“From St. Charles Street you enter on a very small square. An elm tree stands before a yellowish gray plastered house, with a flat roof and a projecting balcony. It has six front windows in each of its three stories, and the doors look old and time-worn. On the corner of this house is an inscription, Letitia Square. The traveller knocks in vain at the door. No voice answers.”

Such is the picture, drawn in 1852, of the Bonaparte mansion in Ajaccio. Few tourists go to see it, for Corsica lies not in the direct routes of the world’s trade or travel. Yet it is a house whose story is more fascinating, more marvellous, than that of any building which cumbers the earth this day.

We shut our eyes, and we see a picture which is richer than the richest page torn from romance. We see a lean, sallow, awkward, stunted lad step forth from the door of the old house and go forth into the world, with no money in his pocket, and no powerful friends to lift him over the rough places. He is only nine years old when he leaves home, and we see him weep bitterly as he bids his mother good-by. We see him at school in France, isolated, wretched, unable at first to speak the language, fiercely resenting the slights put upon his poverty, his ignorance, his family, his country—suffering, but never subdued. We see him rise against troubles as the eagle breasts the storm. We see him lay the better half of the civilized world at his feet. We see him bring sisters and brothers from the island home, and put crowns on their heads. We see him shower millions upon his mother; and we hear him say to his brother on the day he dons the robes of empire, “Joseph, suppose father were here—!”

As long as time shall last, the inspiration of the poor and the ambitious will be the Ajaccio lawyer’s son: not Alexander, the born king; not CÆsar, the patrician; but Napoleon, the moneyless lad from despised Corsica, who stormed the high places of the world, and by his own colossal strength of character, genius, and industry took them!

As long as time shall last his name will inspire not only the individual, but the masses also. Wherever a people have heard enough, read enough, thought enough to feel that absolutism in king or priest is wrong; that special privilege in clan or clique is wrong; that monopoly of power, patronage, wealth, or opportunity is wrong, there the name of Napoleon will be spoken with reverence, despot though he became, for in his innermost fibre he was a man of the people, crushing to atoms feudalism, caste, divine right, and hereditary imposture.

As early as the year 947 there had been Bonapartes in Corsica, for the name of one occurs as witness to a deed in that year. There were also Bonapartes in Italy; and men of that name were classed with the nobles of Bologna, Treviso, and Florence. It is said that during the civil wars of Italy, members of the Bonaparte family took refuge in Corsica, and that Napoleon’s origin can be traced to this source. It is certain that the Bonapartes of Corsica continued to claim kindred with the Italian family, and to class themselves as patricians of Italy; and both these claims were recognized. In Corsica they ranked with the nobility, a family of importance at Ajaccio.

At the time of the French invasion the representatives of the family were Lucien, archdeacon of Ajaccio, and Charles Bonaparte, a young man who had been left an orphan at the age of fourteen.

Born in 1746, Charles Bonaparte married, in 1764, Letitia Ramolino, a Corsican girl of fifteen. She was of good family, and she brought to her husband a dowry at least equal to his own estate. Beautiful, high-spirited, and intelligent, Madame Letitia knew nothing of books, knew little of the manners of polite society, and was more of the proud peasant than of the grand lady. She did not know how to add up a column of figures; but time was to prove that she possessed judgment, common sense, inflexible courage, great loftiness and energy of character. Misfortune did not break her spirit, and prosperity did not turn her head. She was frugal, industrious, strong physically and mentally, “with a man’s head on a woman’s shoulders,” as Napoleon said of her.

Charles Bonaparte was studying law in Italy when the war between France and Corsica broke out. At the call of Paoli, the student dropped his books and came home to join in the struggle. He was active and efficient, one of Paoli’s trusted lieutenants. After the battle of Ponte Nuovo, realizing that all was lost, he gave in his submission (May 23, 1769) to the French, and returned to Ajaccio.

The policy of the French was to conciliate the leading Corsicans, and special attention seems to have been given to Charles Bonaparte. His mansion in Ajaccio, noted for its hospitality, became the favorite resort of General Marbeuf, the bachelor French governor of the island. With an ease which as some have thought indicated suppleness or weakness of character, Bonaparte the patriot became Bonaparte the courtier. He may have convinced himself that incorporation with France was best for Corsica, and that his course in making the most out of the new order of things was wisdom consistent with patriotism.

