The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Vol. 1 (of 4)
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Title: The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Vol. 1 (of 4)
Author: William Milligan Sloane
Release date: January 22, 2008 [eBook #24360]
Language: English
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[Illustration: Napoleon Bonaparte in 1785, aged sixteen. From sketch
made by a comrade; formerly in the Musée des Souverains, now in the
Louvre.]
THE LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
BY
WILLIAM MILLIGAN SLOANE
PH.D., L.H.D., LL.D.
_Professor of History in Columbia University_
Revised and Enlarged
With Portraits
VOLUME I
[Illustration: Editor's arm.]
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1916
Copyright, 1894, 1895, 1896, 1910
BY
THE CENTURY CO.
_Published, October, 1910_
PREFACE TO THE LIBRARY EDITION
This life of Napoleon was first published in 1896 as a book: for the
years 1895-96 it ran as a serial in the pages of the Century Magazine.
Judging from the sales, it has been read by many tens if not hundreds
of thousands of readers; and it has been extensively noticed in the
critical journals of both worlds. Throughout these fourteen years the
demand has been very large and steady, considering the size and cost
of the volumes. Both publishers and author have determined therefore
that a library edition was desired by the public, and in that
confidence the book has been partly rewritten and entirely remade.
In the main it is the same book as that which has passed through so
many editions. But in some respects it has been amplified. The portion
relating to the period of youth has been somewhat expanded, the
personalities of those nearest to Napoleon have been in some cases
more broadly sketched, new chapters have been added to the treatment
of the Continental system, the Louisiana Purchase, and the St. Helena
epoch. In all the text has been lengthened about one-tenth.
Under the compulsion of physical dimensions the author has minimized
the number of authorities and foot-notes. There is really very little
controversial matter regarding Napoleon which is not a matter of
opinion: the evidence has been so carefully sifted that substantial
agreement as to fact has been reached. Accordingly there have been
introduced at the opening of chapters or divisions short lists of good
references for those who desire to extend their reading: experts know
their own way. It is an interesting fact which throws great light on
the slight value of foot-notes that while I have had extensive
correspondence with my fellow workers, there has come to me in all
these years but a single request for the source of two statements, and
one demand for the evidence upon which certain opinions were based.
The former editions were duplicate books, a text by me and a
commentary of exquisite illustrations by other hands. The divergence
was very confusing to serious minds; in this edition there can be no
similar perplexity since the illustrations have been confined to
portraits.
In putting these volumes through the press, in the preparation of the
reference lists for volumes three and four, and in the rearrangement
of the bibliography I have had the assistance of Dr. G. A. Hubbell to
whom my obligation is hereby acknowledged.
William M. SLOANE.
New York, _September 1, 1910_.
PREFACE
In the closing years of the eighteenth century European society began
its effort to get rid of benevolent despotism, so called, and to
secure its liberties under forms of constitutional government. The
struggle began in France, and spread over the more important lands of
continental Europe; its influence was strongly felt in England, and
even in the United States. Passing through the phases of
constitutional reform, of anarchy, and of military despotism, the
movement seemed for a time to have failed, and to outward appearances
absolutism was stronger after Waterloo than it had been half a century
earlier.
But the force of the revolution was only checked, not spent; and to
the awakening of general intelligence, the strengthening of national
feeling, and the upbuilding of a sense of common brotherhood among
men, produced by the revolutionary struggles of this epoch, Europe
owes whatever liberty and free government its peoples now enjoy. At
the close of this period national power was no longer in the hands of
the aristocracy, nor in those of kings; it had passed into the third
social stratum, variously designated as the middle class, the burghers
or bourgeoisie, and the third estate, a body of men as little willing
to share it with the masses as the kings had been. Nevertheless, the
transition once begun could not be stopped, and the advance of manhood
suffrage has ever since been proportionate to the capacity of the
laboring classes to receive and use it, until now, at last, whatever
may be the nominal form of government in any civilized land, its
stability depends entirely upon the support of the people as a whole.
That which is the basis of all government--the power of the purse--has
passed into their hands.
This momentous change was of course a turbulent one--the most
turbulent in the history of civilization, as it has proved to be the
most comprehensive. Consequently its epoch is most interesting, being
dramatic in the highest degree, having brought into prominence men and
characters who rank among the great of all time, and having exhibited
to succeeding generations the most important lessons in the most vivid
light. By common consent the eminent man of the time was Napoleon
Bonaparte, the revolution queller, the burgher sovereign, the imperial
democrat, the supreme captain, the civil reformer, the victim of
circumstances which his soaring ambition used but which his unrivaled
prowess could not control. Gigantic in his proportions, and satanic in
his fate, his was the most tragic figure on the stage of modern
history. While the men of his own and the following generation were
still alive, it was almost impossible that the truth should be known
concerning his actions or his motives; and to fix his place in general
history was even less feasible. What he wrote and said about himself
was of course animated by a determination to appear in the best light;
what others wrote and said has been biased by either devotion or
hatred.
Until within a very recent period it seemed that no man could discuss
him or his time without manifesting such strong personal feeling as to
vitiate his judgment and conclusions. This was partly due to the lack
of perspective, but in the main to ignorance of the facts essential to
a sober treatment of the theme. In this respect the last quarter of a
century has seen a gradual but radical change, for a band of
dispassionate scientific scholars have during that time been occupied
in the preparation of material for his life without reference to the
advocacy of one theory or another concerning his character. European
archives, long carefully guarded, have been thrown open; the
diplomatic correspondence of the most important periods has been
published; family papers have been examined, and numbers of valuable
memoirs have been printed. It has therefore been possible to check one
account by another, to cancel misrepresentations, to eliminate
passion--in short, to establish something like correct outline and
accurate detail, at least in regard to what the man actually did.
Those hidden secrets of any human mind which we call motives must ever
remain to other minds largely a matter of opinion, but a very fair
indication of them can be found when once the actual conduct of the
actor has been determined.
This investigation has mainly been the work of specialists, and its
results have been published in monographs and technical journals; most
of these workers, moreover, were continental scholars writing each in
his own language. Its results, as a whole, have therefore not been
accessible to the general reader in either America or England. It
seems highly desirable that they should be made so, and this has been
the effort of the writer. At the same time he claims to be an
independent investigator in some of the most important portions of the
field he covers. His researches have extended over many years, and it
has been his privilege to use original materials which, as far as he
knows, have not been used by others. At the close of the book will be
found a short account of the papers of Bonaparte's boyhood and youth
which the author has read, and of the portions of the French and
English archives which were generously put at his disposal, together
with a short though reasonably complete bibliography of the published
books and papers which really have scientific value. The number of
volumes concerned with Napoleon and his epoch is enormous; outside of
those mentioned very few have any value except as curiosities of
literature.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER Page
I. Introduction............................................ 1
II. The Bonapartes in Corsica.............................. 20
III. Napoleon's Birth and Childhood......................... 35
IV. Napoleon's School-days................................. 48
V. In Paris and Valence................................... 60
VI. Private Study and Garrison Life........................ 73
VII. Further Attempts at Authorship......................... 83
VIII. The Revolution in France.............................. 100
IX. Buonaparte and Revolution in Corsica.................. 111
X. First Lessons in Revolution........................... 123
XI. Traits of Character................................... 135
XII. The Revolution in the Rhone Valley.................... 148
XIII. Buonaparte the Corsican Jacobin....................... 160
XIV. Buonaparte the French Jacobin......................... 180
XV. A Jacobin Hegira...................................... 199
XVI. "The Supper of Beaucaire"............................. 212
XVII. Toulon................................................ 222
XVIII. A Jacobin General..................................... 236
XIX. Vicissitudes in War and Diplomacy..................... 247
XX. The End of Apprenticeship............................. 260
XXI. The Antechamber To Success............................ 272
XXII. Bonaparte the General of the Convention............... 287
XXIII. The Day of the Paris Sections......................... 302
XXIV. A Marriage of Inclination and Interest................ 313
XXV. Europe and the Directory.............................. 324
XXVI. Bonaparte on a Great Stage............................ 339
XXVII. The Conquest of Piedmont and the Milanese............. 352
XXVIII. An Insubordinate Conqueror and Diplomatist............ 363
XXIX. Bassano and Arcola.................................... 378
XXX. Bonaparte's Imperious Spirit.......................... 393
XXXI. Rivoli and the Capitulation of Mantua................. 406
XXXII. Humiliation of the Papacy and of Venice............... 419
XXXIII. The Preliminaries of Peace--Leoben.................... 430
XXXIV. The Fall of Venice.................................... 444
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Napoleon Bonaparte in 1785, aged sixteen. _Frontispiece_
Marie-Lætitia Ramolino Bonaparte "Madame Mère"--Mother of
Napoleon I..................................................... 50
Charles Bonaparte, Father of the Emperor Napoleon, 1785.......... 96
Bonaparte, General in Chief of the Army of Italy................ 176
Josephine....................................................... 226
Marie-Josephine-Rose Tascher de la Pagerie, called Josephine,
Empress of the French......................................... 276
Bonaparte....................................................... 326
Map of Northern Italy, illustrating the Campaigns of 1796 and
1797.......................................................... 354
Josephine, Empress of the French................................ 374
Map illustrating the Campaign preceding the Treaty of
Campo-Formio, 1797............................................ 414
SI QUID NOVISTI RECTIUS ISTIS,
CANDIDUS IMPERTI: SI NON, HIS UTERE MECUM
_Horace_
LIFE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
CHAPTER I.
Introduction.
The Revolutionary Epoch in Europe -- Its Dominant
Personage -- The State System of Europe -- The Power of
Great Britain -- Feebleness of Democracy -- The Expectant
Attitude of the Continent -- Survival of Antiquated
Institutions -- The American Revolution -- Philosophical
Sophistries -- Rousseau -- His Fallacies -- Corsica as a
Center of Interest -- Its Geography -- Its Rulers -- The
People -- Sampiero -- Revolutions -- Spanish Alliance --
King Theodore -- French Intervention -- Supremacy of Genoa
-- Paoli -- His Success as a Liberator -- His Plan for
Alliance with France -- The Policy of Choiseul -- Paoli's
Reputation -- Napoleon's Account of Corsica and of Paoli --
Rousseau and Corsica.
Napoleon Bonaparte was the representative man of the epoch which
ushered in the nineteenth century. Though an aristocrat by descent, he
was in life, in training, and in quality neither that nor a plebeian;
he was the typical plain man of his time, exhibiting the common sense
of a generation which thought in terms made current by the philosophy
of the eighteenth century. His period was the most tumultuous and yet
the most fruitful in the world's history. But the progress made in it
was not altogether direct; rather was it like the advance of a
traveler whirled through the spiral tunnels of the St. Gotthard.
Flying from the inclemency of the north, he is carried by the
ponderous train due southward into the opening. After a time of
darkness he emerges into the open air. But at first sight the goal is
no nearer; the direction is perhaps reversed, the skies are more
forbidding, the chill is more intense. Only after successive ventures
of the same kind is the climax reached, the summit passed, and the
vision of sunny plains opened to view. Such experiences are more
common to the race than to the individual; the muse of history must
note and record them with equanimity, with a buoyancy and hopefulness
born of larger knowledge. The movement of civilization in Europe
during the latter portion of the eighteenth century was onward and
upward, but it was at times not only devious, slow and laborious, but
fruitless in immediate results.
We must study the age and the people of any great man if we sincerely
desire the truth regarding his strength and weakness, his inborn
tendencies and purposes, his failures and successes, the temporary
incidents and the lasting, constructive, meritorious achievements of
his career. This is certainly far more true of Napoleon than of any
other heroic personage; an affectionate awe has sometimes lifted him
to heaven, a spiteful hate has often hurled him down to hell. Every
nation, every party, faction, and cabal among his own and other
peoples, has judged him from its own standpoint of self-interest and
self-justification. Whatever chance there may be of reading the
secrets of his life lies rather in a just consideration of the man in
relation to his times, about which much is known, than in an attempt
at the psychological dissection of an enigmatical nature, about which
little is known, in spite of the fullness of our information. The
abundant facts of his career are not facts at all unless considered in
the light not only of a great national life, but of a continental
movement which embraced in its day all civilization, not excepting
that of Great Britain and America.
The states of Europe are sisters, children of the Holy Roman Empire.
In the formation of strong nationalities with differences in language,
religion, and institutions the relationship was almost forgotten, and
in the intensity of later rivalry is not always even now remembered.
It is, however, so close that at any epoch there is traceable a common
movement which occupies them all. By the end of the fourteenth century
they had secured their modern form in territorial and race unity with
a government by monarchy more or less absolute. The fifteenth century
saw with the strengthening of the monarchy the renascence of the fine
arts, the great inventions, the awakening of enterprise in discovery,
the mental quickening which began to call all authority to account.
The sixteenth was the age of the Reformation, an event too often
belittled by ecclesiastics who discern only its schismatic character,
and not sufficiently emphasized by historians as the most pregnant
political fact of any age with respect to the rise and growth of free
institutions.
The seventeenth century saw in England the triumph of political ideas
adapted to the new state of society which had arisen, but subversive
of the tyrannical system which had done its work, a work great and
good in the creation of peoples and the production of social order out
of chaos. For a time it seemed as if the island state were to become
the overshadowing influence in all the rest of Europe. By the middle
of the century her example had fired the whole continent with notions
of political reform. The long campaign which she and her allies waged
with varying fortune against Louis XIV, commanding the conservative
forces of the Latin blood, and the Roman religion ended unfavorably to
the latter. At the close of the Seven Years' War there was not an
Englishman in Europe or America or in the colonies at the antipodes
whose pulse did not beat high as he saw his motherland triumphant in
every quarter of the globe.
But these very successes, intensifying the bitterness of defeat and
everything connected with it, prevented among numerous other causes
the triumph of constitutional government anywhere in continental
Europe. Switzerland was remote and inaccessible; her beacon of
democracy burned bright, but its rays scarcely shone beyond the
mountain valleys. The Dutch republic, enervated by commercial success
and under a constitution which by its intricate system of checks was a
satire on organized liberty, had become a warning rather than a model
to other nations.
The other members of the great European state family presented a
curious spectacle. On every hand there was a cheerful trust in the
future. The present was as bad as possible, but belonged to the
passing and not to the coming hour. Truth was abroad, felt the
philosophers, and must prevail. Feudal privilege, oppression, vice and
venality in government, the misery of the poor--all would slowly fade
away. The human mind was never keener than in the eighteenth century;
reasonableness, hope, and thoroughness characterized its activity.
Natural science, metaphysics and historical studies made giant
strides, while political theories of a dazzling splendor never equaled
before nor since were rife on every side. Such was their power in a
buoyant society, awaiting the millennium, that they supplanted
entirely the results of observation and experience in the sphere of
government.
But neither lever nor fulcrum was strong enough as yet to stir the
inert mass of traditional forms. Monarchs still flattered themselves
with notions of paternal government and divine right; the nobility
still claimed and exercised baseless privileges which had descended
from an age when their ancestors held not merely these but the land on
which they rested; the burgesses still hugged, as something which had
come from above, their dearly bought charter rights, now revealed as
inborn liberties. They were thus hardened into a gross contentment
dangerous for themselves, and into an indifference which was a menace
to others. The great agricultural populations living in various
degrees of serfdom still groaned under the artificial oppressions of a
society which had passed away. Nominally the peasant might own certain
portions of the soil, but he could not enjoy unmolested the airs which
blew over it nor the streams which ran through it nor the wild things
which trespassed or dwelt on it, while on every side some exasperating
demand for the contribution of labor or goods or money confronted him.
In short, the civilized world was in one of those transitional epochs
when institutions persist, after the beliefs and conditions which
molded them have utterly disappeared. The inertia of such a
rock-ribbed shell is terrible, and while sometimes the erosive power
of agitation and discussion suffices to weaken and destroy it, more
often the volcanic fires of social convulsion are alone strong enough.
The first such shock came from within the English-speaking world
itself, but not in Europe. The American colonies, appreciating and
applying to their own conditions the principles of the English
Revolution, began, and with French assistance completed, the movement
which erected in another hemisphere the American republic. Weak and
tottering in its infancy, but growing ever stronger and therefore
milder, its example began at once to suggest the great and peaceful
reforms of the English constitution which have since followed.
Threatening absolutism in the strong contrasts its citizens presented
to the subjects of other lands, it has been ever since the moral
support of liberal movements the world around. England herself,
instead of being weakened, was strengthened by the child grown to
independent maturity, and a double example of prosperity under
constitutional administration was now held up to the continent of
Europe.
But it is the greatest proof of human weakness that there is no
movement however beneficent, no doctrine however sound, no truth
however absolute, but that it can be speciously so extended, so
expanded, so emphasized as to lose its identity. Coincident with the
political speculation of the eighteenth century appeared the storm and
stress of romanticism and sentimentalism. The extremes of morbid
personal emotion were thought serviceable for daily life, while the
middle course of applying ideals to experience was utterly abandoned.
The latest nihilism differs little from the conception of the perfect
regeneration of mankind by discarding the old merely because it was
old which triumphed in the latter half of the eighteenth century among
philosophers and wits. To be sure, they had a substitute for whatever
was abolished and a supplement for whatever was left incomplete.
Even the stable sense of the Americans was infected by the virus of
mere theories. In obedience to the spirit of the age they introduced
into their written constitution, which was in the main but a statement
of their deep-seated political habits, a scheme like that of the
electoral college founded on some high-sounding doctrine, or omitted
from it in obedience to a prevalent and temporary extravagance of
protest some fundamental truth like that of the Christian character of
their government and laws. If there be anywhere a Christian
Protestant state it is the United States; if any futile invention were
ever incorporated in a written charter it was that of the electoral
college. The addition of a vague theory or the omission of essential
national qualities in the document of the constitution has affected
our subsequent history little or not at all.
But such was not the case in a society still under feudal oppression.
Fictions like the contract theory of government, exploded by the sound
sense of Burke; political generalizations like certain paragraphs of
the French Declaration of Rights, every item of which now and here
reads like a platitude but was then and there a vivid revolutionary
novelty; emotional yearnings for some vague Utopia--all fell into
fruitful soil and produced a rank harvest, mostly of straw and stalks,
although there was some sound grain. The thought of the time was a
powerful factor in determining the course and the quality of events
throughout all Europe. No nation was altogether unmoved. The center of
agitation was in France, although the little Calvinistic state of
Geneva brought forth the prophet and writer of the times.
Rousseau was a man of small learning but great insight. Originating
almost nothing, he set forth the ideas of others with incisive
distinctness, often modifying them to their hurt, but giving to the
form in which he wrote them an air of seductive practicability and
reality which alone threw them into the sphere of action. Examining
Europe at large, he found its social and political institutions so
hardened and so unresponsive that he declared it incapable of movement
without an antecedent general crash and breaking up. No laws, he
reasoned, could be made because there were no means by which the
general will could express itself, such was the rigidity of
absolutism and feudalism. The splendid studies of Montesquieu, which
revealed to the French the eternal truths underlying the
constitutional changes in England, had enlightened and captivated the
best minds of his country, but they were too serious, too cold, too
dry to move the quick, bright temperament of the people at large. This
was the work of Rousseau. Consummate in his literary power, he laid
the ax at the root of the tree in his fierce attack on the prevailing
education, sought a new basis for government in his peculiar
modification of the contract theory, and constructed a substitute
system of sentimental morals to supplant the old authoritative one
which was believed to underlie all the prevalent iniquities in
religion, politics, and society.
