will always be a disputed question as to which flag Napoleon was born under. He always claimed the date of August 15, 1769, as his natal day, which would make him nominally of French birth. But the boy Napoleon spoke Italian.

Charles Bonaparte, the future Emperor's father, was not a remarkable man, although he stood well in his home town of Ajaccio. He practised law, and must have worked early and late trying to provide for his large family. His wife, Let.i.tia, a woman of great personal beauty and force of character, was the mother of thirteen children, Napoleon being the fourth.

In a family of this size, it was a case of every fellow shift for himself, which rule Napoleon followed out with a vengeance. He himself said in later years: "I was self-willed and obstinate, nothing awed me, nothing disconcerted me. I was quarrelsome, exasperating; I feared no one. I gave a blow here and a scratch there. Every one was afraid of me. My brother Joseph was the one with whom I had the most to do. He was beaten, bitten, scolded. I complained that he did not get over it soon enough."

His mother alone was able to manage him, but she had other things to do as well; so it is not strange that he escaped from the leash. He relates one amusing incident where he was caught red-handed.

In the garden behind their house was a clump of fig trees, which Napoleon was fond of climbing. His mother forbade him to do so, both for fear of damage to himself and to the fruit, but the self-willed boy persisted. "One day when I was idle, and at a loss for something to do," he relates, "I took it in my head to long for some of those figs.

They were ripe; no one saw me, or could know anything of the matter. I made my escape, ran to the tree, and gathered the whole. My appet.i.te being satisfied, I was providing for the future by filling my pockets, when an unlucky gardener came in sight. I was half-dead with fear, and remained fixed on the branch of the tree, where he had surprised me.

He wished to seize me and take me to my mother. Despair made me eloquent; I represented my distress, promised to keep away from the figs in future, and he seemed satisfied. I congratulated myself on having come off so well, and fancied that the adventure would never be known; but the traitor told all. The next day my mother wanted to go and gather some figs. I had not left any, there was none to be found.

The gardener came, great reproaches followed, and an exposure." The upshot of it was a sound thrashing!

But despite all the trials that the boy gave his mother, there always existed between them a strong affection. Napoleon never spoke of her in after years, except in words of praise. "It is to my mother, to her good precepts and upright example, that I owe my success and any great thing I have accomplished." And again: "My mother was a superb woman, a woman of ability and courage."

The boy's first regular schooling was obtained at a small village school kept by nuns. We have a picture of him there as a small thin boy with a shock of unruly hair, a face not always clean, and "stockings half off." But how many other boys have been guilty of such conventional sins--only they do not get immortalized in the sober pages of history!

He next went to a more advanced day school, and then to a seminary conducted by the Abbe Recco. While not a prize student, he was fond of geography, history, and mathematics, and even as a lad his wonderful memory for names and dates began to a.s.sert itself. He had what is known as a photographic mind. When once it had received an impression, the record was permanent.

One other bent early a.s.serted itself. It was for warlike scenes. The boy not only read greedily of Caesar and Alexander and other great conquerors of the past--he drew pictures on the walls, of regiments of soldiers, which in fancy he commanded.

His brother Joseph would jeer, and then there was more trouble. Joseph generally got the worst of it both bodily and mentally. No sooner was the fight over, than the conqueror made good his vantage.

"I went to complain before he had time to recover from his confusion.

I had need to be on the alert. Our mother would have repressed my warlike humor, she would not have put up with my caprices. Her tenderness was allied with severity. She punished, rewarded all alike; the good, the bad, nothing escaped her. My father, a man of sense, but too fond of pleasure to pay much attention to our infancy, sometimes attempted to excuse our faults. 'Let them alone,' she replied; 'it is not your business, it is I who must look after them.'"

The father, a man of happy-go-lucky disposition, would shrug his shoulders and laugh. But when it came to choosing a profession for the two boys, he did not hesitate. Joseph, the brow-beaten, should become a priest, he said, while Napoleon must study soldiering--which decision suited at least one of the boys to a T.