Resistance to France having been crushed, the policy of conciliation inaugurated, and the Corsicans encouraged to take part in the management of their own affairs, subject to France, one might hesitate before condemning the course of Charles Bonaparte in Corsica, just as we may hesitate between the policies of Kossuth and DÉak in Hungary, or of Kosciusko and Czartoryski in Poland. We may, and do, admire the patriot who resists to the death; and, at the same time, respect the citizen who fights till conquered, and then makes the best of a bad situation.

In 1765 Madame Letitia Bonaparte gave birth to her first child; in 1767, to her second, both of whom died while infants. In 1768 was born Joseph, and on August 15, 1769, Napoleon.1

Other children came to the Bonapartes in the years following, the survivors of these being: Elisa, Lucien, Louis, Pauline, Caroline, and Jerome. To support this large family, and to live in the hospitable fashion which custom required of a man of his rank, Charles Bonaparte found a difficult matter, especially as he was a pleasure-loving, extravagant man whose idea of work seemed to be that of a born courtier. He returned to Italy after the peace; spent much of his patrimony there; made the reputation of a sociable, intelligent, easy-going gentleman; and took his degree of Doctor of Laws, at Pisa, in November, 1769.

It was his misfortune to be cumbered with a mortgaged estate and a hereditary lawsuit. Whatever surplus the mortgage failed to devour was swallowed by the lawsuit. His father had expensively chased this rainbow, pushed this hopeless attempt to get justice; and the steps of the father were followed by the son. It was the old story of a sinner, sick and therefore repentant; a priest holding the keys to heaven and requiring payment in advance; a craven surrender of estate to purchase the promise of salvation. Thus the Jesuits got Bonaparte houses and lands, in violation of the terms of an ancestor’s will, the lawsuit being the effort of the legal heirs to make good the testament of the original owner.

In spite of all they could do, the Bonapartes were never able to recover the property.

Charles Bonaparte, a man of handsome face and figure, seems to have had a talent for making friends, for he was made assessor to the highest court of Ajaccio, a member of the council of Corsican nobles, and later, the representative of these nobles to France. With the slender income from his wife’s estate and that from his own, aided by his official earnings, he maintained his family fairly well; but his pretensions and expenditures were so far beyond what he was really able to afford that, financially, he was never at ease.

It was the familiar misery of the gentleman who strives to gratify a rich man’s tastes with a poor man’s purse. There was his large stone mansion, his landed estate, his aristocratic associates, his patent of nobility signed by the Duke of Florence; and yet there was not enough money in the house to school the children.

The widowed mother of Madame Letitia had married a second husband, Fesch, a Swiss ex-captain of the Genoese service, and by this marriage she had a son, Joseph Fesch, known to Napoleonic chronicles as “Uncle Fesch.” This eleven-year-old uncle taught the young Napoleon the alphabet.

In his sixth year Napoleon was sent to a dame’s school. For one of the little girls at this school the lad showed such a fondness that he was laughed at, and rhymed at, by the other boys.

The jeers and the rhyme Napoleon answered with sticks and stones.

It is not very apparent that he learned anything here, for we are told that it was the AbbÉ Recco who taught him to read; and it was this AbbÉ whom Napoleon remembered in his will. As to little Giacominetta, Napoleonic chronicles lose her completely, and she takes her place among the “dream children” of very primitive poesy.

Just what sort of a boy Napoleon was at this early period, it is next to impossible to say. Perhaps he did not differ greatly from other boys of his own age. Probably he was more fractious, less inclined to boyish sports, quicker to quarrel and fight. But had he never become famous, his youthful symptoms would never have been thought to indicate anything uncommon either for good or evil.

At St. Helena, the weary captive amused himself by picturing the young Napoleon as the bad boy of the town. He quarrelled, he fought, he bit and scratched, he terrorized his brothers and sisters, and so forth. It may be true, it may not be; his mother is reported as saying that he was a “perfect imp of a child,” but the authority is doubtful.

The Bonaparte family usually spent the summer at a small country-seat called Milleli. Its grounds were beautiful, and there was a glorious view of the sea. A large granite rock with a natural cavity, or grotto, offered a cool, quiet retreat; and this is said to have been Napoleon’s favorite resort. In after years he improved the spot, built a small summer-house there, and used it for study and meditation.