His entire structure lacked a foundation either in history or in
reason. But the popular fancy was fascinated. The whole flimsy
furniture in the chambers of the general mind vanished. New emotions,
new purposes, new sanctions appeared in its stead. There was a sad
lack of ethical definitions, an over-zealous iconoclasm as to
religion, but there were many high conceptions of regenerating
society, of liberty, of brotherhood, of equality. The influence of
this movement was literally ubiquitous; it was felt wherever men read
or thought or talked, and were connected, however remotely, with the
great central movement of civilization.
No land and no family could to all outward appearance be further aside
from the main channel of European history in the eighteenth century
than the island of Corsica and an obscure family by the name of
Buonaparte which had dwelt there since the beginning of the eighteenth
century. Yet that isolated land and that unknown family were not
merely to be drawn into the movement, they were to illustrate its most
characteristic phases. Rousseau, though mistakenly, forecast a great
destiny for Corsica, declaring in his letters on Poland that it was
the only European land capable of movement, of law-making, of peaceful
renovation. It was small and remote, but it came near to being an
actual exemplification of his favorite and fundamental dogma
concerning man in a state of nature, of order as arising from
conflict, of government as resting on general consent and mutual
agreement among the governed. Toward Corsica, therefore, the eyes of
all Europe had long been directed. There, more than elsewhere, the
setting of the world-drama seemed complete in miniature, and, in the
closing quarter of the eighteenth century, the action was rapidly
unfolding a plot of universal interest.
A lofty mountain-ridge divides the island into eastern and western
districts. The former is gentler in its slopes, and more fertile.
Looking, as it does, toward Italy, it was during the middle ages
closely bound in intercourse with that peninsula; richer in its
resources than the other part, it was more open to outside influences,
and for this reason freer in its institutions. The rugged western
division had come more completely under the yoke of feudalism, having
close affinity in sympathy, and some relation in blood, with the
Greek, Roman, Saracenic, and Teutonic race-elements in France and
Spain. The communal administration of the eastern slope, however,
prevailed eventually in the western as well, and the differences of
origin, wealth, and occupation, though at times the occasion of
intestine discord, were as nothing compared with the common
characteristics which knit the population of the entire island into
one national organization, as much a unit as their insular territory.
The people of this small commonwealth were in the main of Italian
blood. Some slight connection with the motherland they still
maintained in the relations of commerce, and by the education of their
professional men at Italian schools. While a small minority supported
themselves as tradesmen or seafarers, the mass of the population was
dependent for a livelihood upon agriculture. As a nation they had long
ceased to follow the course of general European development. They had
been successively the subjects of Greece, Rome, and the Califate, of
the German-Roman emperors, and of the republic of Pisa. Their latest
ruler was Genoa, which had now degenerated into an untrustworthy
oligarchy. United to that state originally by terms which gave the
island a "speaker" or advocate in the Genoese senate, and recognized
the most cherished habits of a hardy, natural-minded, and primitive
people, they had little by little been left a prey to their own faults
in order that their unworthy mistress might plead their disorders as
an excuse for her tyranny. Agriculture languished, and the minute
subdivision of arable land finally rendered its tillage almost
profitless.
Among a people who are isolated not only as islanders, but also as
mountaineers, old institutions are particularly tenacious of life:
that of the vendetta, or blood revenge, with the clanship it
accompanies, never disappeared from Corsica. In the centuries of
Genoese rule the carrying of arms was winked at, quarrels became rife,
and often family confederations, embracing a considerable part of the
country, were arrayed one against the other in lawless violence. The
feudal nobility, few in number, were unrecognized, and failed to
cultivate the industrial arts in the security of costly strongholds as
their class did elsewhere, while the fairest portions of land not held
by them were gradually absorbed by the monasteries, a process favored
by Genoa as likely to render easier the government of a turbulent
people. The human animal, however, throve. Rudely clad in homespun,
men and women alike cultivated a simplicity of dress surpassed only by
their plain living. There was no wealth except that of fields and
flocks, their money consequently was debased and almost worthless. The
social distinctions of noble and peasant survived only in tradition,
and all classes intermingled without any sense of superiority or
inferiority. Elegance of manner, polish, grace, were unsought and
existed only by natural refinement, which was rare among a people who
were on the whole simple to boorishness. Physically they were,
however, admirable. All visitors were struck by the repose and
self-reliance of their countenances. The women were neither beautiful,
stylish, nor neat. Yet they were considered modest and attractive. The
men were more striking in appearance and character. Of medium stature
and powerful mold, with black hair, fine teeth, and piercing eyes;
with well-formed, agile, and sinewy limbs; sober, brave, trustworthy,
and endowed with many other primitive virtues as well, the Corsican
was everywhere sought as a soldier, and could be found in all the
armies of the southern continental states.
In their periodic struggles against Genoese encroachments and tyranny,
the Corsicans had produced a line of national heroes. Sampiero, one of
these, had in the sixteenth century incorporated Corsica for a brief
hour with the dominions of the French crown, and was regarded as the
typical Corsican. Dark, warlike, and revengeful, he had displayed a
keen intellect and a fine judgment. Simple in his dress and habits,
untainted by the luxury then prevalent in the courts of Florence and
Paris, at both of which he resided for considerable periods, he could
kill his wife without a shudder when she put herself and child into
the hands of his enemies to betray him. Hospitable and generous, but
untamed and terrible; brusque, dictatorial, and without consideration
or compassion; the offspring of his times and his people, he stands
the embodiment of primeval energy, physical and mental.
The submission of a people like this to a superior force was sullen,
and in the long century which followed, the energies generally
displayed in a well-ordered life seemed among them to be not quenched
but directed into the channels of their passions and their bodily
powers, which were ready on occasion to break forth in devastating
violence. In 1729 began a succession of revolutionary outbursts, and
at last in 1730 the communal assemblies united in a national
convention, choosing two chiefs, Colonna-Ceccaldi and Giafferi, to
lead in the attempt to rouse the nation to action and throw off the
unendurable yoke. English philanthropists furnished the munitions of
war. The Genoese were beaten in successive battles, even after they
brought into the field eight thousand German mercenaries purchased
from the Emperor Charles VI. The Corsican adventurers in foreign
lands, pleading for their liberties with artless eloquence at every
court, filled Europe with enthusiasm for their cause and streamed back
to fight for their homes. A temporary peace on terms which granted all
they asked was finally arranged through the Emperor's intervention.
But the two elected chiefs, and a third patriot, Raffaelli, having
been taken prisoners by the Genoese, were ungenerously kept in
confinement, and released only at the command of Charles. Under the
same leaders, now further exasperated by their ill usage, began and
continued another agitation, this time for separation and complete
emancipation. Giafferi's chosen adjutant was a youth of good family
and excellent parts, Hyacinth Paoli. In the then existing
complications of European politics the only available helper was the
King of Spain, and to him the Corsicans now applied, but his
undertakings compelled him to refuse. Left without allies or any
earthly support, the pious Corsicans naïvely threw themselves on the
protection of the Virgin and determined more firmly than ever to
secure their independence.
In this crisis appeared at the head of a considerable following, some
hundreds in number, the notorious and curious German adventurer,
Theodore von Neuhof, who, declaring that he represented the sympathy
of the great powers for Corsica, made ready to proclaim himself as
king. As any shelter is welcome in a storm, the people accepted him,
and he was crowned on April fifteenth, 1736. But although he spoke
truthfully when he claimed to represent the sympathy of the powers, he
did not represent their strength, and was defeated again and again in
encounters with the forces of Genoa. The oligarchy had now secured an
alliance with France, which feared lest the island might fall into
more hostile and stronger hands; and before the close of the year the
short-lived monarchy ended in the disappearance of Theodore I of
Corsica from his kingdom and soon after, in spite of his heroic
exertions, from history.
The truth was that some of the nationalist leaders had not forgotten
the old patriotic leaning towards France which had existed since the
days of Sampiero, and were themselves in communication with the French
court and Cardinal Fleury. A French army landed in February, 1738, and
was defeated. An overwhelming force was then despatched and the
insurrection subsided. In the end France, though strongly tempted to
hold what she had conquered, kept her promise to Genoa and disarmed
the Corsicans; on the other hand, however, she consulted her own
interest and attempted to soothe the islanders by guaranteeing to them
national rights. Such, however, was the prevalent bitterness that many
patriots fled into exile; some, like Hyacinth Paoli, choosing the pay
of Naples for themselves and followers, others accepting the offer of
France and forming according to time-honored custom a Corsican
regiment of mercenaries which took service in the armies of the King.
Among the latter were two of some eminence, Buttafuoco and Salicetti.
The half measures of Fleury left Corsica, as he intended, ready to
fall into his hands when opportunity should be ripe. Even the
patriotic leaders were now no longer in harmony. Those in Italy were
of the old disinterested line and suspicious of their western
neighbor; the others were charged with being the more ambitious for
themselves and careless of their country's liberty. Both classes,
however, claimed to be true patriots.
During the War of the Austrian Succession it seemed for a moment as if
Corsica were to be freed by the attempt of Maria Theresa to overthrow
Genoa, then an ally of the Bourbon powers. The national party rose
again under Gaffori, the regiments of Piedmont came to their help, and
the English fleet delivered St. Florent and Bastia into their hands.
But the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) left things substantially as
they were before the war, and in 1752 a new arrangement unsatisfactory
to both parties was made with Genoa. It was virtually dictated by
Spain and France, England having been alienated by the quarrels and
petty jealousies of the Corsican leaders, and lasted only as long as
the French occupation continued. Under the leadership of the same
dauntless Gaffori who in 1740 had been chosen along with Matra to be a
chief commander, the Genoese were once more driven from the highlands
into the coast towns. At the height of his success the bold guerrilla
fell a victim to family rivalries and personal spite. Through the
influence of his despairing foes a successful conspiracy was formed
and in the autumn of 1753 he was foully murdered.
But the greatest of these national heroes was also the last--Pascal
Paoli. Fitted for his task by birth, by capacity, by superior
training, this youth was in 1755 made captain-general of the island, a
virtual dictator in his twenty-ninth year. His success was as
remarkable as his measures were wise. Elections were regulated so that
strong organization was introduced into the loose democratic
institutions which had hitherto prevented sufficient unity of action
in troubled times. An army was created from the straggling bands of
volunteers, and brigandage was suppressed. Wise laws were enacted and
enforced--among them one which made the blood-avenger a murderer,
instead of a hero as he had been. Moreover, the foundations of a
university were laid in the town of Corte, which was the hearthstone
of the liberals because it was the natural capital of the west slope,
connected by difficult and defensible paths with every cape and bay
and intervale of the rocky and broken coast. The Genoese were
gradually driven from the interior, and finally they occupied but
three harbor towns.
Through skilful diplomacy Paoli created a temporary breach between his
oppressors and the Vatican, which, though soon healed, nevertheless
enabled him to recover important domains for the state, and prevented
the Roman hierarchy from using its enormous influence over the
superstitious people utterly to crush the movement for their
emancipation. His extreme and enlightened liberalism is admirably
shown by his invitation to the Jews, with their industry and steady
habits, to settle in Corsica, and to live there in the fullest
enjoyment of civil rights, according to the traditions of their faith
and the precepts of their law. "Liberty," he said, "knows no creed.
Let us leave such distinctions to the Inquisition." Commerce, under
these influences, began to thrive. New harbors were made and
fortified, while the equipment of a few gunboats for their defense
marked the small beginnings of a fleet. The haughty men of Corsica,
changing their very nature for a season, began to labor with their
hands by the side of their wives and hired assistants; to agriculture,
industry, and the arts was given an impulse which promised to be
lasting.
The rule of Paoli was not entirely without disturbance. From time to
time there occurred rebellious outbreaks of petty factions like that
headed by Matra, a disappointed rival. But on the whole they were of
little importance. Down to 1765 the advances of the nationalists were
steady, their battles being won against enormous odds by the force of
their warlike nature, which sought honor above all things, and could,
in the words of a medieval chronicle, "endure without a murmur
watchings and pains, hunger and cold, in its pursuit--which could even
face death without a pang." Finally it became necessary, as the result
of unparalleled success in domestic affairs, that a foreign policy
should be formulated. Paoli's idea was an offensive and defensive
alliance with France on terms recognizing the independence of Corsica,
securing an exclusive commercial reciprocity between them, and
promising military service with an annual tribute from the island.
This idea of France as a protector without administrative power was
held by the majority of patriots.
But Choiseul, the minister of foreign affairs under Louis XV, would
entertain no such visionary plan. It was clear to every one that the
island could no longer be held by its old masters. He had found a
facile instrument for the measures necessary to his contemplated
seizure of it in the son of a Corsican refugee, that later notorious
Buttafuoco, who, carrying water on both shoulders, had ingratiated
himself with his father's old friends, while at the same time he had
for years been successful as a French official. Corsica was to be
seized by France as a sop to the national pride, a slight compensation
for the loss of Canada, and he was willing to be the agent. On August
sixth, 1764, was signed a provisional agreement between Genoa and
France by which the former was to cede for four years all her rights
of sovereignty, and the few places she still held in the island, in
return for the latter's intervention to thwart Paoli's plan for
securing virtual independence. At the end of the period France was to
pay Genoa the millions owed to her.
By this time the renown of Paoli had filled all Europe. As a statesman
he had skilfully used the European entanglements both of the
Bourbon-Hapsburg alliance made in 1756, and of the alliances
consequent to the Seven Years' War, for whatever possible advantage
might be secured to his people and their cause. As a general he had
found profit even in defeat, and had organized his little forces to
the highest possible efficiency, displaying prudence, fortitude, and
capacity. His personal character was blameless, and could be
fearlessly set up as a model. He was a convincing orator and a wise
legislator. Full of sympathy for his backward compatriots, he knew
their weaknesses, and could avoid the consequences, while he
recognized at the same time their virtues, and made the fullest use of
them. Above all, he had the wide horizon of a philosopher,
understanding fully the proportions and relations to each other of
epochs and peoples, not striving to uplift Corsica merely in her own
interest, but seeking to find in her regeneration a leverage to raise
the world to higher things. So gracious, so influential, so
far-seeing, so all-embracing was his nature, that Voltaire called him
"the lawgiver and the glory of his people," while Frederick the Great
dedicated to him a dagger with the inscription, "Libertas, Patria."
The shadows in his character were that he was imperious and arbitrary;
so overmastering that he trained the Corsicans to seek guidance and
protection, thus preventing them from acquiring either personal
independence or self-reliance. Awaiting at every step an impulse from
their adored leader, growing timid in the moment when decision was
imperative, they did not prove equal to their task. Without his people
Paoli was still a philosopher; without him they became in succeeding
years a byword, and fell supinely into the arms of a less noble
subjection. In this regard the comparison between him and Washington,
so often instituted, utterly breaks down.
"Corsica," wrote in 1790 a youth destined to lend even greater
interest than Paoli to that name--"Corsica has been a prey to the
ambition of her neighbors, the victim of their politics and of her own
wilfulness.... We have seen her take up arms, shake the atrocious
power of Genoa, recover her independence, live happily for an instant;
but then, pursued by an irresistible fatality, fall again into
intolerable disgrace. For twenty-four centuries these are the scenes
which recur again and again; the same changes, the same misfortune,
but also the same courage, the same resolution, the same boldness....
If she trembled for an instant before the feudal hydra, it was only
long enough to recognize and destroy it. If, led by a natural feeling,
she kissed, like a slave, the chains of Rome, she was not long in
breaking them. If, finally, she bowed her head before the Ligurian
aristocracy, if irresistible forces kept her twenty years in the
despotic grasp of Versailles, forty years of mad warfare astonished
Europe, and confounded her enemies."
The same pen wrote of Paoli that by following traditional lines he had
not only shown in the constitution he framed for Corsica a historic
intuition, but also had found "in his unparalleled activity, in his
warm, persuasive eloquence, in his adroit and far-seeing genius," a
means to guarantee it against the attacks of wicked foes.
Such was the country in whose fortunes the "age of enlightenment" was
so interested. Montesquieu had used its history to illustrate the loss
and recovery of privilege and rights; Rousseau had thought the little
isle would one day fill all Europe with amazement. When the latter was
driven into exile for his utterances, and before his flight to
England, Paoli offered him a refuge. Buttafuoco, who represented the
opinion that Corsica for its own good must be incorporated with
France, and not merely come under her protection, had a few months
previously also invited the Genevan prophet to visit the island, and
outline a constitution for its people. But the snare was spread in
vain. In the letter which with polished phrase declined the task, on
the ground of its writer's ill-health, stood the words: "I believe
that under their present leader the Corsicans have nothing to fear
from Genoa. I believe, moreover, that they have nothing to fear from
the troops which France is said to be transporting to their shores.
What confirms me in this feeling is that, in spite of the movement, so
good a patriot as you seem to be continues in the service of the
country which sends them." Paoli was of the same opinion, and remained
so until his rude awakening in 1768.
CHAPTER II.
The Bonapartes in Corsica.
The French Occupy Corsica -- Paoli Deceived -- Treaty
between France and Genoa -- English Intervention Vain --
Paoli in England -- British Problems -- Introduction of the
French Administrative System -- Paoli's Policy -- The Coming
Man -- Origin of the Bonapartes -- The Corsican Branch --
Their Nobility -- Carlo Maria di Buonaparte -- Maria Letizia
Ramolino -- Their Marriage and Naturalization as French
Subjects -- Their Fortunes -- Their Children.
[Sidenote: 1764-72.]
The preliminary occupation of Corsica by the French was ostensibly
formal. The process was continued, however, until the formality became
a reality, until the fortifications of the seaport towns ceded by
Genoa were filled with troops. Then, for the first time, the text of
the convention between the two powers was communicated to Paoli.
Choiseul explained through his agent that by its first section the
King guaranteed the safety and liberty of the Corsican nation. But, no
doubt, he forgot to explain the double dealing in the second section.
Thereby in the Italian form the Corsicans were in return to take "all
right and proper measures dictated by their sense of justice and
natural moderation to secure the glory and interest of the republic of
Genoa," while in the French form they were "to yield to the Genoese
all 'they' thought necessary to the glory and interests of their
republic." Who were the "they"?--the Corsicans or the Genoese? Paoli's
eye was fixed on the acknowledgment of Corsican independence; he was
hoodwinked completely as to the treachery in this second section, the
meaning of which, according to diplomatic usage, was settled by the
interpretation which the language employed for one form put upon that
in which the other was written. Combining the two translations,
Italian and French, of the second section, and interpreting one by the
other, the Genoese were still the arbiters of Corsican conduct and the
promise of liberty contained in the first section was worthless.
Four years passed: apparently they were uneventful, but in reality
Choiseul made good use of his time. Through Buttafuoco he was in
regular communication with that minority among the Corsicans which
desired incorporation. By the skilful manipulation of private feuds,
and the unstinted use of money, this minority was before long turned
into a majority. Toward the close of 1767 Choiseul began to show his
hand by demanding absolute possession for France of at least two
strong towns. Paoli replied that the demand was unexpected, and
required consideration by the people; the answer was that the King of
France could not be expected to mingle in Corsican affairs without
some advantage for himself. To gain time, Paoli chose Buttafuoco as
his plenipotentiary, despatched him to Versailles, and thus fell into
the very trap so carefully set for him by his opponent. He consented
as a compromise that Corsica should join the Bourbon-Hapsburg league.
More he could not grant for love of his wild, free Corsicans, and he
cherished the secret conviction that, Genoa being no longer able to
assert her sovereignty, France would never allow another power to
intervene, and so, for the sake of peace, might accept this solution.