Napoleon was only nine years old when this decision was made, but very precocious. He talked and reasoned like a boy five years older. His unruly disposition probably hastened the choice as well. His parents felt that a school where there was stern discipline would be the best thing for him. Accordingly his father obtained for him an appointment to one of the royal military schools; and on April 23, 1779, he was formally enrolled at Brienne, France, as a student. The die was cast.

He was to become a soldier.

The next five years, however, were by no means a joyous period in his life. In the first months he felt like "a fish out of water"; nor did he try very hard to adapt himself to his environment. It was all frightfully strange and different. From the sunny island in the Mediterranean he found himself transported suddenly to the northern gloom of the Champagne region. The very language was different. He must unlearn Italian, and learn French. It always came hard to him.

To the end of his days he never could spell correctly--although he did learn in time to express himself with clarity and precision.

He found himself, also, thrown into contact with a group of youngsters who were by no means disposed to put up with his overbearing ways.

Many of them were the sons of wealthy parents, while he at times was in straitened circ.u.mstances. They were fastidious in dress, while he had inclined to the slovenly. Small wonder that they derided him, or that he withdrew within the sh.e.l.l of his pride--and stayed there. He had no intimates. One schoolmate who perhaps came nearest to making a friend of this stand-offish chap from the South, and who was to enjoy a large measure of his confidence in after life was Bourrienne. The latter wrote his famous "Memoirs of Napoleon," which give us many interesting personal glimpses. Here is one of the earliest:

"At Brienne, Bonaparte was remarkable for the dark color of his complexion, which the climate of France afterwards very much changed, as well as for his piercing and scrutinising glance, and for the style of his conversation, both with his masters and companions. His conversation almost always gave one the idea of ill-humor, and he was certainly not very sociable. This, I think, may be attributed to the misfortunes of his family during his childhood, and the impressions made on his mind by the subjugation of his country."

It is interesting to note that at this time the boy was still far from reconciled to the idea of being French. He resented the fact that his father's sword, at one time, had helped to further the conquest of Corsica by France. It was to this fact, indeed, that Napoleon himself owed his appointment to this military college. But the boy does not let this consideration sway him. "I hope some time to be in a position to restore her freedom to Corsica!" he exclaimed.

Napoleon's isolation from his fellow cadets was not entirely to his disadvantage. Brienne possessed a good library, and here day after day the boy might be found poring over the stories of great exploits of the past, and dreaming his own day dreams. But his sword was not for France. He pictured himself as her conqueror! One of his favorite books was Plutarch's "Lives of Ill.u.s.trious Men." He devoured the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" whole. "With my sword by my side, and Homer in my pocket, I hope to carve my way through the world," he wrote to his mother. Another well-thumbed volume was Caesar's "Gallic Wars."

We read of more than one instance of ill-will showing between Napoleon and a clique of aristocratic cla.s.smates. But we do not find that he was ever afraid of them or that he ever acted the sneak or the coward.

Morose he often was, and sullen, but it seemed born of the spirit of misunderstanding which still lurked within his breast, against the world at large. He had simply not found himself.

One anecdote related of these school days reveals him as the potential leader, and shows that the other boys, despite their ridicule, recognized his ability. During one unusually severe winter a heavy fall of snow visited the school. Napoleon suggested that they build a fort, and drew up plans for a complete series of fortifications. The others fell in with his scheme, and upon its completion a battle royal ensued which lasted for several days and put more than one of the partic.i.p.ants into the hospital for repairs. In charge of one of the two armies, now attacking the fort, and now playing the part of its defenders, was Napoleon Bonaparte. He was in his element at last.

By the time that he had completed his five years at Brienne, he was made commander of a company of cadets. His first official report card is worth reproducing:

"_School of Brienne_: State of the King's scholars eligible from their age to enter into the service or to pa.s.s to the school at Paris; to wit, M. de Buonaparte (Napoleon) born the 15th August, 1769, in height 4 feet, 10 inches, 10 lines, has finished his fourth season; of good const.i.tution, health excellent; character submissive, honest and grateful; conduct very regular; has always distinguished himself by his application to mathematics; understands history and geography tolerably well; is indifferently skilled in merely ornamental studies and in Latin, in which he has only finished his fourth course; would make an excellent sailor; deserves to be pa.s.sed on to the school at Paris."