It is natural to suppose that Napoleon as a child absorbed a good deal of Corsican sentiment. His wet-nurse was a Corsican peasant, and from her, his parents, his playmates, and his school companions he probably heard the story of Corsica, her wrongs, her struggles, and her heroes. Della Rocca, Sampiero, Gaffori, and Paoli were names familiar to his ears. At a very early age he had all the passions of the Corsican patriot. The French were masters, but they were hated. While the Bonapartes had accepted the situation, they may not have loved it. The very servants in the house vented their curses on “those dogs of French.”

General Marbeuf, the warm friend of the family, encouraged Charles Bonaparte to make the attempt to have the children educated at the expense of France. In 1776 written application was made for the admission of Joseph and Napoleon into the military school of Brienne. At that time both the boys were on the safe side of the age-limit of ten years. But the authorities demanded proofs of nobility,—four generations thereof,—according to Bourbon law; and before these proofs could be put into satisfactory shape, Joseph was too old for Brienne.

Chosen in 1777 by the nobles of Corsica as their deputy to France, Charles Bonaparte set out for Versailles in 1778, taking with him his sons Joseph and Napoleon. Joseph Fesch accompanied the party as far as Aix, where he was to be given a free education for the priesthood by the seminary at that place. Joseph and Napoleon both stated in after years that their father visited Florence on the way to France, and was given an honorable reception at the ducal court.

The Bishop of Autun, nephew of General Marbeuf, had been interested in behalf of the Bonapartes; and it was at his school that Joseph was to be educated for the Church. Napoleon was also placed there till he could learn French enough for Brienne. On January 1, 1779, therefore, he began his studies.

The AbbÉ Chardon, who was his teacher, says that he was a boy of thoughtful and gloomy character. “He had no playmate and walked about by himself.” Very naturally. He was a stranger to all the boys, he was in a strange country, he could not at first speak the language, he could not understand those who did speak it—how was the homesick lad to be sociable and gay under such conditions? Besides, he was Corsican, a despised representative of a conquered race. And the French boys taunted him about it. One day, according to the teacher, the boys threw at him the insult that “the Corsicans were a lot of cowards.” Napoleon flashed out of his reserve and replied, “Had you been but four to one you would never have conquered us, but you were ten to one.” To pacify him the teacher remarked, “But you had a good general—Paoli.”—“Yes,” answered the lad of ten, “and I would like to resemble him.”

According to the school register and to Napoleon’s own record, he remained at Autun till the 12th of May, 1779. He had learned “enough French to converse freely, and to make little themes and translations.”

In the meantime, Charles Bonaparte had been attending his king, the young Louis XVI., at Versailles. Courtier in France as in Ajaccio, the adroit lawyer had pleased. A bounty from the royal purse swelled the pay of the Corsican delegates, a reward for “their excellent behavior”; and for once Charles Bonaparte was moderately supplied with funds.

On May 19, 1779, Napoleon entered the college of Brienne. Its teachers were incompetent monks. The pupils were mainly aristocratic French scions of the privileged nobility, proud, idle, extravagant, vicious. Most of these young men looked down upon Napoleon with scorn. In him met almost every element necessary to stir their dislike, provoke their ridicule, or excite their anger. In person he was pitifully thin and short, with lank hair and awkward manners; his speech was broken French, mispronounced and ungrammatical; it was obvious that he was poor; he was a Corsican; and instead of being humble and submissive, he was proud and defiant. During the five years Napoleon spent here he was isolated, moody, tortured by his own discontent, and the cruelty of his position. He studied diligently those branches he liked, the others he neglected. In mathematics he stood first in the school, in history and geography he did fairly well; Latin, German, and the ornamental studies did not attract him at all. The German teacher considered him a dunce. But he studied more in the library than in the schoolroom. While the other boys were romping on the playground, Napoleon was buried in some corner with a book.

On one occasion Napoleon, on entering a room and seeing a picture of Choiseul which hung therein, burst into a torrent of invective against the minister who had bought Corsica. The school authorities punished the blasphemy.