But the great French minister was a master of diplomacy and would not
yield. In his designs upon Corsica he had little to fear from European
opposition. He knew how hampered England was by the strength of
parliamentary opposition, and the unrest of her American colonies. The
Sardinian monarchy was still weak, and quailed under the jealous eyes
of her strong enemies. Austria could not act without breaking the
league so essential to her welfare, while the Bourbon courts of Spain
and Naples would regard the family aggrandizement with complacency.
Moreover, something must be done to save the prestige of France: her
American colonial empire was lost; Catherine's brilliant policy, and
the subsequent victories of Russia in the Orient, were threatening
what remained of French influence in that quarter. Here was a
propitious moment to emulate once more the English: to seize a station
on the Indian highroad as valuable as Gibraltar or Port Mahon, and to
raise high hopes of again recovering, if not the colonial supremacy
among nations, at least that equality which the Seven Years' War had
destroyed. Without loss of time, therefore, the negotiations were
ended, and Buttafuoco was dismissed. On May fifteenth, 1768, the price
to be paid having been fixed, a definitive treaty with Genoa was
signed whereby she yielded the exercise of sovereignty to France, and
Corsica passed finally from her hands. Paoli appealed to the great
powers against this arbitrary transfer, but in vain.
The campaign of subjugation opened at once, Buttafuoco, with a few
other Corsicans, taking service against his kinsfolk. The soldiers of
the Royal Corsican regiment, which was in the French service, and
which had been formed under his father's influence, flatly refused to
fight their brethren. The French troops already in the island were at
once reinforced, but during the first year of the final conflict the
advantage was all with the patriots; indeed, there was one substantial
victory on October seventh, 1768, that of Borgo, which caused dismay
at Versailles. Once more Paoli hoped for intervention, especially that
of England, whose liberal feeling would coincide with his interest in
keeping Corsica from France. Money and arms were sent from Great
Britain, but that was all. This conduct of the British ministry was
afterward recalled by France as a precedent for rendering aid to the
Americans in their uprising against England.
The following spring an army of no less than twenty thousand men was
despatched from France to make short and thorough work of the
conquest. The previous year of bloody and embittered conflict had gone
far to disorganize the patriot army. It was only with the utmost
difficulty that the little bands of mountain villagers could be
tempted away from the ever more necessary defense of their homes and
firesides. Yet in spite of disintegration before such overwhelming
odds, and though in want both of ordinary munitions and of the very
necessities of life, the forces of Paoli continued a fierce and heroic
resistance. It was only after months of devastating, heartrending,
hopeless warfare, that their leader, utterly routed in the affair
known as the battle of Ponte Nuovo, finally gave up the desperate
cause. Exhausted, and without resources, he would have been an easy
prey to the French; but they were too wise to take him prisoner. On
June thirteenth, 1769, by their connivance he escaped, with three
hundred and forty of his most devoted supporters, on two English
vessels, to the mainland. His goal was England. The journey was a
long, triumphant procession from Leghorn through Germany and Holland;
the honors showered on him by the liberals in the towns through which
he passed were such as are generally paid to victory, not to defeat.
Kindly received and entertained, he lived for the next thirty years in
London, the recipient from the government of twelve hundred pounds a
year as a pension.
The year 1770 saw the King of France apparently in peaceful possession
of that Corsican sovereignty which he claimed to have bought from
Genoa. His administration was soon and easily inaugurated, and there
was nowhere any interference from foreign powers. Philanthropic
England had provided for Paoli, but would do no more, for she was busy
at home with a transformation of her parties. The old Whig party was
disintegrating; the new Toryism was steadily asserting itself in the
passage of contemptuous measures for oppressing the American colonies.
She was, moreover, soon to be so absorbed in her great struggle on
both sides of the globe that interest in Corsica and the Mediterranean
must remain for a long time in abeyance.
But the establishment of a French administration in the King's new
acquisition did not proceed smoothly. The party favorable to
incorporation with France had grown, and, in the rush to side with
success, it now probably far outnumbered that of the old patriots. At
the outset this majority faithfully supported the conquerors in an
attempt, honorable to both, to retain as much of Paoli's system as
possible. But the appointment of an intendant and a military commander
acting as royal governor with a veto over legislation was essential.
This of necessity destroyed the old democracy, for, in any case, the
existence of such officials and the social functions of such offices
must create a quasi-aristocracy, and its power would rest not on
popular habit and good-will, but on the French soldiery. The situation
was frankly recognized, therefore, in a complete reorganization of
those descended from the old nobility, and from these a council of
twelve was selected to support and countenance the governor. The
clergy and the third estate were likewise formally organized in two
other orders, so that with clergy, nobles, and commons, Corsica became
a French _pays d'état_, another provincial anachronism in the chaos of
royal administration. The class bitterness of the mainland could
easily be and was transplanted to the island; the ultimate success of
the process left nothing to be desired. Moreover, the most important
offices were given into French hands, while the seat of government was
moved from Corte, the highland capital, to the lowland towns of Bastia
and Ajaccio. The primeval feud of highlanders and lowlanders was thus
rekindled, and in the subsequent agitations the patriots won over by
France either lost influence with their followers, or ceased to
support the government. Old animosities were everywhere revived and
strengthened, until finally the flames burst forth in open rebellion.
They were, of course, suppressed, but the work was done with a savage
thoroughness the memory of which long survived to prevent the
formation in the island of a natural sentiment friendly to the French.
Those who professed such a feeling were held in no great esteem.
It was perhaps an error that Paoli did not recognize the indissoluble
bonds of race and speech as powerfully drawing Corsica to Italy,
disregard the leanings of the democratic mountaineers toward France,
sympathize with the fondness of the towns for the motherland, and so
use his influence as to confirm the natural alliance between the
insular Italians and those of the peninsula. When we regard Sardinia,
however, time seems to have justified him. There is little to choose
between the sister islands as regards the backward condition of both;
but the French department of Corsica is, at least, no less advanced
than the Italian province of Sardinia. The final amalgamation of
Paoli's country with France, which was in a measure the result of his
leaning toward a French protectorate, accomplished one end, however,
which has rendered it impossible to separate her from the course of
great events, from the number of the mighty agents in history.
Curiously longing in his exile for a second Sampiero to have wielded
the physical power while he himself should have become a Lycurgus,
Paoli's wish was to be half-way fulfilled in that a warrior greater
than Sampiero was about to be born in Corsica, one who should, by the
very union so long resisted, come, as the master of France, to wield a
power strong enough to shatter both tyrannies and dynasties, thus
clearing the ground for a lawgiving closely related to Paoli's own
just and wise conceptions of legislation.
The coming man was to be a typical Corsican, moreover. Born in the
agony of his fatherland, he was to combine all the important qualities
of his folk in himself. Like them, he was to be short, with wonderful
eyes and beautiful teeth; temperate; quietly, even meanly, clad;
generous, grateful for any favor, however small; masterful,
courageous, impassive, shrewd, resolute, fluent of speech; profoundly
religious, even superstitious; hot-tempered, inscrutable, mendacious,
revengeful sometimes and ofttimes forgiving, disdainful of woman and
her charms; above all, boastful, conceited, and with a passion for
glory. His pride and his imagination were to be barbaric in their
immensity, his clannishness was to be that of the most primitive
civilization. In all these points he was to be Corsican; other
characteristics he was to acquire from the land of his adoption
through an education French both in affairs and in books; but he was
after all Corsican from the womb to the grave; that in the first
degree, and only secondarily French, while his cosmopolitan disguise
was to be scarcely more than a mask to be raised or lowered at
pleasure.
This scion was to come from the stock which at first bore the name of
Bonaparte, or, as the heraldic etymology later spelled it, Buonaparte.
There were branches of the same stock, or, at least, of the same name,
in other parts of Italy. Three towns at least claimed to be the seat
of a family with this patronymic: and one of them, Treviso, possessed
papers to prove the claim. Although other members of his family based
absurd pretensions of princely origin on these insufficient proofs,
Napoleon himself was little impressed by them. He was disposed to
declare that his ancestry began in his own person, either at Toulon or
from the eighteenth of Brumaire. Whatever the origin of the Corsican
Buonapartes, it was neither royal from the twin brother of Louis XIV,
thought to be the Iron Mask; nor imperial from the Julian gens, nor
Greek, nor Saracen, nor, in short, anything which later-invented and
lying genealogies declared it to be. But it was almost certainly
Italian, and probably patrician, for in 1780 a Tuscan gentleman of the
name devised a scanty estate to his distant Corsican kinsman. The
earliest home of the family was Florence; later they removed for
political reasons to Sarzana, in Tuscany, where for generations men of
that name exercised the profession of advocate. The line was
extinguished in 1799 by the death of Philip Buonaparte, a canon and a
man of means, who, although he had recognized his kin in Corsica to
the extent of interchanging hospitalities, nevertheless devised his
estate to a relative named Buonacorsi.
The Corsican branch were persons of some local consequence in their
latest seats, partly because of their Italian connections, partly in
their substantial possessions of land, and partly through the official
positions which they held in the city of Ajaccio. Their sympathies as
lowlanders and townspeople were with the country of their origin and
with Genoa. During the last years of the sixteenth century that
republic authorized a Jerome, then head of the family, to prefix the
distinguishing particle "di" to his name; but the Italian custom was
averse to its use, which was not revived until later, and then only
for a short time. Nine generations are recorded as having lived on
Corsican soil within two centuries and a quarter. They were evidently
men of consideration, for they intermarried with the best families of
the island; Ornano, Costa, Bozzi, and Colonna are names occurring in
their family records.
Nearly two centuries passed before the grand duke of Tuscany issued
formal patents in 1757, attesting the Buonaparte nobility. It was
Joseph, the grandsire of Napoleon, who received them. Soon afterward
he announced that the coat-armor of the family was "_la couronne de
compte, l'écusson fendu par deux barres et deux étoilles, avec les
lettres B. P. qui signifient Buona Parte, le fond des armes
rougeâtres, les barres et les étoilles bleu, les ombrements et la
couronne jaune!_" Translated as literally as such doubtful language
and construction can be, this signifies: "A count's coronet, the
escutcheon with two bends sinister and two stars, bearing the letters
B. P., which signify Buonaparte, the field of the arms red, the bends
and stars blue, the letters and coronet yellow!" In heraldic parlance
this would be: Gules, two bends sinister between two estoiles azure
charged with B. P. for Buona Parte, or; surmounted by a count's
coronet of the last. In 1759 the same sovereign granted further the
title of patrician. Charles, the son of Joseph, received a similar
grant from the Archbishop of Pisa in 1769. These facts have a
substantial historical value, since by reason of them the family was
duly and justly recognized as noble in 1771 by the French authorities,
and as a consequence, eight years later, the most illustrious scion
of the stem became, as a recognized aristocrat, the ward of a France
which was still monarchical. Reading between the lines of such a
narrative, it appears as if the short-lived family of Corsican lawyers
had some difficulty in preserving an influence proportionate to their
descent, and therefore sought to draw all the strength they could from
a bygone grandeur, easily forgotten by their neighbors in their
moderate circumstances at a later day. Still later, when all ci-devant
aristocrats were suspects in France, and when the taint of nobility
sufficed to destroy those on whom it rested, Napoleon denied his
quality: the usual inquest as to veracity was not made and he went
free. This escape he owed partly to the station he had reached, partly
to the fact that his family claims had been based on birth so obscure
at the time as to subject the claimants to good-natured raillery.
No task had lain nearer to Paoli's heart than to unite in one nation
the two factions into which he found his people divided. Accordingly,
when Carlo Maria di Buonaparte, the single stem on which the
consequential lowland family depended for continuance, appeared at
Corte to pursue his studies, the stranger was received with flattering
kindness, and probably, as one account has it, was appointed to a post
of emolument and honor as Paoli's private secretary. The new
patrician, according to a custom common among Corsicans of his class,
determined to take his degree at Pisa, and in November, 1769, he was
made doctor of laws by that university. Many pleasant and probably
true anecdotes have been told to illustrate the good-fellowship of the
young advocate among his comrades while a student. There are likewise
narratives of his persuasive eloquence and of his influence as a
patriot, but these sound mythical. In short, an organized effort of
sycophantic admirers, who would, if possible, illuminate the whole
family in order to heighten Napoleon's renown, has invented fables and
distorted facts to such a degree that the entire truth as to Charles's
character is hard to discern. Certain undisputed facts, however, throw
a strong light upon Napoleon's father. His people were proud and poor;
he endured the hardships of poverty with equanimity. Strengthening
what little influence he could muster, he at first appears ambitious,
and has himself described in his doctor's diploma as a patrician of
Florence, San Miniato, and Ajaccio. His character is little known
except by the statements of his own family. They declared that he was
a spendthrift. He spent two years' income, about twelve hundred
dollars, in celebrating with friends the taking of his degree. He
would have sold not only the heavily mortgaged estates inherited by
himself, but also those of his wife, except for the fierce
remonstrances of his heirs. He could write clever verse, he was a
devotee of belles-lettres, and a sceptic in the fashion of the time.
Self-indulgent, he was likewise bitterly opposed to all family
discipline. His figure was slight and lithe, his expression alert and
intelligent, his eyes gray blue and his head large. He was ambitious,
indefatigable as a place-hunter, suave, elegant, and irrepressible.
On the other hand, with no apparent regard for his personal
advancement by marriage, he followed his own inclination, and in 1764,
at the age of eighteen, gallantly wedded a beautiful child of fifteen,
Maria Letizia Ramolino. Her descent, though excellent and, remotely,
even noble, was inferior to that of her husband, but her fortune was
equal, if not superior, to his. Her father was a Genoese official of
importance; her mother, daughter of a petty noble by a peasant wife,
became a widow in 1755 and two years later was married again to
Francis Fesch, a Swiss, captain in the Genoese navy. Of this union,
Joseph, later Cardinal Fesch, was the child. Although well born, the
mother of Napoleon had no education and was of peasant nature to the
last day of her long life--hardy, unsentimental, frugal, avaricious,
and sometimes unscrupulous. Yet for all that, the hospitality of her
little home in Ajaccio was lavish and famous. Among the many guests
who were regularly entertained there was Marbeuf, commander in Corsica
of the first army of occupation. There was long afterward a malicious
tradition that the French general was Napoleon's father. The morals of
Letizia di Buonaparte, like those of her conspicuous children, have
been bitterly assailed, but her good name, at least, has always been
vindicated. The evident motive of the story sufficiently refutes such
an aspersion as it contains. Of the bride's extraordinary beauty there
has never been a doubt. She was a woman of heroic mold, like Juno in
her majesty; unmoved in prosperity, undaunted in adversity. It was
probably to his mother, whom he strongly resembled in childhood, that
the famous son owed his tremendous and unparalleled physical
endurance.
After their marriage the youthful pair resided in Corte, waiting until
events should permit their return to Ajaccio. Naturally of an indolent
temperament, the husband, though he had at first been drawn into the
daring enterprises of Paoli, and had displayed a momentary enthusiasm,
was now, as he had been for more than a year, weary of them. At the
head of a body of men of his own rank, he finally withdrew to Monte
Rotondo, and on May twenty-third, 1769, a few weeks before Paoli's
flight, the band made formal submission to Vaux, commander of the
second army of occupation, explaining through Buonaparte that the
national leader had misled them by promises of aid which never came,
and that, recognizing the impossibility of further resistance, they
were anxious to accept the new government, to return to their homes,
and to resume the peaceful conduct of their affairs. This at least is
the generally accepted account of his desertion of Paoli's cause:
there is some evidence that having followed Clement, a brother of
Pascal, into a remoter district, he had there found no support for the
enterprise, and had thence under great hardships of flood and field
made his way with wife and child to the French headquarters. The
result was the same in either case. It was the precipitate
naturalization of the father as a French subject which made his great
son a Frenchman. Less than three months afterward, on August
fifteenth, the fourth child, Napoleone di Buonaparte, was born in
Ajaccio, the seat of French influence.
The resources of the Buonapartes, as they still wrote themselves, were
small, although their family and expectations were large. Charles
himself was the owner of a considerable estate in houses and lands,
but everything was heavily mortgaged and his income was small. He had
further inherited a troublesome law plea, the prosecution of which was
expensive. By an entail in trust of a great-great-grandfather,
important lands were entailed in the male line of the Odone family. In
default of regular descent, the estate was vested in the female line,
and should, when Charles's maternal uncle died childless, have
reverted to his mother. But the uncle had made a will bequeathing his
property to the Jesuits, who swiftly took possession and had
maintained their ownership by occupation and by legal quibbles.
Joseph, the father of Charles, had wasted many years and most of his
fortune in weary litigation. Nothing daunted, Charles settled down to
pursue the same phantom, virtually depending for a livelihood on the
patrimony of his wife. Letitia Buonaparte, being an only child, had
fallen heir to her father's property on the second marriage of her
mother. The stepfather was an excellent Swiss, a Protestant from
Basel, thoroughly educated, and interested in education, and for years
a mercenary in the Genoese service. On his retirement he became a
Roman Catholic in order to secure the woman of his choice. He was the
father of Letitia's half brother, Joseph. The retired officer, though
kindly disposed to the family he had entered, had little but his
pension and savings: he could contribute nothing but good, sound
common sense and his homely ideas of education. The real head of the
family was the uncle of Charles, Lucien Buonaparte, archdeacon of the
cathedral. It was he who had supported and guided his nephew, and had
sent him to the college founded by Paoli at Corte. In his youth
Charles was wasteful and extravagant, but his wife was thrifty to
meanness. With the restraint of her economy and the stimulus of his
uncle, respected as head of the family, the father of Napoleon arrived
at a position of some importance. He practised his profession with
some diligence, became an assessor of the highest insular court, and
in 1772 was made a member, later a deputy, of the council of Corsican
nobles.
The sturdy mother was most prolific. Her eldest child, born in 1765,
was a son who died in infancy; in 1767 was born a daughter,
Maria-Anna, destined to the same fate; in 1768 a son, known later as
Joseph, but baptized as Nabulione; in 1769 the great son, Napoleone.
Nine other children were the fruit of the same wedlock, and six of
them--three sons, Lucien, Louis, and Jerome, and three daughters,
Elisa, Pauline, and Caroline--survived to share their brother's
greatness. Charles himself, like his short-lived ancestors,--of whom
five had died within a century,--scarcely reached middle age, dying in
his thirty-ninth year. Letitia, like the stout Corsican that she was,
lived to the ripe age of eighty-six in the full enjoyment of her
faculties, known to the world as Madame Mère, a sobriquet devised by
her great son to distinguish her as the mother of the Napoleons.
CHAPTER III.
Napoleon's Birth and Childhood[1].
[Footnote 1: The indispensable authority for the youth
of Napoleon is the collection of his own papers edited,
not always judiciously, by Frédéric Masson and published
by him in coöperation with G. Biagi under the title
Napoléon inconnu. The originals are now in the
Laurentian Library at Florence. They were intrusted by
the Emperor to Cardinal Fesch as a safe depositary,
probably in the hope that they would eventually be
destroyed. What the cardinal actually did with them
remains obscure. Some time early in the nineteenth
century they came into possession of a certain Libri,
one of the French government library inspectors, an
unscrupulous collector and dealer. From them he
excerpted enough matter for an article which, before his
disgrace, was published in an early number of the Revue
des Deux Mondes, but in the publication there was no
statement of authority and the article was forgotten,
important as it was. The originals were not found or
known until in the sale catalogue of Lord Ashburnham's
library appeared a lot entitled merely Napoleon Papers.
