Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0003/00035.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 25KB | 422 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00035}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte And Life Of Josephine
Chapter II}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Tarbell, Ida M.}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{napoleon
corsica
time
young
de
first
officer
paris
years
french
hear
audio
hear
sound
}
$Date{1906}
$Log{Hear Napoleon's Teacher*52320017.aud
}
Title:       Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte And Life Of Josephine
Book:        Life Of Napoleon Bonaparte
Author:      Tarbell, Ida M.
Date:        1906

Chapter II

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.

[Hear Napoleon's Teacher]
Foreshadowing a great man.

     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 Compiegne, 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 Marboeuf, 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.

     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 reestablish 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 Abbe 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 Prophete." 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 cafe, 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.

     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 emigres.  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 emigres 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 soap-boiler, with two pretty
daughters, Julie and Desiree, 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.

     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.