At another time one of the young French nobles scornfully said to Napoleon, “Your father is nothing but a wretched tipstaff.” Napoleon challenged his insulter, and was imprisoned for his temerity.

Upon another occasion he was condemned by the quartermaster, for some breach of the rules, to wear a penitential garb and to eat his dinner on his knees at the door of the common dining-room. The humiliation was real and severe; for doubtless the French lads who had been bullying him were all witnesses to the disgrace, and were looking upon the culprit with scornful eyes, while they jeered and laughed at him. Napoleon became hysterical under the strain, and began to vomit. The principal of the school happening to pass, was indignant that such a degradation should be put upon so dutiful and diligent a scholar, and relieved him from the torture.

“Ah, Bourrienne! I like you: you never make fun of me!” Is there nothing pathetic in this cry of the heart-sick boy?

To his father, Napoleon wrote a passionate appeal to be taken from the school where he was the butt of ridicule, or to be supplied with sufficient funds to maintain himself more creditably. General Marbeuf interfered in his behalf, and supplied him with a more liberal allowance.

The students, in turn, were invited to the table of the head-master. One day when this honor was accorded Napoleon, one of the monk-professors sweetened the boy’s satisfaction by a contemptuous reference to Corsica and to Paoli. It seems well-nigh incredible that the clerical teachers should have imitated the brutality of the supercilious young nobles, but Bourrienne is authority for the incident. Napoleon broke out defiantly against the teacher, just as he had done against his fellow-students: “Paoli was a great man; he loved his country; and I will never forgive my father for his share in uniting Corsica to France. He should have followed Paoli.” Mocked by some of the teachers and tormented by the richer students, Napoleon withdrew almost completely within himself. He made no complaints, prayed for no relief, but fell back on his own resources. When the boys mimicked his pronunciation, turned his name into an offensive nickname, and flouted him with the subjection of his native land, he either remained disdainfully silent, or threw himself single-handed against his tormentors.

To each student was given a bit of ground that he might use it as he saw fit. Napoleon annexed to his own plat two adjacent strips which their temporary owners had abandoned; and by hedging and fencing made for himself a privacy, a solitude, which he could not otherwise get. Here he took his books, here he read and pondered, here he indulged his tendency to day-dreaming, to building castles in the air.

His schoolmates did not leave him at peace even here. Occasionally they would band together and attack his fortress. Then, says Burgoing, one of his fellow-students, “it was a sight to see him burst forth in a fury to drive off the intruders, without the slightest regard to their numbers.”

Much as he disliked his comrades, there was no trace of meanness in his resentments. He suffered punishment for things he had not done rather than report on the real offenders. Unsocial and unpopular, he nevertheless enjoyed a certain distinction among the students as well as with the teachers. His pride, courage, maturity of thought, and quick intelligence arrested attention and compelled respect.

When the students, during the severe winter of 1783–84, were kept within doors, it was Napoleon who suggested mimic war as a recreation. A snow fort was built, and the fun was to attack and defend it with snowballs. Then Napoleon’s natural capacity for leadership was seen. He at one time led the assailants, at another the defenders, as desperately in earnest as when he afterward attacked or defended kingdoms. One student refusing to obey an order, Napoleon knocked him down with a chunk of ice. Many years after this unlucky person turned up with a scar on his face, and reminded the Emperor Napoleon of the incident; whereupon Napoleon fell into one of his best moods, and dealt liberally with the petitioner.

During the whole time Napoleon was at Brienne he remained savagely Corsican. He hated the French, and did not hesitate to say so. Of course the French here meant were the pupils of the school—the big boys who jeered at his poverty, his parentage, his countrymen. It is worth notice that he never by word or deed sought to disarm his enemies by pandering to their prejudices. He made no effort whatever to ingratiate himself with them by surrendering any of his own opinions. He would not even compromise by concealing what he felt. He was a Corsican to the core, proud of his island heroes, proud of Paoli, frankly detesting those who had trampled upon his country. It must have sounded even to the dull ears of ignorant monks as something remarkable when this shabby-looking lad, hardly in his teens, cried out, defiantly, “I hope one day to be able to give Corsica her freedom!” He had drunk in the wild stories the peasants told of Sampiero; he had devoured the vivid annals of Plutarch, and his hopes and dreams were already those of a daring man.