This fact was brought to the author's attention by a
friend, and when after a smart competition between
agents of the French and Italian governments the
manuscripts were deposited at Florence, he sought
permission immediately to examine and study them. This
was promptly granted, they proved to be the lost Fesch
papers, and for the first time it was possible to obtain
a clear account of Napoleon's early years. The standard
authorities hitherto had been the works of Nasica,
Coston, and Jung: while they still have a certain value,
it is slight in view of the reliable deductions to be
drawn from the original boy papers of Napoleon
Bonaparte. Later on and after the publication of the
corresponding portion of this Life, they were edited,
printed, and published. In the main there is no room for
difference with the transcript of M. Masson, but in some
places where the writing is uncommonly bad the author's
own transcript presents the facts as stated in these
pages. Within a few years M. Chuquet has summed up
admirably all our authentic knowledge of the subject--in
a book entitled: La jeunesse de Napoléon. His own
researches have brought to light some further valuable
material. I have not hesitated in this revision to make
the freest use of the latest authorities, but it is a
gratification that no substantial changes, except by way
of slight additions, have been found necessary.]
Birth of Nabulione or Joseph -- Date of Napoleon's Birth --
Coincidence with the Festival of the Assumption -- The Name
of Napoleon -- Corsican Conditions as Influencing Napoleon's
Character -- His Early Education -- Childish Traits --
Influenced by Traditions Concerning Paoli -- Family
Prospects -- Influence of Marbeuf -- Upheavals in France --
Napoleon Appointed to a Scholarship -- His Efforts to Learn
French at Autun -- Development of His Character -- His
Father Delegate of the Corsican Nobility at Versailles.
[Sidenote: 1768-79.]
The trials of poverty made the Buonapartes so clever and adroit that
suspicions of shiftiness in small matters were developed later on, and
these led to an over-close scrutiny of their acts. The opinion has
not yet disappeared among reputable authorities that Nabulione and
Napoleone were one and the same, born on January seventh, 1768, Joseph
being really the younger, born on the date assigned to his
distinguished brother. The earliest documentary evidence consists of
two papers, one in the archives of the French war department, one in
those of Ajaccio. The former is dated 1782, and testifies to the birth
of Nabulione on January seventh, 1768, and to his baptism on January
eighth; the latter is the copy, not the original, of a government
contract which declares the birth, on January seventh, of Joseph
Nabulion. Neither is decisive, but the addition of Joseph, with the
use of the two French forms for the name in the second, with the clear
intent of emphasizing his quality as a Frenchman, destroys much of its
value, and leaves the weight of authority with the former. The
reasonableness of the suspicion seems to be heightened by the fact
that the certificate of Napoleon's marriage gives the date of his
birth as February eighth, 1768. Moreover, in the marriage contract of
Joseph, witnesses testify to his having been born at Ajaccio, not at
Corte.
But there are facts of greater weight on the other side. In the first
place, the documentary evidence is itself of equal value, for the
archives of the French war department also contain an extract from the
one original baptismal certificate, which is dated July twenty-first,
1771, the day of the baptism, and gives the date of Napoleone's birth
as August fifteenth, 1769. Charles's application for the appointment
of his two eldest boys to Brienne has also been found, and it
contains, according to regulation, still another copy from the
original certificate, which is dated June twenty-third, 1776, and also
gives what must be accepted as the correct date. This explodes the
story that Napoleon's age was falsified by his father in order to
obtain admittance for him to the military school. The application was
made in 1776 for both boys, so as to secure admission for each before
the end of his tenth year. It was the delay of the authorities in
granting the request which, after the lapse of three years or more,
made Joseph ineligible. The father could have had no motive in 1776 to
perpetrate a fraud, and after that date it was impossible, for the
papers were not in his hands; moreover, the minister of war wrote in
1778 that the name of the elder Buonaparte boy had already been
withdrawn. That charge was made during Napoleon's lifetime. His
brother Joseph positively denied it, and asserted the fact as it is
now substantially proved to be; Bourrienne, who had known his Emperor
as a child of nine, was of like opinion; Napoleon himself, in an
autograph paper still existing, and written in the handwriting of his
youth, thrice gives the date of his birth as August fifteenth, 1769.
If the substitution occurred, it must have been in early infancy.
Besides, we know why Napoleon at marriage sought to appear older than
he was, and Joseph's contract was written when the misstatement in it
was valuable as making him appear thoroughly French.
Among other absurd efforts to besmirch Napoleon's character is the
oft-repeated insinuation that he fixed his birthday on the greatest
high festival of the Roman Church, that of the Assumption of the
Virgin Mary, in order to assure its perpetual celebration! In sober
fact the researches of indefatigable antiquaries have brought to light
not only the documentary evidence referred to, but likewise the
circumstance that Napoleon, in one paper spelled Lapulion, was a not
uncommon Corsican name borne by several distinguished men, and that in
the early generation of the Buonaparte family the boys had been named
Joseph, Napoleon, and Lucien as they followed one another into the
world. In the eighteenth century spelling was scarcely more fixed than
in the sixteenth. Nor in the walk of life to which the Buonapartes
belonged was the fixity of names as rigid then as it later became.
There were three Maria-Annas in the family first and last, one of whom
was afterward called Elisa.
As to the form of the name Napoleon, there is a curious though
unimportant confusion. We have already seen the forms Nabulione,
Nabulion, Napoleone, Napoleon. Contemporary documents give also the
form Napoloeone, and his marriage certificate uses Napolione. On the
Vendôme Column stands Napolio. Imp., which might be read either
Napolioni Imperatori or Napolio Imperatori. In either case we have
indications of a new form, Napolion or Napolius. The latter, which was
more probably intended, would seem to be an attempt to recall
Neopolus, a recognized saint's name. The absence of the name Napoleon
from the calendar of the Latin Church was considered a serious
reproach to its bearer by those who hated him, and their incessant
taunts stung him. In youth his constant retort was that there were
many saints and only three hundred and sixty-five days in the year. In
after years he had the matter remedied, and the French Catholics for a
time celebrated a St. Napoleon's day with proper ceremonies, among
which was the singing of a hymn composed to celebrate the power and
virtues of the holy man for whom it was named. The irreverent
school-boys of Autun and Brienne gave the nickname "straw
nose"--_paille-au-nez_--to both the brothers. The pronunciation,
therefore, was probably as uncertain as the form, Napaille-au-nez
being probably a distortion of Napouilloné. The chameleon-like
character of the name corresponds exactly to the chameleon-like
character of the times, the man, and the lands of his birth and of his
adoption. The Corsican noble and French royalist was Napoleone de
Buonaparté; the Corsican republican and patriot was Napoléone
Buonaparté; the French republican, Napoléon Buonaparte; the victorious
general, Bonaparte; the emperor, Napoléon. There was likewise a change
in this person's handwriting analogous to the change in his
nationality and opinions. It was probably to conceal a most defective
knowledge of French that the adoptive Frenchman, as republican,
consul, and emperor, abandoned the fairly legible hand of his youth,
and recurred to the atrocious one of his childhood, continuing always
to use it after his definite choice of a country.
Stormy indeed were his nation and his birthtime. He himself said: "I
was born while my country was dying. Thirty thousand French, vomited
on our shores, drowning the throne of liberty in waves of blood--such
was the horrid sight which first met my view. The cries of the dying,
the groans of the oppressed, tears of despair, surrounded my cradle at
my birth."
These were the words he used in 1789, while still a Corsican in
feeling, when addressing Paoli. They strain chronology for the sake of
rhetorical effect, but they truthfully picture the circumstances under
which he was conceived. Among many others of a similar character there
is a late myth which recalls in detail that when the pains of
parturition seized his mother she was at mass, and that she reached
her chamber just in time to deposit, on a carpet or a piece of
embroidery representing the young Achilles, the prodigy bursting so
impetuously into the world. By the man himself his nature was always
represented as the product of his hour, and this he considered a
sufficient excuse for any line of conduct he chose to follow. When in
banishment at Longwood, and on his death-bed, he recalled the
circumstances of his childhood in conversations with the attendant
physician, a Corsican like himself. "Nothing awed me; I feared no one.
I struck one, I scratched another, I was a terror to everybody. It was
my brother Joseph with whom I had most to do; he was beaten, bitten,
scolded, and I had put the blame on him almost before he knew what he
was about; was telling tales about him almost before he could collect
his wits. I had to be quick: my mama Letizia would have restrained my
warlike temper; she would not have put up with my defiant petulance.
Her tenderness was severe, meting out punishment and reward with equal
justice; merit and demerit, she took both into account."
Of his earliest education he said at the same time: "Like everything
else in Corsica, it was pitiful." Lucien Buonaparte, his great-uncle,
was a canon, a man of substance with an income of five thousand livres
a year, and of some education--sufficient, at least, to permit his
further ecclesiastical advancement. "Uncle" Fesch, whose father had
received the good education of a Protestant Swiss boy, and had in turn
imparted his knowledge to his own son, was the friend and older
playmate of the turbulent little Buonaparte. The child learned a few
notions of Bible history, and, doubtless, also the catechism, from the
canon; by his eleven-year-old uncle he was taught his alphabet. In his
sixth year he was sent to a dame's school. The boys teased him because
his stockings were always down over his shoes, and for his devotion to
the girls, one named Giacominetta especially. He met their taunts with
blows, using sticks, bricks, or any handy weapon.
According to his own story, he was fearless in the face of superior
numbers, however large. His mother, according to his brother Joseph,
declared that he was a perfect imp of a child. She herself described
him as fond of playing at war with a drum, wooden sword, and files of
toy soldiers. The pious nuns who taught him recognized a certain gift
for figures in styling him their little mathematician. Later when in
attendance at the Jesuit school he regularly encountered on his way
thither a soldier with whom he exchanged his own piece of white bread
for a morsel of the other's coarse commissary loaf. The excuse he
gave, according to his mother, was that he must learn to like such
food if he were to be a soldier. In time his passion for the simple
mathematics he studied increased to such a degree that she assigned
him a rough shed in the rear of their home as a refuge from the
disturbing noise of the family. For exercise he walked the streets at
nightfall with tumbled hair and disordered clothes. Of French he knew
not a word; he had lessons at school in his mother tongue, which he
learned to read under the instruction of the Abbé Recco. The worthy
teacher arrayed his boys in two bodies: the diligent under the
victorious standard of Rome, the idle as vanquished Carthaginians.
Napoleon of right belonged to the latter, but he was transferred, not
because of merit, by the sheer force of his imperious temper.
This scanty information is all the trustworthy knowledge we possess
concerning the little Napoleon up to his tenth year. With slight
additions from other sources it is substantially the great Napoleon's
own account of himself by the mouthpiece partly of his mother in his
prosperous days, partly of Antommarchi in that last period of
self-examination when, to him, as to other men, consistency seems the
highest virtue. He was, doubtless, striving to compound with his
conscience by emphasizing the adage that the child is father to the
man--that he was born what he had always been.
In 1775, Corsica had been for six years in the possession of France,
and on the surface all was fair. There was, however, a little remnant
of faithful patriots left in the island, with whom Paoli and his
banished friends were still in communication. The royal cabinet,
seeking to remove every possible danger of disturbance, even so slight
a one as lay in the disaffection of the few scattered nationalists,
and in the unconcealed distrust which these felt for their conforming
fellow-citizens, began a little later to make advances, in order, if
possible, to win at least Paoli's neutrality, if not his acquiescence.
All in vain: the exile was not to be moved. From time to time,
therefore, there was throughout Corsica a noticeable flow in the tide
of patriotism. There are indications that the child Napoleon was
conscious of this influence, listening probably with intense interest
to the sympathetic tales about Paoli and his struggles for liberty
which were still told among the people.
As to Charles de Buonaparte, some things he had hoped for from
annexation were secured. His nobility and official rank were safe; he
was in a fair way to reach even higher distinction. But what were
honors without wealth? The domestic means were constantly growing
smaller, while expenditures increased with the accumulating dignities
and ever-growing family. He had made his humble submission to the
French; his reception had been warm and graceful. The authorities knew
of his pretensions to the estates of his ancestors. The Jesuits had
been disgraced and banished, but the much litigated Odone property had
not been restored to him; on the contrary, the buildings had been
converted into school-houses, and the revenues turned into various
channels. Years had passed, and it was evident that his suit was
hopeless. How could substantial advantage be secured from the King?
His friends, General Marbeuf in particular, were of the opinion that
he could profit to a certain extent at least by securing for his
children an education at the expense of the state. While it is likely
that from the first Joseph was destined for the priesthood, yet there
was provision for ecclesiastical training under royal patronage as
well as for secular, and a transfer from the latter to the former was
easier than the reverse. Both were to be placed at the college of
Autun for a preliminary course, whatever their eventual destination
might be. The necessary steps were soon taken, and in 1776 the formal
supplication for the two eldest boys was forwarded to Paris.
Immediately the proof of four noble descents was demanded. The
movement of letters was slow, that of officials even slower, and the
delays in securing copies and authentications of the various documents
were long and vexatious.
Meantime Choiseul had been disgraced, and on May tenth, 1774, the old
King had died; Louis XVI now reigned. The inertia which marked the
brilliant decadence of the Bourbon monarchy was finally overcome. The
new social forces were partly emancipated. Facts were examined, and
their significance considered. Bankruptcy was no longer a threatening
phantom, but a menacing reality of the most serious nature.
Retrenchment and reform were the order of the day. Necker was trying
his promising schemes. There was, among them, one for a body
consisting of delegates from each of the three estates,--nobles,
ecclesiastics, and burgesses,--to assist in deciding that troublesome
question, the regulation of imposts. The Swiss financier hoped to
destroy in this way the sullen, defiant influence of the royal
intendants. In Corsica the governor and the intendant both thought
themselves too shrewd to be trapped, and secured the appointment from
each of the Corsican estates of men who were believed by them to be
their humble servants. The needy suitor, Charles de Buonaparte, was to
be the delegate at Versailles of the nobility. They thought they knew
this man in particular, but he was to prove as malleable in France as
he had been in Corsica.
Though nearly penniless, the noble deputy, with the vanity of the born
courtier, was flattered, and accepted the mission, setting out on
December fifteenth, 1778, by way of Italy with his two sons Joseph and
Napoleon. With them were Joseph Fesch, appointed to the seminary at
Aix, and Varesa, Letitia's cousin, who was to be sub-deacon at Autun.
Joseph and Napoleon both asserted in later life that during their
sojourn in Florence the grand duke gave his friend, their father, a
letter to his royal sister, Marie Antoinette. As the grand duke was at
that time in Vienna, the whole account they give of the journey is
probably, though perhaps not intentionally, untrue. It was not to the
Queen's intercession but to Marbeuf's powerful influence that the
final partial success of Charles de Buonaparte's supplication was due.
This is clearly proven by the evidence of the archives. To the
general's nephew, bishop of Autun, Joseph, now too old to be received
in a royal military school, and later Lucien, were both sent, the
former to be educated as a priest. It was probably Marbeuf's influence
also, combined with a desire to conciliate Corsica, which caused the
herald's office finally to accept the documents attesting the
Buonapartes' nobility.
It appears that the journey from Corsica through Florence and
Marseilles had already wrought a marvelous change in the boy.
Napoleon's teacher at Autun, the Abbé Chardon, described his pupil as
having brought with him a sober, thoughtful character. He played with
no one, and took his walks alone. In all respects he excelled his
brother Joseph. The boys of Autun, says the same authority, on one
occasion brought the sweeping charge of cowardice against all
inhabitants of Corsica, in order to exasperate him. "If they [the
French] had been but four to one," was the calm, phlegmatic answer of
the ten-year-old boy, "they would never have taken Corsica; but when
they were ten to one...." "But you had a fine general--Paoli,"
interrupted the narrator. "Yes, sir," was the reply, uttered with an
air of discontent, and in the very embodiment of ambition; "I should
much like to emulate him." The description of the untamed faun as he
then appeared is not flattering: his complexion sallow, his hair
stiff, his figure slight, his expression lusterless, his manner
insignificant. Moreover, his behavior was sullen, and at first, of
course, he spoke broken French with an Italian accent. Open-mouthed
and with sparkling eyes, however, he listened attentively to the first
rehearsal of his task; repetition he heartily disliked, and when
rebuked for inattention he coldly replied: "Sir, I know that already."
On April twenty-first, 1779, Napoleon, according to the evidence of
his personal memorandum, left Autun, having been admitted to Brienne,
and it was to Marbeuf that in later life he correctly attributed his
appointment. After spending three weeks with a school friend, the
little fellow entered upon his duties about the middle of May.
On New Year's day, 1779, the Buonapartes had arrived at Autun, and for
nearly four months the young Napoleone had been trained in the use of
French. He learned to speak fluently, though not correctly, and wrote
short themes in a way to satisfy his teacher. Prodigy as he was later
declared to have been, his real progress was slow, the difficulties of
that elegant and polished tongue having scarcely been reached; so that
it was with a most imperfect knowledge of their language, and a sadly
defective pronunciation, that he made his appearance among his future
schoolmates. Having, we may suppose, been assigned to the first
vacancy that occurred in any of the royal colleges, his first
destination had been Tiron, the roughest and most remote of the
twelve. But as fortune would have it, a change was somehow made to
Brienne. That establishment was rude enough. The instructors were
Minim priests, and the life was as severe as it could be made with
such a clientage under half-educated and inexperienced monks. In spite
of all efforts to the contrary, however, the place had an air of
elegance; there was a certain school-boy display proportionate to the
means and to the good or bad breeding of the young nobles, also a very
keen discrimination among themselves as to rank, social quality, and
relative importance. Those familiar with the ruthlessness of boys in
their treatment of one another can easily conceive what was the
reception of the newcomer, whose nobility was unknown and unrecognized
in France, and whose means were of the scantiest.
During his son's preparatory studies the father had been busy at
Versailles with further supplications--among them one for a supplement
from the royal purse to his scanty pay as delegate, and another for
the speedy settlement of his now notorious claim. The former of the
two was granted not merely to M. de Buonaparte, but to his two
colleagues, in view of the "excellent behavior"--otherwise
subserviency--of the Corsican delegation at Versailles. When, in
addition, the certificate of Napoleon's appointment finally arrived,
and the father set out to place his son at school, with a barely
proper outfit, he had no difficulty in securing sufficient money to
meet his immediate and pressing necessities.
CHAPTER IV.
Napoleon's School-days[2].
[Footnote 2: The authorities for the period are Masson:
Napoléon inconnu. Chuquet: La jeunesse de Napoléon.
Jung: Bonaparte et son temps. Böhtlingk: Napoleon
Bonaparte: seine Jugend und sein Emporkommen. Las Cases:
Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène. Antommarchi: Mémoires.
Coston: Premières années de Napoléon, Nasica: Mémoires
sur l'enfance et la jeunesse de Napoléon.]
Military Schools in France -- Napoleon's Initiation into the
Life of Brienne -- Regulations of the School -- The Course
of Study -- Napoleon's Powerful Friends -- His Reading and
Other Avocations -- His Comrades -- His Studies -- His
Precocity -- His Conduct and Scholarship -- The Change in
His Life Plan -- His Influence in His Family -- His Choice
of the Artillery Service.
[Sidenote: 1779-84.]