Two points are especially interesting in this report--the first that Napoleon had a "submissive character"; the second that he would make "an excellent sailor." The following year when another inspector visited the school, he added a note that was more accurate. "Character masterful, impetuous and headstrong"; and he decided that Napoleon should enter the Military School at Paris.

Accordingly, in the Fall of 1784, he bade Brienne farewell without regrets on either side, and turned his face toward the capital. No one seeing this slender, almost dwarfed, figure with the thin face, high cheekbones and sunken, inquiring eyes, would ever have imagined that Paris was welcoming her future lord. History holds strange secrets within her pages.

At the Military School, he chose the artillery as his particular branch of service. To what good use he put his study of the field guns, we find evidence in his first appearance on the field of actual warfare.

At the outset he made few friends; it seemed to be the bitter experience of Brienne all over again. The trouble was that he was one of the students being educated at the State's expense--a perfectly proper system, which we ourselves follow at West Point and Annapolis.

But many of these French students came of wealthy families and, like young prigs, looked down upon the King's scholars as "charity patients." Napoleon justly resented this; and even went so far as to indite a memorial against this condition of affairs at Brienne--which did not tend to enhance his popularity.

However he did begin to find himself in a social way. With maturer years and a broader outlook he began to emerge from his sh.e.l.l. He made a few good friends, one or two being among the gentler s.e.x. One lady in particular, Madame de Colombier, took a fancy to this gawky country lad and frequently invited him to her home in the country. Her daughter, Caroline, was also a welcome friend, and the memory of those simple but pleasant hours remained with him all his life as a ray of sunshine among the all-too-gloomy days of youth.

"We were the most innocent creatures imaginable," he says. "We contrived little meetings together. I well remember one which took place on a midsummer morning, just as daylight was beginning to dawn.

It will scarcely be believed that all our happiness consisted in eating cherries together."

The young artillery student--now a lieutenant--also visited the Permons; and Madame Junot, then a little girl, gives a clever cartoon of him as he appeared in full regimentals at the age of sixteen.

"There was one part of his dress which had a very droll appearance--that was his boots. They were so high and wide that his thin little legs seemed buried in their amplitude. Young people are always ready to observe anything ridiculous, and as soon as my sister and I saw Napoleon enter the drawing-room, we burst into a loud fit of laughter. Bonaparte could not relish a joke; and when he found himself the object of merriment he grew angry. My sister, who was some years older than I, told him that since he wore a sword he ought to be gallant to ladies, and, instead of being angry, should be happy that they joked with him.

"'You are nothing but a child, a little school-girl,' said Napoleon, in a tone of contempt.

"Cecile, who was twelve or thirteen years of age, was highly indignant at being called a child, and she hastily resented the affront by replying to Bonaparte, 'And you are nothing but a Puss in Boots!'"

Napoleon at this time was hard put to it to keep up appearances as an officer, on his slender income. His father had pa.s.sed away, and he could not expect further help from home. He was now his mother's oldest adviser, and we find him writing her sage letters which sound like a man of forty. Indeed, his brain matured early. At fourteen he wrote and spoke like a man.

He was subject to fits of depression and melancholy, and even thoughts of suicide--but these, fortunately, were pa.s.sing whims, and gradually the resolute nature he was to evince in later years began to a.s.sert itself. A favorite motto with him, as a man, was: "The truest wisdom is a resolute determination," and already he was putting it into practice.

Soon after obtaining his commission, he left school on his first a.s.signment of active duty. Some riots had broken out at Lyons, and his regiment of artillery was sent there. But things speedily quieted down, leaving to him the monotony of garrison life. In telling about it afterward he remarked:

"When I entered the service I found garrison life tedious. I began reading novels, and that kind of reading proved interesting. I made an attempt at writing some; this task gave range to my imagination. It took hold of my knowledge of positive facts, and often I found amus.e.m.e.nt in giving myself up to dreams in order to test them later by the standard of my reasoning powers. I transported myself in thought to an ideal world, and I sought to discover wherein lay the precise difference between that and the world in which I lived."

Thus we see in the young soldier the same recluse and dreamer of Brienne. In boyhood parlance today, he "flocked by himself," building air castles which in part were to become reality.