During these years at Brienne, General Marbeuf continued to be Napoleon’s active friend. He seems to have regularly supplied him with money, and it was the General’s interference which secured his release from imprisonment in the affair of the duel. Through the same influence Napoleon secured the good-will of Madame de Brienne, who lived in the chÂteau near the school. This lady warmed to the lad, took him to her house to spend holidays and vacations, and treated him with a motherly kindness which he never forgot.

The character which Napoleon established at Brienne varied with the point of view. To the students generally he appeared to be unsocial, quarrelsome, and savage. To some of the teachers he seemed to be mild, studious, grateful. To others, imperious and headstrong. M. de Keralio reported him officially as submissive, upright, thoughtful, “conduct most exemplary.” On all he made the impression that he was inflexible, not to be moved after he has taken his stand. Pichegru, afterward conqueror of Holland, and after that supporter of the Bourbons, was a pupil-teacher to Napoleon at Brienne, and is thought to have been the quartermaster who put upon him the shame of eating on his knees at the dining-room door. Bourbon emissaries were eager to win over to their cause the brilliant young general, Bonaparte, and suggested the matter to Pichegru. “Do not try it,” said he. “I knew him at Brienne. His character is inflexible. He has taken his side, and will not change.” When Napoleon, in his last years, came to speak of his school days, he seemed to have forgotten all that was unpleasant. Time had swept its effacing fingers over the actual facts, and he had come to believe that he had not only been happy at Brienne, but had been a jolly, frolicksome fellow—a very cheerful, sociable, popular lad. It was some other youth who had shunned his fellows, fenced himself within a garden wall, combated all intruders with sticks and stones, and hated the French because they teased him so. The real Napoleon, according to the captive Emperor, was a boy like other boys, full of fun, frolic, tricks, and games. One of the sportive tricks of the merry and mythical Bonaparte was this: An old commandant, upward of eighty, was practising the boys at target-shooting with a cannon. He complained that the aim was bad, none of the balls hit the target. Presently, he asked of those near him if they had seen the ball strike. After half a dozen discharges, the old general bethought himself of counting the balls. Then the trick was exposed—the boys had slipped the balls aside each time the gun was loaded.

Another anecdote told by the Emperor brings him more immediately within the circle of our sympathies. Just above his own room at the college was a fellow-student who was learning to play on the horn. He practised loudly, and at all hours. Napoleon found it impossible to study. Meeting the student on the stairs, Napoleon feelingly remonstrated. The horn player was in a huff at once, as a matter of course. His room was his own, and he would blow horns in it as much as he pleased. “We will see about that,” said Napoleon, and he challenged the offender to mortal combat. Death could have no terrors compared to the incessant tooting in the room above, and Napoleon was determined to take his chances on sudden sword thrust rather than the slow tortures of the horn practice. Fellow-students interfered, a compromise was reached, and the duel did not come off. The student who roused the ire of Napoleon in this extreme manner was named Bussey, and in the campaign of 1814 Napoleon met him again, received offers of service from him, and named him aide-de-camp. It is a pleasure to be able to record that this fellow-student of Brienne remained faithful to Napoleon to the very last, in 1814 and again in 1815.

In the year 1810 the Emperor Napoleon, divorced from Josephine, was spending a few days in seclusion in the Trianon at Versailles, awaiting the coming of the Austrian wife, “the daughter of the CÆsars.” Hortense and Stephanie Beauharnais were with him, and Stephanie mischievously asked him if he knew how to waltz. Napoleon answered:—

“When I was at the military school I tried, I don’t know how many times, to overcome the vertigo caused by waltzing, without being able to succeed. Our dancing-master had advised us when practising to take a chair in our arms instead of a lady. I never failed to fall down with the chair, which I squeezed affectionately, and to break it. The chairs in my room, and those of two or three of my comrades, disappeared one after another.”

The Emperor told this story in his gayest manner, and the two ladies laughed, of course; but Stephanie insisted that he should even now learn to waltz, that all Germans waltzed, that his new wife would expect it, and that as the Empress could only dance with the Emperor, he must not deprive her of such a pleasure. “You are right,” exclaimed Napoleon. “Come! give me a lesson.”