It was an old charge that the sons of poor gentlemen destined to be
artillery officers were bred like princes. The institution at Brienne,
with eleven other similar academies, had been but recently founded as
a protest against the luxury which had reigned in the military schools
at Paris and La Flèche. Both these had been closed for a time because
they could not be reformed; the latter was, however, one of the twelve
from the first, and that at Paris was afterward reopened as a
finishing-school. The monasteries of various religious orders were
chosen as seats of the new colleges, and their owners were put in
charge with instructions to secure simplicity of life and manners, the
formation of character, and other desirable benefits, each one in its
own way in the school or schools intrusted to it. The result so far
had been a failure; there were simply not twelve first-rate
instructors in each branch to be found in France for the new
positions; the instruction was therefore limited and poor, so that in
the intellectual stagnation the right standards of conduct declined,
while the old notions of hollow courtliness and conventional behavior
flourished as never before. In order to enter his boy at Brienne,
Charles de Buonaparte presented a certificate signed by the intendant
and two neighbors, that he could not educate his sons without help
from the King, and was a poor man, having no income except his salary
as assessor. This paper was countersigned by Marbeuf as commanding
general, and to him the request was formally granted. This being the
regular procedure, it is evident that all the young nobles of the
twelve schools enjoying the royal bounty were poor and should have had
little or no pocket money. Perhaps for this very reason, though the
school provided for every expense including pocket money, polished
manners and funds obtained surreptitiously from powerful friends
indifferent to rules, were the things most needed to secure kind
treatment for an entering boy. These were exactly what the young
gentleman scholar from Corsica did not possess. The ignorant and
unworldly Minim fathers could neither foresee nor, if they had
foreseen, alleviate the miseries incident to his arrival under such
conditions.
At Autun Napoleon had at least enjoyed the sympathetic society of his
mild and emotional brother, whose easy-going nature could smooth many
a rough place. He was now entirely without companionship, resenting
from the outset both the ill-natured attacks and the playful personal
allusions through which boys so often begin, and with time knit ever
more firmly, their inexplicable friendships. To the taunts about
Corsica which began immediately he answered coldly, "I hope one day
to be in a position to give Corsica her liberty." Entering on a
certain occasion a room in which unknown to him there hung a portrait
of the hated Choiseul, he started back as he caught sight of it and
burst into bitter revilings; for this he was compelled to undergo
chastisement.
Brienne was a nursery for the qualities first developed at Autun. The
building was a gloomy and massive structure of the early eighteenth
century, which stood on a commanding site at the entrance of the town,
flanked by a later addition somewhat more commodious. The dormitory
consisted of two long rows of cells opening on a double corridor,
about a hundred and forty in all: each of these chambers was six feet
square, and contained a folding bed, a pitcher and a basin. The pupil
was locked in at bed-time, his only means of communication being a
bell to arouse the guard who slept in the hall. Larger rooms were
provided for his toilet; and he studied where he recited, in still
another suite. There was a common refectory in which four simple meals
a day were served: for breakfast and luncheon, bread and water, with
fruit either fresh or stewed; for dinner, soup with the soup-meat, a
side-dish and dessert; for supper, a joint with salad or dessert. With
the last two was served a mild mixture of wine and water, known in
school slang as "abundance." The outfit of clothing comprised
underwear for two changes a week, a uniform consisting of a blue cloth
coat, faced and trimmed with red, a waistcoat of the same with white
revers, and serge breeches either blue or black. The overcoat was of
the same material as the uniform, with the same trimming but with
white lining. The studies comprised Latin, mathematics, the French
language and literature, English, German, geography, drawing, fencing,
music, vocal as well as instrumental, and dancing.
[Illustration: In the Museum of Versailles. Marie-Laetitia Ramolino
Bonaparte "Madame Mère"--Mother Of Napoleon I.]
Perhaps the severe regimen of living could have been mitigated and
brightened by a course of study nominally and ostensibly so rich and
full; but in the list of masters, lay and clerical, there is not a
name of eminence. Neither Napoleon nor his contemporary pupils
recalled in later years any portion of their work as stimulating, nor
any instructor as having excelled in ability. The boys seem to have
disliked heartily both their studies and their masters. Young
Buonaparte had likewise a distaste for society and was thrown upon his
own unaided resources to satisfy his eager mind. Undisciplined in
spirit, he was impatient of self-discipline and worked spasmodically
in such subjects as he liked, disdaining the severe training of his
mind, even by himself. He did learn to spell the foreign tongue of his
adopted country, but his handwriting, never good, was bad or worse,
according to circumstances. Dark, solitary, and untamed, the new
scholar assumed the indifference of wounded vanity, despised all
pastimes, and found delight either in books or in scornful
exasperation of his comrades when compelled to associate with them.
There were quarrels and bitter fights, in which the Ishmaelite's hand
was against every other. Sometimes in a kind of frenzy he inflicted
serious wounds on his fellow-students. At length even the teachers
mocked him, and deprived him of his position as captain in the school
battalion.
The climax of the miserable business was reached when to a taunt that
his ancestry was nothing, "his father a wretched tipstaff," Napoleon
replied by challenging his tormentor to fight a duel. For this offense
he was put in confinement while the instigator went unpunished. It was
by the intervention of Marbeuf that his young friend was at length
released. Bruised and wounded in spirit, the boy would gladly have
shaken the dust of Brienne from his feet, but necessity forbade.
Either from some direct communication Napoleon had with his protector,
or through a dramatic but unauthenticated letter purporting to have
been written by him to his friends in Corsica and still in existence,
Marbeuf learned that the chiefest cause of all the bitterness was the
inequality between the pocket allowances of the young French nobles
and that of the young Corsican. The kindly general displayed the
liberality of a family friend, and gladly increased the boy's
gratuity, administering at the same time a smart rebuke to him for his
readiness to take offense. He is likewise thought to have introduced
his young charge to Mme. Loménie de Brienne, whose mansion was near
by.[3] This noble woman, it is asserted, became a second mother to the
lonely child: though there were no vacations, yet long holidays were
numerous and these were passed with her; her tenderness softened his
rude nature, the more so as she knew the value of tips to a
school-boy, and administered them liberally though judiciously.
[Footnote 3: The sources of these statements are two
letters of 5 April, 1781, and 8 October, 1783; first
printed in the Mémoires sur la vie de Bonaparte, etc.,
etc., par le comte Charles d'Og.... This pseudonym
covers a still unknown author; the documents have been
for the most part considered genuine and have been
reprinted as such by many authorities, including Jung.
Though this author was an official in the ministry of
war and had its archives at his disposal, he gives one
letter without any authority and the other as in the
"Archives de la guerre." Many searchers, including the
writer, have sought them there without result. Latterly
their authenticity has been denied on the ground of
inherent improbability, since pocket money was by rule
almost unknown in the royal colleges, and Corsican
homesickness is as common as that of the Swiss. But
rules prove nothing and the letters seem inherently
genuine.]
Nor was this, if true, the only light among the shadows in the picture
of his later Brienne school-days. Each of the hundred and fifty pupils
had a small garden spot assigned to him. Buonaparte developed a
passion for his own, and, annexing by force the neglected plots of
his two neighbors, created for himself a retreat, the solitude of
which was insured by a thick and lofty hedge planted about it. To this
citadel, the sanctity of which he protected with a fury at times half
insane, he was wont to retire in the fair weather of all seasons, with
whatever books he could procure. In the companionship of these he
passed happy, pleasant, and fruitful hours. His youthful patriotism
had been intensified by the hatred he now felt for French school-boys,
and through them for France. "I can never forgive my father," he once
cried, "for the share he had in uniting Corsica to France." Paoli
became his hero, and the favorite subjects of his reading were the
mighty deeds of men and peoples, especially in antiquity. Such matter
he found abundant in Plutarch's "Lives."
Moreover, his punishments and degradation by the school authorities at
once created a sentiment in his favor among his companions, which not
only counteracted the effect of official penalties, but gave him a
sort of compensating leadership in their games. When driven by storms
to abandon his garden haunt, and to associate in the public hall with
the other boys, he often instituted sports in which opposing camps of
Greeks and Persians, or of Romans and Carthaginians, fought until the
uproar brought down the authorities to end the conflict. On one
occasion he proposed the game, common enough elsewhere, but not so
familiar then in France, of building snow forts, of storming and
defending them, and of fighting with snowballs as weapons. The
proposition was accepted, and the preparations were made under his
direction with scientific zeal; the intrenchments, forts, bastions,
and redoubts were the admiration of the neighborhood. For weeks the
mimic warfare went on, Buonaparte, always in command, being sometimes
the besieger and as often the besieged. Such was the aptitude, such
the resources, and such the commanding power which he showed in either
rôle, that the winter was always remembered in the annals of the
school.
Of all his contemporaries only two became men of mark, Gudin and
Nansouty. Both were capable soldiers, receiving promotions and titles
at Napoleon's hand during the empire. Bourrienne, having sunk to the
lowest depths under the republic, found employment as secretary of
General Bonaparte. In this position he continued until the consulate,
when he lost both fortune and reputation in doubtful money
speculations. From old affection he secured pardon and further
employment, being sent as minister to Hamburg. There his lust for
money wrought his final ruin. The treacherous memoirs which appeared
over his name are a compilation edited by him to obtain the means of
livelihood in his declining years. Throughout life Napoleon had the
kindliest feelings for Brienne and all connected with it. In his death
struggle on the battle-fields of Champagne he showed favor to the town
and left it a large legacy in his will. No schoolmate or master
appealed to him in vain, and many of his comrades were in their
insignificant lives dependent for existence on his favor.
It is a trite remark that diamonds can be polished only by diamond
dust. Whatever the rude processes were to which the rude nature of the
young Corsican was subjected, the result was remarkable. Latin he
disliked, and treated with disdainful neglect. His particular
aptitudes were for mathematics, for geography, and above all for
history, in which he made fair progress. His knowledge of mathematics
was never profound; in geography he displayed a remarkable and
excellent memory; biography was the department of history which
fascinated him. In all directions, however, he was quick in his
perceptions; the rapid maturing of his mind by reading and reflection
was evident to all his associates, hostile though they were. The most
convincing evidence of the fact will be found in a letter written,
probably in July, 1784, when he was fifteen years old, to an
uncle,--possibly Fesch, more likely Paravicini,--concerning family
matters.[4] His brother Joseph had gone to Autun to be educated for
the Church, his sister (Maria-Anna) Elisa had been appointed on the
royal foundation at Saint-Cyr, and Lucien was, if possible, to be
placed like Napoleon at Brienne. The two younger children had already
accompanied their father on his regular journey to Versailles, and
Lucien was now installed either in the school itself or near by, to be
in readiness for any vacancy. All was well with the rest, except that
Joseph was uneasy, and wished to become an officer too.
[Footnote 4: Du Casse, Supplément à la Correspondence de
Napoléon Ier, Vol. X, p. 50. Masson, I, 79-84.]
The tone of Napoleon is extraordinary. Opening with a commonplace
little sketch of Lucien such as any elder brother might draw of a
younger, he proceeds to an analysis of Joseph which is remarkable.
Searching and thorough, it explains with fullness of reasoning and
illustration how much more advantageous from the worldly point of view
both for Joseph and for the family would be a career in the Church:
"the bishop of Autun would bestow a fat living on him, and he was
himself sure of becoming a bishop." As an _obiter dictum_ it contains
a curious expression of contempt for infantry as an arm, the origin of
which feeling is by no means clear. Joseph wishes to be a soldier:
very well, but in what branch of the profession? He could not enter
the navy, for he knows no mathematics; nor is his doubtful health
suited to that career. He would have to study two years more for the
navy, and four if he were to be an engineer; however, the ceaseless
occupation of this arm of the service would be more than his strength
could endure. Similar reasons militate against the artillery. There
remains, therefore, only the infantry. "Good. I see. He wants to be
all day idle, he wants to march the streets all day, and besides, what
is a slim infantry office? A poor thing, three quarters of the time;
and that, neither my dear father nor you, nor my mother, nor my dear
uncle the archdeacon, desires, for he has already shown some slight
tendency to folly and extravagance." There is an utter absence of
loose talk, or of enthusiasm, and no allusion to principle or
sentiment. It is the work of a cold, calculating, and dictatorial
nature. There is a poetical quotation in it, very apt, but very badly
spelled; and while the expression throughout is fair, it is by no
means what might be expected from a person capable of such thought,
who had been studying French for three years, and using it exclusively
in daily life.
In August, 1783, Buonaparte and Bourrienne, according to the statement
of the latter, shared the first prize in mathematics, and soon
afterward, in the same year, a royal inspector, M. de Keralio, arrived
at Brienne to test the progress of the King's wards. He took a great
fancy to the little Buonaparte, and declaring that, though
unacquainted with his family, he found a spark in him which must not
be extinguished, wrote an emphatic recommendation of the lad, couched
in the following terms: "M. de Bonaparte (Napoleon), born August
fifteenth, 1769. Height, four feet ten inches ten lines [about five
feet three inches, English]. Constitution: excellent health, docile
disposition, mild, straightforward, thoughtful. Conduct most
satisfactory; has always been distinguished for his application in
mathematics. He is fairly well acquainted with history and geography.
He is weak in all accomplishments--drawing, dancing, music, and the
like. This boy would make an excellent sailor; deserves to be admitted
to the school in Paris." Unfortunately for the prospect, M. de
Keralio, who might have been a powerful friend, died almost
immediately.
By means of further genuflections, supplications, and wearisome
persistency, Charles de Buonaparte at last obtained favor not only for
Lucien, but for Joseph also. Deprived unjustly of his inheritance,
deprived also of his comforts and his home in pursuit of the ambitious
schemes rendered necessary by that wrong, the poor diplomatist was now
near the end of his resources and his energy. Except for the short
visit of his father at Brienne on his way to Paris, it is almost
certain that the young Napoleon saw none of his elders throughout his
sojourn in the former place. The event was most important to the boy
and opened the pent-up flood of his tenderness: it was therefore a
bitter disappointment when he learned that, having seen the royal
physician, his parent would return to Corsica by Autun, taking Joseph
with him, and would not stop at Brienne. Napoleon, by the advice of
Marbeuf and more definitely by the support of his friend the
inspector, had been designated for the navy; through the favor of the
latter he hoped to have been sent to Paris, and thence assigned to
Toulon, the naval port in closest connection with Corsica. There were
so many influential applications, however, for that favorite branch of
the service that the department must rid itself of as many as
possible; a youth without a patron would be the first to suffer. The
agreement which the father had made at Paris was, therefore, that
Napoleon, by way of compensation, might continue at Brienne, while
Joseph could either go thither, or to Metz, in order to make up his
deficiencies in the mathematical sciences and pass his examinations to
enter the royal service along with Napoleon, on condition that the
latter would renounce his plans for the navy, and choose a career in
the army.
The letter in which the boy communicates his decision to his father is
as remarkable as the one just mentioned and very clearly the sequel to
it. The anxious and industrious parent had finally broken down, and in
his feeble health had taken Joseph as a support and help on the
arduous homeward journey. With the same succinct, unsparing statement
as before, Napoleon confesses his disappointment, and in commanding
phrase, with logical analysis, lays down the reasons why Joseph must
come to Brienne instead of going to Metz. There is, however, a new
element in the composition--a frank, hearty expression of affection
for his family, and a message of kindly remembrance to his friends.
But the most striking fact, in view of subsequent developments, is a
request for Boswell's "History of Corsica," and any other histories or
memoirs relating to "that kingdom." "I will bring them back when I
return, if it be six years from now."[5] The immediate sequel makes
clear the direction of his mind. He probably did not remember that he
was preparing, if possible, to strip France of her latest and highly
cherished acquisition at her own cost, or if he did, he must have felt
like the archer pluming his arrow from the off-cast feathers of his
victim's wing. It is plain that his humiliations at school, his
studies in the story of liberty, his inherited bent, and the present
disappointment, were all cumulative in the result of fixing his
attention on his native land as the destined sphere of his activity.
[Footnote 5: This letter, which is without date, is
printed in Coston, as taken from the newspapers; again
in a revised form in Nasica: Mémoires sur l'enfance et
la jeunesse de Napoléon, p. 71, who claimed to have
collated it with the original; and again in Jung:
Bonaparte et son temps, who gives as his reference,
Archives de la guerre, preserving exactly the form given
by Nasica. The Napoleon papers of the War Department
were freely, and I believe entirely, put into my hands
for examination. This letter was not among them; in
fact, my efforts to confirm the references of Jung were
sadly ineffectual.]
Four days after the probable date of writing he passed his examination
a second time, before the new inspector, announced his choice of the
artillery as his branch of the service, and a month later was ordered
to the military academy in Paris. This institution had not merely been
restored to its former renown: it now enjoyed a special reputation as
the place of reward to which only the foremost candidates for official
honors were sent. The choice of artillery seems to have been reached
by a simple process of exclusion; the infantry was too unintellectual
and indolent, the cavalry too expensive and aristocratic; between the
engineers and the artillery there was little to choose--in neither did
wealth or influence control promotion. The decision seems to have
fallen as it did because the artillery was accidentally mentioned
first in the fatal letter he had received announcing the family
straits, and the necessary renunciation of the navy. On the
certificate which was sent up with Napoleon from Brienne was the note:
"Character masterful, imperious, and headstrong."
CHAPTER V.
In Paris and Valence[6].
[Footnote 6: Authorities as before for this and the five
chapters following.]
Introduction to Paris -- Teachers and Comrades -- Death of
Charles de Buonaparte -- His Merits -- The School at Paris
-- Napoleon's Poverty -- His Character at the Close of His
School Years -- Appointed Lieutenant in the Regiment of La
Fère -- Demoralization of the French Army -- The Men in the
Ranks -- Napoleon as a Beau -- Return to Study -- His
Profession and Vocation.
[Sidenote: 1784-86.]
It was on October thirtieth, 1784 that Napoleon left Brienne for
Paris.[7] He was in the sixteenth year of his age, entirely ignorant
of what were then called the "humanities," but fairly versed in
history, geography, and the mathematical sciences. His knowledge, like
the bent of his mind, was practical rather than theoretical, and he
knew more about fortification and sieges than about metaphysical
abstractions; more about the deeds of history than about its
philosophy. The new surroundings into which he was introduced by the
Minim father who had accompanied him and his four comrades from
Brienne, all somewhat younger than himself, were different indeed from
those of the rude convent he had left behind. The splendid palace
constructed on the plans of Gabriel early in the eighteenth century
still stands to attest the King's design of lodging his gentlemen
cadets in a style worthy of their high birth, and of educating them in
manners as well as of instructing them. The domestic arrangements had
been on a par with the regal lodgings of the corps. So far had matters
gone in the direction of elegance and luxury that as we have said the
establishment was closed. But it had been reopened within a few
months, about the end of 1777. While the worst abuses had been
corrected, yet still the food was, in quantity at least, lavish; there
were provided two uniforms complete each year, with underwear
sufficient for two changes a week, what was then considered a great
luxury; there was a great staff of liveried servants, and the officers
in charge were men of polished manners and of the highest distinction.
At the very close of his life Napoleon recalled the arrangements as
made for men of wealth. "We were fed and served splendidly, treated
altogether like officers, enjoying a greater competence than most of
our families, greater than most of us were destined to enjoy." At
sixteen and with his inexperience he was perhaps an incompetent judge.
Others, Vaublanc for example, thought there was more show than
substance.
[Footnote 7: This is the date given by himself on the
slip of paper headed "Époques de ma vie" and contained
in the Fesch papers, now deposited in the Laurentian
Library at Florence. Here and there the text is very
difficult to decipher, but the line "Parti pour l'école
de Paris, le 30 Octobre 1784" is perfectly legible. Las
Cases, in the Mémorial, Vol. I, p. 160, represents
Napoleon as quoting Keralio in declaring that it was not
for his birth or his attainments but for the qualities
he discerned in the boy that he sent him with imperfect
preparation to Paris.]
Be that as it may, Bonaparte's defiant scorn and habits of solitary
study grew stronger together. It is asserted that his humor found vent
in a preposterous and peevish memorial addressed to the minister of
war on the proper training of the pupils in French military schools!
He may have written it, but it is almost impossible that it should
ever have passed beyond the walls of the school, even, as is claimed,
for revision by a former teacher, Berton. Nevertheless he found
almost, if not altogether, for the first time a real friend in the
person of des Mazis, a youth noble by birth and nature, who was
assigned to him as a pupil-teacher, and was moreover a foundation
scholar like himself. It is also declared by various authorities that
from time to time he enjoyed the agreeable society of the bishop of
Autun, who was now at Versailles, of his sister Elisa at Saint-Cyr,
and, toward the very close, of a family friend who had just settled in
Paris, the beautiful Mme. Permon, mother of the future duchess of
Abrantès. Although born in Corsica, she belonged to a branch of the
noble Greek family of the Comneni. In view of the stringent
regulations both of the military school and of Saint-Cyr, these visits
are problematical, though not impossible.
Rigid as were the regulations of the royal establishments, their
enforcement depended of course on the character of their directors.
The marquis who presided over the military school was a veteran
place-holder, his assistant was a man of no force, and the director of
studies was the only conscientious official of the three. He knew his
charge thoroughly and was recognized by Napoleon in later years as a
man of worth. The course of studies was a continuation of that at
Brienne, and there were twenty-one instructors in the various branches
of mathematics, history, geography, and languages. De l'Esguille
endorsed one of Buonaparte's exercises in history with the remark:
"Corsican by nation and character. He will go far if circumstances
favor." Domairon said of his French style that it was "granite heated
in a volcano." There were admirable masters, seven in number, for
riding, fencing, and dancing. In none of these exercises did
Buonaparte excel. It was the avowed purpose of the institution to make
its pupils pious Roman Catholics. The parish priest at Brienne had
administered the sacraments to a number of the boys, including the
young Corsican, who appears to have submitted without cavil to the
severe religious training of the Paris school: chapel with mass at
half-past six in the morning, grace before and after all meals, and
chapel again a quarter before nine in the evening; on holidays,
catechism for new students; Sundays, catechism and high mass, and
vespers with confession every Saturday; communion every two months.
Long afterwards the Emperor remembered de Juigné, his chaplain, with
kindness and overwhelmed him with favors. Of the hundred and
thirty-two scholars resident during Buonaparte's time, eighty-three
were boarders at four hundred dollars each; none of these attained
distinction, the majority did not even pass their examinations. The
rest were scholars of the King, and were diligent; but even of these
only one or two were really able men.
It was in the city of Mme. Permon's residence, at Montpellier, that on
the twenty-fourth of February, 1785, Charles de Buonaparte died. This
was apparently a final and mortal blow to the Buonaparte fortunes, for
it seemed as if with the father must go all the family expectations.
The circumstances were a fit close to the life thus ended. Feeling his
health somewhat restored, and despairing of further progress in the
settlement of his well-worn claim by legal methods, he had determined
on still another journey of solicitation to Versailles. With Joseph as
a companion he started; but a serious relapse occurred at sea, and
ashore the painful disease continued to make such ravages that the
father and son set out for Montpellier to consult the famous
specialists of the medical faculty at that place. It was in vain, and,
after some weeks, on February twenty-fourth the heartbroken father
breathed his last. Having learned to hate the Jesuits, he had become
indifferent to all religion, and is said by some to have repelled with
his last exertions the kindly services of Fesch, who was now a
frocked priest, and had hastened to his brother-in-law's bedside to
offer the final consolations of the Church to a dying man. Others
declare that he turned again to the solace of religion, and was
attended on his death-bed by the Abbé Coustou. Joseph, prostrated by
grief, was taken into Mme. Permon's house and received the tenderest
consolation.[8]
[Footnote 8: Mémoires du roi Joseph, I, 29.]
Failure as the ambitious father had been, he had nevertheless been so
far the support of his family in their hopes of advancement. Sycophant
and schemer as he had become, they recognized his untiring energy in
their behalf, and truly loved him. He left them penniless and in debt,
but he died in their service, and they sincerely mourned for him. On
the twenty-third of March the sorrowing boy wrote to his great-uncle,
the archdeacon Lucien, a letter in eulogy of his father and begging
the support of his uncle as guardian. This appointment was legally
made not long after. On the twenty-eighth he wrote to his mother. Both
these letters are in existence, and sound like rhetorical school
exercises corrected by a tutor. That to his mother is, however,
dignified and affectionate, referring in a becoming spirit to the
support her children owed her. As if to show what a thorough child he
still was, the dreary little note closes with an odd postscript giving
the irrelevant news of the birth, two days earlier, of a royal
prince--the duke of Normandy! This may have been added for the benefit
of the censor who examined all the correspondence of the young men.
Some time before, General Marbeuf had married, and the pecuniary
supplies to his boy friend seem after that event to have stopped. Mme.
de Buonaparte was left with four infant children, the youngest,
Jerome, but three months old. Their great-uncle, Lucien, the
archdeacon, was kind, and Joseph, abandoning all his ambitions,
returned to be, if possible, the support of the family. Napoleon's
poverty was no longer relative or imaginary, but real and hard.
Drawing more closely than ever within himself, he became a still more
ardent reader and student, devoting himself with passionate industry
to examining the works of Rousseau, the poison of whose political
doctrines instilled itself with fiery and grateful stinging into the
thin, cold blood of the unhappy cadet. In many respects the
instruction he received was admirable, and there is a traditional
anecdote that he was the best mathematician in the school. But on the
whole he profited little by the short continuation of his studies at
Paris. The marvelous French style which he finally created for himself
is certainly unacademic in the highest degree; in the many courses of
modern languages he mastered neither German nor English, in fact he
never had more than a few words of either; his attainments in fencing
and horsemanship were very slender. Among all his comrades he made but
one friend, while two of them became in later life his embittered
foes. Phélipeaux thwarted him at Acre; Picot de Peccaduc became
Schwarzenberg's most trusted adviser in the successful campaigns of
Austria against France.
Whether to alleviate as soon as possible the miseries of his
destitution, or, as has been charged, to be rid of their querulous and
exasperating inmate, the authorities of the military school shortened
Buonaparte's stay to the utmost of their ability, and admitted him to
examination in August, 1785, less than a year from his admission.[9]
He passed with no distinction, being forty-second in rank, but above
his friend des Mazis, who was fifty-sixth. His appointment,
therefore, was due to an entire absence of rivalry, the young nobility
having no predilection for the arduous duties of service in the
artillery. He was eligible merely because he had passed the legal age,
and had given evidence of sufficient acquisitions. In an oft-quoted
description,[10] purporting to be an official certificate given to the
young officer on leaving, he is characterized as reserved and
industrious, preferring study to any kind of amusement, delighting in
good authors, diligent in the abstract sciences, caring little for the
others,[11] thoroughly trained in mathematics and geography; quiet,
fond of solitude, capricious, haughty, extremely inclined to egotism,
speaking little, energetic in his replies, prompt and severe in
repartee; having much self-esteem; ambitious and aspiring to any
height: "the youth is worthy of protection." There is, unfortunately,
no documentary evidence to sustain the genuineness of this report; but
whatever its origin, it is so nearly contemporary that it probably
contains some truth.
[Footnote 9: The examiner in mathematics was the great
Laplace.]
[Footnote 10: Taken from the apocryphal Memoirs of the
Count d'Og ... previously mentioned. See Masson:
Napoléon inconnu, I, 123; Chuquet, I, 260; Jung, I,
125.]
[Footnote 11: Las Cases, I, 112. Napoleon confessed his
inability to learn German, but prided himself on his
historical knowledge.]
The two friends had both asked for appointments in a regiment
stationed at Valence, known by the style of La Fère. Des Mazis had a
brother in it; the ardent young Corsican would be nearer his native
land, and might, perhaps, be detached for service in his home. They
were both nominated in September, but the appointment was not made
until the close of October. Buonaparte was reduced to utter penury by
the long delay, his only resource being the two hundred livres
provided by the funds of the school for each of its pupils until they
reached the grade of captain. It was probably, and according to the
generally received account, at his comrade's expense, and in his
company, that he traveled. Their slender funds were exhausted by
boyish dissipation at Lyons, and they measured on foot the long
leagues thence to their destination, arriving at Valence early in
November.
The growth of absolutism in Europe had been due at the outset to the
employment of standing armies by the kings, and the consequent
alliance between the crown, which was the paymaster, and the people,
who furnished the soldiery. There was constant conflict between the
crown and the nobility concerning privilege, constant friction between
the nobility and the people in the survivals of feudal relation. This
sturdy and wholesome contention among the three estates ended at last
in the victory of the kings. In time, therefore, the army became no
longer a mere support to the monarchy, but a portion of its moral
organism, sharing its virtues and its vices, its weakness and its
strength, reflecting, as in a mirror, the true condition of the state
so far as it was personified in the king. The French army, in the year
1785, was in a sorry plight. With the consolidation of classes in an
old monarchical society, it had come to pass that, under the
prevailing voluntary system, none but men of the lowest social stratum
would enlist. Barracks and camps became schools of vice. "Is there,"
exclaimed one who at a later day was active in the work of army
reform--"is there a father who does not shudder when abandoning his
son, not to the chances of war, but to the associations of a crowd of
scoundrels a thousand times more dangerous?"
We have already had a glimpse of the character of the officers. Their
first thought was social position and pleasure, duty and the practice
of their profession being considerations of almost vanishing
importance. Things were quite as bad in the central administration.
Neither the organization nor the equipment nor the commissariat was in
condition to insure accuracy or promptness in the working of the
machine. The regiment of La Fère was but a sample of the whole.
"Dancing three times a week," says the advertisement for recruits,
"rackets twice, and the rest of the time skittles, prisoners' base,
and drill. Pleasures reign, every man has the highest pay, and all are
well treated." Buonaparte's income, comprising his pay of eight
hundred, his provincial allowance of a hundred and twenty, and the
school pension of two hundred, amounted, all told, to eleven hundred
and twenty livres a year; his necessary expenses for board and lodging
were seven hundred and twenty, leaving less than thirty-five livres a
month, about seven dollars, for clothes and pocket money. Fifteen
years as lieutenant, fifteen as captain, and, for the rest of his
life, half pay with a decoration--such was the summary of the prospect
before the ordinary commonplace officer in a like situation. Meantime
he was comfortably lodged with a kindly old soul, a sometime
tavern-keeper named Bou, whose daughter, "of a certain age," gave a
mother's care to the young lodger. In his weary years of exile the
Emperor recalled his service at Valence as invaluable. The artillery
regiment of La Fère he said was unsurpassed in personnel and training;
though the officers were too old for efficiency, they were loyal and
fatherly; the youngsters exercised their witty sarcasm on many, but
they loved them all.
During the first months of his garrison service Buonaparte, as an
apprentice, saw arduous service in matters of detail, but he threw off
entirely the darkness and reserve of his character, taking a full
draught from the brimming cup of pleasure. On January tenth, 1786, he
was finally received to full standing as lieutenant. The novelty, the
absence of restraint, the comparative emancipation from the arrogance
and slights to which he had hitherto been subject, good news from the
family in Corsica, whose hopes as to the inheritance were once more
high--all these elements combined to intoxicate for a time the boy of
sixteen. The strongest will cannot forever repress the exuberance of
budding manhood. There were balls, and with them the first experience
of gallantry. The young officer even took dancing-lessons. Moreover,
in the drawing-rooms of the Abbé Saint-Ruf and of his friends, for the
first time he saw the manners and heard the talk of refined
society--provincial, to be sure, but excellent. It was to the special
favor of Monseigneur de Marbeuf, the bishop of Autun, that he owed his
warm reception. The acquaintances there made were with persons of
local consequence, who in later years reaped a rich harvest for their
condescension to the young stranger. In two excellent households he
was a welcome and intimate guest, that of Lauberie and Colombier.
There were daughters in both. His acquaintance with Mlle. de Lauberie
was that of one who respected her character and appreciated her
beauty. In 1805 she was appointed lady in waiting to the Empress, but
declined the appointment because of her duties as wife and mother. In
the intimacy with Mlle. du Colombier there was more coquetry. She was
a year the senior and lived on her mother's estate some miles from the
town. Rousseau had made fashionable long walks and life in the open.
The frequent visits of Napoleon to Caroline were marked by youthful
gaiety and budding love. They spent many innocent hours in the fields
and garden of the château and parted with regret. Their friendship
lasted even after she became Mme. de Bressieux, and they corresponded
intimately for long years. Of his fellow-officers he saw but little,
though he ate regularly at the table of the "Three Pigeons" where the
lieutenants had their mess. This was not because they were distant,
but because he had no genius for good-fellowship, and the habit of
indifference to his comrades had grown strong upon him.
The period of pleasure was not long. It is impossible to judge whether
the little self-indulgence was a weak relapse from an iron purpose or
part of a definite plan. The former is more likely, so abrupt and
apparently conscience-stricken was the return to labor. His
inclinations and his earnest hope were combined in a longing for
Corsica.[12] It was a bitter disappointment that under the army
regulations he must serve a year as second lieutenant before leave
could be granted. As if to compensate himself and still his longings
for home and family, he sought the companionship of a young Corsican
artist named Pontornini, then living at Tournon, a few miles distant.
To this friendship we owe the first authentic portrait of Buonaparte.
It exhibits a striking profile with a well-shaped mouth, and the
expression of gravity is remarkable in a sitter so young. The face
portrays a studious mind. Even during the months from November to
April he had not entirely deserted his favorite studies, and again
Rousseau had been their companion and guide. In a little study of
Corsica, dated the twenty-sixth of April, 1786, the earliest of his
manuscript papers, he refers to the Social Contract of Rousseau with
approval, and the last sentence is: "Thus the Corsicans were able, in
obedience to all the laws of justice, to shake off the yoke of Genoa,
and can do likewise with that of the French. Amen." But in the spring
it was the then famous but since forgotten Abbé Raynal of whom he
became a devotee. At the first blush it seems as if Buonaparte's
studies were irregular and haphazard. It is customary to attribute
slender powers of observation and undefined purposes to childhood and
youth. The opinion may be correct in the main, and would, for the
matter of that, be true as regards the great mass of adults. But the
more we know of psychology through autobiographies, the more certain
it appears that many a great life-plan has been formed in childhood,
and carried through with unbending rigor to the end. Whether
Buonaparte consciously ordered the course of his study and reading or
not, there is unity in it from first to last.
[Footnote 12: For an amusing caricature by a comrade at
Paris, see Chuquet: La jeunesse de Napoléon, I, 262. The
legend is: "Buonaparte, cours, vole au secours de Paoli
pour le tirer des mains de ses ennemis."]
After the first rude beginnings there were two nearly parallel lines
in his work. The first was the acquisition of what was essential to
the practice of a profession--nothing more. No one could be a soldier
in either army or navy without a practical knowledge of history and
geography, for the earth and its inhabitants are in a special sense
the elements of military activity. Nor can towns be fortified, nor
camps intrenched, nor any of the manifold duties of the general in the
field be performed without the science of quantity and numbers. Just
these things, and just so far as they were practical, the dark,
ambitious boy was willing to learn. For spelling, grammar, rhetoric,
and philosophy he had no care; neither he nor his sister Elisa, the
two strong natures of the family, could ever spell any language with
accuracy and ease, or speak and write with rhetorical elegance. Among
the private papers of his youth there is but one mathematical study of
any importance; the rest are either trivial, or have some practical
bearing on the problems of gunnery. When at Brienne, his patron had
certified that he cared nothing for accomplishments and had none.
This was the case to the end. But there was another branch of
knowledge equally practical, but at that time necessary to so few that
it was neither taught nor learned in the schools--the art of politics.
CHAPTER VI.
Private Study and Garrison Life.
Napoleon as a Student of Politics -- Nature of Rousseau's
Political Teachings -- The Abbé Raynal -- Napoleon Aspires
to be the Historian of Corsica -- Napoleon's First Love --
His Notions of Political Science -- The Books He Read --
Napoleon at Lyons -- His Transfer to Douay -- A Victim to
Melancholy -- Return to Corsica.
[Sidenote: 1786-87.]
In one sense it is true that the first Emperor of the French was a man
of no age and of no country; in another sense he was, as few have
been, the child of his surroundings and of his time. The study of
politics was his own notion; the matter and method of the study were
conditioned by his relations to the thought of Europe in the
eighteenth century. He evidently hoped that his military and political
attainments would one day meet in the culmination of a grand career.
To the world and probably to himself it seemed as if the glorious
period of the Consulate were the realization of this hope. Those years
of his life which so appear were, in fact, the least successful. The
unsoundness of his political instructors, and the temper of the age,
combined to thwart this ambitious purpose, and render unavailing all
his achievements.
Rousseau had every fascination for the young of that time--a
captivating style, persuasive logic, the sentiment of a poet, the
intensity of a prophet. A native of Corsica would be doubly drawn to
him by his interest in that romantic island. Sitting at the feet of
such a teacher, a young scholar would learn through convincing
argument the evils of a passing social state as they were not
exhibited elsewhere. He would discern the dangers of ecclesiastical
authority, of feudal privilege, of absolute monarchy; he would see
their disastrous influence in the prostitution, not only of social,
but of personal morality; he would become familiar with the necessity
for renewing institutions as the only means of regenerating society.
All these lessons would have a value not to be exaggerated. On the
other hand, when it came to the substitution of positive teaching for
negative criticism, he would learn nothing of value and much that was
most dangerous. In utter disregard of a sound historical method, there
was set up as the cornerstone of the new political structure a fiction
of the most treacherous kind. Buonaparte in his notes, written as he
read, shows his contempt for it in an admirable refutation of the
fundamental error of Rousseau as to the state of nature by this
remark: "I believe man in the state of nature had the same power of
sensation and reason which he now has." But if he did not accept the
premises, there was a portion of the conclusion which he took with
avidity, the most dangerous point in all Rousseau's system; namely,
the doctrine that all power proceeds from the people, not because of
their nature and their historical organization into families and
communities, but because of an agreement by individuals to secure
public order, and that, consequently, the consent given they can
withdraw, the order they have created they can destroy. In this lay
not merely the germ, but the whole system of extreme radicalism, the
essence, the substance, and the sum of the French Revolution on its
extreme and doctrinaire side.
Rousseau had been the prophet and forerunner of the new social
dispensation. The scheme for applying its principles is found in a
work which bears the name of a very mediocre person, the Abbé Raynal,
a man who enjoyed in his day an extended and splendid reputation which
now seems to have had only the slender foundations of unmerited
persecution and the friendship of superior men. In 1770 appeared
anonymously a volume, of which, as was widely known, he was the
compiler. "The Philosophical and Political History of the
Establishments and Commerce of the Europeans in the Two Indies" is a
miscellany of extracts from many sources, and of short essays by
Raynal's brilliant acquaintances, on superstition, tyranny, and
similar themes. The reputed author had written for the public prints,
and had published several works, none of which attracted attention.
The amazing success of this one was not remarkable if, as some critics
now believe, at least a third of the text was by Diderot. However this
may be, the position of Raynal as a man of letters immediately became
a foremost one, and such was the vogue of a second edition published
over his name in 1780 that the authorities became alarmed. The climax
to his renown was achieved when, in 1781, his book was publicly
burned, and the compiler fled into exile.