Thereupon he rose, took the merry Stephanie in his arms, and went capering around the room to the music of his own voice, humming the air of The Queen of Prussia. After two or three turns, his fair teacher gave him up in despair; he was too hopelessly awkward; and she flattered him, while pronouncing him a failure, by saying that he was made to give lessons and not receive them.

Toward the close of 1783 a royal inspector of the military schools, Keralio by name, examined the students at Brienne for the purpose of selecting those who were to be promoted to the higher military school at Paris. M. de Keralio was greatly impressed by Napoleon, and emphatically recommended his promotion. This inspector having died, his successor examined Napoleon the second time, and passed him on to the Paris school, which he entered on October 30, 1784. On the certificate which went with him from Brienne were the words, “Character masterful, imperious, and headstrong.”

When Napoleon alighted from the coach which brought him from Brienne to Paris, and stood, a tiny foreign boy, in the midst of the hurly-burly of a great city, he must have felt himself one of the loneliest and most insignificant of mortals. Demetrius Permon found him in the Palais Royal, “where he was gaping and staring with wonder at everything he saw. Truly, he looked like a fresh importation.” M. Permon invited the lad to dine, and found him “very morose,” and feared that he had “more self-conceit than was suitable to his condition.” Napoleon made this impression upon Permon by declaiming violently against the luxury of the young men at the military school, denouncing the system of education which prevailed there, comparing it unfavorably to the system of ancient Sparta, and announcing his intention of memorializing the minister of war on the subject.

Napoleon, at the military school of Paris, continued to be studious, and to read almost constantly. He was obedient to the authorities, and defiant to the young aristocrats who surrounded him and looked down on him. The extravagance, indolence, and superciliousness of the noble students, together with the general luxury which prevailed in the establishment, disgusted and enraged a scholar who had no money to spend, and who had come there to study. When he, as head of the State, came to reorganize the educational system of France, he did not forget the lessons taught by his own experience. As a man he adopted a system which avoided all the abuses which as a boy he had denounced.

During this period he may have occasionally visited the Permons in Paris and his sister Elisa, who had been admitted into the State school at St. Cyr. Madame D’Abrantes so relates in her Memoirs; and while there is a difficulty about dates, her narrative is, perhaps, substantially correct. It is a lifelike picture she paints of Napoleon’s gloom at Paris and Elisa’s sorrow at St. Cyr: Napoleon wretched because he could not pay his way among the boys; Elisa miserable because she could not keep step with the girls. Napoleon sulked and denounced luxury; Elisa wept and bewailed her poverty. Elisa was consoled by a tip given by Madame Permon. As for Napoleon, he refused to borrow: “I have no right to add to the burdens of my mother.”

On final examination, August, 1785, Napoleon stood forty-second in his class—not a brilliant mark, certainly, but it sufficed. He received his appointment of sub-lieutenant with joy unbounded. His days of tutelage were over: henceforth he was a man and an officer. Having chosen the artillery service, he set out with Des Mazis, a friend he had made at the military school, to join the regiment of La FÈre, which was stationed at Valence. According to one account, Napoleon borrowed money from a cloth merchant to make this journey; according to another, Des Mazis paid the way of both. However that may be, it seems that when the young officers reached Lyons, a gay city of the south, they relaxed the rigors of military discipline to such an extent that their money all vanished. The remainder of the distance to Valence was made on foot.

Those biographers who devote their lives to defaming Napoleon, lay stress on the alleged fact that he was educated by the King. In becoming an adherent of the Revolution, these writers say that he betrayed an amount of moral obliquity quite appalling. Louis XVI. was king while Napoleon was at Brienne, and the suggestion that Napoleon owed a debt of gratitude to Louis XVI. is amusing. The tax-payers, the people, educated Napoleon; and whatever debt of gratitude he owed, he owed to them. In going with the Revolution, he went with those who had paid his schooling. He himself drew this distinction at the time. When M. Demetrius Permon rebuked him for criticising royalty, throwing the alleged debt of gratitude in his teeth, the boy replied, “The State educates me; not the King.”

Of course Permon could not admit the distinction, he being a noble of the Old Order; nor can biographers who write in the interest of modern Toryism admit it. But the distinction is there, nevertheless; the boy saw it, and so does impartial history.

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