By 1785 the storm had finally subsided, and though he had not yet
returned to France, it is supposed that through the friendship of Mme.
du Colombier, the friendly patroness of the young lieutenant,
communication was opened between the great man and his aspiring
reader.[13] "Not yet eighteen," are the startling words in the
letter, written by Buonaparte, "I am a writer: it is the age when we
must learn. Will my boldness subject me to your raillery? No, I am
sure. If indulgence be a mark of true genius, you should have much
indulgence. I inclose chapters one and two of a history of Corsica,
with an outline of the rest. If you approve, I will go on; if you
advise me to stop, I will go no further." The young historian's letter
teems with bad spelling and bad grammar, but it is saturated with the
spirit of his age. The chapters as they came to Raynal's hands are not
in existence so far as is known, and posterity can never judge how
monumental their author's assurance was. The abbé's reply was kindly,
but he advised the novice to complete his researches, and then to
rewrite his pieces. Buonaparte was not unwilling to profit by the
counsels he received: soon after, in July, 1786, he gave two orders to
a Genevese bookseller, one for books concerning Corsica, another for
the memoirs of Mme. de Warens and her servant Claude Anet, which are a
sort of supplement to Rousseau's "Confessions."
[Footnote 13: Masson (Napoléon inconnu, Vol. I, p. 160)
denies all the statements of this paragraph. He likewise
proves to his own satisfaction that Bonaparte was
neither in Lyons nor in Douay at this time. The
narrative here given is based on Coston and on Jung, who
follows the former in his reprint of the documents,
giving the very dubious reference, Mss. Archives de la
guerre. Although these manuscripts could not be found by
me, I am not willing to discard Jung's authority
completely nor to impugn his good faith. Men in office
frequently play strange pranks with official papers, and
these may yet be found. Moreover, there is some slight
collateral evidence. See Vieux: Napoleon à Lyon, p. 4,
and Souvenirs à l'usage des habitants de Douay. Douay,
1822.]
During May of the same year he jotted down with considerable fullness
his notions of the true relations between Church and State. He had
been reading Roustan's reply to Rousseau, and was evidently
overpowered with the necessity of subordinating ecclesiastical to
secular authority. The paper is rude and incomplete, but it shows
whence he derived his policy of dealing with the Pope and the Roman
Church in France. It has very unjustly been called an attempted
refutation of Christianity: it is nothing of the sort. Ecclesiasticism
and Christianity being hopelessly confused in his mind, he uses the
terms interchangeably in an academic and polemic discussion to prove
that the theory of the social contract must destroy all ecclesiastical
assumption of supreme power in the state.
Some of the lagging days were spent not only in novel-reading, as the
Emperor in after years confessed to Mme. de Rémusat, but in attempts
at novel-writing, to relieve the tedium of idle hours. It is said that
first and last Buonaparte read "Werther" five times through. Enough
remains among his boyish scribblings to show how fantastic were the
dreams both of love and of glory in which he indulged. Many entertain
a suspicion that amid the gaieties of the winter he had really lost
his heart, or thought he had, and was repulsed. At least, in his
"Dialogue on Love," written five years later, he says, "I, too, was
once in love," and proceeds, after a few lines, to decry the sentiment
as harmful to mankind, a something from which God would do well to
emancipate it. This may have referred to his first meeting and
conversation with a courtesan at Paris, which he describes in one of
his papers, but this is not likely from the context, which is not
concerned with the gratification of sexual passion. It is of the
nobler sentiment that he speaks, and there seems to have been in the
interval no opportunity for philandering so good as the one he had
enjoyed during his boyish acquaintance with Mlle. Caroline du
Colombier. It has, at all events, been her good fortune to secure, by
this supposition, a place in history, not merely as the first girl
friend of Napoleon, but as the object of his first pure passion.
But these were his avocations; the real occupation of his time was
study. Besides reading again the chief works of Rousseau, and
devouring those of Raynal, his most beloved author, he also read much
in the works of Voltaire, of Filangieri, of Necker, and of Adam
Smith. With note-book and pencil he extracted, annotated, and
criticized, his mind alert and every faculty bent to the clear
apprehension of the subject in hand. To the conception of the state as
a private corporation, which he had imbibed from Rousseau, was now
added the conviction that the institutions of France were no longer
adapted to the occupations, beliefs, or morals of her people, and that
revolution was a necessity. To judge from a memoir presented some
years later to the Lyons Academy, he must have absorbed the teachings
of the "Two Indies" almost entire.
The consuming zeal for studies on the part of this incomprehensible
youth is probably unparalleled. Having read Plutarch in his childhood,
he now devoured Herodotus, Strabo, and Diodorus; China, Arabia, and
the Indies dazzled his imagination, and what he could lay hands upon
concerning the East was soon assimilated. England and Germany next
engaged his attention, and toward the close of his studies he became
ardent in examining the minutest particulars of French history. It
was, moreover, the science of history, and not its literature, which
occupied him--dry details of revenue, resources, and institutions; the
Sorbonne, the bull Unigenitus, and church history in general; the
character of peoples, the origin of institutions, the philosophy of
legislation--all these he studied, and, if the fragments of his notes
be trustworthy evidence, as they surely are, with some thoroughness.
He also found time to read the masterpieces of French literature, and
the great critical judgments which had been passed upon them.[14]
[Footnote 14: The volumes of Napoléon inconnu contain
the text of these papers as deciphered for M. Masson and
revised by him. My own examination, which antedated his
transcription by more than a year (1891), led me to
trust their authenticity absolutely, as far as the
writer's memory and good faith are concerned. I cannot
rely as positively as Masson does on the Époques de ma
vie, which has the appearance of a casual scribbling
done in an idle moment on the first scrap that came to
hand.]
The agreeable and studious life at Valence was soon ended. Early in
August, 1786, a little rebellion, known as the "Two-cent Revolt,"
broke out in Lyons over a strike of the silk-weavers for two cents an
ell more pay and the revolt of the tavern-keepers against the
enforcement of the "Banvin," an ancient feudal right levying a heavy
tax on the sale of wine. The neighboring garrisons were ordered to
furnish their respective quotas for the suppression of the uprising.
Buonaparte's company was sent among others, but those earlier on the
ground had been active, several workmen had been killed, and the
disturbance was already quelled when he arrived. The days he spent at
Lyons were so agreeable that, as he wrote his uncle Fesch, he left the
city with regret "to follow his destiny." His regiment had been
ordered northward to Douay in Flanders; he returned to Valence and
reached that city about the end of August. His furlough began
nominally on October first, but for the Corsican officers a month's
grace was added, so that he was free to leave on September first.
The time spent under the summer skies of the north would have been
dreary enough if he had regularly received news from home. Utterly
without success in finding occupation in Corsica, and hopeless as to
France, Joseph had some time before turned his eyes toward Tuscany for
a possible career. He was now about to make a final effort, and seek
personally at the Tuscan capital official recognition with a view to
relearning his native tongue, now almost forgotten, and to obtaining
subsequent employment of any kind that might offer in the land of his
birth. Lucien, the archdeacon, was seriously ill, and General
Marbeuf, the last influential friend of the family, had died. Louis
had been promised a scholarship in one of the royal artillery schools;
deprived of his patron, he would probably lose the appointment.
Finally, the pecuniary affairs of Mme. de Buonaparte were again
entangled, and now appeared hopeless. She had for a time been
receiving an annual state bounty for raising mulberry-trees, as France
was introducing silk culture into the island. The inspectors had
condemned this year's work, and were withholding a substantial portion
of the allowance. These were the facts and they probably reached
Napoleon at Valence; it was doubtless a knowledge of them which put an
end to all his light-heartedness and to his study, historical or
political. He immediately made ready to avail himself of his leave so
that he might instantly set out to his mother's relief.
Despondent and anxious, he moped, grew miserable, and contracted a
slight malarial fever which for the next six or seven years never
entirely relaxed its hold on him. Among his papers has recently been
found the long, wild, pessimistic rhapsody to which reference has
already been made and in which there is talk of suicide. The plaint is
of the degeneracy among men, of the destruction of primitive
simplicity in Corsica by the French occupation, of his own isolation,
and of his yearning to see his friends once more. Life is no longer
worth while; his country gone, a patriot has naught to live for,
especially when he has no pleasure and all is pain--when the character
of those about him is to his own as moonlight is to sunlight. If there
were but a single life in his way, he would bury the avenging blade of
his country and her violated laws in the bosom of the tyrant. Some of
his complaining was even less coherent than this. It is absurd to take
the morbid outpouring seriously, except in so far as it goes to prove
that its writer was a victim of the sentimental egoism into which the
psychological studies of the eighteenth century had degenerated, and
to suggest that possibly if he had not been Napoleon he might have
been a Werther. Though dated May third, no year is given, and it may
well describe the writer's feelings in any period of despondency. No
such state of mind was likely to have arisen in the preceding spring,
but it may have been written even then as a relief to pent-up feelings
which did not appear on the surface; or possibly in some later year
when the agony of suffering for himself and his family laid hold upon
him. In any case it expresses a bitter melancholy, such as would be
felt by a boy face to face with want.
At Valence Napoleon visited his old friend the Abbé Saint-Ruf, to
solicit favor for Lucien, who, having left Brienne, would study
nothing but the humanities, and was determined to become a priest. At
Aix he saw both his uncle Fesch and his brother. At Marseilles he is
said to have paid his respects to the Abbé Raynal, requesting advice,
and seeking further encouragement in his historical labors. This is
very doubtful, for there is no record of Raynal's return to France
before 1787. Lodging in that city, as appears from a memorandum on his
papers, with a M. Allard, he must soon have found a vessel sailing for
his destination, because he came expeditiously to Ajaccio, arriving in
that city toward the middle of the month, if the ordinary time had
been consumed in the journey. Such appears to be the likeliest account
of this period, although our knowledge is not complete. In the
archives of Douay, there is, according to an anonymous local
historian, a record of Buonaparte's presence in that city with the
regiment of La Fère, and he is quoted as having declared at Elba to
Sir Neil Campbell that he had been sent thither. But in the "Epochs of
My Life," he wrote that he left Valence on September first, 1786, for
Ajaccio, arriving on the fifteenth. Weighing the probabilities, it
seems likely that the latter was doubtful, since there is but the
slenderest possibility of his having been at Douay in the following
year, the only other hypothesis, and there exists no record of his
activities in Corsica before the spring of 1787. The chronology of the
two years is still involved in obscurity and it is possible that he
went with his regiment to Douay, contracted his malaria there, and did
not actually get leave of absence until February first of the latter
year.
CHAPTER VII.
Further Attempts at Authorship.
Straits of the Buonaparte Family -- Napoleon's Efforts to
Relieve Them -- Home Studies -- His History and Short
Stories -- Visit to Paris -- Renewed Petitions to Government
-- More Authorship -- Secures Extension of his Leave -- The
Family Fortunes Desperate -- The History of Corsica
Completed -- Its Style, Opinions, and Value -- Failure to
Find a Publisher -- Sentiments Expressed in his Short
Stories -- Napoleon's Irregularities as a French Officer --
His Life at Auxonne -- His Vain Appeal to Paoli -- The
History Dedicated to Necker.
[Sidenote: 1787-89.]
When Napoleon arrived at Ajaccio, and, after an absence of eight
years, was again with his family, he found their affairs in a serious
condition. Not one of the old French officials remained; the
diplomatic leniency of occupation was giving place to the official
stringency of a permanent possession; proportionately the disaffection
of the patriot remnant among the people was slowly developing into a
wide-spread discontent. Joseph, the hereditary head of a family which
had been thoroughly French in conduct, and was supposed to be so in
sentiment, which at least looked to the King for further favors, was
still a stanch royalist. Having been unsuccessful in every other
direction, he was now seeking to establish a mercantile connection
with Florence which would enable him to engage in the oil-trade. A
modest beginning was, he hoped, about to be made. It was high time,
for the only support of his mother and her children, in the failure to
secure the promised subsidy for her mulberry plantations, was the
income of the old archdeacon, who was now confined to his room, and
growing feebler every day under attacks of gout. Unfortunately,
Joseph's well-meant efforts again came to naught.
The behavior of the pale, feverish, masterful young lieutenant was not
altogether praiseworthy. He filled the house with his new-fangled
philosophy, and assumed a self-important air. Among his papers and in
his own handwriting is a blank form for engaging and binding recruits.
Clearly he had a tacit understanding either with himself or with
others to secure some of the fine Corsican youth for the regiment of
La Fère. But there is no record of any success in the enterprise.
Among the letters which he wrote was one dated April first, 1787, to
the renowned Dr. Tissot of Lausanne, referring to his correspondent's
interest in Paoli, and asking advice concerning the treatment of the
canon's gout. The physician never replied, and the epistle was found
among his papers marked "unanswered and of little interest." The old
ecclesiastic listened to his nephew's patriotic tirades, and even
approved; Mme. de Buonaparte coldly disapproved. She would have
preferred calmer, more efficient common sense. Not that her son was
inactive in her behalf; on the contrary, he began a series of busy
representations to the provincial officials which secured some
good-will and even trifling favor to the family. But the results were
otherwise unsatisfactory, for the mulberry money was not paid.
Napoleon's zeal for study was not in the least abated in the
atmosphere of home. Joseph in his memoirs says the reunited family was
happy in spite of troubles. There was reciprocal joy in their
companionship and his long absent brother was glad in the pleasures
both of home and of nature so congenial to his feelings and his
tastes. The most important part of Napoleon's baggage appears to have
been the books, documents, and papers he brought with him. That he had
collections on Corsica has been told. Joseph says he had also the
classics of both French and Latin literature as well as the
philosophical writings of Plato; likewise, he thinks, Ossian and
Homer. In the "Discourse" presented not many years later to the Lyons
Academy and in the talks at St. Helena, Napoleon refers to his
enjoyment of nature at this time; to the hours spent in the grotto, or
under the majestic oak, or in the shade of the olive groves, all parts
of the sadly neglected garden of Milleli some distance from the house
and belonging to his mother; to his walks on the meadows among the
lowing herds; to his wanderings on the shore at sunset, his return by
moonlight, and the gentle melancholy which unbidden enveloped him in
spite of himself. He savored the air of Corsica, the smell of its
earth, the spicy breezes of its thickets, he would have known his home
with his eyes shut, and with them open he found it the earthly
paradise. Yet all the while he was busy, very busy, partly with good
reading, partly in the study of history, and in large measure with the
practical conduct of the family affairs.
As the time for return to service drew near it was clear that the
mother with her family of four helpless little children, all a serious
charge on her time and purse, could not be left without the support of
one older son, at least; and Joseph was now about to seek his fortune
in Pisa. Accordingly Napoleon with methodical care drew up two papers
still existing, a memorandum of how an application for renewed leave
on the ground of sickness was to be made and also the form of
application itself, which no doubt he copied. At any rate he applied,
on the ground of ill health, for a renewal of leave to last five and a
half months. It was granted, and the regular round of family cares
went on; but the days and weeks brought no relief. Ill health there
was, and perhaps sufficient to justify that plea, but the physical
fever was intensified by the checks which want set upon ambition. The
passion for authorship reasserted itself with undiminished violence.
The history of Corsica was resumed, recast, and vigorously continued,
while at the same time the writer completed a short story entitled
"The Count of Essex,"--with an English setting, of course,--and wrote
a Corsican novel. The latter abounds in bitterness against France, the
most potent force in the development of the plot being the dagger. The
author's use of French, though easier, is still very imperfect. A
slight essay, or rather story, in the style of Voltaire, entitled "The
Masked Prophet," was also completed.
It was reported early in the autumn that many regiments were to be
mobilized for special service, among them that of La Fère. This gave
Napoleon exactly the opening he desired, and he left Corsica at once,
without reference to the end of his furlough. He reached Paris in
October, a fortnight before he was due. His regiment was still at
Douay: he may have spent a few days with it in that city. But this is
not certain, and soon after it was transferred to St. Denis, now
almost a suburb of Paris; it was destined for service in western
France, where incipient tumults were presaging the coming storm.
Eventually its destination was changed and it was ordered to Auxonne.
The Estates-General of France were about to meet for the first time in
one hundred and seventy-five years; they had last met in 1614, and had
broken up in disorder. They were now called as a desperate remedy, not
understood, but at least untried, for ever-increasing embarrassments;
and the government, fearing still greater disorders, was making ready
to repress any that might break out in districts known to be specially
disaffected. All this was apparently of secondary importance to young
Buonaparte; he had a scheme to use the crisis for the benefit of his
family. Compelled by their utter destitution at the time of his
father's death, he had temporarily and for that occasion assumed his
father's rôle of suppliant. Now for a second time he sent in a
petition. It was written in Paris, dated November ninth, 1787, and
addressed, in his mother's behalf, to the intendant for Corsica
resident at the French capital. His name and position must have
carried some weight, it could not have been the mere effrontery of an
adventurer which secured him a hearing at Versailles, an interview
with the prime minister, Loménie de Brienne, and admission to all the
minor officials who might deal with his mother's claim. All these
privileges he declares that he had enjoyed and the statements must
have been true. The petition was prefaced by a personal letter
containing them. Though a supplication in form, the request is unlike
his father's humble and almost cringing papers, being rather a demand
for justice than a petition for favor; it is unlike them in another
respect, because it contains a falsehood, or at least an utterly
misleading half-truth: a statement that he had shortened his leave
because of his mother's urgent necessities.
The paper was not handed in until after the expiration of his leave,
and his true object was not to rejoin his regiment, as was hinted in
it, but to secure a second extension of leave. Such was the slackness
of discipline that he spent all of November and the first half of
December in Paris. During this period he made acquaintance with the
darker side of Paris life. The papers numbered four, five, and six in
the Fesch collection give a fairly detailed account of one adventure
and his bitter repentance. The second suggests the writing of history
as an antidote for unhappiness, and the last is a long, rambling
effusion in denunciation of pleasure, passion, and license; of
gallantry as utterly incompatible with patriotism. His acquaintance
with history is ransacked for examples. Still another short effusion
which may belong to the same period is in the form of an imaginary
letter, saturated likewise with the Corsican spirit, addressed by King
Theodore to Walpole. It has little value or meaning, except as it may
possibly foreshadow the influence on Napoleon's imagination of
England's boundless hospitality to political fugitives like Theodore
and Paoli.
Lieutenant Buonaparte remained in Paris until he succeeded in
procuring permission to spend the next six months in Corsica, at his
own charges. He was quite as disingenuous in his request to the
Minister of War as in his memorial to the intendant for Corsica,
representing that the estates of Corsica were about to meet, and that
his presence was essential to safeguard important interests which in
his absence would be seriously compromised. Whatever such a plea may
have meant, his serious cares as the real head of the family were ever
uppermost, and never neglected. Louis had, as was feared, lost his
appointment, and though not past the legal age, was really too old to
await another vacancy; Lucien was determined to leave Brienne in any
case, and to stay at Aix in order to seize the first chance which
might arise of entering the seminary. Napoleon made some
provision--what it was is not known--for Louis's further temporary
stay at Brienne, and then took Lucien with him as far as their route
lay together. He reached his home again on the first of January, 1788.
The affairs of the family were at last utterly desperate, and were
likely, moreover, to grow worse before they grew better. The old
archdeacon was failing daily, and, although known to have means, he
declared himself destitute of ready money. With his death would
disappear a portion of his income; his patrimony and savings, which
the Buonapartes hoped of course to inherit, were an uncertain
quantity, probably insufficient for the needs of such a family. The
mulberry money was still unpaid; all hope of wresting the ancestral
estates from the government authorities was buried; Joseph was without
employment, and, as a last expedient, was studying in Pisa for
admission to the bar. Louis and Lucien were each a heavy charge;
Napoleon's income was insufficient even for his own modest wants,
regulated though they were by the strictest economy. Who shall cast a
stone at the shiftiness of a boy not yet nineteen, charged with such
cares, yet consumed with ambition, and saturated with the romantic
sentimentalism of his times? Some notion of his embarrassments and
despair can be obtained from a rapid survey of his mental states and
the corresponding facts. An ardent republican and revolutionary, he
was tied by the strongest bonds to the most despotic monarchy in
Europe. A patriotic Corsican, he was the servant of his country's
oppressor. Conscious of great ability, he was seeking an outlet in the
pursuit of literature, a line of work entirely unsuited to his powers.
The head and support of a large family, he was almost penniless; if he
should follow his convictions, he and they might be altogether so. In
the period of choice and requiring room for experiment, he saw himself
doomed to a fixed, inglorious career, and caged in a framework of
unpropitious circumstance. Whatever the moral obliquity in his feeble
expedients, there is the pathos of human limitations in their
character.
Whether the resolution had long before been taken, or was of recent
formation, Napoleon now intended to make fame and profit go hand in
hand. The meeting of the Corsican estates was, as far as is known,
entirely forgotten, and authorship was resumed, not merely with the
ardor of one who writes from inclination, but with the regular
drudgery of a craftsman. In spite of all discouragements, he appeared
to a visitor in his family, still considered the most devoted in the
island to the French monarchy because so favored by it, as being "full
of vivacity, quick in his speech and motions, his mind apparently hard
at work in digesting schemes and forming plans and proudly rejecting
every other suggestion but that of his own fancy. For this intolerable
ambition he was often reproved by the elder Lucien, his uncle, a
dignitary of the church. Yet these admonitions seemed to make no
impression upon the mind of Napoleon, who received them with a grin of
pity, if not of contempt."[15] The amusements of the versatile and
headstrong boy would have been sufficient occupation for most men.
Regulating, as far as possible, his mother's complicated affairs, he
journeyed frequently to Bastia, probably to collect money due for
young mulberry-trees which had been sold, possibly to get material for
his history. On these visits he met and dined with the artillery
officers of the company stationed there. One of them, M. de Roman, a
very pronounced royalist, has given in his memoirs a striking portrait
of his guest.[16] "His face was not pleasing to me at all, his
character still less; and he was so dry and sententious for a youth of
his age, a French officer too, that I never for a moment entertained
the thought of making him my friend. My knowledge of governments,
ancient and modern, was not sufficiently extended to discuss with him
his favorite subject of conversation. So when in my turn I gave the
dinner, which happened three or four times that year, I retired after
the coffee, leaving him to the hands of a captain of ours, far better
able than I was to lock arms with such a valiant antagonist. My
comrades, like myself, saw nothing in this but absurd pedantry. We
even believed that this magisterial tone which he assumed was
meaningless until one day when he reasoned so forcibly on the rights
of nations in general, his own in particular, _Stupete gentes!_ that
we could not recover from our amazement, especially when in speaking
of a meeting of their Estates, about calling which there was some
deliberation, and which M. de Barrin sought to delay, following in
that the blunders of his predecessor, he said: 'that it was very
surprising that M. de Barrin thought to prevent them from deliberating
about their interests,' adding in a threatening tone, 'M. de Barrin
does not know the Corsicans; he will see what they can do.' This
expression gave the measure of his character. One of our comrades
replied: 'Would you draw your sword against the King's representative?'
He made no answer. We separated coldly and that was the last time this
former comrade did me the honor to dine with me." Making all
allowance, this incident exhibits the feeling and purpose of Napoleon.
During these days he also completed a plan for the defense of St.
Florent, of La Mortilla, and of the Gulf of Ajaccio; drew up a report
on the organization of the Corsican militia; and wrote a paper on the
strategic importance of the Madeleine Islands. This was his play; his
work was the history of Corsica. It was finished sooner than he had
expected; anxious to reap the pecuniary harvest of his labors and
resume his duties, he was ready for the printer when he left for
France in the latter part of May to secure its publication. Although
dedicated in its first form to a powerful patron, Monseigneur
Marbeuf, then Bishop of Sens, like many works from the pen of genius
it remained at the author's death in manuscript.
[Footnote 15: Correspondence of Sir John Sinclair, I,
47.]
[Footnote 16: Souvenirs d'un officier royaliste, par M.
de R..., Vol. I, p. 117.]
The book was of moderate size, and of moderate merit.[17] Its form,
repeatedly changed from motives of expediency, was at first that of
letters addressed to the Abbé Raynal. Its contents display little
research and no scholarship. The style is intended to be popular, and
is dramatic rather than narrative. There is exhibited, as everywhere
in these early writings, an intense hatred of France, a glowing
affection for Corsica and her heroes. A very short account of one
chapter will sufficiently characterize the whole work. Having outlined
in perhaps the most effective passage the career of Sampiero, and
sketched his diplomatic failures at all the European courts except
that of Constantinople, where at last he had secured sympathy and was
promised aid, the author depicts the patriot's bitterness when
recalled by the news of his wife's treachery. Confronting his guilty
spouse, deaf to every plea for pity, hardened against the tender
caresses of his children, the Corsican hero utters judgment. "Madam,"
he sternly says, "in the face of crime and disgrace, there is no other
resort but death." Vannina at first falls unconscious, but, regaining
her senses, she clasps her children to her breast and begs life for
their sake. But feeling that the petition is futile, she then recalls
the memory of her earlier virtue, and, facing her fate, begs as a last
favor that no base executioner shall lay his soiled hands on the wife
of Sampiero, but that he himself shall execute the sentence. Vannina's
behavior moves her husband, but does not touch his heart. "The pity
and tenderness," says Buonaparte, "which she should have awakened
found a soul thenceforward closed to the power of sentiment. Vannina
died. She died by the hands of Sampiero."
[Footnote 17: Printed in Napoléon inconnu, Vol. II, p.
167.]
Neither the publishers of Valence, nor those of Dôle, nor those of
Auxonne, would accept the work. At Paris one was finally found who was
willing to take a half risk. The author, disillusioned but sanguine,
was on the point of accepting the proposition, and was occupied with
considering ways and means, when his friend the Bishop of Sens was
suddenly disgraced. The manuscript was immediately copied and revised,
with the result, probably, of making its tone more intensely Corsican;
for it was now to be dedicated to Paoli. The literary aspirant must
have foreseen the coming crash, and must have felt that the exile was
to be again the liberator, and perhaps the master, of his native land.
At any rate, he abandoned the idea of immediate publication, possibly
in the dawning hope that as Paoli's lieutenant he could make Corsican
history better than he could write it. It is this copy which has been
preserved; the original was probably destroyed.
The other literary efforts of this feverish time were not as
successful even as those in historical writing. The stories are wild
and crude; one only, "The Masked Prophet," has any merit or interest
whatsoever. Though more finished than the others, its style is also
abrupt and full of surprises; the scene and characters are Oriental;
the plot is a feeble invention. An ambitious and rebellious Ameer is
struck with blindness, and has recourse to a silver mask to deceive
his followers. Unsuccessful, he poisons them all, throws their corpses
into pits of quicklime, then leaps in himself, to deceive the world
and leave no trace of mortality behind. His enemies believe, as he
desired, that he and his people have been taken up into heaven. The
whole, however, is dimly prescient, and the concluding lines of the
fable have been thought by believers in augury to be prophetic.
"Incredible instance! How far can the passion for fame go!" Among the
papers of this period are also a constitution for the "calotte," a
secret society of his regiment organized to keep its members up to the
mark of conduct expected from gentlemen and officers, and many
political notes. One of these rough drafts is a project for an essay
on royal power, intended to treat of its origin and to display its
usurpations, and which closes with these words: "There are but few
kings who do not deserve to be dethroned."
The various absences of Buonaparte from his regiment up to this time
are antagonistic to our modern ideas of military duty. The subsequent
ones seem simply inexplicable, even in a service so lax as that of the
crumbling Bourbon dynasty. Almost immediately after Joseph's return,
on the first of June he sailed for France. He did not reach Auxonne,
where the artillery regiment La Fère was now stationed, until early in
that month, 1788. He remained there less than a year and a half, and
then actually obtained another leave of absence, from September tenth,
1789, to February, 1791, which he fully intended should end in his
retirement from the French service.[18] The incidents of this second
term of garrison life are not numerous, but from the considerable
body of his notes and exercises which dates from the period we know
that he suddenly developed great zeal in the study of artillery,
theoretical and practical, and that he redoubled his industry in the
pursuit of historical and political science. In the former line he
worked diligently and became expert. With his instructor Duteil he
grew intimate and the friendship was close throughout life. He
associated on the best of terms with his old friend des Mazis and
began a pleasant acquaintance with Gassendi. So faithful was he to the
minutest details of his profession that he received marks of the
highest distinction. Not yet twenty and only a second lieutenant, he
was appointed, with six officers of higher rank, a member of the
regimental commission to study the best disposal of mortars and cannon
in firing shells. Either at this time or later (the date is
uncertain), he had sole charge of important manoeuvers held in honor
of the Prince of Condé. These honors he recounted with honest pride in
a letter dated August twenty-second to his great-uncle. Among the
Fesch papers are considerable fragments of his writing on the theory,
practice, and history of artillery. Antiquated as are their contents,
they show how patient and thorough was the work of the student, and
some of their ideas adapted to new conditions were his permanent
possession, as the greatest master of artillery at the height of his
fame. In the study of politics he read Plato and examined the
constitutions of antiquity, devouring with avidity what literature he
could find concerning Venice, Turkey, Tartary, and Arabia. At the same
time he carefully read the history of England, and made some accurate
observations on the condition of contemporaneous politics in France.
[Footnote 18: Similar instances of repeated and
lengthened absence from duty among the young officers
are numerous and easily found in the archives.
Nevertheless, Buonaparte's case is a very extraordinary
example of how a clever person could work the system.
The facts are bad enough, but as many cities claimed
Homer, so in the Napoleonic legend events of a sojourn
at Strasburg about this time were given in great detail.
He was in relations with a famous actress and wrote
verses which are printed. Even Metternich records that
the young Napoleon Bonaparte had just left the Alsatian
capital when he himself arrived there in 1788. Later, in
1806, a fencing-master claimed that he had instructed
both these great men in the earlier year at Strasburg.
Yet the whole tale is impossible. See Napoléon inconnu,
Vol. I, p. 204.]
His last disappointment had rendered him more taciturn and
misanthropic than ever; it seems clear that he was working to become
an expert, not for the benefit of France, but for that of Corsica.
Charged with the oversight of some slight works on the fortifications,
he displayed such incompetence that he was actually punished by a
short arrest. Misfortune still pursued the family. The youth who had
been appointed to Brienne when Louis was expecting a scholarship
suddenly died. Mme. de Buonaparte was true to the family tradition,
and immediately forwarded a petition for the place, but was, as
before, unsuccessful. Lucien was not yet admitted to Aix; Joseph was a
barrister, to be sure, but briefless. Napoleon once again, but for the
last time,--and with marked impatience, even with impertinence,--took
up the task of solicitation. The only result was a good-humored,
non-committal reply. Meantime the first mutterings of the
revolutionary outbreak were heard, and spasmodic disorders, trifling
but portentous, were breaking out, not only among the people, but even
among the royal troops. One of these, at Seurre, was occasioned by the
news that the hated and notorious syndicate existing under the
scandalous agreement with the King known as the "Bargain of Famine"
had been making additional purchases of grain from two merchants of
that town. This was in April, 1789. Buonaparte was put in command of a
company and sent to aid in suppressing the riot. But it was ended
before he arrived; on May first he returned to Auxonne.
[Illustration: From the collection of W. C. Crane. Engraved by Huot.
Charles Bonaparte, Father of the Emperor Napoleon, 1785.
Painted by Girodet.]
Four days later the Estates met at Versailles. What was passing in the
mind of the restless, bitter, disappointed Corsican is again plainly
revealed. A famous letter to Paoli, to which reference has already
been made, is dated June twelfth. It is a justification of his
cherished work as the only means open to a poor man, the slave of
circumstances, for summoning the French administration to the bar
of public opinion; viz., by comparing it with Paoli's. Willing to face
the consequences, the writer asks for documentary materials and for
moral support, ending with ardent assurances of devotion from his
family, his mother, and himself. But there is a ring of false coin in
many of its words and sentences. The "infamy" of those who betrayed
Corsica was the infamy of his own father; the "devotion" of the
Buonaparte family had been to the French interest, in order to secure
free education, with support for their children, in France. The
"enthusiasm" of Napoleon was a cold, unsentimental determination to
push their fortunes, which, with opposite principles, would have been
honorable enough. In later years Lucien said that he had made two
copies of the history. It was probably one of these which has been
preserved. Whether or not Paoli read the book does not appear. Be that
as it may, his reply to Buonaparte's letter, written some months
later, was not calculated to encourage the would-be historian. Without
absolutely refusing the documents asked for by the aspiring writer, he
explained that he had no time to search for them, and that, besides,
Corsican history was only important in any sense by reason of the men
who had made it, not by reason of its achievements. Among other bits
of fatherly counsel was this: "You are too young to write history.
Make ready for such an enterprise slowly. Patiently collect your
anecdotes and facts. Accept the opinions of other writers with
reserve." As if to soften the severity of his advice, there follows a
strain of modest self-depreciation: "Would that others had known less
of me and I more of myself. _Probe diu vivimus_; may our descendants
so live that they shall speak of me merely as one who had good
intentions."
Buonaparte's last shift in the treatment of his book was most
undignified and petty. With the unprincipled resentment of despair, in
want of money, not of advice, he entirely remodeled it for the third
time, its chapters being now put as fragmentary traditions into the
mouth of a Corsican mountaineer. In this form it was dedicated to
Necker, the famous Swiss, who as French minister of finance was vainly
struggling with the problem of how to distribute taxation equally, and
to collect from the privileged classes their share. A copy was first
sent to a former teacher for criticism. His judgment was extremely
severe both as to expression and style. In particular, attention was
called to the disadvantage of indulging in so much rhetoric for the
benefit of an overworked public servant like Necker, and to the
inappropriateness of putting his own metaphysical generalizations and
captious criticism of French royalty into the mouth of a peasant
mountaineer. Before the correspondence ended, Napoleon's student life
was over. Necker had fled, the French Revolution was rushing on with
ever-increasing speed, and the young adventurer, despairing of success
as a writer, seized the proffered opening to become a man of action.
In a letter dated January twelfth, 1789, and written at Auxonne to his
mother, the young officer gives a dreary account of himself. The
swamps of the neighborhood and their malarious exhalations rendered
the place, he thought, utterly unwholesome. At all events, he had
contracted a low fever which undermined his strength and depressed his
spirits. There was no immediate hope of a favorable response to the
petition for the moneys due on the mulberry plantation because "this
unhappy period in French finance delays furiously (_sic_) the
discussion of our affair. Let us hope, however, that we may be
compensated for our long and weary waiting and that we shall receive
complete restitution." He writes further a terse sketch of public
affairs in France and Europe, speaks despairingly of what the council
of war has in store for the engineers by the proposed reorganization,
and closes with tender remembrances to Joseph and Lucien, begging for
news and reminding them that he had received no home letter since the
preceding October. The reader feels that matters have come to a climax
and that the scholar is soon to enter the arena of revolutionary
activity. Curiously enough, the language used is French; this is
probably due to the fact that it was intended for the family, rather
than for the neighborhood circle.
CHAPTER VIII.
The Revolution in France.
The French Aristocracy -- Priests, Lawyers, and Petty Nobles
-- Burghers, Artisans, and Laborers -- Intelligent Curiosity
of the Nation -- Exasperating Anachronisms -- Contrast of
Demand and Resources -- The Great Nobles a Barrier to Reform
-- Mistakes of the King -- The Estates Meet at Versailles --
The Court Party Provokes Violence -- Downfall of Feudal
Privilege.
[Sidenote: 1787-89.]
At last the ideas of the century had declared open war on its
institutions; their moral conquest was already coextensive with
central and western Europe, but the first efforts toward their
realization were to be made in France, for the reason that the line of
least resistance was to be found not through the most downtrodden, but
through the freest and the best instructed nation on the Continent.
Both the clergy and the nobility of France had become accustomed to
the absorption in the crown of their ancient feudal power. They were
content with the great offices in the church, in the army, and in the
civil administration, with exemption from the payment of taxes; they
were happy in the delights of literature and the fine arts, in the
joys of a polite, self-indulgent, and spendthrift society, so
artificial and conventional that for most of its members a sufficient
occupation was found in the study and exposition of its trivial but
complex customs. The conduct and maintenance of a salon, the stage,
gallantry; clothes, table manners, the use of the fan: these are
specimens of what were considered not the incidents but the essentials
of life.
The serious-minded among the upper classes were as enlightened as any
of their rank elsewhere. They were familiar with prevalent
philosophies, and full of compassion for miseries which, for lack of
power, they could not remedy, and which, to their dismay, they only
intensified in their attempts at alleviation. They were even ready for
considerable sacrifices. The gracious side of the character of Louis
XVI is but a reflection of the piety, moderation, and earnestness of
many of the nobles. His rule was mild; there were no excessive
indignities practised in the name of royal power except in cases like
that of the "Bargain of Famine," where he believed himself helpless.
The lower clergy, as a whole, were faithful in the performance of
their duties. This was not true of the hierarchy. They were great
landowners, and their interests coincided with those of the upper
nobility. The doubt of the country had not left them untouched, and
there were many without conviction or principle, time-serving and
irreverent. The lawyers and other professional men were to be found,
for the most part, in Paris and in the towns. They had their
livelihood in the irregularities of society, and, as a class, were
retentive of ancient custom and present social habits. Although by
birth they belonged in the main to the third estate, they were in
reality adjunct to the first, and consequently, being integral members
of neither, formed a strong independent class by themselves. The petty
nobles were in much the same condition with regard to the wealthy,
powerful families in their own estate and to the rich burghers; they
married the fortunes of the latter and accepted their hospitality, but
otherwise treated them with the same exclusive condescension as that
displayed to themselves by the great.
But if the estate of the clergy and the estate of the nobility were
alike divided in character and interests, this was still more true of
the burghers. In 1614, at the close of the middle ages, the third
estate had been little concerned with the agricultural laborer. For
various reasons this class had been gradually emancipated until now
there was less serfage in France than elsewhere; more than a quarter,
perhaps a third, of the land was in the hands of peasants and other
small proprietors. This, to be sure, was economically disastrous, for
over-division of land makes tillage unprofitable, and these very men
were the taxpayers. The change had been still more marked in the
denizens of towns. During the last two centuries the wealthy burgesses
had grown still more wealthy in the expansion of trade, commerce, and
manufactures; many had struggled and bought their way into the ranks
of the nobility. The small tradesmen had remained smug, hard to move,
and resentful of change. But there was a large body of men unknown to
previous constitutions, and growing ever larger with the increase in
population--intelligent and unintelligent artisans, half-educated
employees in workshops, mills, and trading-houses, ever recruited from
the country population, seeking such intermittent occupation as the
towns afforded. The very lowest stratum of this society was then, as
now, most dangerous; idle, dissipated, and unscrupulous, they were yet
sufficiently educated to discuss and disseminate perilous doctrines,
and were often most ready in speech and fertile in resource.
This comparative well-being of a nation, devoted like the ancient
Greeks to novelty, avid of great ideas and great deeds, holding
opinions not merely for the pleasure of intellectual gymnastics but
logically and with a view to their realization, sensitive to
influences like the deep impressions made on their thinkers by the
English and American revolutions--such relative comfort with its
attendant opportunities for discussion was not the least of many
causes which made France the vanguard in the great revolution which
had already triumphed in theory throughout the continent and was
eventually to transform the social order of all Europe.
Discussion is not only a safety-valve, it is absolutely essential in
governments where the religion, morals, opinions, and occupations of
the people give form and character to institutions and legislation.
The centralized and despotic Bourbon monarchy of France was an
anachronism among an intelligent people. So was every institution
emanating from and dependent upon it. It was impossible for the
structure to stand indefinitely, however t
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